So, I had a thought about Roy Mustang, and wanted to share. (Please read all the way through, I’m a huge Roy fan, despite how the first half of this post may seem, this isn’t an anti-Roy post, but rather a character study of sorts).
So normally, throughout the show, we see that Roy is calm, cool, and collected. He doesn’t show any emotion really, beyond smugness, or satisfaction at times. It takes the death of his best friend before we actually see some real emotion from him, and even then, he tries to hide it away, with the infamous, “It’s a terrible day for rain.” line.
Compare that -Mustang, sitting in his office with his team, or Mustang interrogating Major Armstrong following Hughes’ death -to what we see when he goes after Lust. When he goes after Envy.
That’s not even cold anger. That’s burning rage. In those two scenes, Roy is legitimately terrifying. He’s cruel.
His words to Lust, for example: “You said I couldn’t kill you, but I’d like the opportunity to prove you wrong. So how many times is it gonna take?” Or with Envy later, “Isn’t it interesting how quickly the tongue can be turned into a mess of boiling grease?”
That’s borderline sadistic, when you think about it. We see other people in the show get angry. Hell, in that same scene, Riza starts shooting, cursing, “You bitch!”. We see Ed -many, many times -lose his cool and start cussing out his enemies.
This is something different, though. This isn’t the desperate anger, a person pushed to the edge, and in emotional turmoil.
Roy in those scenes isn’t conflicted. He’s not in turmoil. He’s not desperate. He’s pissed. This isn’t a righteous fury, or desperation. This is rage.
So how do we fit this into Roy’s character? The man who deeply cares about his subordinates, who tries to protect the two boys under his command as much as he can, the man who’s a ‘lady’s man’, suave, cool, and collected? How does this aspect fit in?
Well, like most of Roy’s character development, we have to go back to Ishval. In Ishval, when a twenty-three year old Roy decided that he’d do what it took to get home, so he could ‘climb to the top of the pyramid’ as Hughes puts it. He’s willing to do whatever he has to, to try and make things right.
So he puts it all aside, tucking it away in that little black box in the back of his mind. The betrayal he feels by his government? Black box. The guilt over what he’s done? Black box. The horror at what he’s seen? Black box. The choices he’s had to make? Black box. As he tells Ed, “We keep moving. Whatever it takes. Even if it’s through a river of mud.”
Roy Mustang is the king of denial, the ruler of suppressing, the undisputed champion of compartmentalization. For a decade, this is how Roy survives. This is how he avoids eating a gun, how he gets up in the morning. He just doesn’t think about it. Shoves it down, and hides all those things away in the deepest parts of himself.
So what we see when Roy loses it? When he brutally tortures Lust and Envy? Roy is letting all that pain, all that self-loathing, all the guilt, the shame, the betrayal all out in those moments. What we see there is everything from Ishval making itself known.
And what makes it worse? Roy knows that this aspect of him exists. He knows what he’s capable of, when he opens that black box and let’s it all come bubbling out, like a volcano finally erupting, destroying everything in its path. We know he knows this… because he tells Riza that part of her job is to be ready to kill him if needed. He knows that each time he opens that box, that he lets himself feel everything he’s kept hidden away, tucked in the darkest corners of his mind, there’s a possibility that he’ll lose it; that he’s dancing along the edge of a knife, ready to topple off.
He knows exactly what he’s capable of. That he could very easily become worse than Kimblee. That there’s a part of him that’s just as broken, and dangerous, as Kimblee is.
Both suave, swarmy Roy and cruel, rage-filled Roy are the same person. He’s able to be suave and collected because of that rage. But that rage exists because he’s forcing himself to be so calm and rational.
These two aspects showcase Roy’s trauma in a heart-breaking way. Neither one of them is the ‘Real’ Roy at this point. The real Roy Mustang -the boy who wanted to protect people, who volunteered, the young idealist boy who told Master Hawkeye he was going to help -died in Ishval.
These two disparate parts of his personality are all that’s left of that boy. The man he so desperately wants to be, and the angry boy raging at the injustice and unfairness of it all.
