The Tragic Ranks

Dressrosa's nightmare begins under the palace lights. Across the country, citizens flee and beg as King Riku's sudden violence tears through the streets: "Help us!!" "We gave you the money, so spare our lives...!!" "Your highness, please stop!" The land is described as blanketed by evil, and panic spreads everywhere: "The whole country is in a panic!!!" People cannot understand what has happened to the king they trusted, asking, "What on earth has happened to his highness!?" Inside the palace, Viola can only whisper, "Father..." while others recall that Riku had burst out strangely earlier. The situation has grown beyond anything the palace can contain, so the Marines are contacted: "I think the situation is beyond one we can deal with at this point..." The decision is made to leave everything to Captain Vergo, while Dressrosa's faith in its king begins to collapse.

Snow drifts inside the palace as the coup reveals another hidden hand. The guards are startled: "Snow?!" and then recognize the maid at the gate: "Monet!? What are you doing there!?" They demand to know why a maid would open the palace gates, but Monet smiles at Princess Viola and says, "...Lifufu. Princess Viola..." She tells Viola that if she uses her clairvoyance, she will see exactly what is happening throughout the country: "I expect you'd see it quite clearly." Outside, disaster spreads at once: "There's a blaze coming from the east tower!!" "Viola-sama has been captured!" "Pirates are inside the palace!!" Monet's answer is cold and final. She is "Inviting in... a new royal family." Viola is trapped as the Donquixote Family walks into the palace through doors opened from within.

The palace falls into the Donquixote Family's hands while King Riku is forced to attack his own people. Soldiers and citizens cry out, "Why are you doing this!?" and bodies fall around the king. Riku fights against the unseen control with everything left in him, begging, "Please stop...!!" He would rather die than be made to strike down his countrymen: "If you would have me strike down my countrymen...!! Kill me!! Somebody please... Then I would rather die...!!" Meanwhile, the invaders admire their stolen prize. Doflamingo calls the palace "A fitting palace for the young master!!" and his crew treats it like a new home: "I like the look of this place. Not bad." The loyal defenders shout, "Monet!! Unhand Viola-sama!" and "What have you bastards done to King Riku!!" Doflamingo answers by declaring that the palace needs cleaning, turning the royal family's suffering into the opening act of his reign.

The citizens' love for King Riku makes the scene crueler. Even as they lie wounded and robbed, they still call out to him with grief instead of hatred: "Why, King Riku?" "Did we... did we do something wrong...!?" They remind him that he had always been kind and just. Because it was Riku who asked for their money, they surrendered everything they had; because he was their king, they believed him. Their faith is spoken aloud through their pain: "We gave all we had, because you're our king, who we take so much pride in... Because you always think of us, first...!! Because you're our beloved king!!!" The page turns the manipulated massacre into a betrayal that the victims cannot yet understand, showing the exact moment trust is broken while the real criminal remains hidden.

The public's grief curdles into rage. The same people who loved King Riku now believe he has robbed and slaughtered them for selfish reasons. Voices rise across the city: "King Riku is trampling all over our hearts!!" "He stole our money, and now he means to kill us!!!" "All in his own self-interest...!! He's treating us like garbage!" The verdict hardens into hatred: "An inhuman piece of shit!!!" and finally, "Damn you, King Riku...!!! I hate you...!!!" The Riku Royal Army approaches, and the streets erupt again: "The Riku Royal Army is coming!!" "Hey, get away from there!! Run away!!" A victim pleads, "Sa... save me...!!" while Doflamingo's scheme succeeds: the kingdom is made to curse the king who is himself a victim.

At the height of the chaos, the Donquixote Family enters as if they are saviors. Doflamingo descends upon the ruined city, laughing while his crew cuts through the controlled royal soldiers and frightened citizens stare in shock. People ask, "W-who are you people...?" and Doflamingo gives Dressrosa the answer he has prepared for this very moment: "My name is Donquixote Doflamingo!!! I've come to save this land!!!" The double spread makes the lie enormous. The man who engineered the nightmare stands above it as the supposed rescuer, while Diamante, Trebol, Pica, and the rest of the family display the force that will replace Riku's rule. Dressrosa sees pirates bringing down the army, not knowing that the rescue is only another layer of the same trap.

Doflamingo tightens the performance. As the people watch his family defeat the royal army, he urges them to surrender to the chaos: "Now fall... give in to the mayhem!!" The citizens see pirates but also see the men who have taken down the army for them. Names spread through the crowd: "Diamante!! Pica, Trebol..." Doflamingo calls the soldiers and the old order "this country's trash" and commands his officers to remove it. The terrified crowd begins to chant the name he wants them to trust: "Doflamingo!!" The page shows the coup's final emotional turn: fear becomes gratitude, gratitude becomes worship, and the criminal who made Dressrosa bleed is accepted as the hero who saved it.

Back in the present, the Toy Soldier finishes the awful shape of the story: "So in just a single night... the country fell into Doflamingo's hands." Don Chinjao calls it exactly what it is: "What a story... a real nightmare!!!" Robin recognizes the precision of it: "Such a cunning man..." The Tontatta are furious and heartbroken, crying that they will never forgive Doflamingo. The Soldier explains that the beloved King Riku was sent to his death for a crime he had not committed, and one listener admits shamefully that even they believed King Riku had gone mad at the time. They contacted the new king, Doflamingo, only to learn what that truly meant. The shame remains: "I'm ashamed for having ever doubted King Riku!!"

The Toy Soldier then reveals that King Riku did not die. "No... King Riku still lives!!" At the time, Doflamingo became interested in Princess Viola's power, and Viola made the only bargain she could: "If you promise not to kill father... I will serve under you!!" Her sacrifice kept Riku alive, but it chained her to the enemy. The Soldier explains that Viola is still alive and now serves under Doflamingo as one of the Donquixote Family's officers, having changed her name to Violet. The others are stunned: "An officer!?" Yet the meaning is clear. King Riku survives because his daughter buried her own life inside the family that destroyed hers.

In the flower field, the Toy Soldier carries the weight of everyone Doflamingo broke. He says King Riku is definitely still alive somewhere in Dressrosa, but he cannot imagine the pain Riku has endured for ten years, nor the pain in Viola's heart. Fear, anger, and tears have filled an entire decade. He also thinks of the soldiers who, alongside King Riku, were manipulated against their will into striking down the people in front of them. Someone asks if King Riku's men were not killed that night, and the Soldier's silence makes clear that the answer is more complicated. Dressrosa's tragedy is not only the stolen throne; it is the way Doflamingo forced victims to appear as villains and then left them to live with that stain.

The Toy Soldier explains that some of the royal soldiers were killed, but others bowed down to Doflamingo on the spot and survived as his bodyguards. The listeners react with anger: "What a bunch of traitors!!" and "They were only acting on the orders of that crazed King Riku!!" But the Soldier refuses to abandon them. He asks to take those men on as his own, because he believes they too had to make an impossible decision. Leo is moved to tears again: "Well if that's how it is then I can't help but cry again!! You guys...!!" The Soldier adds that even with the surviving soldiers, their numbers fall short of the country's full military strength. The rebellion is still too small, but his mercy toward the shamed soldiers reveals the kind of leader he is.

The Soldier turns to the deeper wound hidden in Dressrosa. He asks Fraland, "Remember what I showed you in town, earlier?" and says, "I expect it has something to do with one of my own missing memories..." The curse of the toys is not merely that people are transformed; everyone else forgets they ever existed. He explains that people have completely forgotten that the toys used to be their family members. The toys themselves remember their human lives, as one toy insists, "My name is Milo, not Wanpoko," but the humans who loved them remember nothing. The Soldier sums up the horror plainly: "In other words, there are toys walking the streets who have forgotten who you used to be?" "Yes, exactly." Nobody realizes they have forgotten something so important. "This is Dressrosa's greatest tragedy."

The forgotten toys become the heart of the strategy. The Soldier explains that if Dressrosa's darkness were brought to light, everyone would find a seething will of rebellion. In that darkness, Doflamingo consigns every seed of revolt to oblivion; the instant people are turned into toys, everyone starts forgetting they hated Doflamingo. More than anything, "these tragic ranks" hold the key to their plan. The giants and allies understand the scale of it: if they are fighting a Shichibukai and his crew, the small force gathered here would not be enough. But if every toy in the country joined the rebellion, that might be enough to win. The realization lands at once: "So that's it!!" "They're the trump card you mentioned before!!"

Usopp panics the instant the plan sounds like a direct challenge to Doflamingo. He turns to Robin for confirmation: "Isn't that right, Robin!?" then blurts, "Ehh!!? I will never forgive Doflamingo." He tries to pull the mission back to its original scope: "Hey, hey, hey hold on!!! Why does it sound like you're raring to take down Doflamingo!? All we're here to do is destroy the factory!! And when that's done, we're outta here!!" The Tontatta ask what happened that morning, and the truth about Doflamingo's false abdication comes out. To them, Usoland's appearance on this exact day can only be destiny: today is the long-awaited decisive battle. They were thrilled when Doflamingo seemed to abandon the throne, then crushed when it proved to be a misprint from cloud nine down to hell. Still, they interpret the despair as a sign to revolt today, leaving Usopp only able to shout, "Sorry about that!!!"

Beneath Dressrosa, in the scrap yard, another prisoner sits among discarded toys. Doflamingo's hidden system has thrown the defeated and forgotten below the country itself. The old warrior addresses a toy ship, asking, "So, even though you're retired... You led a ship here?" The ship answers cheerfully, "Hiya haya, indeed I did!!" The old man says he has no one to inherit command of the Happou Navy; if only he had some grandchildren. The situation feels strangely familiar to him, as if a large hole has opened in his consciousness: "It's the same feeling as ten years ago..." From nearby, other lost voices cry out, "Where am I going!? Help me, Grandpa!" and "What'd you do to the aloof warrior Jeet!?" Another demands, "!? What have you done to the lone wolf Abdullah!?" The scrap yard exposes the forgotten victims still trapped under Doflamingo's kingdom.

At the Corrida Colosseum, a scream cuts across the arena: "Aaaaaah!!" Zoro and Kin'emon notice the commotion with a simple "Oh?" and "Hmm?" Then Luffy bursts into view wearing his disguise and shouts at full volume, "Zoro!! Kinemon!!" The secrecy collapses immediately. Someone snaps, "Luffy!! Keep it down, you idiot!!!" Luffy explains how he got there: "That chicken-head guy led me over here!" When asked where the chicken-headed man is now, Luffy answers that on the way there, "he started foaming at the mouth..." Elsewhere, a shadow draws near and says, "I've finally found you..." The chapter ends by shifting from the hidden history of Dressrosa back to the present danger closing in around Luffy, Zoro, and Kin'emon.

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