Compiled for Dockside Memory-Keepers, Palace Whisper-Traders, and anyone foolish enough to say “blood doesn’t matter” in the Estes Sea.
Every child raised under Shogunate shadow is taught a clean story:
“The Shogun executed his cousin for treason and piracy.”
It is repeated because it keeps the Dynasty tidy.
It is repeated because it prevents questions.
It is repeated because the truth is worse:
Shogun Kaigan did not kill his cousin.
He hid him.
Not out of mercy alone—out of politics.
A Shogun can execute an enemy.
A Shogun cannot casually execute his own blood without creating a fracture that invites knives.
So Kaigan did what leaders do when faced with a family problem that threatens the state:
He erased the man from record, declared him dead, and sealed him alive beneath the palace—a breathing secret chained under the throne he serves.
That prisoner is the father of both Julius and Kaio.
Rosaline “Rose Captain” Veyra was a pirate with discipline—fast raids, clean rules, a crew that believed in her because she never lied to them about the cost.
Then she stepped into Titan-Forged power without the safety net.
She carried a Giant Pearl without a secondary anchor organ, and her pregnancy didn’t unfold like pregnancy. It unfolded like resonance acceleration: growth too fast, pressure surges too violent, and a body forced to act like a living containment chamber.
She fled, wounded, and still refusing to die.
She did not seek a priest.
She sought someone who could keep her alive long enough to deliver what the sea had decided to make inside her.
Dock rumor calls it romance.
Medical ledgers call it a catastrophic obstetric incident.
Both agree on one thing:
Rosaline would not “make amends.”
Not to the Shogunate. Not to Kaigan. Not to anyone.
She loved who she loved.
And she refused to apologize for it.
His name is sealed in palace paper and spoken only in rooms with locked doors. In dockside mouths he’s called:
The Shogun’s Cousin
The Erased Lord
The Man Under the Throne
What matters isn’t the name. It’s what he did.
He fathered children with a pirate captain and refused to surrender her, denounce her, or “correct the bloodline” for Dynasty comfort.
When the Shogun’s court discovered it, the demand was simple:
public repentance
political marriage
the pirate’s head
the children returned as property
The cousin refused.
So Kaigan turned the situation into a controlled myth:
Declare the cousin executed.
Hunt Rose publicly.
Destroy the paper trail.
Keep the cousin alive in a locked hole beneath the palace—
not dead enough to become a martyr, not free enough to become a threat.
This is why the record is clean.
This is why the truth leaks anyway.
Because secrets, like blood, always find cracks.
Julius is the older brother—seventeen, and already the kind of legend that makes dockhands stop laughing when his name enters a room.
But before the smoke scars, before the dead-man smile, before the Love flag:
Julius was a baby delivered by a pirate who was running out of time.
Rosaline did something that sounds insane until you understand what she was doing:
She brought the newborn to his father—to the Erased Cousin—long enough to prove the truth, long enough to mark the bloodline as real… then she left again.
Not abandonment. Not cruelty.
A pirate’s version of protection:
“If they know he exists, they can hunt him.
If they can’t find him, he can live.”
Sometime after that visit—whether by one reckless night or a final act of defiance—Kaio was conceived.
And once the palace learned the cousin had produced heirs with a pirate captain, the cousin made the only move left that didn’t end in Julius being dragged into the palace as a hostage:
He sent his first son away.
Quietly. Quickly.
With a false name and a cheap berth.
That is how Julius became a cabin boy.
Not because he was unlucky—because his father chose exile over chains for him.
And if you ever wonder why Julius treats freedom like religion, remember:
He was born from a love story that the Shogunate tried to bury alive.
Kaio is one year younger than Julius by blood… and older than most boys by will.
He looks different because the womb became a battlefield.
While pregnant with Kaio, Rosaline sheltered at the place where the Great Monkey Alabasta dwelled—close enough to be imprinted.
Not paternity. Not magic “mixing.”
A phenomenon pearl-trained people fear because it turns development into a rewrite:
prolonged exposure to a Great Pearl Beast frequency can overwrite fetal resonance patterns, accelerating growth and shaping phenotype.
So Kaio inherited:
his father’s royal blood,
his mother’s pirate will,
and Alabasta’s resonance “calm line” stamped into his bones like a storm’s fingerprint.
That is why dock slang calls him Wukong.
That is why his body moves like spring-loaded defiance.
That is why his will condenses into pearls the way some people sweat.
And it is also why there are conflicting ledgers about him.
Some records list him younger than he should be.
That is not an error.
That is protection by paperwork—a doctor’s mercy, a port’s silence, a city deciding a boy should not be found by the Shogunate’s accountants.
Shogun Kaigan rules through stability, and stability requires stories that do not embarrass the throne.
A cousin who loved a pirate is not just scandal—
it’s a precedent.
Because if royal blood can defect for love, what stops soldiers, officers, pearlwrights, and heirs from doing the same?
So Kaigan made an example without creating a martyr:
Rose is a criminal on paper.
The cousin is “dead” on paper.
The children do not exist on paper.
And yet:
Julius exists.
Kaio exists.
Meaning the Shogun’s lie is still alive, still breathing, still capable of cracking open at the worst possible moment—right when the Love Pirates begin turning into a symbol.
Love (the pearl-born ant) was the first in the crew to state the dangerous truth aloud:
Julius has Shogunate blood.
His father is alive.
He is trapped under the palace.
And the records have been erased on purpose.
Love doesn’t know everything—no one does.
But Love knows patterns.
And the Siddhi of Love does not bond to emptiness.
It bonds to intent with roots deep enough to survive being cut from history.
This parentage is not just drama. It is leverage.
If the Shogunate confirms Julius and Kaio are real:
Julius becomes a political weapon or a political corpse.
Kaio becomes a prize—because imprinting and will-pearls are not “children,” they are assets in the eyes of empires.
If the Love Pirates remain small, the story stays rumor.
If the Love Pirates become legend, the Shogun’s lie becomes expensive to maintain.
And somewhere under the palace—beneath the rooms where polished men speak of honor—
a cousin breathes in the dark, listening for the day the sea finally returns what was stolen.
“A throne can bury a man.
It cannot bury what he started.”