Edward Newgate

Towering at well over six meters, Whitebeard dwarfed ordinary men, yet unlike most beings of his scale he carried himself in flawless proportion. The pale crescent mustache framing his jaw is what gave rise to his famous nickname. Age had ploughed his long face with deep wrinkles, old scars crossed his bare chest, and dense muscle wrapped his frame, the biceps visibly swelling whenever he summoned his quake powers. He draped a white captain's coat bearing his Jolly Roger across his broad shoulders, tied a black bandana over his head, and wore loose trousers tucked into tall boots with a sash at the waist. Declining health in his final years often left him hooked to oxygen and monitoring machines between battles. Over seventy-two years of fighting he never once took a wound to the back, refusing as he did to flee any foe; his last clash with Akainu, however, cost him his left eye and half of that signature mustache.

Beneath a fearsome reputation, Newgate was at heart a father figure. Raised as a penniless orphan, he treasured family above any fortune, a longing his peers mocked but that he never hid. His swagger could read as reckless overconfidence, yet calculation usually lay behind it: laying claim to Fish-Man Island shielded it from slavers, and his demand that Blackbeard be punished was really cover for Ace's defiance. Fully aware he was only one mortal man, he placed the futures of the young above his own life and would gladly die for those he called his sons. He took in castaways of every background as foster children, and Marco credited the crew's fierce devotion to that paternal warmth. Where fellow Emperors like Kaidou and Big Mom ruled through terror, Whitebeard bent his might toward mercy, freeing Fish-Man Island and quietly funneling aid to his impoverished homeland of Sphinx. His code was iron: he never forgave the killing of a crewmate, swearing even at death's door to avenge Thatch. He kept a fondness for fine drink and a booming laugh of "Gurarara."

Newgate grew up an orphan on Sphinx before turning to piracy and falling in with the storied Rocks Pirates. After that crew shattered, he raised his own banner, adopted the Whitebeard name, and rose to the rank of Emperor over the New World. He and Gol D. Roger shared a warm rivalry, and he lent his crewmate Kouzuki Oden to Roger so the Pirate King could reach Laugh Tale, a destination Whitebeard himself had no wish to seek. Once Roger died, the world named Whitebeard the mightiest man alive and the one standing nearest the One Piece, his bounty climbing past five billion, second only to Roger's across all history.

His strength was the stuff of legend. In his prime he had fought Roger to a standstill over days, and even in old age he could overpower Ace more than a hundred times and trade blows on even footing with three admirals at once, wounding Akainu badly in retaliation for Ace. His Gura Gura no Mi, the strongest of the Paramecia fruits, let him crack the very air with shockwaves, tilt and rupture whole islands, and raise tsunamis, while he also commanded all three branches of Haki, including the rare gift of cloaking his attacks in Supreme King Haki.

In time he unknowingly took Roger's son, Ace, into his crew. When Ace was captured while chasing the traitor Marshall D. Teach and sentenced to public execution, Whitebeard led his fleet and allies in a siege on Marineford that erupted into the Summit War. The fighting claimed both Ace, struck down by Akainu, and Whitebeard himself, finished by Teach. With his dying breath he declared to the entire world that the One Piece truly existed, igniting a fresh wave of pirates and ushering in the New Age. Soon afterward, Teach stole the power of the Gura Gura no Mi from his fallen body by means still unknown.