This was written as a response to my message on the SnK blog asking for people's opinions on Treize. It's the best thought-out piece on him we've ever seen and so we decided to ask Carolyn's permission to post this on the site, since Treize, even though he is no longer alive, plays a huge part in SnK and especialy in Act Zero. She graciously consented and here is the [edited] essay she sent us.

Okay, I'm a little late in responding, but I honestly couldn’t pass up a chance like this. To blather on about my interpretations of all things Gundam Wing is my greatest joy in life (note to self: don’t think about GW and Les Mis at the same time for it causes aneurysms). Treize especially is my favourite character; I’m helpless not to fall in love with men of great conviction (Saitou Hajime, Don Quixote, Javert, etc).

For the longest time, I only had the most tenuous of grasps on Treize, the simplest of puppet strings. I had an okay idea of how he would react in a situation based on interpolation and extrapolation from other situations I had seen him in, but even with the “how”, I had a very blurry vision of “why”. I could make him dance, but I sure as heck didn’t know where the strings were attached.

Then, I happened to look up his image song, Hoshikuzu no Senshitachi. Actually, I think I have SnK to blame for that (I can blame many things on SnK, namely shibby music). The particular translation I came across was very poetic and I'm still looking it over and thinking about it, but the key lines that jumped out right away were:

Immediately, I began thinking that this carried the tinge of suicide, written about someone planning to die. Now, Treize isn’t the kind of man who ever seemed suicidal to me, which is why episode 48 was always a point of interest for me.

I am a firm believer that Treize killed himself, but certainly not for the reasons that most people commit suicide. What exactly those reasons were, I could never exactly fathom (a curveball from that “why” area), so I was interested. Very interested. So interested, that I recall I went out for a two hour walk very late at night just to keep my brain from exploding out of my ear.

When I went back to the song, I remembered what I already knew about Treize. First, he was a soldier. Not an aristocrat, not a politician, not a man, and not a leader. The leader part is important because most people would disagree with me, that he was most definitely a leader. But remember he did not lead just anyone; he led soldiers, like himself.

The last line, about it being “a soldier’s legend” to die fascinated me. I looked over it and thought, “that’s true”. It’s what soldiers are for from many a perspective. That explained to me Treize’s suicidal tone in the song; he was a man expecting to die and preparing for it. But soldiers die a special kind of death; they die for something. So, what was Treize dying for?

That brought me to the “burning up everything, returning to peace…” line. That lyric has stuck in my mind, heart, and notebook, as being a key to understanding Treize. I’ve always thought he fought for peace, only I thought that he came to that decision during the actual show. My old theory was that Relena had shown him a good idea, although he didn’t think she had the experience to implement it. He intended to help her by becoming the bad guy, embodying war so that it died with him (as well as with Zechs).

But my opinion has changed. I think Treize did intend to be a symbol, and thereby remove the whole that the symbol represented with his death, but I don’t think he wanted to symbolize war; he wanted to symbolize the soldier. I think that Treize felt that as long as there were soldiers, there could never be peace.

It explains why he hated the mobile dolls so much. Not only did they disgrace soldiers, and cheapen them, but they ensured perpetual war. He loved the mobile suits because they had returned man to the battlefield when nuclear warfare removed them; but the dolls were a backward step. As he said in episode 48, “There was once an era where fights were ended with the touch of a button. The embodiment of that adbomination[sic] are the Mobile Dolls....” (http://www.gundamwing.net/lagrange02/episode48.html)

It also explains why he loved Wufei, and wanted him to have a hand in his death.

I have long thought that Wufei was not a soldier, not even a warrior. He was only trying to be one, for the memory of Meiran. It was hard to see at first, because of his talent, his ferocity, his devotion. But it was all for Meiran, not his own calling. This is most highly evident in the fact that a soldier would not have thrown away his advantage to fight an opponent, and neither would a warrior in most circumstances. That’s how Treize knew when Wufei came out of his Gundam to fight, that Wufei was not a soldier, and that’s what Treize wanted to find out about his new opponents.

I don’t mean to imply that Treize hated soldiers, I'm positive he didn’t. He respected them, loved them, was one of them, and wanted to remove them from the world. He wanted soldiers to be stars; still shining their light and message to the world, but long dead. He therefore needed capable hands in which to leave the world. The values, concerns, and attitudes of men like Dermail and Tsubarov wouldn’t do, his trusted soldiers were hopefully going to die with him, but young men and women like Relena Peacecraft and the Gundam pilots were full of potential.

The only problem with that statement is that the pilots Heero and Trowa were soldiers, and I just finished saying that Treize didn’t want any soldiers left. The thing to remember is that for the longest time, Treize only knew one pilot personally, Wufei. He would have based his understanding of all the pilots on that one, who was most definitely not a soldier. It’s a good thing the Wufei got to him before Trowa did actually, because Trowa would have just blown that boat out of the water, and I would be short an obsession.

When Treize finally met Heero, it was during his exile. Romefeller had already served its purpose and was now becoming unwieldy, Relena was making her ideals and potential known, and Treize had the players for his final act all picked out. Thus he greeted Heero, “Thank you for coming, Heero Yuy. A messenger of the peace that I love. I welcome you with all my heart.” (http://www.gundamwing.net/lagrange02/episode34.html)

However, Heero was not Wufei, and Treize was confused. At the time he had wanted any one of the Gundam pilots to kill him, but in speaking with Heero he recognized a fellow soldier. He was also very tired by this time, and definitely wanted to die, as you can gather by reading the dialogue of this episode. So, he told Heero, “Speaking with you was the highlight of my life. [...] And I came to understand. My death and yours must occur together.” (http://www.gundamwing.net/lagrange02/episode34.html)

But Heero refused the offer and Treize had no choice but to live another day. And then he gave Heero a mobile suit.

There were two main advances in mobile suit technology during this series, those being the Zero system and the mobile doll. Either one of the advances would have to cancel the other out, or they would have to absorb each other. Treize could not allow the dolls to continue in any way, so he helped the Zero system cause the dolls to be an evolutionary dead end of sorts. That was why he created Epyon. He gave it to Heero because there was no one else he could trust with it, even with his newfound perception of the pilots. However, he still hoped that Heero, being a soldier, would lose and die, or reform.

Trieze never met another pilot face to face, and so determined Wufei to be his proper executioner. When the fight began he was feeling very dramatic and poetic, but Wufei shot him down a little, telling him to get on with it. I like that part because it showed Treize’s humanity, that he did have faults, like a melodramatic predilection. Of course, his theatrics were excusable since he was preparing to die.

I digress. Treize was anxious during the fight because he felt Wufei was afraid to kill him, because he wouldn’t use the dragon arm to finish it quickly. The most telling example of Treize’s state of mind was when he responded to Wufei’s desire to fight on equal terms by saying “That's not like you at all.... Are you holding back?” (http://www.gundamwing.net/lagrange02/episode48.html). His statement was a mistake because Wufei made the same demands on the only other occasion in which they interacted, so it was like him to demand it again. Treize felt that it was be the final war, in which all soldiers died, in which Zechs and Heero killed each other, and in which he himself would become the light of a dead star. If somebody, preferably Wufei, didn’t kill him soon, then his whole plan would be completely foiled (pun intended only because I’ve gone seven pages without making a joke).

Finally, Treize’s highest point in the entire series. The point where the first-time watcher is finally convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Treize was not the villain. In other words, the revelation of his list of dead people. I believe that the list referred to dead soldiers specifically. They were the men and women that Treize wanted to lead out of war and into death.

Treize told Wufei about the list in order for Wufei to know something personal about him, because Wufei understood him without knowing anything about him. He also wanted to make sure that Wufei knew that the soldiers’ deaths were not meaningless, and his wouldn’t be either, because Treize knew that he was about to hurt Wufei.

I used to think that Treize made a mistake at the end, telling Wufei about the list. I thought that Treize had intended to remain the bad guy so that Wufei wouldn’t feel guilty over killing him, but couldn’t do it. However, now I think that Treize killed himself because he couldn’t get Wufei to kill him in those last moments, and when Treize told Wufei about the list, it was because he had already formulated that plan, which he knew would hurt Wufei, but was the only option. Treize hoped that in opening himself to Wufei, he would allow Wufei the chance to understand Treize’s actions and what was to be achieved by them, thereby reconciling his own part in the drama.

Near the end, Treize said that Wufei was one of the few people who understand him. In my opinion, Zechs and Une were the others he was referring to. I don’t include the possibility of unmentioned characters, because I get the impression that Treize didn’t have much of a personal life, the people close to him would have to be people who worked with him, and he wouldn’t have much time to develop more than a couple deep relationships. I don’t have much to base this opinion on; it’s simply a thought that continually crops up without me asking it. Again, SnK may have influenced it in part.

I think that Une, and even Zechs, had much of the same grasp on Treize as I originally had. That is, knowing the basic “how”, but not the “why”. This is how Treize was able to surprise them, especially Une, because all their understanding of him was based on speculation from observation. For every situation they had never seen Treize react to, another piece of the puzzle was missing. But Wufei, who spent almost no time with Treize and knew even less about his personal life and history, was able, through luck or chance or however, to understand his “why”.

Unfortunately, Wufei both didn’t care about understanding Treize (he was very wrapped up in his own problems), and was confused by his understanding. Also, not knowing any of Treize’s personal details would be like being mathematical genius, but having yet to be taught what math is. Wufei actually only had the _potential_ to understand Treize, which is why Treize wanted to share himself, so that he could draw on that potential in order to help Wufei cope.

If I haven’t made it clear already, I don’t think that Treize was correct in his philosophy. Not that he was evil, I just don’t think that removing all soldiers is possible, or a means to peace. I once visited a site (I think I got the link from SnK, actually) where someone said the reason Treize was shown bathing, was to give him humanity. The concept of Treize’s humanity stuck with me, and it shone new light on his character and actions. I found examples of it when he retreated from Romefeller, when he was mistaken about Heero, and especially in the final battle. Treize made mistakes, had errors in judgment, had emotions, and dreams. My discovery lent itself to allowing me to see the man, a man who I greatly admired, as having the potential to be wrong about his mission in life. It was hard and weird at first. I tend to believe that everyone around me, especially those whom I admire, are completely right and secure in their views. But I think that Treize was wrong, and I still love him.

I hope I've made my thoughts and opinions on Treize clear, because I've certainly spent a number of words on the topic. I also hope that this gives you something, anything at all. It has definitely been enjoyable for me, and a great help as it gave me a chance to write down and refine all of my ideas, which will come in handy in the Gundam Wing epilogues I plan to write (shameless self plug? Why not).

And in case you don’t remember me as the wing nut from before, thank you again for introducing Beyond and Baka Beyond into my life, and for Sainan no Kekka, which has given me far too much to think about and will continue to do so, long after it is finished.