Bekori

Heavyset in build, Bekori has a sizable nose tinged red at its end and a notably large mouth. Shoulder-length pale hair frames his face, paired with a trimmed dark beard and a tidy mustache of the same shade. His royal getup consists of a crown, a pale cravat, and a dark uniform befitting his station. The manga depicts a scar left by Kuma's strike, a mark the animated version omits. By the point six years before the present, age had turned his facial hair shaggier and lighter.

Cold and obsessed with money, Bekori governed as a corrupt ruler who placed payment of the Heavenly Tribute far above his people's wellbeing. His groveling loyalty to the World Nobles drove him to oppress his own citizens, squeezing wealth from them in hopes of winning the nobles' approval. He held the impoverished south in contempt and saw no problem in selling them into slavery for failing to contribute to the tariff. Foolishly, he assumed the wealthy northerners endorsed this bigotry, when in fact they recoiled from it in disgust. Once those northern statesmen objected to his torching of the south, he had them gunned down without hesitation, proof that his own interests outweighed any loyalty to subjects or realm. Beyond his political clumsiness, he proved remarkably dense, repeatedly dismissing Kuma even after the man had wrecked his schemes more than once. Twice beaten and driven out, he still refused to reflect, instead casting himself as a wronged victim through slander and clinging to plans of reclaiming power until it killed him.

A quarter century before the present, Bekori had only recently inherited the Sorbet throne from his predecessor Bulldog. Three years into his rule, he proclaimed that the kingdom proper consisted solely of the northern region, and anyone unable to meet the Heavenly Tribute faced enslavement. When Kuma spoke out against the Royal Army seizing southerners, he was thrown in prison, and his companions met the same fate after demanding his freedom. The Freedom Fighters then stormed the realm to liberate it, compelling Bekori to scrap his policies of division and bondage, though he clung to his crown. Roughly sixteen years afterward, he revived his old aim, this time seeking to wipe out those he deemed worthless by setting fire to their houses, an idea he claimed to have borrowed from a ruler of an eastern land who had gained favor with the World Nobles by similar means. As his people and nobles objected, he ordered several executed, but Kuma intervened before it could happen. Brushing aside Bekori's threats, Kuma launched him and the castle into the sky with his power, an event remembered as the Solo Revolution. Surviving yet unrepentant, Bekori partnered with the World Government to brand Kuma a tyrant and himself a wronged ruler, then sailed a Marine fleet back to Sorbet to retake it by force. Kuma simply sent the whole armada to the bottom of the sea, and whether Bekori lived or drowned remains unknown.