i want to clear a thing up about how paladin zarkon actually works here ... or , how this blog is going to function now that i know s8 . or some things about zarkon & black , zarkon & honerva , so on so forth .
so uh . remember when black stored shiro ? well , black also stored zarkon . there’s no way around it , black does have a close bond with her paladins . i may have mentioned this before , but while yes , zarkon believes that honerva is the love of his life , black is his soulmate . black knows more about zarkon than he knows about himself . black can probably ... see all other realities , too —- & from the looks of it , zarkon as a dictator is in the minority of those . black did what any good lion would do with her omniscient , near - omnipotent abilities . she stored what was ‘ correct ’ . she stored the zarkon that was supposed to exist , one that is made of the ‘ base ’ person that she met & adored , & one who has conflicting memories , because black had to supplement missing parts , since zarkon died & his body lived on , whereas shiro died & his body vanished & a clone was released in his place .
does zarkon have all his memories together ? to a certain point , yes . his natural memories lead up to honerva’s pregnancy , a discussion of what to name their son ( deciding on a combination of altean & galra legend , lotor ) , & gets blurry after that . black saw no need to preserve the corruption that escalated after that . the remainder of zarkon’s memories are , for lack of a better term , filtered by black . he has no connection consciously to his future self , but has the sinking feeling that the reality he’s ‘ lived ’ in is not the truth . after all , black can only do so much .
for zarkon , his memories line up much with the ‘ other universe ’ , which for black & for most realities , is the correct one . zarkon believes honerva died , he often visits alfor & the other paladins in this mindscape , so on so forth —- but something feels off . black can only replicate so much . zarkon is her paladin , she can only make so much of the others , of their traits . zarkon is smart , he gets that something is wrong . & no , he’s not angry at black , he could never be angry at black for trying to protect him . black was trying to preserve what should’ve been & zarkon , especially torn from the safety of black’s simulated world , is really doing Bad in coping with what happened .
zarkon , i’ve mentioned before , is basically cosmic alexander the great . he looks up to other mythological conquerors , but his conquests weren’t what they become in the future . zarkon was all for integration , for working with planets , as well as the people of planets . what we see lotor doing in the flashback ? zarkon used to be like that , too . working alongside the people of other planets ; zarkon isn’t an idiot . not when he was alive . the zarkon of the future is a zombie , that’s how it is . he died . he didn’t come back properly , because it’s basically like a human transmutation in fullmetal alchemist . he wanted so badly to revive honerva , but ALCHEMY . maybe an altean alchemist like alfor could’ve done it , but zarkon isn’t an alchemist . the cost to bring back honerva was another life , zarkon offered his own . he also offered his friends , but the point is the life that was taken was his & because he doesn’t know alchemy , things went horribly wrong .
this is why paladin zarkon has such a violent reaction to seeing all the memories as they are . of knowing ten thousand years of pain that he caused , because he can’t reconcile it with himself . it doesn’t feel like him , but it is . he doesn’t remember the actions as his own , but they are . they are , as much as they aren’t . a good reference here is any homunculus in the 2003 fullmetal alchemist .
paladin zarkon’s continued existence is finite , he’s tied to black . he goes where black goes until the quintessence he has runs out , he’s on borrowed time , as anyone brought back like that is . he doesn’t have a real body to anchor himself to anymore , he’s very much a construct of black , the result of alchemy gone horribly wrong & a lion’s love .
anyway , i know this is scrambled , but it’s the best i can give for now , as to how this blog works .
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