Yhwach and The World
Putting aside Yhwach’s villainy and heinous acts. He really is the world’s first and biggest victim.
His personality and actions become more and more understandable (not excusable) the more you dig into his backstory.
Because he has been victimized again and again by world and the shinigami in power for as long as the 3 worlds have existed.
I’ve joked in the past that Adnyeus lowkey dgaf about his son but the more info we get the more it feels like the truth.
Think about it, Yhwach was stripped of his mind, his memories (for a time), his body, his powers but most importantly the world he knew and understood (the world he was seemingly raised in).
All without a single explanation or look from his parent. (Honestly it is no wonder why he treats his “children” like he does if that was the example Adnyeus gave him)
Then he was trapped in a body that was unable to move or speak for who knows how long until people found him and began to use him to cure their ailments (and isn’t it at least a bit sad? That Yhwach was used for what he could provide since he was a baby?)
Only to then find out he could only keep a functional body and mind by KILLING, a concept that didn’t even exist in his previous world. Can you imagine the toll it must take on someone? To know your continued existence in a body that can move depends on killing the people that came to you for help?
It is no wonder he is so desensitized to the murder of his own people by the time we see him in TYBW.
Personally, I lowkey don’t begrudge Yhwach his absolute hatred and abhorrence of Ichibei. Because (correct me if I am wrong) all his tragedies and pain can be traced one way or another to the monk.
Even after all that, he was to reckon with the fact there is not place for him and his people in the new worlds. They don’t fit in, and it is not a simple mistake. The world was CREATED in such a way they would never fit in. By his father and the shinigami.
It is no wonder he hates them so much his hated poured down to his people.
Not to mention he feels everything from the souls he absorbs. Their pain, their joys, their fears, etc. (So he wasn’t only stuck with a shitty ability he was forever stuck living with the fears of an entire nation lodged in his soul)
Again and again he gets screwed over not by coincidences or unpredictable strikes of fate, but by a carefully calculated and curated design created by forces beyond him (Adnyeus, The Noble Houses, Ichibei)
And then Ichibei has the gall to come down and scold and demean Yhwach because the Quincy are killing hollows as if he didn’t have a hand in creating the world as is. As if he didn’t play a hand in creating the problem he was now scolding Yhwach for.
Then he uses Yhwach’s father’s mutilated arm to seal Yhwach’s greatest power. Leaving essentially crippled in a way, because the Allmighty is not just a cool power, it is a part of his soul.
All of this is not even mentioning the OG Blood War.
Is this whole post me saying Yhwach is a saint who has done nothing wrong ever? Absolutely no. But people are complex. Some can be both a victim and a perpetrator. Which is precisely what Yhwach is.
He is a victim who went on to recreate and pass on all of the atrocities and unfairness committed against him. He is someone who took the wrong lesson away from everything that happened to him.
