#thank you for the message
⚜️ “I am power, absolute.” •• About Urizen’s motivations and intentions.
MESSAGE; hiya, i got a bunch of urizen questions id love to hear your opinion on, if you got the time/motivation to answer! […] thank you so much if you take the time to go through this!
Hello dearest anon, and thank you so much for your message! Your questions were very intriguing and a pleasure to think about and mull over, and I apologize in advance for the avalanche of text that is about to hit you - brevity is not my strength.
Q1: if he won against dante, what would have been his plan after the fruit?
Truth be told, dear anon, I don’t think there ever was a plan beyond eating the fruit. It is a disappointing answer, I know, but the way I understand Urizen he was absolutely truthful when he told Dante that “[the Qliphoth fruit’s] power, you see, was all [he] ever wanted.”
I have talked about it at various points on this blog before, but I am convinced that Urizen was not primarily motivated by some nefarious urge to rule and torture and be praised as King of the Realms - in fact, I don’t think he could have cared less about anyone else but him. What motivated Urizen and fuelled his actions was ultimately fear; fear of being weak, fear of defeat, fear of being at another’s mercy once again. The citizens of Red Grave were as much a casualty to him as the countless demons that died in his name; he cared as little about Malphas and Cerberus as he cared about the Empusas eagerly harvesting human blood to grow his demonic tree.
He did not even care about Dante and their rivalry anymore by the time his brother came to confront him. As V said, Urizen had discarded everything that ever mattered to Vergil. The only part of Vergil left inside of Urizen was the scared and wounded child, helplessly lashing out at anyone and everyone and afraid of being consumed by fear and nightmares.
Once again, as V has put it, all his life Vergil was desperate to hide his imperfections and weaknesses beneath layer upon layer of power. He hid his most vulnerable core inside a massive armour, but once that armour fell apart, what was left of Urizen was nothing but pain, self-loathing, grief and fear.
He only cared about the fruit. Urizen thought that by consuming the fruit, he would finally feel safe and whole again; a way he hadn’t felt like since the day that Eva was killed and he was left traumatized and helpless.
I think that Urizen was convinced the fruit would give him a level of power that was unrivaled in the underworld - he wanted to become the strongest being in existence and surpass any demon before or after him.
Q2: [would he want to] rule the human world?
That is an excellent question! I have discussed a very similar question on this blog before: did Vergil ever want world domination? While this post focuses on Vergil’s perspective, I briefly touch upon Urizen as part of Vergil as well. The TLDR is roughly summarized in my answer to your first question: at the end of the day, I don’t think that Urizen truly ever cared about being a political leader for either of the realms - but it would be a lie to say that he would have never entertained the thought of ruling over both realms the way Mundus always wanted to but never actually succeeded.
In a fantastic addition to one of my recent posts it was pointed out that Urizen’s appearance and behaviour is possibly an expression of Vergil’s desire to surpass Sparda - I’d argue that it might also be an expression of his desire to surpass Mundus, his abuser. Mundus is, as far as we know, the most powerful being that has ever defeated Vergil, so it would be logical, I think, to assume that in order to rid himself of his trauma and fear of Mundus, Vergil would want to surpass Mundus. Because if he is better than Mundus, then he would no longer have to fear him. (He expresses something similar towards Dante during their first encounter: that Urizen now realizes he no longer has reason to fear Dante because he has grown far more powerful than his younger brother.)
One could argue that since Mundus always wanted to rule over the human world but never actually succeeded, one way of surpassing Mundus might be accomplishing what he never could and rule over the human world, yes.
With Dante gone and Urizen becoming the most powerful being in existence, I think it is possible that he would have eventually grown bored enough to act like a king and rule over the human world. But I don’t think it was his primary motivation. His primary motivation was likely to surpass Mundus and Sparda and every being in existence in das strength and power.
Q3: [would he] go to hell to start shit with whoever the biggest baddest strongest is in there to prove himself more powerful?
Similar to the previous question, I think that he may have eventually done this if he had defeated Dante, yes - but it was not a primary motivation for his actions in DMC5. DMC5 is Vergil’s very unhealthy way of dealing with and trying to overcome his trauma and his end goal was always to rid himself of his insecurities and perceived inferiority.
And though Urizen pretty much ignored Dante for a whole month during DMC5, indicating that his interest in proving his superiority over another is significantly smaller than his desire to grow even more powerful (he remained seated in his throne and was fed human blood by the Qliphoth for the whole month, iirc), I think that a victorious Urizen who has consumed the fruit to reach “completion” would eventually grow restless. As I have expressed in another post, I think that Urizen’s desire for power has become bottomless and eating the Qliphoth fruit may have given him a feeling of security initially, but it would just be another “layer of paint”, his underlying issues would still not have been resolved and he would probably still feel threatened and restless at the slightest provocation.
So yes, eventually he would likely get involved in conflicts with other powerful demons, although not just for the sake of smacking them around but especially because he’d want to eliminate any possible threats.
Q3 (contd.): hes already the demon king (although im not sure what exactly means with all the different regions(?) of hell like the fire hell mentioned by berial).
The way I understand demon world politics, I think it is safe to assume that Urizen is not the demon king, but a demon king; the usurper, to be more specific. The existence of potential rivals such as Goliath suggests that following Mundus’ and Argosax’ defeats at the hands of Dante, the Underworld is not yet united under a single ruler, but that there are various leaders of groups/clans/tribes that call themselves king of a specific territory. The fact that Urizen is also called “the usurper” suggests that he has challenged or been challenged by at least one such king and defeated him in battle, but it is just as well possible that multiple clan leaders have sworn fealty to Urizen upon witnessing his strength or something similar (and maybe that is how and why King Cerberus ended up guarding certain areas of the Qliphoth).
Personally, I still think that Urizen was not too invested in politics, but that he used it as a tool to reach his end goal of consuming the Qliphoth fruit: he needed foot soldiers to do the tedious work of collecting human blood and victims to turn into Angelos, so that he could sit on his throne and feed on blood for however long it took until the fruit was ready to be consumed. He wanted to maximize the amount of power gained by growing the Qliphoth and therefore he needed followers. But as I said previously, I don’t think he was attached to his followers and I don’t think he really cared about actually being a king - Malphas seemed much more invested in his political career, likely for her personal gain. I think that she saw him as Mundus 2.0 and thought that if she was in his favour and demonstrated her devotion to him and his power, then she would in turn have a high position in his court and therefore hold a lot of power.
Malphas is very uncomfortable with the thought that Sparda’s sword is still somewhere in Red Grave, so much so that she orders Trish to find and retrieve it, while Urizen is just like… nah, I’ll sit on this throne and eat blood, I’m good. He really doesn’t care about being challenged. All he cares about is power, actual power, not political power.
Q4: [would he want to] find mundus to kick his ass?
This is a very good question! In the event that Mundus is still alive and not dead (I wish Capcom could properly make up their mind about this…), then I could see two possible scenarios: yes, if he felt strong and safe enough, I think that Urizen would definitely want to strike while Mundus was still recovering from his defeat! But also no, it is just as possible that Urizen would have been too scared to lose against Mundus, subconsciously, to seek him out and challenge him. Vergil has been made to feel inferior and insignificant at the hands of Mundus multiple times during his childhood and has been forced to obey him for about a decade. And Urizen is ultimately all bark, no bite when we strip away his armour. As is shown in VoV, Urizen is still deeply traumatized and deathly afraid of his own weakness, still haunted by his nightmares and fears. It is probably simultaneously his ultimate power fantasy to switch roles and have Mundus reduced to a pitiful heap of misery and regret, begging for mercy at Urizen’s feet, but it is also his greatest nightmare to fight Mundus again and lose and relive the torture he had to go through when he was younger.
I can really see it go both ways, it probably depends on how secure Urizen feels and how weakened Mundus is, if he is still alive somewhere.
Q5: what would he even do if he managed to succeed and actually become the most powerful being?
Again, this depends: acquiring power is not a healthy way to deal with trauma and it does exactly nothing to help Urizen address his underlying fears and issues. There is a huge difference between knowing something and understanding something when dealing with trauma. I think that even if Urizen knew that he was the most powerful being in existence, he might never truly feel like that fact was true, there would always be a tiny voice of doubt in his mind that maybe there was still someone somewhere who was stronger than him and therefore he must gain more and more power. Urizen’s desire for power is not based on a factual lack of strength, but on emotion. He feels weak, he feels inferior, it is his core belief that only power can make him whole and safe again and until this issue is not properly addressed, he will always feel like he is lacking.
So, even if Urizen became the most powerful being in existence, it would still not be enough. He would still be obsessed with growing stronger. He does not act based on facts, facts mean nothing to him. He has to feel strong and invincible and safe, but it is a feeling he will forever chase and never experience as long as he runs from his fears and trauma instead of working through them.
Q6: and also, now that urizen doesnt exist separately, is vergil technically the demon king? vov even mentions the fruit giving rise to mundus as the demon emperor, which doesnt exactly equate eating the fruit to being the boss in hell, but…
Technically, I think you could call Vergil a former demon king. What is a king without his followers? A king’s political power is reliant on how many followers he has - and I’d guess that Vergil has none; Sons of Sparda are probably not exactly welcome, let alone respected among Hell’s residents. Never mind that Urizen was, in fact, a shitty king who did absolutely nothing for his followers but use them as cannon fodder. I never once saw him raise even a single finger or tentacle to protect his subjects. Urizen was only ever interested in his own gain and well-being.
In Hell, Dante and Vergil fight against the exact same demons that had previously supported Urizen & I think that if they still recognized Vergil as their king, then they would not try to harm him. Therefore it is fair to assume that those once loyal to Urizen do not see Vergil as their king, and therefore he is at best a king without any real political power.
Urizen was a king. Vergil is a kill-on-sight target.
The Qliphoth giving rise to Mundus is probably meant in the sense that it granted Mundus the power necessary to attack other regions of Hell and unite various parts of Hell under his rule. The power he gained by consuming the fruit was enough to put him on equal standing with Argosax, who would have otherwise likely been stronger than Mundus (or at least it has never been mentioned anywhere that Argosax had to consume a Qliphoth fruit to match Mundus’ strength).
Argosax was the second emperor of Hell. Mundus ruled over one half, Argosax ruled over the other. I don’t think eating the fruit is a prerequisite for becoming king, but the power gained by eating the fruit is very helpful when you need to rid yourself of any opposition.
