#the idea that roger sent generations of gold hungry pirates off on an archaeological expedition is extremely funny to me tho ????

[franeridan]

alright here's the current theory. Roger was genuinely just a dude. Just some guy. He was definitely strong in his own right and had a good ass crew and ship, but what everyone who's known him keeps on saying whenever he's brought up is true - everyone keeps calling him a monster but he really was nothing special, probably very strong but no more than anyone out of the rocks pirates, and definitely no more ruthless. He had honest to god infants on his crew, he was just some guy going on an adventure.

but during Robin's backstory the ohara archeologists say this: the poneglyphs were written to recount the hidden history, and the hidden history is about a war between the world government and an island that is no more. So why would have four of those been used to give the coordinates for laugh tale? because laugh tale is the island the world government was at war with. And Roger found Oden, and read the poneglyphs, and found laugh tale, and that's why the world government called him king of the pirates and made a show of hunting him down and then killing him where everyone could see, because he'd found out the truth they'd been keeping hidden for eight hundred years

so the theory is that his speech right before he died was his last fuck you to the government. He told the whole world that there was a treasure (and there probably is), and that it was on laugh tale, and they could and SHOULD look for it - so now the government killed one dude who found out the truth, but in exchange for that, if before there were only the archaeologists and the particularly curious to worry about, now there's the whole of the ruthless and lawless and fearless and greedy side of the world's population looking for that very same thing they've been doing their best to hide. And that was a very funny thing to do on Roger's part, imho. Like, after that I'd call him king too tbf