Berthold Hawkeye

Master Hawkeye is shown as a gaunt, ailing older man in his final scenes, wasting away from the illness that ultimately kills him. Beyond that the manga and 2009 anime give him little distinct design, though his likeness is said to echo Shimei, a character from another of Arakawa's works. His tombstone in Brotherhood supplies both his birth year of 1860 and his full first name.

Riza remembers her father as a frightening figure she could never feel close to, a man wholly consumed by his research. He held the State Military in open contempt, reacting flippantly to Mustang's enlistment and choosing to live in squalor rather than join the State Alchemist program. He guarded his life's work jealously, refusing to pass his flame alchemy to Mustang out of fear that a young, naive student could not be trusted with it. Even so, his dying apology to Riza reveals that beneath the coldness he genuinely cared for her.

A gifted alchemist, Hawkeye worked out the intricate theory required to push flame alchemy to its most powerful and efficient form. Terrified of that knowledge falling into the wrong hands and unwilling to leave ordinary written notes, he inked the whole of his research as an enormous transmutation array across his daughter's back, a choice that may reflect just how strained their relationship had become.

When Mustang, then only a regular soldier, returned hoping to learn the theory and qualify as a State Alchemist, Hawkeye told him the secret now lived with Riza, then collapsed, coughing up blood, and died in his student's arms after asking his daughter's forgiveness for having done so little for her.