Bleach: What Is the Lichtreich & How Is It Different from the Wandenreich?

The Quincy are one of the major factions in Bleach. They are an exceptionally powerful group that was founded and led by Yhwach until his downfall 1,000 years ago and after his reawakening in the present time. Like the other factions, the Quincy also had their own special domain, but the Quincy actually had two of them – the Lichtreich, their original home, and the Wandenreich, their home after Yhwach’s downfall. In this article, we will tell you about these two locations.

The Lichtreich was the former home of the Quincy from the time before Yhwach’s first attack on Soul Society when Yamamoto defeated him. It was, seemingly, a portion of the human world, but the exact relation was not explained. It seemed like a normal realm with a central castle, Silbern, in the center. As it seemed, the Quincy in the Lichtreich were not unified at the time, and Yhwach united them using his charisma and force where necessary. After Yhwach’s downfall, the Quincy escaped the human world and realized they could hide in the shadows of Soul Society, where they established the Wandenreich.

The rest of this article will tell you about the history of the Quincy, focusing on the Lichtreich and its relation to the Wandenreich. From the story presented in this article, you will find out all the answers you want and need, as we will provide you with everything you need to know about this topic. Of course, since the history of the Lichtreich will be explored a bit later, we have to warn you that the article will contain a fair amount of spoilers, so be careful how you approach it.

The Lichtreich was the first home of the Quincys, before they moved to the Wandenreich

As we have said, the Quincy are one of the major factions in the series, and like all the other major factions, they had their own home. The Shinigami lived in Soul Society, the Hollows in Hueco Mundo, the humans in the World of the Living, and the Hell dwellers in Hell. As they were humans, the Quincy lived in what seemed to be a portion of the human world known as the Lichtreich (the Empire of Light).

It is not completely clear how the Lichtreich was related to the human world, but based on the fact that Quincy fled the human world after Yhwach’s downfall and that the Lichtreich looked a lot like the human world, we assume that it was a portion of that world; it is possible that the Lichtreich was established in the light of the human world, just like the Wandnreich was established in the shadows of Soul Society.

Not much is known about the Lichtreich, but the Quincy were, before Yhwach’s rise, heterogenous, and Yhwach was the one who united them into one homogenous empire and a force to be reckoned with.

The architecture of the Lichtreich looked much like that of Central Europe in the 19th century, which makes sense based on the Germanic motifs surrounding the Quincy. At one point, Ichibei offered Yhwach a non-aggression pact that included allowing Yhwach to rule over the Lichtreich without any outside interventions, which Ichibei refused, and a bit later, he launched his attack on the Seireitei, which ended in his defeat.

After the Quincy lost in battle against the Shinigami 1,000 years earlier and faced complete extinction, some survivors fled to the place they considered safest for them at the time: the Soul Society itself. With their ability to control Reishi, they created a hidden space in the Soul Society, which is made entirely of Reishi, called the Schatten Bereich. This is in the same place as Seireitei but in a different dimension, which is separated from the usual environment by shadows.

In this world, undetectable by the Soul Society, they built a kingdom – the Wandenreich – secretly for a thousand years and gathered strength to take revenge on the Shinigami. At an unknown point in time, Sōken Ishida clearly opposed the ideology and objectives of the Wandenreich. He fled to this world, living with his family until his death as the “last Quincy.”

Sometime after the fall of Sosuke Aizen, the empire finally took action. His army soon took over Hueco Mundo, overthrew the local ruler of the Hollows, Tia Harribel, and captured her. The kingdom established a base in Aizen’s former domain and enslaved the Arrancar with its hunting army. The prisoners were offered the option of joining the Wandenreich or being killed. As a result, the Wandenreich also has some Arrancar who were trained to Quincy as its members.

At the same time, a delegation was sent to Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto to declare war on the Seiretei. Waiting for the time when Ichigo Kurosaki and Kisuke Urahara, two of the five “special war potentials,” were in Hueco Mundo, the Wandenreich then began its first invasion of the Seireitei with the Sternritter army, inflicting heavy losses on the ranks of the Gotei 13 stands out, not least through her mechanism for stealing a Shinigami’s Bankai.

However, Captain-Commander Yamamoto’s death and Ichigo’s arrival from Hueco Mundo signaled the end of the invasion, and Yhwach, who could no longer stay outside the shadow area, ordered a temporary withdrawal. After Ichigo and several other Captain-level Shinigami then set off for the Soul King’s Palace, the Wandenreich launched its second invasion of the Seireitei by completely dissolving the Soul Society’s Reishi Matter, thereby replacing the Seireitei with the Wandenreich.

Despite this surprise attack and the literal loss of their territory, the forces of the Gotei 13 were better armed this time and could wipe out a large part of the Sternritter during the battle. Undeterred by this, Yhwach nevertheless moved forward towards realizing his actual goal, the conquest of the palace of Reiō.

He fully realized this with the extinction of the Royal Guard and the assassination attempt on Reiō, from which he ruled over the Royal Dimension as the de facto reigning Soul King from his Wahrwelt and increasingly gained power over all worlds until his final defeat in the fight against Ichigo.

The main base in the Lichtreich and the Wandenreich was called Silbern. This was a large palace that was accessed via a staircase at the front. The second level of the palace is supported by a few thick columns and the third level is supported by a multitude of thinner columns. The palace is surrounded by several square towers with partly pointed and flat roofs.

To the left and right of the palace entrance, two tall, thorn-like structures curve towards each other and represent a kind of arch-like monument in front of the palace. There is, among other things, the Yhwachs throne room, behind which a Reishi staircase leads to a curtained room in which the animal Harribel is imprisoned, as well as several sun gates through which the Quincy invaded Soul Society.

It is also possible to enter the human world through these gates. The entire Wandenreich consists of items Quincy collected from Soul Society during their thousand-year stay in the shadow of Soul Society. It could not normally be detected or entered by Shinigami and exists without their knowledge, hence the name “The Invisible Empire.” It also seems that Yhwach could only leave the Wandenreich for a limited time before he had to return there.

During the Second Invasion, Silbern appeared in the Soul Society dimension when Quincy destroyed the Seireitei’s overlying matter, resolving this issue for Yhwach. After Yhwach’s ascension into the Royal Palace and absorption of the Reiō, he allowed the fragments of his former capital to rise from the Soul Society into the sky. He created his new palace from them, the so-called Wahrwelt, from where he ruled over the realms. However, he allowed the rubble of the destroyed royal palace and the Royal Guard’s five capitals to fall into the Seireitei.