Zorzal El Caesar (ゾルザル・エル・カエサル, Zoruzaru Eru Kaesaru) is the first prince of the Empire. Widely considered to be the worst and most moronic tyrant in the history of the Empire, he is solely responsible for the downfall of the Empire through the suicidal and futile war against the technological superior JSDF.
Personality
Zorzal's personality is defined by five key characteristics: his hedonism, his narcissism, his ruthlessness, his naivety and his need to be adored.
As a hedonist, he loves opulence, extravagant displays and pleasures of all kinds. For him every experience is a new opportunity to experience new pleasures that push him more and more towards new heights of sensation and depravity. Such is the level of his excesses and sadism that now enjoys great pleasure in committing rapes, murders and genocides, as well as the possession of many sexual slaves. It was he who led the bloody military campaign against the Warrior-bannies and it was he who ordered the almost complete extermination or enslavement of the enemy population, all because their women were of good looks and therefore potential sexual slaves for him. He loves to deceive and humiliate those who are too weak and powerless to be able to oppose him, like Tyuule and Noriko Mochizuki, and he's so accustomed to perform similar acts that he doesn't even bother to hide them to the people who visit his palace or the throne room.
As a narcissist, he's convinced that he deserves praise and utter devotion from everyone around him because of his royal blood. Added to what is an unstable personality to begin with, Zorzal was spoiled and indulged throughout his entire life, resulting in him possessing a massive sense of entitlement, along with having no impulse and self-control due to getting whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, which knew no rational bounds. In addition he is the heir apparent to the imperial throne, convinced from an early age that one day he would command the most powerful nation of Falmart and turn the world into exactly as he wanted it to be, and this fueled his narcissism to an extreme. Based on Tyuule's observation, Zorzal always thinks the whole world is bend for his own will and everything goods in the world must be benefited solely to him but he has little to no understanding how the world actually works. Furthermore, according to his sister, Pina Co Lada, Zorzal is the type of man who like to live in his own world of delusional vanity in which he can never seem to accept the truth that he is an idiot or other civilizations are superior to the Empire. She also firmly states that Zorzal is willing to believe lies as long it pleases him and letting him stay away from his delusion to accept truth or reality no matter the consequences to the point of he even lies to himself. This trait often being taken advantage by Tyuule to provoke him to wage suicidal war against the JSDF in which she often flattens him with false and delusional fact that he and the Empire is invincible to any kind of forces.
When roused or denied, he is fully willing to use force to achieve his goals. He's incompetent, unintelligent, naive, impulsive and prone to rash outbursts of violence when angered, frightened or even mildly slighted. He favors brute force over more subtle actions and don't consider the consequences of his actions. Also, as a further proof of his ruthlessness, he's tyrannical with his subjects and indifferent to the suffering and death of his soldiers, all sent to die in a senseless war just to satisfy his massive ego. It's shown that most of its citizens of all races of the Empire highly despises and hates him, even before his rise to power. During the establishment of his government in Telta, most citizens throw food and rocks at him and his soldiers show their disgust of him for putting them through suicide wars against the JSDF, establishing high taxes and forcing the commoners to fund the war efforts. His treatment of his own citizens later backfires horribly during the Imperial Civil War since most of the imperial villagers of the countryside are more willing to help his enemies, the JSDF and pro-peace faction, than his soldiers. His own soldiers and generals as well as many pro-war senators also greatly dislikes him due to the fact that he never seems capable of listening to excuse and explanation, no matter how reasonable is it since he often executes any general and soldier who failed him without a slight though, despite the fact that they are being defeated by the far more superior force of guns and armored vehicles.
Zorzal naively thinks to be a master of deception and calculation and a skilled manipulator of court politics, capable to easily outsmart even his father and brother but this is far from being the truth. His brother, Diabo, describes Zorzal as "an idiot who thinks he is a genius." The people around him, like Molt, Marcus, Casel, Pina, Diabo, Tyuule and the Haryo tribe, tend to have a very poor opinion about his intelligence, considering him a puppet easy to manipulate as well as the fact that some senators in the senate secretly laugh at him after he gets beaten up by a woman, showing their low opinion about him. Furthermore, Pina as well as Marcus also state that Zorzal is seemly incapable to conduct sophisticated and well-thought schemes and tactics and he often seemly head-on directly in action mindlessly based on his own instincts, no matter how clearly superior the enemy is, such as Japan. While his father Molt is also not farsighted at ruling, with his foolish attempt to conquer the Earth without having sufficient information about the enemy, he is at least respected as a statesman and is respectful toward others, both friends and foes. Zorzal, in contrast, has no redeeming values whatsoever: literally his only claim to rule is that he is the son of Molt, the previous emperor.
Fundamentally, however, Zorzal wants to be loved by the others and those he rules (in particular the ruling class of nobles), a characteristic determined by his egocentrism and the lack of his father's affection. After his father's poisoning, he came to power by and supporting populism; all his supporters and pro-war senators helped him in his coup because inflamed by his speeches and ideas that the Empire is an invincible nation, the greatest power in the world, and the main reason it is losing against Japan is because the pro-peace senators are all defeatists and have been bribed by the Japanese.
Zorzal has always been fascinated by the culture and history of the Empire, probably because he identified himself with the emperors of the past, which were generally authoritarian, ruthless, extremely determined and inclined to take anything they wanted through acts of war, territorial expansion or by bullying the allied kingdoms. From a certain point of view he can be considered a fanatic chauvinist, since he's very proud of his nation's achievements (especially the more brutal and bloody ones) and he's a firm believer in the superiority and glory of the Empire even Pina states that his greatest fantasy is that the Empire is invincible force. Even in the face of the clear technological superiority of Japan, he would never admit that another nation is better than the Empire and would be willing to do anything to prove that he is right, even making absurd acts such as resuming war with Japan, despite the extensive losses among all imperial assets engaged in the conflict. He also shows to cling to the glorious history of the Empire as a way to justify his actions; In fact he considers the actions undertaken by the imperial senate at the time of the Arctic War as the best way to resolve also the current war: never surrender and submit to the enemy, regardless of the losses and humiliations, because negotiating for peace equates to admit defeat (a further proof of his delusional vision of reality, since he cannot distinguish the fact that the JSDF are not the same medieval-level enemies the Empire fought in the past, not to mention millions time more powerful and more technologically advanced). Therefore, he develops a very rash but most of all delusional and baseless opinion that the Japanese seek peace because they think that fighting the Empire's domain is a tricky business for them, an erroneous idea just based on the single fact that the JSDF only defends its home quarters at Alnus Hill, while taking little consideration of their actual military capability plus the fact that he and his cohorts don't know about the terrible threat of posed by the superpowers beyond the Gate , if Japan behaves aggressively toward the Empire due to the fact that he never visits the world beyond the Gate. Furthermore, he also absurdly states that the loss of 60% worth of the Empire's military power to be just a minor setback along the path to victory or even stating that the bombing of the Imperial Senate is nothing special or worth to be taken into consideration since he naively states that the JSDF can only destroy the building when no ones watching without realizing or even accepting how much damages its causes to the structure, showing how truly delusional he is. However, after losing the vast majority of his army during the Imperial Civil War, he somehow begins to despair before the realization that the JSDF is really indeed far superior to the Empire in every possible way, but, despite being placed in front of the undeniable truth, he realizes that he has gone too far to stop now and stubbornly decides to continue with the war. As the result, he recovers from his despair and encourages himself to continue fighting to win a war now considered to be a lost cause.
He's obsessed with the self-conception that he is a great warrior and a fearless ruler. While he is physically strong, a skilled swordsman and prone to be absolutely brutal when he is in a position of power, he is quick to cower in the face of force greater than his own, as seen when he was attacked by Shino Kuribayashi during the Liberation of Noriko Mochizuki. Zorzal never raised a weapon against an enemy combatant without having with him a wide armed escort that protects him and guarantees the numerical advantage, despite bragging melodramatically that he would personally cut down every single soldier of the JSDF and the imperial loyalists in battle (which he never came close to at any point in both the Empire-Japanese war and the imperial civil war). Whenever something goes out of control, he always cower in fear and panic in which he often ask Tyuule or one his generals for advice of what to do next or starting to blame others for incompetency or uselessness since he is almost incapable of taking responsibility for all his foolish decisions indicating that his leadership skill is as low as his intelligent. He also an egomaniac since he demands all people have to praise and respect him because he is a crown prince despite achieving nothing special in his pathetic life. Therefore, he is incredibly jealous of the praise of his official, his father and his sibling to Itama's gang for slaying the Flame Dragon in which he wonders why they receive so much praise and respect in stead of him not realizing the fact he himself cannot even defend himself from Itami's punch and the beating he received from a woman like Shino.
Like his father, he is quite reckless and lacks of insight in dealing with enemy unknown to him and believe wholeheartedly that thousand of men and troop can guarantee any victory against any foe without trying to understand their technology and tactics. As the result, he highly favored human wave tactic to overwhelm his enemy whether is soldiers, tank or helicopter in which he gleefully pushes his men into their doom and believe they can overcome all kinds of foe. Even after failing miserably, he also failed to acknowledge the futility of his effort and believe there must be some way to defeat his enemy without taking into the account of studying JSDF's technology. Zorzal also dislikes the weapons of the SDF, calling it "cowardly" since it brings no honor in a fight. This is most likely due to his upbringing as a knight. As a result, he refuses to adapt to firearms and technology into his army no matter how destructive it is. It should be taken notice that In term of combat strategy, it is shown that Zorzal and his pro-war supporters are extremely ethnocentric in making strategy against the JSDF since most of his tactics are to fight medieval army not modern army with firearms and armored vehicles due to the fact that Zorzal and his supporters keep clinging to the past glory of the Empire against their medieval-equivalent enemies and never seems to realize the different between the power gap of JSDF and the Empire's past enemies and the different in nature between JSDF and the past enemies in the Empire. However, he is not as stupid as people perceived him since he and his cohorts manage to develop counter-measure against JSDF advanced weaponry such as throwing chains at the helicopter rotor to make it crash or digging a big hole to trap tanks and Humvee. However, all these methods are short-lived since they are useless against other vehicles including jet fighters and are unreliable contributed by his total ignorance about JSDF technical configuration of their war machines.. In the end, his force is utterly destroyed during the Imperial Civil War because of his short-term thinking and lack of adaptability in the war. Zorzal also cares less about the well-being of his soldiers, generals and pro-war senators since he treats them just like meat shield and expandable items against the JSDF in which he willing to abandon all of his general and pro-war senators while they are fighting for their life against the JSDF during ambushes to further his own goals, despite giving promises to give them reinforcement.
His underestimation of the JSDF is already worst enough but it is also shown that he also greatly underestimates the force of nature in the Special Region itself, much like his pro-war supporters. The prime examples are his underestimation of Apostle like Rory Mercury and Giselle in which he willing to make enemy out of all two of them and charge his troop directly at them while not taking into the fact that one of them is enough to tank his whole army as well as the fact that Giselle can command vast army of dragons or stating that the killing of the Flame Dragon is nothing special while not seem to realize that no one in the Special Region, even Apostle can kill its and the JSDF is the only force so far that can kill its. Furthermore, he also seem to be ''all brawn and no brains'' when it comes to recruit troop in which he often prefer to use muscle races like troll, orcs or ogre in combat while regarding others demi-human races with great magical or fighting power like Elves, Dark Elves, Warrior Bunnies or Dwarf as inferior without taking into account of their great power showing his racism and shallow thinking. At the same time, he also underestimate the usage of magic since he cannot realize that magic is the only things that actually can cause more damages to the JSDF's force than Imperial Army's primitive weapon, which he doesn't take into account of recruiting powerful mages from Rondel to replace weak mages in the Imperial Army. Consequently, his foolish outlook puts his force into more disadvantages against the JSDF and the Loyalist during the Imperial Civil War since all powerful races like Elves, Warrior Bunnies, Dwarf or Siren plus Rory and Giselle as well as all the powerful mages of Rondel. he underestimates so much support the JSDF in the fight against him causing even more casualties than ever.
Despite his foolishness, he has some tactical sense in battle since he never tries to attack Alnus head-on or lay siege since it would be completed suicide due to the JSDF defense system around Alnus or realizing that frontal attack is more effective than laying siege.
After losing all his military, he still refuses to accept his own stupidity and shallow thinking and blames all his generals and soldiers for his loss in the war. During this time, he begins to show sign of mental breakdown and threat to execute all his generals who failed him as well as refusing to surrender despite having nothing left to fight. However, before the JSDF and pro-peace faction can get him, he was killed by Tyuule not before he also kills her by breaking her neck. As the last breath of his life, he laments the fact that Tyuule never truly love him indicated his somehow affection to her as well as his loss of sanity.
Appearance
In all three media, Zorzal is described as tall and muscular, with a "bodybuilder-like" physique. Itami states that he is even taller than Kurokawa, so he is assumed to be over 6'3" in height.
Manga: Zorzal has short blonde hair in his manga appearance, which lays relatively flat. His outfit consists of heavy armor made of bronze, including a muscle cuirass (breastplate), pauldrons, tassets (groin-guards), with a long red cape. He looks like a typical roman officer of the Imperial Periode.
Anime: The anime version of Zorzal has short blonde hair, similarly to the manga version, though his hair does not lie flat but has a rather spiky appearance. Zorzal wears plate armor, but instead of gold plated, the armor is painted burgundy with yellow highlights and a white cape.
Light Novel: In the light novel, Zorzal retains his great height, though his hair is white rather than blonde in color. He is not shown wearing armor and opted for black and blue clothing with a white cape.
History
Zorzal is the 2nd born from the child of Emperor Molt Sol Augustus fighting for the crown. Zorzal is the most muscular member of the family, but is the least intelligent member in the family.
Plot
Zorzal Caesar is introduced raping Tyuule, the queen of the Warrior Bunnies, who gave herself up to him in exchange for saving her people, which, unbeknownst to her, was destroyed years before. After being told by Marcus that there was strange activity on the senates, he went to the party held by Pina, but leaving quickly just after tasting food.
After exposing that the Empire had captured Japanese Citizens as slaves during the Ginza Incident, Zorzal was thoroughly beaten by Shino Kuribayashi in front of the King to expose the fate of the other Japanese Citizens.
Zorzal is later seen again at a triumphal procession with his father, and is angered by the fact that he is being ignored by the people, in place of his father and sister Pina Co Lada. During the procession, the emperor drinks from a poisoned cup of wine, and becomes severely ill. It is hinted that Zorzal may be involved. It is assumed that Zorzal intends to succeed his dead father as emperor.He has began reorganizing the army and pushing out minister that object to his rule.
When the SDF arrive at the capital city to rescue Pina, Zorzal watches in shock as the paratroopers descend into the city. When Itami arrives to extract Pina, Zorzal lets loose a giant ogre under his service, only to be killed by Lelei and Rory. Zorzal tries to fight Itami, but Itami shoots a warning shot, telling him that the SDF are always watching and he can take his life anytime, so he quickly backs down. After these events, Zorzal takes the pro-war senators with him to Telta, the second largest city of the Empire.
During this time, he begins to rally support and build his force to fight the Loyalist and the JSDF in which creating the Imperial Civil War. Although inventing counter-measures to deal with JSDF's superior technology, his foolish thinking cause his force to suffer more loss than win since all his counter-measure like guerrilla warfare and human wave ambush are short-live since he quickly runs out of men, orc, goblin and armored Ogre to throw at the gun barrel of the JSDF.
After losing the war because his lack of wise thinking and failed tactics, he is abandoned by all his generals and pro-war senators since he refuses to listen to them to surrender plus his disregard to their life during conducting ambushes. In the end, he is assassinated by Tyuule before the Loyalist and the JSDF can bring him to justice.
Legacy
Zorzal dies in disgrace with everyone even his own generals and supporters brands him as an idiotic warmonger due to his disregard for their life and well-being as well as starting the war that was completely suicidal to begin with. His corpse is cremated along with the corpse of his death soldier without royal burial since Pina, Molt and Diabo states that he doesn't deserve it. Furthermore, his excessive use of human wave attack against JSDF's firearms during the Civil Wars destroys 90% of the Empire's fighting power causing the Empire to lose all influence on all vassal states and others countries. The useless scorch earth tactics employed by him and the pro-war faction also greatly damage the relationship between the royalty and the citizen in which creating a great difficulty for Pina to rebuild the trust between the royal family and the Imperial Citizen. Ironically, Zorzal is the one that ultimately brings down the Empire not the JSDF because of his pointless price and shallow and idiotic thinking..
Relationships
Yōji Itami: After how Itami had first punched Zorzal, when seeing the enslaved Noriko, the prince began to bluster in how he will find and destroy Japan along with how he tells Itami that he should blame himself for his actions; though this overweening mood died shortly as Itami’s men were able to kill Zorzal’s men, and scare off the remaining survivors, along with how Itami ordered Kuribayashi to interrogate Zorzal about the other enslaved Japanese. Since then, Zorzal greatly hates Itami, yet is very fearful of the JSDF soldier where he would be intimated just by seeing Itami. In their next encounter, after being shown a short death-dealing display of modern sniping, that could have taken his life where Itami states to Zorzal that Japan can kill the tyrant anytime, Zorzal developed a deep trauma from the tribulation that causes the erstwhile prince to hear a fear-induced phantom sound of a gunshot, which forces Zorzal to cover his ears and blench in fear.
Tyuule: one of Zorzal's sex slaves, who he frequently sexually maltreats heavily in various ways, such as choking while raping her. Tyuule had endured Zorzal's abuse, initially believing her kingdom would be spared, only to discover later that Zorzal had long broken the deal where the prince destroyed her kingdom, spread false information to Tyuule’s people where they believed their queen had abandoned her people to save herself, and either genocidally killed or enslaved the Warrior Bunnies. Thus, Tyuule wanted to get revenge against Zorzal, as well as the Empire, and saw Japan as the perfect nation capable of obliterating the Empire.
After the Liberation of Noriko Mochizuki, where Tyuule showed her “loyalty” to Zorzal, the prince stopped abusing her and started to treat Tyuule in a more mild fashion. While Tyuule pretends to be Zorzal’s trustworthy confidant, in reality she only pretends to help Zorzal so that warmongering potentate can recklessly challenge Japan only to bring down the entire Empire down with him to complete extirpation.
She, to a degree, manipulates Zorzal’s actions behind the scenes, going as far as to make a speech for Zorzal to use once he began his coup. Zorzal is usually reliant on Tyuule for advice and is unsuspecting in how her advice is what perniciously contributes to the end of his regnant sovereignty.
Tyuule later had gotten her revenge on Zorzal as the Empire had branded him a traitor. However, she shows to have a mix feeling on how she accomplished her goal.
After his force is defeated by JSDF in the civil war, Zorzal meets his demise when he exposes her as spy and try to kill her. His effort is success but at the cost of his life when she stabs him in the neck and he dies of blood loss.
Diabo: Zorzal's brother, who is second line in succession and wants the throne where Diabo usually tries to scheme of a way to make himself emperor. After the Liberation of Noriko Mochizuki, where Diabo had made a visit to his heavily marred brother, Zorzal had told Diabo to choose to side with him, their father, or Piña who now had allied herself with the Japanese. Ultimately, after Zorzal El Caesar's Coup, Diabo chose to not side with Zorzal, or Piña, as he fled to find help from other countries.
Hitoshi Furuta: Zorzal’s latest personal chef, who was hired because of how Zorzal took a great liking to Furuta’s cooking after tasting how he prepared a Ma Nuga meat during the banquet prepared by Piña, where Zorzal comments in how Furuta is like a god of cooking.
Zorzal is apparently ignorant in how Furuta is a Japanese undercover agent that is providing intelligence to the JSDF.
Kati: Zorzal and Diabo's brother-in-law. Not much is known about him other than the fact that Molt had him killed; Diabo described Molt to be young at the time. This later made Zorzal upset and also angered the orphaned sons of the previous emperor.
Herm Fule Maio: Herm is Zorzal's friend and military adviser during the Imperial Civil War. Despite admiring Zorzal, he has limit of how he can handle Zorzal's idiotic and shallow thinking. After Zorzal loses the Civil War, he has enough of Zorzal's stupidity and opens with the rest of the pro-war senators and generals to surrender the JSDF and the Loyalist. In the end, unlike Zorzal, he regrets starting the war with the JSDF and realize that he, Zorzal and the rest of the pro-war faction responsible for bringing down the Empire because of their blind price and idiotic thinking.
Imperial senate: Zorzal has an infamous reputation in the governing body, especially for the pro-peace senators and Maquis Casel due to his brutish, idiotic and cruel nature. Most of the senate have a high doubt of his capability to lead the Empire. Furthermore, it is revealed that some pro-war senators who suppose to support him the suicide war against the JSDF seemly cannot stand him due to his lack of wise strategy in fighting the JSFD, incapable of listening to reasonable excuse as well as disregard for their well-being since he treats them like meat shields for suicide ambush against the JSDF.
After the conclusion of the Imperial Civil War, all surviving pro-war senators and generals finally have enough of Zorzal and surrender the Loyalist as well as the JSDF. Finally, they also admit that they were fools to support his ill-fated war out of blind price and lack of far-thinking.
Rory Mercury and Giselle: Much like the JSDF, Zorzal doesn't think highly of them in term of power, despite their obviously superhuman power to overwhelm the vast Imperial army without breaking a sweat due to his delusional mind. Even Giselle states that Zorzal seemly and stupidly thinks himself as above the gods and divinity and Rory also mockingly states that he is an idiot who don't know his place in the world.
Skills & Abilities
- Swordsmanship: Zorzal is a prince, so he had undergone training at a young age and would be able to adeptly use a sword in battle. However, he failed to defend himself from Itami and Shino since he barely stands after Itami punches him and unable to counterattack Shino's strike showing that he is quite a weakling.
- Inhuman Sexual Appetite: As an owner of a harem of sex slaves it takes substantial effort to quell his more base urges.
Gallery
Trivia
- Caesar was the Name of the famous roman General and Dictator Julius Caesar. However, his corrupted personality that involving raping multiple woman of all races or attempting to kill or imprison family members like Pina or Molt; irrational behavior; shallow thinking as well as his delusion and vanity make him looks more like the Roman Tyrant Caligula since at least Julies Caesar possesses qualities as a good and famous historical leader.
- His fate also quite similar to Caligula since Caligula being killed by one of his bodyguard in the conspiracy that involves a large amount of senators and generals in the Roman Senate. In the case of Zorzal, he was killed by one of his adviser, Tyuule and all his supporters turn on him and surrender the Loyalist and the JSDF after his suicidal war is lost.
- In the Roman Empire, Caesar was the title for the Emperors successor (the ruling emperor was called Augustus)
- In the anime, Zorzal is shown to have more common sense than in the manga since he knows when to stop when facing overwhelming power while in the manga version, Zorzal is shown stupid enough to threat Itami or the JSDF even after all his soldiers are killed and he himself is helpless against their firepower. Furthermore, he is also shown to be more brave in the anime since he actually tries to defend himself against Shino's brutal beating by trying to punch her unlike the manga, when he only shouts hopelessly at the guard to restrain her.
- In the anime, after the warning shot from a sniper during the Raid on the South Palace, the sound of the gunshot begins ringing in his head and causing him to tremble in fear each time, showing that he had gained Hoplophobia.