think Arakawa has chosen to make Riza the bearer of the flame alchemy tattoo and have her not know any alchemy (unless I'm forgetting something)? On that subject, how would you describe and judge Riza's relationship with her father? What do you make of him giving her the tattoo but not the actual knowledge? Regarding Roy's relationship with Madame Christmas and his worldviews, how and when do you think he decided to join the army? Was it his 'own' decision, perhaps influenced by someone, or *2*
Continuing from this post. I’m answering question #2 here. See my blog tomorrow for the answer to #3.
Question 1: Why did Arakawa choose to make Riza the bearer of the flame alchemy tattoo and have her not know any alchemy?
Question 2: How would you describe and judge Riza’s relationship with her father? What do you think of him giving her the tattoo but not the actual knowledge?
Question 3: Regarding Roy’s relationship with Madame Christmas and his worldviews, how and when do you think he decided to join the army? Was it his ‘own’ decision, perhaps influenced by someone, do you think Madame Christmas raised him with that in mind / influenced him heavily?
Riza’s relationship with her father, and why he gave her the tattoo but not knowledge of Flame Alchemy.
It’s a complicated relationship between Riza and Berthold, especially if we’re taking material from To the Promised Day in addition to the manga and 2009 anime. I’ve seen fans give different interpretations for the dynamics between these two, and I’ve got my own perspective… that frankly makes my skin crawl. The three characters that make my skin crawl the most in FMA are Shou Tucker, Solf J. Kimblee… and Berthold Hawkeye.
Things that have been confirmed to us about their relationship, from various canonical resources:
Riza’s father didn’t talk to her. He was so engrossed in alchemy that he didn’t take care of himself or see to his daughter’s emotional needs. Riza thought he wasn’t interested in her and she blamed herself for the wall between them.
Riza was afraid of her father in part because he was so passionate in his alchemical studies. The fiery look in his eye was disconcerting when he delved deep into his studies. At the same time, she still was influenced by his alchemy and his beliefs. Riza talks about equivalent exchange, so she obviously learned some about alchemy. She also saw what he could do and wanted to believe that alchemy could be used to improve her country. So even though she was scared of her father’s fervent alchemical pursuits, she also through her father learned to respect and believe in the power of alchemy for good, too.
The biggest ideological difference we see between Riza and Berthold is their stance on the military. Riza respects the military and thinks it can help the citizens for the good. Berthold is wary of the military. He refuses to show Mustang Flame Alchemy because Roy chose to become a soldier. You could speculate that maybe this plays into Berthold not teaching Riza to do Flame Alchemy. But I have a bigger idea, which I’ll get to after my other points.
Riza and Berthold didn’t actively hate each other. Berthold dies asking Mustang to look after his daughter, regretting he didn’t spend time to show her his love. Riza on her own part admits to Edward that she wishes her father were still alive so she could get some reconciliation and closure for her relationship with Berthold. Frankly, the Hawkeye family relationship sings VERY closely to what I’ve seen of abusive irl parental relationships. The parent can love their child and want the best for their child… and still make choices that legitimately cause their kid to suffer. Their child can suffer, and acknowledge that their parent treated them poorly… while still hold some attachment because, “Well, he’s imperfect, but he’s still my father.” It doesn’t excuse Berthold’s lack of attention to his daughter - his neglect - and his actions that made her afraid of him - but it means that there was a complicated dynamic to how they felt about each other.
Berthold trusts Riza with the tattoo. He tells Roy, as he’s dying, “All the notes from my research are held by my daughter. If you promise to use your alchemy with the right intentions, she will let you have it all.” This seems to imply that Berthold trusts Riza would properly judge the character of an alchemist like Roy. And that, through her smart judgment of character and conscience, she’d know whether or not they were “worthy” of being shown Flame Alchemy. Arakawa confirms this outright in the third guidebook.
Riza seems to make a comment, from what I can tell in To the Promised Day, that she didn’t think her father tattooing her was all bad; the tattoo was at least a reason for her and her father not to be completely estranged and closed off.
Berthold tells Mustang (when Roy’s 20 and Riza’s 16) that he completed his research years ago. This very well could mean that he tattooed Riza years ago… when she was a teenager, little more than a child.
With those observations given…
There’s no way that Berthold could have healthily tattooed his daughter.
First off, there’s too much indication of the relationship being… uncomfortable, neglectful, you could call it abusive. Riza being afraid of her father, blaming herself for their distance, being okay with something as dramatic as a tattoo just to be with him a little bit, and especially thinking he didn’t love her… all those are MAJOR red flags.
There are debates I’ve seen in fandom regarding whether or not Riza gave consent for the back tattoo. Honestly, that doesn’t matter, because any possibility is a bad one. He did something uncomfortably terrible even if Berthold didn’t pressure, manipulate, trick, or force her into it. Even if Riza gave direct consent for Berthold to tattoo her back, you’ve got to consider:
This is a lonely girl who wants time with her father. She wants her father to love her. There’s some emotionally questionable reasons for why she might agree to this tattoo. Even moreso, Riza is a child. The MAXIMUM age she could have been was sixteen when the tattoo happened. It’s likely she was younger. Berthold says, “I completed my research years ago” in the English manga and “long, long ago” in FMAB English subs… which means it probably wasn’t in the last two years he finished his alchemy work. That might mean he tattooed her years ago, too, nearer to when he first finished his research.
Which would have made Riza what? Thirteen?? Twelve????
Sure, maybe the girl happily said, “Sure, that’s okay! I’ll have the tattoo!” Maybe she thought it wasn’t a bad thing at all at the time. But… this is a child. A child. It’s grossly irresponsible at best and deceitful at worst to put a child in this position. By tattooing Riza, Berthold fated a child to carry around an enormous, dangerous, threatening, burdensome secret on her back for her entire life. Even if Berthold tried explaining (which he seems to have done some of, given Riza discusses his motivations at his gravestone), this teen girl wouldn’t understand the full weight she’d have to bear! You’re pulling a child into a horrible burden for the rest of her life, when she’s still too young to understand everything about it.
Note this is an alchemical secret that’s made Berthold - the grown adult who’s the founder of this very alchemy - uncomfortable at times. He says his alchemical technique “is the greatest and most powerful form of alchemy,” and refused to write it down on paper because “he couldn’t risk the destruction of his life’s work or have it fall into the wrong hands.” And if you look at the text of Riza’s tattoo (which can more or less be read in the manga if you squint), it appears to be “Libera Me,” and that says a LOT about what Berthold would have been thinking about his own research.
The meaning of “Libera Me” in English?
Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day,When the heavens and the earth shall be moved,When thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
I am made to tremble, and I fear, till the judgment be upon us, and the coming wrath,When the heavens and the earth shall be moved. That day, day of wrath, calamity and misery, day of great and exceeding bitterness,
When thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon them.
As uncomfortably prophetic as this is to Roy and Riza’s future with Flame Alchemy and Ishval, this is text that Berthold himself would have used and applied first. This shows Berthold is fully aware of how dangerous this alchemy can be. It also suggests he feels fear and guilt for what he’s created. It almost sounds like he’s regretful he researched this at all.
And he still went and put this on his daughter, permanently. He couldn’t just bear his own sin. He made his little girl bear his responsibility and sense of guilt forever. He did this with some sort of conscience, it seems, but… still. The only way I can see to look at this is “yikes.”
It’s a weird relationship. It’s a father estranged from his daughter under the same roof. It’s a man who feels he loves his daughter but never goes around to share that love. It’s a daughter who thinks her father doesn’t like her but wishes she could have his love. It’s a man who thinks his daughter has a good heart and can be trusted with his greatest secrets, but makes her guard his secrets in a fucked up tattoo choice. He puts her in a potentially dangerous position that will - inevitably - cause her struggles and pain. It’s a clash of comprehensible but poorly executed human intentions.
So why didn’t he just teach Riza this alchemy? If he entrusted her with the secret and tattooed it on her back for her “guarding” that’s so messed up, then why couldn’t he have just TOLD her about it?
Well, she would have been a kid, very young. Her maximum age for learning any of this, given the year of his death, was sixteen. And as much as the Elrics are advanced in alchemy before this age, I suspect that in Amestris, it was more common to start learning alchemy your teenaged years, after you’ve gotten a good science education at school and need to begin thinking about a career. Riza’s a little young yet to be learning complex alchemy. And even if Riza could have understood at that young age, she’s still not mature enough to necessarily handle all the implications of this dangerous knowledge. Showing your daughter the actual knowledge of Flame Alchemy wouldn’t have been a good idea. Not that being a paranoid bastard (UNLIKE OTHER NORMAL PARANOID ALCHEMISTS WHO WROTE CODED RESEARCH NOTES) tattooing your daughter is a GOOD idea, either.
Berthold’s caution for others learning his dangerous alchemy also could have gone into his reasoning for tattooing it, but not teaching her how to decode it. He’s got it recorded in a “safe place” (ugh) where you have to strip a teenaged woman half-naked to know the information’s been recorded at all (see why I don’t like this guy) - but he’s also got an extra safety measure: she can’t tell you how to do the alchemy. Someone can’t come up and force her into telling you how it works. It’s another layer of precaution.
I also imagine that Berthold’s antics turned Riza off from pursuing alchemy. Maybe the girl occasionally thought to become an alchemist - it’d mean more time with Dad, after all. But since Berthold and Riza were so emotionally distanced, and Riza was afraid of her father’s alchemical research fervors… she probably wouldn’t have been too keen to study alchemy. Especially not THIS deeply, to the point that she would learn all the ins-and-outs of a new form of probably-pretty-complex alchemy. So yeah, he wouldn’t have just been able to tell her the knowledge.
The one idea Berthold and I agree on is that Flame Alchemy shouldn’t have ever been spread to the military because of its dangerous destructive capabilities. Berthold decides Roy isn’t ready to learn Flame Alchemy because Roy joined the military. In fact, he says it was a waste teaching the young man the basics of alchemy at all!!! Ouch. And yet the first thing Roy and Riza do after Berthold dies? Toss the Amestrian military Flame Alchemy. And what does the Amestrian military do with this? Genocide. Berthold… had a good point here.
So in short, I would agree with Berthold about not sharing the knowledge of Flame Alchemy with Roy or his daughter Riza. But I think it was a shoddy and disturbing move for Berthold to give Riza the tattoo - however that ended up happening. Lots of Berthold’s decisions regarding his daughter are from the mind of someone who perceives his daughter well, but doesn’t do well for her. At all.
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