They are cool in concept but don’t make, like, any sense in the actual show. Fu starts off as just some dude with miraculous and then we see the Celestial Guardian and the Miracle Eating senti-monster thing and it just gets confusing and contradictory.
So I am running with the concept but editing it heavily and I’ve decided that I’m going to explain who The Guardians are by explaining Fu’s backstory.
Fu was born to a rural, Chinese farming family in the mid 1900’s. He had many older siblings and a few younger ones and was prone to getting lost in the crowd. The family struggled to survive, having to sell of their products to keep their land leaving them with virtually no crop for themselves. As a result, the older, more able-bodied members of the family got most of the food.
So Fu starved and he suffered.
He tried to help around the farm, to earn his keep, but he was too weak, too malnourished to lend any real aid. Even if he did manage to help to any substantial degree, he was ignored and forgotten.
So one day he left. It wasn’t a big deal, those who noticed his departure from the family didn’t care, and neither did he. He was determined to find a better life for himself.
In his free time, Fu often wandered through the countryside, occasionally visiting the village, and during his visits, he had heard about a distant and reclusive vihara of monks who took in starving children. Fu himself wasn’t particularly religious, having never meditated or prayed, but he wasn’t going to pass up the chance of a full stomach.
Fu hiked through mountains and forests, scrounging for any food he could find and sleeping in trees. Eventually, he stumbled upon a path, strong and sturdy that ran through the forest. It was out of place in the lush surroundings, tan and solid and level, but it was a sign of civilization so Fu took it.
Eventually, Fu met other travelers, all children like himself. They journeyed up this path together, slowly growing in numbers, until they stumbled across it.
The vihara was large and made primarily of stone, with smooth and imposing pillars laid in a large clearing. In the vihara, Fu and the other children were clothed and fed and housed. The clothes were coarse and itchy, the food only coming once a day and tough and tasteless, he slept on hard, wooden floors, but wood was better than dirt and any food was better than none so he stayed. The monks gave him and the other children free shelter and sustenance for a few days, but that soon changed.
One day Fu and the other children who had arrived at similar times to him were gathered and told they were now required to earn their keep. This was the moment that Fu and the other children realized these were not monks.
The first thing they made the children do was work; hard, laborious, back-breaking work. Fu had watched his family perform this kind of work his whole life but had never been healthy enough to fully appreciate how exhausting it was. Still, Fu remained determined, knowing this was his only real option. Other children left in search of another place to take temporary refuge in, but some remained.
With time, the strenuous labor morphed into learning to fight. They still labored, but it was no longer purposeless. They worked to build strength so they could fight better. If the children failed to perform to the expected standards, they were sent away with a pack of food and water.
Fu did not leave. He was not sent off. No, he remained, determined to see this through.
By this point, Fu was a teenager and his education began. Him and the other teens still worked and trained, but this was interspersed with history lessons on the vihara, which the children learned was actually the central base of a group of people known as The Guardians.
They learned how The Guardians formed, how they had slowly spread out across the world, and formed satellite facilities. They learned that this temple remained the base of operations. They learned what The Guardians were guarding.
They were magic jewelry pieces called “miraculous”. They learned the basic functions of the miraculous and were told that further details would only be rewarded by those who proved themselves. They learned that miraculous were scattered about the world. They learned that the miraculous had been used for evil throughout history. They learned that people were not to be trusted with such power.
They learned that The Guardians collected miraculous and stored them in a secure facility. They learned that only Guardians who completed the trials were allowed to know this location. They learned that only Guardians who were worthy were allowed any access to the location.
The children trained until they became teenagers and the teens trained until they became adults and the adults set out into the world on their trials.
The trial was how a follower became a Guardian. Followers were tasked with finding any artifacts relating to a miraculous or a miraculous itself and bringing it back to the vihara. If they succeeded, they were granted status as a Guardian and given new, more important responsibilities.
When he was old enough, Fu was sent out with a group of 5 other monks, many of them far older than him who had been searching for Miraculouses the majority of their lives. He spent a long time on the road, traveling in search of these mystical pieces. They tracked down every rumor of unnatural occurrences, but still, nothing. It was years since he had been back to the temple, he had grown older, harder, more calloused, but still, he was determined to only return when he had found a Miraculous. His compatriots who started the journey with him slowly dwindled in numbers, all returning back to the temple to rest and recollect their thoughts, but Fu refused. He would not fail.
Eventually, Fu’s determination paid off in England. He had found a girl, no older than he was when he first set out to the temple, with hair so blonde it was white radiating around her. She came from a family with a long history of importance and she adorned a piece of jewelry Fu knew had to be a miraculous.
So he stole it. Swiftly and deftly he removed it from her person and with the piece first pressed in his palm, he returned to the vihara he hadn’t seen in a decade.
When he returned to the temple with the miraculous and was immediately granted the title of Master Guardian, a title only rewarded to those who discovered an actual miraculous. No other Miraculous had been found for decades, he was the first in so long to find one.
As such he was informed of immense knowledge. He was told that those who found miraculous related objects became Guardians, those who found second-ring miraculous were Master Guardians, and those who found first-ring miraculous were Celestial Guardians. He was told that The Guardians were in possession of 19 miraculous from around the world and that they were in possession of the only complete miracle box that remained. This miracle box was born here, in this temple, when human civilization in modern-day East Asia was first forming. The vihara was built here in honor of that and protected the box. It was now Fu’s turn to play a role in that protection.
Fu was allowed to train with the turtle miraculous, a powerful miraculous from the original miracle box. He trained diligently, quickly befriending the kwami Wayze and picking up on the properties of the miraculous swiftly. He trained with it during the day, practicing so he would be familiar with it should the need to use it arise, and returned it to the First Miracle Box stored in the vault at night.
It was a simple yet rewarding routine. Fu had never felt a greater purpose or sense of fulfillment.
But then the vihara was attacked.
An army of miraculous wearers swarmed the temple at night. The followers and Guardians held off the attackers while the Celestial and Master Guardians rushed to the vault, but when they arrived they realized they had been followed.
The attackers spoke in accented Mandarin about how The Guardians had failed in their duties. They thought they were protecting the world of the dangers of miraculous when in actuality they had been stripping people of their ability to protect themselves. They were erasing history cultures never knew existed. They were playing God.
Every Guardian of every rank fought. It was bloody and primal, a fight where anything went. Fu had managed to get ahold of the First Miracle Box and as he looked over the carnage, he realized The Guardians would not emerge from this fight as victors. His best course of action was to flee, to keep the First Miracle Box, the most important item The Guardians had in possession safe.
So he ran. He ran far, never stopping until he couldn’t run anymore. His body gave out in Riquewihr, a small rural town in Eastern France. He took some time to recover, to eat and rest uneasily as he devised a plan.
Fu would need to hide. He didn’t know if other Guardian temples had been attacked and couldn’t risk reaching out for fear of revealing his location. For now, he needed to lay low and keep the First Box safe.
He thought that hiding in plain sight would be his best opportunity. An old Chinese man with no knowledge of the French language would be conspicuous in rural settings. He had a better shot at blending in if he was in an urban setting.
Okay that was long and there were a lot of words so I’m going to do an overview of all that here as well as add a few more details/clarification. I’m getting tired so this will be bullet-pointed sorry not sorry.
The Guardians are a centuries-old cult organization that trains members to collect Miraculous and protect them
They collect miraculous objects that relate to them or insinuate their existence
So this could be a dormant senti-monster or a text that mentions a miraculous holder
They are trying to wipe all knowledge of miraculous existing from the public’s minds so that they remain a secret since people cannot be trusted with this kind of power
The Guardians take in young children under the age of 10 to start preparing and testing them
Those who are being prepared for or are trying to become Guardians are simply called followers
Guardians refer to followers who return an object referencing a miraculous
Master Guardians refer to followers who return with a first-ring miraculous
Celestial Guardians refer to followers who return with second-ring miraculous
Guardians/followers collect miraculous and Master/Celestial Guardians train with miraculous so they know how to use them in case of an emergency. They do not permanently hold onto a miraculous, rather only wearing it for a few hours at a time and exclusively for training purposes.
The group that attacked The Guardians vihara attacked all the other ones
I’ve been referring to this group in my head and notes as the “Anti-Guardian League” which is a dumb as hell name I have been workshopping for 2 months so please if you have a better idea lemme know
The placeholder name is pretty spot on in explaining them though. Basically the Anti-Guardian League wants to destroy/abolish The Guardians because they think people should have access to miraculous. Miraculous formed all over the world as a representation of cultural beliefs and The Guardians have no right to take that away
Basically basically The Guardians are the British Museum and The Anti-Guardian League is all the countries that want their shit back
Fu became a follower under the age of ten (idfk his exact age man its irrelevant)
Fu was questing to become a Guardian and returned with the miraculous in the very late 1990’s, like 1999 or smth
The vihara (temple) is attacked a few years later, so like 2002ish
Fu flees to Paris immediately and is in Paris for the rest of his life
He is old but not unrealistically old when he meets Marinette/Adrien and all that
He doesn’t reach out to The Guardians on his own because he doesn’t know if it is safe to so he diligently protects the miracle box himself
Fu was basically raised in a cult highly religious sect and was brainwashed raised into believing that The Guardians are infallible people
He trust(ed/s) everything they say to a fault and accepts their knowledge as fact without questioning it ever
That was how he survived, that was how he was accepted into their ranks, was through his unwavering and unquestioning loyalty
