SUMMARY

The Will of D. in One Piece is a mysterious trait inherited by select characters who lead with charisma and face death fearlessly.
Will of D. carriers like Luffy, Ace, and Dragon have shaped history through pivotal moments of defiance against the World Government.
The Will of D. hints at a deeper role in One Piece’s final saga, symbolizing defiance and courage to change the world forever.

The lengthy epic of One Piece has intrigued fans with all kinds of mysteries and strange phenomena, from the enduring mystery of the Void Century to the Voice of All Things and the enigma of who or what Imu actually is. A more personal example includes the Will of D., a phenomenon that has been helping shape the story of One Piece since the earliest chapters and episodes. The Will of D. has not been fully explained, but One Piece fans cannot deny its impact.

A handful of characters, including protagonist Monkey D. Luffy himself, bear the middle initial D., making them all bearers of the Will of D. Since it’s a middle name rather than a last name, not all of these people are family, and they don’t even express the Will of D. in the same ways, but they do have some similarities as members of the same unofficial group. Now, One Piece fans ought to know more about what the story has revealed about the Will of D., who has it, and how it has altered the course of One Piece‘s epic story.

Known Characteristics and Possible Explanations For the Will of D.

Over the course of 27 years and counting, the story of One Piece has shown fans some distinct hints and clues about how the Will of D. works and what its intended role in the story may be. For one thing, while not everyone in the Will of D. club is related to one another by blood, the Will of D. can indeed be inherited and passed down, as a few families have shown. Protagonist Monkey D.

Luffy, for example, inherited it from his father Monkey D. Dragon, who in turn inherited it from his own father, the Navy hero Monkey D. Garp. Similarly, Luffy’s foster brother, Portgas D. Ace, evidently inherited it from both his parents, Gol D. Roger the pirate king and Portgas D. Rouge. Perhaps not coincidentally, both families have played an enormous role in shaping the course of history.

Anyone who has the Will of D. will probably have two key characteristics: strong leadership and a relaxed, even happy attitude in the face of certain death. A few tragic deaths or near-deaths in One Piece showed a Will of D. carrier facing their inevitable demise with a smile on their face, and they might even be laughing or commenting on how they are satisfied with how their lives went and are ready for the end. That doesn’t mean the Will of D. carriers don’t value their lives and certainly doesn’t mean they have self-destructive tendencies.

But it might mean, in the eyes of some anime fans, that Will of D. users are romanticized heroes who know when their time in the world is over and aren’t afraid at all. The Will of D. won’t protect them from death, such as execution or getting cored by a magma punch, but at least they can die in peace. The other key trait of a Will of D. user is the charisma to assemble a crew of allies and inspire people by leading with example.

In most cases, this manifests as the power of friendship in a leadership role, with many Will of D. users being pirate captains or, in Garp’s case, a Navy leader of great repute. It can be inferred that Will of D. are born leaders, either because the Will of D. makes them that way or because the Will of D. somehow chooses to exist in people born with natural leadership traits. That also means that indirectly, the Will of D. can be embodied in entire pirate crews at once, since any leader will impose their will on their followers and have those followers fight for their will.

Pirate crews such as the Rocks Pirates, Heart Pirates, the villainous Blackbeard Pirates crew, and the Straw Hat Pirates crew are all teams that fight for the Will of D. through their leaders. The main mystery of the Will of D. is the role it plays in One Piece‘s chronology. Plenty of characters have commented on this in cryptic terms, making it clear that the Will of D. is more than just a super-leadership trait.

In fact, Corazon tells a young Trafalgar D. Water Law that the Will of D. is the enemy of the gods, with the gods being the Celestial Dragons who embody the World Government and its will. It’s also been suggested that the Will of D. has come in connection to the fall of the once-great Ancient Kingdom and the founding of today’s World Government over 800 years ago, and it’s likely that most or all Will of D. carriers will be involved in the final fight to free the world from the World Government’s control.

Notable Will of D. Carriers and How They Changed the World

It’s been noted that many people who bear the Will of D. tend to be involved in major historic events in some fashion, and in some cases, they’re the direct cause of historical events. In other cases, the Will of D. user is simply a combatant who got involved, or might even be a victim. The most historic example was the first known Will of D. user, Nefeltari D. Lilli, one of the First Twenry royals who helped found the World Government.

Nefeltari D. Lilli betrayed the fledgling World Government despite her position among the First Twenty, scattering the poneglyphs across the world for related but currently unknown reasons. Only the Nefeltari family declined to become Celestial Dragons, returning to their homeland in Alabasta because of the Will of D. Centuries later, the famed pirate captain Gol D. Roger ruled the seas as the king of all pirates, a coveted position even among the mighty Four Emperors, and he even visited Laugh Tale, where he found out the truth of the world.

His near-mythical One Piece treasure now resides there, an object that is probably connected to the Will of D. somehow. Finally, Gol D. Roger was publically executed in Logue Town, where he helped change the world one last time by challenging everyone to find his One Piece treasure, right before he died smiling. Thus, the great pirate age was launched. Notably, the World Government tried to downplay Gol’s nature of a D. carrier by calling him Gold Roger, a name that many accepted as his real name, his Will of D. concealed.

While Monkey D. Garp hasn’t done anything quite so dramatic, his son Monkey D. Dragon is poised to shake up the world as a Will of D. carrier. Dragon, unlike his Navy father, is a pirate to the bone, and he is the leader of the entire Revolutionary Army, a rebel faction that includes the likes of Emporio Ivankov, Luffy’s childhood friend Sabo, Koala, and many others. There’s little doubt that Dragon will make his big move in the story’s final saga, launching the much-anticipated war to either free the world from the World Government’s iron grip or die trying. Either way, the world will never be the same again.

The foster brothers Luffy and Ace are major wielders of the Will of D., both getting caught up in and causing historical events time and again. For his part, Portgas D. Ace was the one who caught the World Government’s attention and got himself captured specifically because he bore the initial D., though the Navy probably wanted to deal a major blow to Whitebeard as well, with Ace being a prominent Whitebeard Pirates officer.

That led Luffy, Whitebeard, and Blackbeard to converge at Marineford and have a great battle alongside thousands of other combatants, a turning point in One Piece‘s story right before the shōnen-style time skip started. Once Trafalgar D. Water Law arrived, that marked not one, but four Will of D. carriers involved in that historic battle. And, of course, Ace died in peace with a smile on his face in Luffy’s arms.

Both Monkey D. Luffy and Marshall D. Teach/Blackbeard are poised to change the world in the final saga, and in many ways, they already have. Luffy was the one who declared war on the World Government at Enies Lobby, and more recently, his shōnen transformation into Gear 5 made him the embodiment of Nika and Joy Boy, which guarantees that he will play a major and symbolic role in the final fight for freedom.

Meanwhile, Captain Blackbeard will likely play a major role in the final battle and make history in the process, and he even killed Captain Whitebeard at Marineford and stole the latter’s Devil Fruit, which certainly made a serious impact as well. All these events and more reinforce the belief that the Will of D. is almost the embodiment of defiance and the courage to change the world, making it far more than a letter in certan characters’ names. It’s an expression of history itself.