Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTvfothKom4

THE MYSTERY OF LILY

So King Cobra finally faced the Gorosei about the truth of the origin of the world, finally shedding us some light about what happened at the end of the Void Century. As he explains, a group of 20 human kings from 20 human kingdoms came together to form an alliance to take down a certain immense kingdom as they feared the kingdom’s ideology could threaten their power. After successfully eradicating the God Country of the Lunaria situated upon the Red Line, the twenty founders and their families founded Mary Geoise, where they ascended to live as the clan of the Celestial Dragons, to rule over the world. The twenty kings made a pledge around the Empty Throne to vow that none of them would try and take power for themselves.

Since the founders would be too busy ruling the world, the twenty families left new royal families to take control of their original countries. We saw this for example with the Donquixote Clan abandoning Dressrosa, and thus the Riku Family rising up to rule Dressrosa in their stead.

But as we know, as Doflamingo has told us ever since Dressrosa, the Nefertari clan was the only one that did not become a Celestial Dragon. The Queen of Alabasta in the Void Century, Nefertari Lily, was meant to return to Alabasta and continue ruling that country instead of joining the Celestial Dragons. This is already peculiar on its own, but even weirder is that… Nefertari Lily never returned from Mary Geoise.

Instead her little brother had to take control of the country after her disappearance, only receiving a mysterious letter from her. The Gorosei chalk this as Lily having suffered some accident at sea returning home, but Cobra believes there is more to this, as things simply don’t add up. Why is it that there are only 19 swords around the throne, or in other words, why did Lily never pledge her sword? Why did Lily write back to Alabasta that she would never return? And why did Alabasta decide to house a Poneglyph detailing an ancient weapon after this event? If Alabasta was an ally of the ancient kingdom housing a poneglyph, then why would they have been part of the 20 founding families? Just… where did queen Lily go?

Now, a quick simple conclusion that we can come off of all this is that Lily decided to stand up against Imu at the end of the Void Century instead of pledging her sword to them, and was killed in turn, thus not making it back to Alabasta, only being able to send a letter of warning in case she was killed where she spilled some of the secrets she knew. And while that makes good enough sense and is probably the safest answer to this mystery, it’s also kind of a boring answer. So instead of just wrapping up this analysis here and leave it at that, how about we speculate a little and think of the far more interesting possibility? What if we’re looking at this the wrong way?

LILY’S SECRET

We could speculate a lot about all this, but as always, the simplest answer lies in the linguistics. Because we need to ask ourselves what does the name “Lily” even mean? Well, on one hand the name is fairly consistent with the naming scheme for Alabasta, as it is formed by two syllables ending in i in Japanese, just like the names of Nefertari Vivi and her mother Nefertari Titi before her. This is a loose connection, but with her name I also wonder if she has any connection with the Empire of Amazon Lily, which has existed for centuries, potentially ever since the Void Century. Perhaps Lily was seen as a powerful global female figure or maybe even had some hand in the foundation of Amazon Lily.

But ultimately that doesn’t matter much, because beyond all that, as you likely know, Lily is a type of flower, but it’s one that holds very big importance in one specific culture: that of ancient Egypt. And as we know, Alabasta is in large part based off of ancient Egypt, so it makes sense that their sovereign would be named after a flower that was considered sacred in the culture it was inspired by.

Because in ancient Egypt the blue Lily was not only considered a sacred flower and outright worshipped as a god, but known by the name of…. “Nefertem”. Which explains the name Nefertari in One Piece. In the Egyptian myth of creation, Nefertem is referred to having originated from the primordial sea, blossoming into a blue Lily flower in the form of nature itself during the creation of the world. This potentially ties with One Piece in the myth of the mother of nature, the sea, Umi, as well as the creation of the world by the Celestial Dragons.

As such, it would make sense if the primordial figure of Mother Sea, whom some called Umi the Mother of Nature, may have been that of the Queen of Alabasta Nefertari Lily, she who embodies nature and the sea as the Lily flower. This would even explain why those of the Nefertari Clan have blue hair, as blue is an obvious association with water and the sea, which may have played into the reason why Nefertari Lily may have been consecrated as the Goddess of the Sea, much like in the Egyptian myth.

And well, once you think about it, it would make sense what became of Lily. If Lily never left Mary Geoise, unless she was killed, then the only other option is that she must’ve stayed there. Not as a Celestial Dragon, as she never pledged her sword upon the throne, but as someone else entirely. Someone who didn’t need to pledge her sword, because the swords were pledged to her. Someone above the Celestial Dragons who instead took over control of the world and decided to rule it from the shadows. Nefertari Lily, also known as the Goddess of the Sea Umi became Imu, the King of the World.

This would explain why Imu-sama is always found in the Chamber of Flowers of Mary Geoise. This chamber is likely the very same “Phantom Room” that the guards speculate about earlier in the chapter, as all those who witness it, suddenly disappear, silenced for what they saw. But the peculiar thing is that this chamber is filled with… you guessed it, Lily flowers. This is why Imu is surrounded by nature, loved by butterflies just like a flower, because she is just like a Lily, the mother of nature.

This even explains the sword that Imu used in that room to stab the posters of Luffy, Blackbeard, and Shirahoshi, as it is likely the very sword missing from the Empty Throne. The pledge upon the Empty Throne was not one of equality among the kings to promise to not steal the power for themselves, it was a pledge to follow Lily as their leader and to not take power away from her, to promise to keep her existence hidden from the world, for they all feared her and knew they couldn’t oppose her.

WHAT HAPPENED?

But… how did this happen? How did the Queen of Alabasta go from ruling a country to ruling the entire world? Well given what we know, it’s fairly easy to put the pieces together of what happened during the void Century.

If we assume that Lily is indeed the Mother of Nature, Umi, then it follows reason as we’ve talked previously that that could make her the Sea Devil, said to be the origin of Devil Fruits. This is because as we know, during the Void Century the 20 kings of the alliance were referred to as the “devils”, whereas the allies of the immense kingdom were referred to as the “gods” of the God Country. Thus it would make sense that the Sea Devil was among the devils of the 20 kingdoms, even further if it is the Sea herself.

This creation of devil fruits however would not have been possible without the ancient kingdom’s, or most precisely the God Country’s advanced technology, which applied the bloodline elements to allow people to evolve their genetic code into far more advanced forms. This would suggest to us that Umi had connections to both the alliance of 20 kingdoms but also the god country, but if Umi was Nefertari Lily, then it would make perfect sense, because it explains the dual connection Alabasta already has with both the Celestial Dragons and also the ancient kingdom through its poneglyph.

Though we don’t know the details, I think we can make a fairly safe assumption of what really happened. Lily may have originally been an ally of the God Country, having helped with the creation of devil fruits, likely thanks to the Devil Fruit Tree Eve found at the top of the Red Line, in order for the people of the God Country and their allies to attain liberation from the human tyrants who controlled the world. However, it is likely that this was a trap all along, as Umi made all those who ate devil fruits weak to her powers, the sea, to ensure that none would be willing to rise up against her. It is then that she likely switched sides and allied with the other 19 kings, maybe even being the one who formed that alliance in the first place, promising that if they helped make her King of the World, then she would let them ascend with her and become gods. Thanks to this betrayal, Umi and the 19 kings were able to wipe out the people of the God Country, ascending to Mary Geoise and making the 19 Celestial Dragons pledge to never dare rise against her. However publicly, Umi, now going as Imu, decided to vanish from history, and instead rule the world from the shadows, attaining a perennially youthful surgery alongside her five shields, the Five Elder Planets.

Her very existence had to disappear, so they pretended that Lily had returned to Alabasta so that none would suspect that she rose as King of the World. However, in reality her younger brother was forced to rule, after receiving a peculiar letter from Lily directly. It is at this point that her brother may have realized the horror of his sister’s lust for power and her desire to control the world that perhaps he may have had a change of heart, deciding to hide the poneglyph within Alabasta in order to protect it. This may be why the Gorosei referred to the Nefertari Clan as a clan of traitors.

But alternatively, it is also possible that Umi managed to locate the poneglyph of Pluton and had it sealed within the tombs of Alabasta to ensure that none would be able to locate it. This would line up with what Robin mentioned back in Alabasta that the Nefertari family isn’t trying to protect the poneglyph, rather they were likely ordered to hide it from the world. This would also explain why Cobra questioned why the Nefertari clan has been hiding this poneglyph all this time.

This led King Cobra to finally arouse his suspicion regarding the role of the Nefertari Clan and what happened to Queen Lily. And this finally frames so many things together. It explains why Lily was holding a picture of Vivi in Chapter 908. Because not only is Vivi in part her descendant, but she also bears a striking resemblance to her. From the faint silhouette we see of Lily, not only does she perfectly match that of Imu, but she also looks a lot like Vivi. And considering what we’ve seen with the likes of Poseidon or Joyboy finally reappearing upon the world, then I wonder if Imu sees Vivi resembling her so much as some twist of fate. But regardless, she thought the Nefertari too dangerous with what they have discovered, which is why she had King Cobra killed and tried to capture Vivi, but she managed to escape as she got on Morgans’s ship after heading down to the Red Port to get Garp.

Lily may have potentially been crafting this grand plan for centuries. She took advantage of the people of the God Country to steal their place and rule from the top of the world. Much how in the myth of Genesis the Devil and Eve tempted Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, resulting in them being kicked from the realm of God, the Garden of Eden, Lily temped the people of the God Country with the devil fruits from the Sun Tree Eve, to kick them from the God Country and take power for herself. But Lily feared that the ideals of the kingdom she tried to wipe out, ideals of freedom and equality, could be inherited by future generations, and so tried to erase all existence on the Void Century, including of what happened to herself, to trick people by ruling the world from the shadows as the King of the World Imu-sama.

But, much like inherited will or people’s dreams, these are things that will never cease to be, and Joyboy will one day become reality to stand up to Imu’s wicked plan and bring the world liberation. We are seeing this very laugh tale take form in front of our very own eyes and become reality.