Shorts Review: RWBY: World of Remnant “The Great War”.

Hopefully the last “World of Remnant” we have to deal with for Vol.4 so let’s do this!

Spoilers Below

Qrow once again delves into another piece of Remnant history with something that’s been frequently mentioned both within the show and past “World of Remnant” segments. A big event that happened prior to the show’s existence called. “The Great War”.

During his narration, he explains that the war itself lasted 10 years in combination with a century that was filled with tension towards one another with a good chunk of that tension coming from Mistral which didn’t help matters either.

He then says there’s always been a high-demand for a place safe from Grimm with a land rich full of resources and the Emperor of Mistral was able to make that a reality for himself and a good chunk of land he took over thanks to Mantle (A Kingdom that would later change its name to Atlas.)

Mantle & Mistral had a peaceful alliance and did it’s share of trading which lead to Mantle’s technological innovations being shared to it’s public in exchange for goods that would be normally hard to find in the frozen tundra of mistral and started out good until Mantle had an incident that led to them establishing a bizarre law that forbade its own people by abolishing any form of art & self-expression of any kind believing that if they keep the people’s emotions in check, Grimm wouldn’t attack.

While Mistral had a ‘strong, artistic culture” this eventually led to Mistral to “selectively comply” with Mantles wishes in the outer territories allowing the centralized powers to continue doing as they please with Qrow bluntly describing Mistral as being “Full of jerks”.

The People of Vale in response to their bullshit were frequently against Mistral & Mantle’s ideological way of doing things and it didn’t help that they were even going as far as to push their hypocritical way of life on people against their will or the piss-poor slave labor compared to the other lands.

The King of Vale did his best to avoid conflict despite his own people demanding to share his land with the people of mistral which only escalated things further with nobody knowing “who shot first” and lead to the first battle of “The Great War”.

Mantle being the military douchebags they were, came to Mistral’s side providing assistance to Mantle’s faction with lives being lost at the battlefield and from random Grimm attacks and eventually Vacuo decided to join the party.

At first Mantle & Mistral would treat Vacuo as a neutral zone on the condition that they didn’t interfere but progressively imposed their will on them by saying “don’t side with them, side with us and you’ll be safe.” but Vacuo wasn’t having it thinking that if nobody stood up to Mistral & Mantle, Vacuo would no longer be a neutral zone and would be conquered next and Drove both kingdoms out saying “they have their backs” only to destroy both buildings in secret.

As the war raged on, there would be temporary cease-fires when Grimm attacks escalated given that a soldier’s own survival takes priority with most villages destroyed and never recovered since they had no line of defense.

Eventually, the war ended in the Vacuo campaign when Mistral & Mantle attempted to invade Vacuo’s dust mines and cut off the supply of their weapons only for them to be caught off guard with a surprise attack when Vale jumped in helping Vacuo’s forces.

The King of Vale laid waste to the enemy forces with only “a sword and his scepter” which earned Vale’s leader the nickname “The Warrior King” with all 3 factions bowing to Vale’s king finally ending the Great war.

Despite being the victor, The Warrior King turned down having absolute rule and established a treaty in the island of Vytal with the 3 remaining leaders for a peaceful co-existence. (I guess this explains their festival in Vol.3 being a Huntsmen/Huntress Olympics of sorts.)

With the newly established abolishment of slavery in their land, The Warrior King (who would be the last king of Vale) helped create Huntsmen academics, government restructuring, and placed his most trusted followers to take over each school.

All four Huntsmen academies were now established under the condition was that he would teach the world to fight so long as they promised to fight for themselves but never against each other.

The narration ends with Qrow pointing out how flawed their so-called alliance has now become and forebodingly says “Seems we haven’t kept our end of the bargain”.

Overview

In the history books, it’s often said that “History is written by the victor”. So Everyone believes they are the Heroic Protagonist, that they are in the right or a “tragic victim” in some way. And since Vale & Vacuo won, they will most likely be painted in a better light compared to Mantle & Mistral who most likely saw themselves as a failure in that regard.

And given that the end of the Great War took place decades before the events of RWBY Vol.1, It means that War & slavery are still within living memory to various people. In many ways, this puts Jacque’s “questionable labor practices” within the Schnee Dust Company into a different light.

With the way “The Warrior King” diplomatically handled things, it’s easy to speculate that This “Warrior King” was Ozpin the whole time. Because of the way the King’s Scepter is designed is eerily similar to Ozpin’s walking cane and given that Ozpin’s consciousness is implied to be immortal, I think that the King merged with his aura the same way Ozpin is now attempting to do with that farm boy Oscar and further explains why he spoke of his actual involvement with the creation of Huntsman schools.

 

Also, the king’s sword is gold which could be hinting at the sword being Jaune’s, The Hilt is even Identical design-wise and given that Jaune never knew who his father was and his weapons briefly mentioned that his standard sword & shield were family heirlooms from this “Great War”.

The last time the show did a “World of Remnant” before the last three episodes of a season, it foreshadowed events of what would happen explaining that the CCT towers were all connected and the fact they would all go offline if one would be destroyed and sounded like huge design flaw making it easy to assume to the audience on what’s to come.

Now that we know how this “Great War” sorta started, It sounds like it could happen again because during these four seasons. Remnant has faced: The Dust embargo by Torchwick’s men, The misconception of Atlas’ involvement in the fall of Beacon from Vol.3 due to Cinder’s Hacking, Mistral being Salem’s next target, and the White Fang’s “Faunus Lives Matter” movement being militarized by Adam (and whoever the fuck this “Khan” person is that was briefly mentioned in episode 1 of vol.4 by Salem’s evil council.)

Shit could possibly get real… again!