#ch522

[every-sanji]

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

Hi! During Amazon Lily (ch522 and ch523) Gloriosa talks about the two other Empresses. In the translation it says "the previous empress died of this illness, as did the empress before her" and "(they) ruined themselves by suppressing those feelings". Since Shakky is very much alive, are there any nuances in the original Japanese text that didn't come through with the translation that suggests those two empresses didn't die for real? Thank you!

oooh, good question! i'd forgotten about this line!

so, if i'm reading it right, there is a small but important distinction here between the japanese and the english. gloriosa says 先代皇帝もこの病で死んだ/sendai koutei mo kono yamai de shinda, "the previous empress also died of this disease."

however, when talking about the empress two generations in the past (so, shakky) she says 先々代も同じだったそうじゃ/sensendai mo onaji datta sou ja. the important word here is sou, which is a pretty versatile word in japanese that can have several meanings- in contexts like this, it usually means 'seems'/confers a sort of uncertainty on the statement. so her statement about shakky is something like "it the empress before her seems to have been the same" or "it seems the same befell the empress before her." there's a few ways you could translate it.

given she seems (from the one panel we get) unsurprised that shakky is alive when we get the reveal in chapter 1059, my guess is that shakky faked her death or otherwise chose to suddenly disappear when she quit pirating, and that gloriosa was aware and may have helped her cover for it.

[hiro-danna]

[naruto1to700]

Chapter 522