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“Let’s be the bad guys.”
Wilbur wasn’t actually too sure what that meant. He used to be so sure of himself, of right and wrong, but how could he be anymore? After being betrayed by those he trusted, after watching those he loved die around him, after being forced out of the country he built?
He was naive back then, nothing more than a young man playing revolution in his fake 1700s coat, laughing with his friends about the drugs they were cooking. That’s all it was back then, a game, holding no more meaning than the signs that screamed, in their poorly translated languages, “THE GREEN BASTARD MUST DIE,” and like most of those signs, he didn’t really understand the meaning of what revolution really was. He remembered how he watched Tubbo put up those walls, the power almost intoxicating when he realized how loyal they all were to him, his right hand man, Tommy, his son, Fundy. But power was a double-edged sword, he had come to learn, it came with responsibility, with duty, with the weight of watching people die to fulfill your own dream.
He wasn’t sure anymore if it even was his dream, or just some sick game he wanted to be part of, to play general, to be the hero, the man who was blindly adored despite his flaws. But the double-edged sword had come down on him once more when he learned that violence and fear are the only ways to stay ahead of the game, and that heroics fall in and out of fashion. He learned, along with the rest of L’Manberg, that there is no way to earn power or freedom, but that both words are meaningless, based only on the faulty perceptions created in warped minds, minds so easily molded by fear, by propaganda, by their own misconceptions.
In truth, what was to say that Wilbur was the bad guy? He couldn’t find a shred of evidence that death, that violence, that pain were bad, and how could they be? How could they be wrong when revolution, the thing he idolized so much, the hand of accountability on any overzealous government, required death and suffering to succeed? Wilbur had seen firsthand, that no matter how well written the declaration, at the end of the day, there is destruction, betrayal, and death. And he had seen that his revolution was successful, so why should it matter that his friends were dead, that they had betrayed him, or even that the new leader of his beautiful nation, the eternal object of his affections, had no respect for anybody within?
L’Manberg was his project, his love, his beautiful country, and Wilbur could not bear to see it in the hands of anybody else. If the first war was to kill a tyrant, why shouldn’t the second one be that way also? Only this time, instead of being armed with friends, with a hope for a better future, Wilbur was armed with hatred: hatred of being pushed aside, hatred of the man who had destroyed him.
Wilbur no longer needed the support of those around him, not when he knew how quickly they changed, how easily they were converted with only the threat of a blade or the danger of exile. He saw them as nothing more than an army of blind drones, stumbling around in search of a leader, the first person who could provide them with a sense of selfish security. He no longer wanted anything to do with them, he didn’t need their approval. His only obligation now was to the chaos, to the prospect of a leaderless future, one where no man was greater than another.
How he wished his old self could see him now, how he wished he could have known what he knew now. He wished he could tell himself that death is not a tragedy, but a gift, the great equalizer among all men. He wished he could have seen the world for what it really was, a dirty mess of people all clamoring to be the best, all believing they were heroes, completely identical to his past self.
Wilbur was not the bad guy.
There was no such thing.