One Piece started in 1999, and even after 25 years, it is still one of the most popular anime. Eiichiro Oda’s one-stop solution for entertainment has every anime fan yearning for more. He has done a great job of maintaining all the mysteries and revealing them only when the time is right. The first arc of the Final Saga, the Egghead Island arc, revealed several secrets related to Bartholomew Kuma.
But several mysteries are still kept a secret. One of them is that Dark King Silvers Rayleigh did not march to Marineford to save Portgas D. Ace from being executed. He was the son of Gol D. Roger, his former captain. So, several fan theories have come up that justify why Rayleigh did not enter the Paramount War.
Fan Theories Have Found A Justification For Rayleigh’s Missing At Marineford
Dark King Silvers Rayleigh was the vice-captain of the Roger Pirates. He was introduced in One Piece during the Sabaody Archipelago arc. Even though he was a member of Gol D. Roger’s pirate crew, he was absent from Portgas D. Ace’s execution. Ace was Gol D. Roger’s son, yet Rayleigh did not come to save him. While this was a major surprise to the One Piece fandom, few fans came up with theories that justify his actions.
The first point raised by the fans was that Gol D. Roger only ever told Monkey D. Garp about his son. So, there was no way Rayleigh could have known about it. He was old and retired, and he could hardly be any help in front of the full force of the Navy. There were Admirals, Vice Admirals, Captains, etc. Another important reason pointed out by the fans was that Rayleigh wanted to see how things played out.
He wanted the new generation to write their own fate and not let the old generation influence them. Moreover, Roger may have instructed his old crew mates to help guide JoyBoy to Laugh Tale. So, Rayleigh was on the lookout for who Shanks passed his Strawhat to.
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Several fan theories justify why Rayleigh was not there to save Ace. While most of them are from Rayleigh’s point of view, there is a particular fan theory that takes a sneak peek into Ace’s perspective. Portgas D. Ace hated his biological father and wanted to have no connection to him. So, he might have purposely left the idea of meeting Rayleigh. He saw Whitebeard as his father and respected him.
Even though Ace and Whitebeard die, Rayleigh is seen to shed tears for the latter and not the former. Another thing to notice is that Luffy had freed Ace, but he purposely chose to defend Whitebeard’s honor instead of running away. Rayleigh had no obligation to Ace, which is a major reason for his missing.
While these are all just fan theories, it would still be interesting to know why Rayleigh purposely chose to stay away from Ace’s execution. Was it not knowing that Ace was Roger’s son or something else, is still a mystery. But fans are hopeful that Eiichiro Oda one day might reveal it all.
