Whitebeard’s Fight Against Garling, Explained

The events that transpired on God Valley go down as some of the most important throughout the entirety of One Piece, not only for the time they occurred but for the whole story. This is because the most powerful and important factions of the time all converged and fought against one another on an island in an incident that was so destructive that the World Government had to erase the island and all knowledge of it from history.

Because of this, many battles took place during the God Valley Incident. The most important of these is the one that everyone knows about, where Garp and Roger joined forces to take down Rocks. However, it is implied that there was another battle between two equally legendary warriors at the head of their respective factions; Whitebeard and Figarland Garling, so let’s take a look at how this fight may have happened in One Piece.

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Why This Fight Happened

Why These Two Probably Fought

The entire speculation about the clash between these two powerhouses comes from a short conversation that Whitebeard had with Shanks early on in the series. In Chapter 434, Shanks makes his way to the Moby Dick to talk about Blackbeard. Here, Whitebeard states that every time he sees Shanks, the scars he got from a ‘certain man’ begin to ache since the latter reminds him of this person. For the longest time, everyone believed this to be Roger, due to Whitebeard and Roger’s legendary rivalry.

However, as time went on, more evidence seemed to point away from this fact. Ultimately, St. Figarland Garling is revealed, who is one of the strongest characters in the series and the Supreme Commander of the Gods’ Knights during the God Valley Incident. Most importantly, though, Garling is all but confirmed to be Shanks’ father, since One Piece: Red stated that Shanks is actually a Celestial Dragon. This was confirmed in Chapter 1137, where Shamrock is shown as Garling’s son and the twin of Shanks.

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How The Battle Likely Played Out

The Second Most Important Fight On God Valley

It is almost confirmed that Whitebeard’s main opponent during the God Valley Incident was St. Figarland Garling, but how would this fight have played out? So far, it is known that Whitebeard was the strongest pirate of his generation alongside Roger but both were likely behind Rocks, which is a fact that has been proven through the dialogue of many others, such as Sengoku and Garp.

Because of this, Whitebeard and Roger were easily among the top tiers of the One Piece world, with the former having some of the most potent Haki in the setting along with arguably the most destructive Devil Fruit ability of them all. So, Garling would need Haki and Devil Fruit powers just as strong in order to have matched Whitebeard at all, so it’s safe to say that, at the very least, Garling’s overall strength is likely on the same level as Whitebeard and Roger. This makes him the strongest Celestial Dragon after the Gorosei.

The greatest power in the world for one to have is Conqueror’s Haki, which only the strongest characters do. One of the trademarks of Conqueror’s Haki is the fact that one must be incredibly ambitious to wield the power, as is seen with everyone who has used it, and Garling perfectly fits these criteria since he is the Supreme Commander of a force that polices the Celestial Dragons, who are the highest authority in the world.

From this, it can be surmised that Garling is almost sure to have Advanced Conqueror’s Haki, especially considering that he is now elevated to the position of an Elder. Along with this, his sword may also be a Supreme Grade Weapon since he leads one of the world’s most powerful factions, as well as the fact that Whitebeard and Roger had Supreme Grade Weapons too, so it would just make perfect sense in order for him to fight on equal footing with Whitebeard.

Finally, there’s the much-theorized subject of Garling’s Devil Fruit. Many fans believe that he will have a powerful Devil Fruit power, which goes along with this theory since he must have needed a powerful fruit to fight against Whitebeard, whose Gura Gura no Mi is easily the most destructive fruit in all of One Piece. Many argue that Roger never needed a Devil Fruit to fight against Whitebeard so Garling doesn’t either, but a counter-point here could be that, despite being rivals, Whitebeard and Roger had a friendship and were only really shown to fight using Haki.

While this doesn’t mean that Whitebeard never used his Devil Fruit abilities against Roger, it has just never been shown. So, a popular theory is that Garling is the user of a Mythical Zoan Devil Fruit that turns him into the giant wolf from Norse mythology known as Fenrir. Many contextual clues that allude to this being his transformation, so it might be that this power was used against Whitebeard on God Valley.

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One Piece

Release Date

October 20, 1999

Network

Fuji TV

Directors

Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou