Pretty Puzzles!!!

Batman

My Magnet

I Want My Mind To Be Like Clear Glass

Under The Rain

Peace and War

Artificial Demand

Aftermath Angel

I See You

BPD, as defined by the National Institute of Mental Health, is described as, “a serious mental illness that affects how a person feels about themselves and others and makes it hard to function in everyday life. The disorder often involves difficulty regulating emotions, leading to impulsivity, an unstable or often changing sense of self, and troubled relationships with others,” (National Institute of Mental Health, 2025). Building upon this definition, BPD has a spectrum of symptoms that can be presented in incredibly nuanced and complicated ways, and differs from person to person and is thus harder to generalize. However, there are classifiable traits and patterns, which we see frequently with Edward.

Using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition or DSM-5 criteria of BPD diagnosis for reference, we can identify samples of these instances throughout the story.

One prominent symptom of BPD is intense relationships in which the subject can switch between polarizing perceptions of the other person in the relationship. In short periods of time, the person can go from extreme idolization to equally as extreme resentment, often referred to as “splitting.” 

Edward, in The Riddler: Year One, is displayed to have felt incredibly overlooked, especially due to his neglect in childhood. In his adulthood, he is shown to idolize his boss and division director, Mr.Stone. One of his core motivations for continuing his investigation into the money laundering he noticed in New Beginnings was the idea of Stone praising him. However, despite his want for Stone’s praise, he later goes on to hate Stone to the point of envisioning him as a rotting, monster-like amalgamation, even when he does gain Stone’s approval. Such an intense switch is indicative of Edward’s unstable relationships and how he can treat others in those relationships when influenced by his emotions.

Moreover, this pattern is displayed in Edward’s relationship to Batman. When he first discovers Batman, he is in awe of him and quickly begins to idolize him. When struggling, Edward looks to Batman for inspiration, asking himself “what would he do?”

In Edward’s journal he drew an ink sketch of Batman telling him that he matters, once more showing his desire for validation. He projects what he needs to hear onto Batman so he can attempt to stabilize his own emotions, as he is so isolated in his personal life.

The idea of someone understanding him is enough to motivate Edward to continue his investigation into the potential criminal activity he discovered. It gives Edward the sense that his actions matter and that he is worthy of taking those steps of action.

Overall, Batman gives him hope and a purpose, making him feel more understood than ever.

Edward’s idolization of Batman develops into a parasocial relationship that guides the way he formats his murder spree. However, when Edward and Bruce meet in person at Arkham and Bruce deposes that they have any sort of partnership with each other, Edward, while initially in denial, quickly becomes spiteful at his rejection and it's apparent that his perspective shifts to antagonizing Batman the way he antagonizes the entirety of Gotham as having been “against” him and "complicit" in the corrupted system that caused him to suffer. 

Edward had no issue with letting Batman go and attempt to intervene with the extremely dangerous flood and his group of violent followers, establishing a resentment towards him, going from the extreme of idolizing Batman to the point of attempting to reflect and replicate parts of him in himself and his Riddler persona to the extreme of letting him die and even mocking him before doing so with his singing of Ave Maria.

Another core trait of BPD is having an unstable sense of identity and self image, often externally influenced by feedback. Edward’s sense of self shifts extremely after his discovery of The Renewal Fund being a front for money laundering. Before his discovery, his self image was marked with resentment, indignation, and contempt. He would frequently compare himself to his co-workers, a form of external influence, and feel extreme resentment towards himself for not being more successful despite the amount of effort-driven work he has done. He frequently blamed himself for his rejection from The Renewal Fund and society as a whole, reflected in his lack of interpersonal relationships, while also valuing his talents to a high degree, such as his puzzles, mathematics, and logic skills, but only seeing those skills as partially independent of himself.

This poor self image shifts completely post-discovery as he is given a reason to absolve himself of blame for his loneliness, his suffering, his being neglected and rejected, among his other struggles, and instead blame the corruption in Gotham and those he views as part of that corruption for his issues.

Removing himself from the blame allowed him to elevate his ego as he no longer has to see himself as accountable for his own suffering. This self-righteous hatred results in his quick radicalization into violence and sensation, only taking one year as the title references. Such quick and extreme switch in sense of self is indicative not just of how extreme the reveal of The Renewal Fund’s fraudulence impacted Edward, but also how much the blame for his hardship was burdening him. Regardless, such a massive switch caused by external factors can be considered as a trait of BPD. 

Another prominent trait of BPD seen in Edward is impulsivity that typically veers into self harming. Edward, near the outset of his story, is shown to have impulsive suicidal thoughts frequently throughout his average day, spurred on by his self resentment. However, he takes active efforts to cope with these impulses, using breathing techniques and attention diversion to shift his focus and to ground himself. However, as his mental state declines during his investigation of New Beginnings and Waterfront, these impulsive thoughts get more graphic, however he does not act on any of them. Edward is an incredibly cautious and detail oriented person, which is how he was so successful as The Riddler, and often would not act without a reason and a plan. However, that does not detract from how his thoughts themselves were impulsive.

These issues are long term since Edward’s childhood and young adulthood where it’s emphasized how Edward would essentially feel as though he were being strangled by his own mind, as abstractedly portrayed in the art of the story.

Suicidal and physically self harming behaviors, such as the ones previously mentioned in Edward’s impulsive thoughts, are in themselves considered to be a diagnostic trait for BPD. 

Another trait for BPD is affective dysregulation, which is difficulty managing emotions and can cause mood swings that last for varying periods of time. An especially apparent example of such behavior presented by Edward is when he becomes hopeful at the idea of getting Stone to recognize his discovery of potential money laundering in New Beginnings, and thus him by proxy. However, when this attempt falls through, Edward suffers from an acute episode which detailed previously described extremely poor self image due to external influence, accompanied by self harming idealization to the point of hallucination. Moreover, when he compares himself to his co-worker, he remarks that he should let his own corpse rot in a ditch.

His moods, when externally influenced and especially in regards to his self image, tend to be capricious. As we see after the flood, Edward has begun crying while in Arkham, which can be due to his severed connection with Batman. Some would describe this behavior as “overreacting” but it is overwhelmingly apparent that Edward’s reactions are fully genuine and founded upon his perspectives and beliefs and how he interprets the interactions and world around him. 

The most meaningful and prominent of the traits Edward shares with the BPD criteria is the fear of abandonment. Abandonment is what has haunted and plagued Edward’s life the most, being the cause for most of his struggle. Edward felt neglected at the orphanage, abandoned by society, especially after Thomas Wayne’s death and his hope was ripped away from him. In a flashback depicting Edward’s difficult transition into adulthood, a youthful version of Edward is detailed as begging the present Edward to “not abandon him,” showing how he feels as though he has no one but himself, and even then Edward shuts the light on the vision, showing how he was still forced to abandon what that youthful version of him represents, being his child-like naivety of ever receiving help because he was abandoned.

Edward’s fear came to fruition and he was abandoned, which results in his resentful behavior in the present day, especially after the Renewal discovery. 

All such traits contribute to the idea that Edward Nashton could realistically have BPD when interpreting his actions through that context. Moreover, the development of BPD is often associated with troubled childhoods. As seen graphically in The Riddler: Year One, Edward’s childhood and young adult years were characterized by hardship, death, and neglect that could be associated with the development of BPD.

Edward’s potential having of BPD can be considered relevant to the themes of his character, being how lies are used as justification to mistreat vulnerable people in Gotham. Moreover, this theme is made more specific with how people with mental illnesses are treated within a society that views those in need of help as burdensome or akin to cancerous tumors. Edward’s having of BPD is paralleling his mother who was mentally ill and was institutionalized at Arkham, showing how, similar to her, he was unable to receive help, but unlike her he is choosing to not attempt to partake in the broken system Gotham has. Edward saw himself as making a structural change to Gotham’s system by killing the corrupt officials running it, especially as he viewed himself as a victim of it.

Edward’s potential untreated BPD simply builds upon this theme of a man who was in need of help but was denied it, and rejected by society to the point his resentment fostered into an isolation so extreme he turned to radicalization into violent ideals for change and to absolve himself of responsibility for his repeated aforementioned rejection.

Works Cited

Leichsenring, Falk, et al. “Borderline Personality Disorder: A Comprehensive Review of Diagnosis and Clinical Presentation, Etiology, Treatment, and Current Controversies.” World Psychiatry, vol. 23, no. 1, 2024, pp. 4–25, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38214629/, https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.21156. National Institute of Mental Health. “Borderline Personality Disorder.” Nih.gov, National Institute of Mental Health, 2019, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/borderline-personality-disorder.

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