In this post, I will discuss Roy Mustang’s character arc in the series. This post is all about the Roy presented in the 03 anime for the record. (Roy’s character is quite a bit different in Brotherhood. A little more heroic and a little less broken and a little more consumed by revenge.)
Roy is part of the military. That is his most significant characteristic. Yes, the military defines him. The military is a pretty messed-up institution in the world of FMA. The country is always at war and it will slowly be revealed that there’s no good justification for it. Wars have been happening because people want to obtain the forbidden power of the Philosopher’s stone.
Roy’s arc throughout the story is all about coming to understanding how broken this system he’s dedicated to is even while his life is completely tied up in the military. All his friends and companions are his fellow soldiers and Roy is rarely ever shown wearing anything but his uniform. The military defines his life -he’s been part of it for a long time – and it is hopelessly corrupt.
The first eye-opener for Roy was the Ishval war. He sees great atrocities committed… and he participates in them, following the orders of his superiors. He’d likely believed all the lies he’d been told about his ‘enemies.’
He hates himself for it but Roy is a dutiful soldier in Ishval. (The only exception we see is helping Dr. Marcoh to escape.) We specifically see him blowing up a young boy with a gun (in a PTSD flashback) and his execution of a pair of (Amestrian) doctors. He confesses to Hughes to killing a lot of people in Ishval.
For his work, he is rapidly promoted through the military and we meet him as Colonel Roy Mustang, the Flame alchemist and hero of Ishval. At first he seems like an arrogant, teasing person with a goofy side around his close subordinates. Towards Ed, he really gets under his skin with his smirking knows-everything attitude.
Secretly, Roy is filled with self-loathing and drinks and even considers killing himself. He makes a promise to himself to fix the military, aided by his closest friend Maes Hughes. Of course, Roy wants to reform the system from the inside and to achieve that he aims to become the Fuhrer – that’s his goal for the series. He feels its the only way he can justify living and making up for his sins. (Also, as he expresses to Winry later, that he wants to be in a position where he’ll never have to follow unjust orders again.)
While he may have done terrible things, he is not a bad person. At least, that’s not how others see him. He has a loyal team surrounding him who want to help him to achieve his goals. Havoc, Breda, Fuery, Falman and, of course, Riza Hawkeye. They all greatly respect him. Riza makes it very clear that she is aware of the things he’s done in Ishval and chooses to follow him anyway. She does not condemn him. Besides them, there’s also Armstrong and Hughes.
Roy tries his best to be good, to improve the world even as he’s trapped by his own demons. He’s given up his innocence to get into a high-up, influential Military position. It’s not easy for him, we really see his struggles and we’re slowly shown that, yes, the things he has done are awful and he can’t necessarily expect forgiveness.
Roy is a people person who can be very charming. He goes on lots of dates with girls and has been very good at becoming a rising threat in the military as he works his way up the chain of command. He is seen as power-hungry by many who don’t know him well. (Sheska views him this way for much of the series given his inability to open up to her when she wants to help.) These relationships are fleeting things compared to the trust of his team however.
That brings us to Edward and Alphonse. Roy’s relationship with them is quite unlike anyone else – they aren’t Military, they’re still (clever, somewhat jaded) children. While Ed does join the Military on Roy’s suggestion, he keeps it at arms length. Edward never wears a uniform and makes it very obvious that he sees joining the military as a means to an end – he’s only after the stone. The Elrics have never experienced war and Roy wishes that he could make it so they never will. To that end, he’s protective of them, keeping them in the dark about Liore and about Hughes’ death. While he’s caring, he has the inability to be very effective about it. He’s a soldier who struggles to relate to the boys.
After the Nina tragedy, and facing a crying, distraught Ed in an alley, Roy is harsh and tells Ed to just get over it and move on. This disconnect resulting from alternating between being overprotective and treating Edward like one of his men is partially why the two have a rather strained relationship throughout the series. (And why I don’t much care for a parental!Roy. It’s not that he doesn’t care but that he doesn’t care successfully.)
Their relationship is further complicated by how they’re both basically using the other for their own goals. Ed only motivation is fixing his brother and he’s joined the military for its resources so he can search for the Philosopher’s stone. Roy is sympathetic, of coursem but his discovery of the prodigy Fullmetal alchemist for the military definitely earns him some points in the eyes of the higher ups. Additionally, Ed is reporting to Mustang – he can find all about the Philosopher’s stone through Ed; he knows it is somehow connected to the military as he used an incomplete stone in Ishval. The information that Ed is seeking out is valuable to Mustang. Later, it will be Ed and Al who will tell him that the Fuhrer and his secretary are both Homunculi and that they have been causing wars purely because they have been after the stone this whole time.
In the first half of the series, Roy is motivated by guilt over his actions in Ishval. He believed he could fix things by gaining power. But things change with the death of his dearest friend Maes Hughes. It’s at that point he begins to realise how deep the corruption in the Military goes. Hughes’ research into the Ishval war led to his death. Working to slowly reform the military from the inside is starting to look more and more like a hopeless dream when it’s hiding so much evil – such as the fifth laboratory and their special ops soldiers they turned into chimeras after they started a war. (The Ishval war, naturally.)
The Fuhrer’s genial demeanour had fooled many soldiers into maybe thinking he might be what he appears to be – a kind grandfatherly sort of man who cares about the military. It’s only a closer look that shows that he’d been constantly throwing the country into pointless wars in order to gather ingredients for the stone and to cause people to lose everything and become desperate enough to seek it out. (Mustang and his team talk about it in episode 44). It is at this point that they are growing aware that the Fuhrer who they have been serving is their true enemy.
In the above scene, Riza describes how Mustang can use his destructive flame alchemy to prevent a riot breaking out. Despite Mustang’s best efforts to be a soldier who can keep the peace and protect others though, he isn’t able to prevent Liore from turning into another Ishval. He wasn’t able to protect his best friend, Hughes. Ishvalans are still being persecuted by the military. He can’t even protect the Elrics from war.
That’s why he ultimately has to give up his dreams. He wanted to become the Fuhrer to fix the military and prevent all the unjust suffering and the deaths of innocent people but his plans of reforming it from the inside are too slow and they aren’t working. Maybe they’d never work if it’s been the Homunculi ultimately pulling the strings this whole time. Whatever the case, he decides he can no longer justify his position as the dutiful soldier.
He decides instead to assassinate the Fuhrer. Yes, it’s about avenging Hughes but it’s also about justifying his own existence and doing what’s Right. Standing idly by as more wars are started would be selfish in his mind; even his dream to become the Fuhrer would have become selfish.
He and Edward cross paths once more. Edward is on his way to fight the Homunculi because he cannot stand by either. His goal of fixing himself and his brother is now secondary to stopping evil. Likewise, Mustang’s new motivation is to stop the evil corruption that plagues the country at the source.
It is only now that the two of them can come to an understanding. Right as both of them go their own separate ways to potentially face death. I like how in the above scene, Mustang initially thinks to give Ed a military salute but then changes his mind and offers him a handshake instead. A nice little symbol showing how they’re a bit closer and also how their not tied to the military anymore. (Ed goes for a handclap because he’s contrary and it lightens the mood.)
Roy’s loyal men are staging a coup for him, directly waging war against the corrupt military. Meanwhile, he and his closest companion Riza sneak over to the Fuhrer’s home alone. (I like how he’s not in his military uniform in this final fight.)
It is fitting that Roy has to face Pride at the end because he has had to let go of his pride, his dreams, to come here. Ed explicitly states that he’ll never be able to become Fuhrer if he goes through with this. His whole identity as a military man is being thrown away here and he is at peace with the thought.
The Fuhrer’s last actions involve taking an innocent child down with even as the innocent boy leads to his own defeat. It is not a perfect, bloodless victory.
Interestingly enough, it is Archer who takes out one of Mustang’s eyes. Archer operates as a foil to Mustang, a man who was jealous of Mustang’s prestige from Ishval and wanted Liore to be ‘his’ ishval. Archer is cold but clever; most people can’t stand him but he nevertheless rose to power following Hughes’ death. Yeah, a good man like Hughes gets replaced by a power-hungry snake such as Archer. While Mustang is a military man, he does not enjoy and embrace it as Archer does.
Archer was described as the ideal soldier because he is a man who likes war. His most faithful man was Kimblee (who loves to cause chaos and suffering). It’s a pretty good symbol as to how much Mustang messed up in his relationship with Ed when Edward decides to willingly turn himself over to Archer’s command rather than stick with Roy (who was being controlling). By the end of course, Archer has been turned into a crazed half-machine and he’s killed by Riza, who was defending Roy.
But in the end, when Roy has finally killed the Fuhrer and finally given up on the military that has so long defined him? When’s he severely injured?
Well, they’ve finally reversed the Ishvalan policy and the finally reforming State is actually helping them to rebuild.
Riza is closer to Roy now that they’re both out of uniform. She’s taking care of him and letting her hair down. They were always very close in the military but there was a wall between them. It seems to have dropped.
Things are still imperfect, Roy acknowledges as much. The world is beautiful for it’s imperfections, he says.
Roy? He’s happy now.
—-
And that concludes Roy’s arc in the series and some of my thoughts on his character. Like all characters in the show, he’s pretty defined by past tragedies. He’s one of the most complex characters I think, so I tried to keep this pretty focussed. I see him as the main character after Ed and Al so we see a lot of him in the series. His relationships between the various characters is pretty varied and I didn’t want to go into every one in depth but I hope this works as a good overview.
Zetalial 