Why Did Dark Ace Betray the Sky Knights?
I’ve been putting off this post for a while, and even now, I’m not sure if I should be saying this out loud.
Some people might not like this, so a warning in advance: there will be a lot of politics and military, and the Sky Knights might not seem as good as they are portrayed in the show.
What Does the Canon Say?
There are many hypotheses in the fandom explaining his actions - ranging from simple bullying, almost like in school, to a choice dictated by the structure of the Atmosian economy, which the author describes as similar to Orwell’s 1984. What interests us, however, are the canonical facts. Let’s review them.
1. The Co-pilot
Before his betrayal, Ace was the co-pilot of the greatest Sky Knight - Lightning Strike.
If you think about it, the co-pilot of the greatest Sky Knight is a fairly significant position, one that wouldn’t be given to just anyone. Therefore, Ace must have somehow proven himself to end up here.
2. Free Atmos Propaganda
At the beginning of every episode, Aerrow tells us who Lightning Strike is and describes his goal as follows:
From a political perspective, this is an extremely harsh statement; Cyclonia is presented as absolute evil, subject to complete and unconditional dismantling. Such statements usually imply decisive action and achieving goals by any available means.
3. No One Likes Traitors
Throughout the show, Ace is portrayed as none other than the second-in-command in Cyclonia.
However, traitors are usually treated differently: betray once, betray twice. Carver is a testament to this. But this doesn’t affect Ace at all - he enjoys the exceptional trust of Master Cyclonis.
4. Loyalty
At the end of the episode “Age of Heroes Part 2,” Ace shields Master Cyclonis from falling debris.
However, he could have, let’s say, chosen not to do so, yet he risked his life regardless.
5. The Strength of the Sides
In the episode “Origins,” we see chronicle footage of the Battle to End All Battles. Let’s count the forces deployed by each side.
13 ships, including the Condor. Now, Cyclonia.
Lightning Strike faced 10 Cyclonian battleships.
6. Battle Results
The final shots of the chronicle show that Cyclonia retained at least 3 of its battleships.
However, what happened to the Sky Knights’ fleet is not specified.
7. The Medulla Crystal
In the episode “Energy Crisis,” Ace hides the Medulla Crystal from Master Cyclonis and secretly acquires the Suit of Untold Vengeance.
Yet, after he was ready to shield her from falling debris, this seems quite contradictory.
Conclusions
So, we have reviewed all the available information. Based on this, we can formulate several fundamental questions:
How did Ace become the co-pilot?
What is the influence of Free Atmos propaganda?
Where did Master Cyclonis’s trust and Ace’s loyalty come from?
Why did the Sky Knights lose the Battle to End All Battles?
Why did Ace hide the Medulla Crystal from Master Cyclonis?
It is likely that all these factors are interconnected. And to find this connection, I propose the following hypothesis.
Patriotism Leads to Betrayal
So, this is likely a case where patriotism, under certain circumstances, can indeed lead to betrayal. To understand how this happens, let’s reconstruct the context of the Battle to End All Battles.
The Influence of Propaganda
There has been an unceasing war between Free Atmos and Cyclonia for hundreds of years. A new phase has just begun; both sides have ambitions for victory, and the population is tense. This is ideal ground for the ideology of ridding Atmos of evil to take hold: people tired of centuries of war will enthusiastically join the ranks of the Sky Knights to end the conflict.
Ace then appears on the scene. If we assume this propaganda affected him, it becomes perfectly clear how he rose to the position of co-pilot. He was a patriot driven by the desire to rid Atmos of evil, and therefore he trained long and hard, eventually earning a spot next to Lightning Strike.
However, every patriotism has one very serious drawback: if the patriot’s country is losing, it becomes very hard for them to accept.
The Weaker Side
Free Atmos’s situation is clearly not the best. Even if we imagine that Ace genuinely shot down the Condor with this attack…
…it still means the Sky Knights had at least 12 ships left in the air against 10, but despite this, they lost. From this, we can draw a rather grim conclusion: this entire Battle to End All Battles was a suicide mission; the Sky Knights were weaker and could not outfight the Cyclonian fleet in a classic artillery duel.
If the Sky Knights’ command were not complete idiots, they should have understood this and waged war according to their capabilities. That is, they should have waged an asymmetric war with sabotage, guerrilla tactics, hit-and-run maneuvers, and the like.
Propaganda vs. Reality
At this point, reality begins to contradict the propaganda. Ace, seeing this discrepancy, might have started thinking: I was promised that we would rid Atmos of evil, a decisive victorious war, and what did I get? Sabotage? Guerrilla warfare? We are constantly hiding in corners like rats, and our comrades are dying in pointless raids! Why is this happening? Why aren’t we giving the enemy a decisive rebuff, like warriors? Why aren’t we gathering our strength and crushing Cyclonia with a decisive blow? What are our comrades dying for? What is this all about?! Is the command out of its mind?! Maybe they’ve been bought?!
And against this backdrop, he began to have conflicts with this very command and his direct superior, Lightning Strike. The result was that his comrades, seeing that while he was useful, he was also conflict-prone, tried not to provoke him unnecessarily and, for example, didn’t inform him about the sabotage objectives of the missions he participated in. This continued until this Battle to End All Battles was announced.
The Meaning of the Attack on Cyclonia
And at this point, we need to consider: if the Sky Knights couldn’t defeat the Cyclonian fleet - couldn’t meet the necessary condition for dismantling Cyclonia - then what was the point of this entire attack? Let’s refer back to the chronicle footage.
It shows squadrons of Storm Hawks and Rex Guardians flying toward the citadel and shelling it. But what are they doing at this moment? What combat mission are they performing? Too much was at stake for this to be just a spectacular show.
Since we already know the Sky Knights were waging an asymmetric war, and that, at least, the stated goal of this attack was the dismantling of Cyclonia, it means that what they were doing must align with the nature of the war and the stated goal. In that case, pressure on Cyclonia’s military-political leadership fits this description. If that is so, then Cyclonia had only one thing at that moment that could be used for that purpose: the Empress and her only granddaughter.
Now, we can consider two options: the Sky Knights intended to break through to Cyclonia with the force of two squadrons under artillery cover to either eliminate both of them, thereby sparking a struggle for the throne among the Cyclonian elite, or to capture the young Master Cyclonis to use her as leverage against the Empress.
The first option can be immediately doubted: in that case, Cyclonia would still have its fleet, and something would still need to be done about it. It’s far from certain that the Sky Knights would have succeeded in defeating it while the situation on Cyclonia stabilized, and that power wouldn’t ultimately pass to a more competent person.
The second option might even seem foolish: it is obvious that the Empress was not born yesterday to yield to such intimidation. However, perhaps that is not the case.
From the heroes’ stories, we learn that their home terras were destroyed by Cyclonia, and Terra Merbia was attacked at some point but apparently survived. And here it is important to note that, despite all this, Cyclonia never achieved the fall of Free Atmos, nor the defeat of the Sky Knights, nor even any elementary weakening of the latter. This gives us the reason to doubt her sanity: purely practically, she had to expend resources on these attacks, use up a huge amount of crystals - and for what? What did she achieve with that? Avenged her dead son? Sure, sure. In that case, the military-political leadership of Free Atmos might very well have hoped that after the capture of the granddaughter, the grandmother might panic over her safety, might start acting irrationally, and perhaps would agree to some serious concessions, such as a significant reduction of the fleet, for example.
On the Eve of the Battle to End All Battles
Okay, let’s assume the goal of this operation was to capture the young Master Cyclonis and immediately retreat afterward. But what does this have to do with Ace? Obviously, he wouldn’t have been informed of the command’s true intentions, and he would have been infinitely glad to learn that command finally got smart and gathered all their forces to crush Cyclonia. But let’s suppose he somehow found out about this plan - perhaps by overhearing a conversation. In that case, Ace would have realized he was simply being deceived, and that the Sky Knights weren’t coming to crush Cyclonia, but were rushing into a dubious venture without a clear idea of what they would do next, or even whether they could secure those concessions.
And, essentially, this could have been the last straw. Realizing that the command was not planning to win, that the Sky Knights would suffer devastating losses not for victory, but for some unclear purpose, Ace might have decided to sabotage this attack to, as he saw it, compel the command to do what it should be doing - waging a decisive war of annihilation, rather than raids that only result in huge losses with no visible outcome. But what happened, happened. The propaganda that was supposed to motivate Ace to fight against Cyclonia turned against Free Atmos itself.
Ace and Master Cyclonis
After the betrayal, Ace defected to Cyclonia. And here, the contradiction with the dislike of traitors immediately disappears: it is unknown what position the previous Empress gave him. It’s highly unlikely he was some significant figure in Cyclonia. And this remained the case until the power passed to her granddaughter.
There was a poll here asking: can Ace consider himself a hero after what he did? I won’t claim to know his specific personal opinion, but it’s quite plausible that the young Master Cyclonis could have thought so. From her perspective, he might be a true hero who risked everything to save her from the fate intended for her. This also resolves the question of where Ace’s loyalty came from: while her grandmother treated him with suspicion because he was a traitor, she considered him a hero, and when she inherited the throne, she made him her right-hand man. Perhaps there’s no better reason to be loyal.
The Medulla Crystal
At first glance, something completely incomprehensible is happening here. Ace is Master Cyclonis’s right-hand man, enjoys her exceptional trust, and is infinitely loyal to her. This means he wouldn’t hide the crystal for no reason, and we need to find something that could have pushed him to do it.
We can consider the possibility that, upon finding this crystal, he fell under its influence, and he started going mad back on terra Saharr. But then the question arises: how did he find it? It’s unlikely that a crystal meant to be destroyed would be left in the most visible place to be accidentally found someday. This suggests Ace was either intentionally looking for it or received it from someone, and in either case, this doesn’t look much like loyalty.
Another possibility is that it was his reaction to the appearance of the Nightcrawlers in Master Cyclonis’s service.
It is not definitively known who they are, but for 32 episodes, until “Royal Twist,” no one knew they even existed, and in “Cyclonia Rising Part 2,” Ace isn’t exactly happy about their arrival in new gear.
In this case, it can be assumed that Ace might have considered them a threat to Master Cyclonis and hoped to get rid of them using the Suit of Untold Vengeance. Then, where he got the Medulla Crystal becomes less important, and his actions no longer show any obvious contradictions.
Conclusion
Well, this hypothesis is partly based on assumptions that do not directly follow from the facts. Many things can be picked at, and there is plenty to criticize. I am not claiming to be the ultimate truth; all the presented facts can be interpreted in different ways. If someone read this far, thank you for your attention.
