Queen Beryl and the Self-Fulfilled Prophecy
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if, in a given adaptation of Sailor Moon, Queen Beryl would choose not to brainwash the Shitennou to maintain their loyalty. I have the advantage of having seen every adaptation of the Dark Kingdom arc, which she does not have, of course, being a character in that arc. At the same time, however, I’ve noticed that in almost every version where she does use brainwashing, they almost inevitably turn on her once they figure that out. Or at least they attempt to do so.
I think it’s implied that she didn’t use brainwashing in Eien Densetsu, since Kunzite and Zoisite do seem to be aware of what happened with the Moon Kingdom, but they ultimately deem their loyalty to Beryl more important. I’d go as far as to assume, based on her “Coffin of Darkness” number, that they agree with her assessment that she was betrayed and that Endymion was in the wrong to break their engagement and pursue Serenity. (Particularly since she seems to have legitimately been a queen of an Earth-based kingdom in some of the musicals.)
Sure, in Eien Densetsu, they’re also dealing with the much more pressing threat of Galaxia’s manipulation of Queen Beryl, and the three of them are also newly-revived, so they might simply have chosen not to air any grievances against her out of pragmatism. At the same time, I don’t typically think so. While Eien Densetsu does include some original and manga-based elements, it seems to be more anime-based than manga-based, and as far as I can tell, they weren’t implied to be brainwashed in the anime. (And let’s be real, if it was a thing in ED, Zoisite would definitely have had an “I know you’re in there somewhere” fight with Mercury. Or at least a “Shit, wait! I was mind-controlled when I did that!” fight)
I’m thinking about it right now because I’m on act 12 of PGSM, where Zoisite starts to recover his memories and Queen Beryl attempts to suppress them. So I find myself wondering if things would have turned out differently with him if she’d let him recover his memories in that moment. Would he have remained loyal, like Jadeite, gone off to do his own thing like Nephrite, or was his loyalty towards Endymion always such that he would have sided with him no matter what? From what I can tell thus far, her attitude towards Zoisite seems to be something to the effect of, “As long as he’s not actively interfering with our efforts, just let him do whatever he wants” up until he starts regaining memories, at which point that shifts to, “No, seriously, let him do what he wants, don’t talk to him, don’t question him about it. I’ll deal with this bullcrap he’s pulling.”
But it seems like if she’d just let the memories come back on their own, he probably would have investigated it for awhile, but he might have eventually written them off as just things he didn’t remember while in the process of reviving. But because she went ahead and tried to suppress them, and it didn’t work, if and when he wakes up from rock form, he’s going to know that not only was there stuff he wasn’t told, but that for some reason, Queen Beryl seems to actively see those memories as a threat. And he’s going to want to look into why.
And this seems to be a recurring thing across most versions of Sailor Moon where Queen Beryl opts to use brainwashing. Eventually, the Shitennou wise up to it, and end up turning on her (PGSM Jadeite notwithstanding of course). It’s somewhat interesting to me how so many versions of Queen Beryl seem to believe that they will inevitably be betrayed, and so they must use any means necessary to prevent that....which ultimately causes exactly what she was afraid of.
So I always find myself wondering what would happen if she didn’t choose to do that, whether it was her initial choice, or whether she simply let the initial round expire once their memories started coming back.
