 How much longer do you think your god plans to wait before unleashing his spirit? Anger is a vice that we are often overcome by, a vice that sometimes possesses the spirit of vengeance. It's an emotion that overtakes, seeing red, blinded by rage. These are some of the idioms we often associate with anger. It is an emotion that more often than not is boisterous, it's loud, it's big, and some might even consider it beastly. But Führer Bradley seldom is any of these things. He always seems to be calm and collected. His fury is locked behind a wall of consideration and genuine thought. So why exactly is King Bradley wrath of Furious? Well it's the fury that his soul has been left with, and one that has festered for over 30, maybe 40 years. The fact that he spends all his time around humans, unlike some of his other siblings, seems to feed into the anger that boils inside him. Every day at every moment he is reminded of why he feels superior to humanity. He is reminded of their weak-mindedness, their hypocritical behavior, their foolishness, and for so long he has been forced to put on this mask. Posing as a kind and warm king, and he's had to keep up this facade for who knows how long by the time this story unfolds. Rath as the series' real constant threat means that he is juxtaposed with many different characters, and it's in these moments that we begin to further understand what exactly he's all about. Rath first meets Greed in the tunnels of doublet, after hearing about a homunculus down there. He says that he's been given a job, orders from father to take Greed down, and with it he takes down all of Greed's companions, he slaughters them, and when he finds out that his brother feels pity for the pawns that he just killed, it infuriates Rath even more than he already was, calling his brother pathetic and brutally incapacitating him and the last of his pawns. There is a sense of resentment here, especially regarding Greed and the other Chimera. Rath is bitter towards Greed because he has what Bradley desires, freedom, control, the ability to choose. Yes, he truly believes that Greed is pathetic for valuing humans and trying to save his human friends, but Greed at least has chosen his friends and his path. Defecting from father was a choice that he alone made, and he was able to live with for over a century. Later, it is revealed that pride is Selene Bradley, the Führer's son, and in one of their earliest interactions, Rath is being monitored by his older brother, and nearly at all times of the day, the first homunculus looms over his younger brother as a literal shadow, and at any sign of mutiny, he can simply go and tell father. When Rath shows the slightest hint of individuality, he threatens him with telling their father. So his contempt for humanity and being a faithful servant to father is instead what he hangs his hat on. During pride in Rath's conversation, he mentions for the first time the script that his life follows, locked into the path of King Bradley since his birth, and now he was sitting atop of the country just like father planned. But Bradley offers the rare smile when he thinks about the fact that there are youngsters, deviants, deterrents to his father's plan. He finds it amusing, he says. Anything that doesn't follow the script or isn't in line with father's plan brings Bradley genuine excitement. A few chapters later, Bradley's origin is told in full. It's interesting, it's written entirely from his perspective, and it's almost as if some of his own feelings seep through, despite his unfazed demeanor. I don't even remember my own name, he says. My own here is bolded, and again we see the common theme here. Bradley yearns for a deviation from the script. He yearns for control and ownership because he doesn't have anything that truly belongs to him. He has no control over anything. You have nothing to worry about, leave everything to us, the scientists told him. That is Bradley's life summarized in two lines. Bradley isn't even sure that this wrathful soul that he carries, the last one who fought off all the other souls, is even his original soul. Bradley has no identity. He was bred in a lab and forced to compete with all those in line to potentially gain an identity. He was to compete with the same people he grew up with and then he watched them all die. But he is proud to have been created for a purpose. In a sense, Bradley is the closest to father's original form. In the backstory of the dwarf and the flask, the homunculus goes into detail about what it means to be a slave, someone without rights, without freedom, someone's property. The dwarf yearns for freedom, he yearns to escape his cage, and yet a cage is exactly what he has built for his youngest son. But wrath has no way to gain independence. All he knows is his cage. He doesn't even know what it's like to even desire it. And that is just one cause of his great ire. Another reason for Bradley's bitterness is wrath. This is Darwinian-like belief about survival, leadership, and God. Bradley thinks of humans as incredibly selfish, barbaric, over-sentimental, and self-righteous. They are truly a confused species. They call the homunculi monsters, and yet their avarice is so great that one even accepts the monster inside of him just for power. That is but one example. When it comes to Bradley and Ling, the two are opposites regarding the idea of what a king is. To Ling, a king's duty is to his people. A true king wouldn't sacrifice anyone to succeed. Wrath, however, wouldn't even hesitate to forsake a comrade in order to survive or climb the ranks. A king is more important than all of those beneath him. Wrath tells the young prince that it's immature and naive to believe that there are true kings in this world. All kings have to trample and step on others in order to rise in this world. That is what makes them kings. Leaders must be ruthless. Wrath believes that he is king Bradley because his soul was able to conquer all the less wrathful ones, because he was stronger than everyone else in the running to become Bradley. Darwinism follows the belief in Charles Darwin's survival of the fittest. Bradley argues that in this world, intervention of the sword from any social or political factors simply don't exist. Those who are mentally, physically, and in his case spiritually strong are the ones who have the right to power. They are the ones who should rule. The theory argues that the best adapted humans naturally rose to the top of the social, political, and economic strata. The ones who have risen to the top are deserving of their positions because they are the strongest or the fittest. The Ishvalan War is a prime example of not only Bradley's beliefs, but also of one of the reasons for his resentment of humanity. Bradley's belief of man is validated when he is approached by an Ishvalan prophet who wants to sacrifice his one life in exchange for thousands. To it, Bradley responds that humans are terribly conceited, and not only that, they are weak-minded. The Ishvalans then curse Bradley with the name of God, who apparently will be the one to strike him down for his crimes. This invocation of God further infuriates the already wrathful Fuhrer. Bradley doesn't believe in God and in notions of their being a higher power. Why hasn't your God stepped up to intervene, he says? What is God anyway? Bradley believes that God is just an idol created by those too weak to take responsibility for their own fates, that a mere idol can't harm the King Bradley. Bradley believes that those who hide behind God are not only foolish, but also incredibly weak. Believing in a higher power means a lack of belief in oneself and in one's strength. It's an act of cowardice. Those who believe in a higher power are not strong enough to actually do anything about the problems they may be facing. They aren't strong enough to mobilize or to fight. It's the hand of man that we have to be wary of, not the fantasy for the weak-minded, he says. Bradley believes that the only person who will take him down will be somebody that is more powerful than him, not a mere idol. And I think that alludes to Roy Mustang, the man who not only looks up at Bradley, but he looks past him as well. The two men who are fighting for the future of their country. I think Bradley fears, hates, and respects Mustang. When he's talking about the hand of man they should be wary of, he's talking about men like Roy, the humans who struggle and fight and who are unpredictable. He hates that about humanity, but he also respects and he fears it. And they interact many times. Whether it's about the future of their country, their beliefs, or his homunculent nature, these two are at odds. Some defending a mistress and the others still aiming to control it. Bradley taking Hawkeye hostage and keeping his ultimate eye on the Flamelcombs throughout the series, to me, is the ultimate form of respect. But it's not only Mustang that he has to keep his eye on, it's all of these youngsters who are getting in the way of father's plan. It's Ed and Al, Roy, Ling, Scar, and now Greed. The third time Greed interacts with Wrath, it is a Greed who has regained his memory of Bradley executing his friends. And Greed attacks his brother for this. Bradley responds to his brother's attack by telling him that he should have left the past where it belongs, dead and buried, just as he is done to his own past. Wrath never tries to search for his name, to search for the man that he was before becoming King Bradley, and he instructs Greed to do the same. And there's that theme of control again. At his home, looking at his wife and pride, he is reminded of what little power he's had in his own life. And Greed, reverting back to his old self, spurs that rage in the fear. Greed has control again, he has the choice to lash out, while Bradley returns to his planned out life. However, I believe there is one more place where Wrath finds a bit of freedom. When fighting Fu, he says that prey like the old man, opponents as strong and as adept as the old man, makes the hunt come alive. I almost hate to kill you, he says. I think there are a few reasons why Wrath is so adept at battle besides his training and superhuman abilities. And it's because through combat he is able to exercise all the different parts of himself. In battle, it's one of the only other areas in his life where he doesn't have to follow a script. He has room to be creative, and the stronger the opponent he fights, the more he has to think outside the box, hence prey like Fu makes the hunt come alive. Combat is the one place where he has control and freedom. At the same time, combat reinforces his Darwinistic beliefs that those who are mentally and physically strong are those who deserve to win. In battle, he proves time and time again why he is fewer Bradley, why he was chosen to be Wrath. And in the fact that he can't regenerate like the other Hamunculi, it gives him a level of desperation that the other Hamunculi don't have. Bradley is old and his body gets weaker and weaker by the day. That makes him an even deadlier force. Wrath's continued willingness to dispose of anyone weaker than him, his belief in abandoning even those of his own country, is the beginning of his undoing when placed against the values of Greedling, who refuses to leave anyone behind. Because in their final encounter, Greedling is aided by many different comrades, Fu, Buccaneer, the other Mestrian soldiers, and even Lanfan and Falman are the ones who ended up saving them, while Bradley slips and falls into the water with the injuries sustained by Buccaneer's sword. The selfish king ultimately ends up alone and is forced to then take on Scar in his diminished state, two nameless men fighting to the death, how amusing he says. And there's that word amusing again, when he's genuinely enjoying whatever it is he is doing. He then says that rank, nationality, class, race, gender, name, none of these things matter when he's facing down Scar. Nothing is holding them back, we fight only for ourselves, he says. These are the things Bradley never had any control over, and these are the things that have mattered most for all of his life, the things that have spurred his rage. Now in combat once again he is at peace, and once again he is fighting to validate his views on the world and nature, that the strongest will survive. Fighting brings Bradley a sense of purpose, he finds value and he finds his identity in it, he finds control and freedom in it, and in this battle he isn't fighting for anyone this time, not for father, not for pride. For him, this is what it means to live, he says, it's been a long time coming. This is the perfect domain for Wrath to finally meet his end, the meaning of life for him is fighting for himself and dying for himself, not for a script and not for anyone else. As the battle nears its conclusion, Wrath for the final time provokes Scar, suggesting the idea that because he uses alchemy it means that he has forsaken his god, and because the genocide of Ishval happened, Wrath as the very executor of the specific order to exterminate the Ishvalans because God allowed that to happen, that God does not exist in this world, Bradley argues. At the very same time, Bradley gets blinded by the moon blocking out the sun, and he clips. An act that can be considered an act of God blinds him giving Scar the upper hand, and the Ishvalan destroys both of his arms. Religious texts cite that the sin of Wrath is punished by being dismembered alive. Bradley says that he never believed in destiny or God, but he does consider in this moment that this could mean that the heavens were not on his side. Bradley was defeated by a man who was once possessed by the very Wrath that he embodies. His last moments were spent in the eye line of an act of providence that he denied his entire life, and Scar himself represents an act of God. It is providence that Bradley, during the Ishvalan war, suggested that if they want to take him down, they will need to use their own hands to do so. Scar had finally reunited his two hands, Reconstruction and Deconstruction. In order to take down the Fuhrer and to rebuild Ishval, Father Wrath was killed by Ishval's Wrath. He was caught off guard by a man who had finally accepted and learned that life is not destruction and decomposition, but Reconstruction is the other side of it, the same way that he has reconstructed his purpose and accepted that he was once wrong. Scar now understands what vengeance and Wrath could do for him, instead of letting it control him, as Bradley had been controlled by it. A righteous vengeance, if it exists, is justice. It is something that Bradley will never know. The King is then greeted by Lanfang, another agent of righteous vengeance, and she asks him for his final words. Bradley uniquely mentions his wife. Aside from combat, the only other place Bradley has had freedom and choice was with his wife. All the moments they spent together, they were of his choosing. Those were the truest moments of his life. And I think he told her about his true nature and his upbringing, and I don't think that changed a thing between them, because the Bradley she saw was a kind man. The perception she had of him was also one of the few things he could control. Wrath clearly had the capability of loving and the capability of goodness. He could have become like Scar or Lanfang, repurposing his anger. But again, what does Wrath know about freedom? He says in the end, in death, that his life was good. He was killed by a man stronger than he was, and he was able to die on his own terms, for no one else but himself. In all of his fury and hate, Wrath the Furious died at peace. Wrath on the surface was the homunculus with the most humanity. He was a human. He couldn't regenerate. He at least had a name unlike the other homunculi. He had a wife, a home, and yet everything that truly makes us human. He could only touch, but never hold.