Bleach: Who Is Yhwach’s Mother? How Was He Born?
Yhwach is the leader of the Quincy, as well as the father of all Quincy. This is a well-known fact and something that Bleach fans don’t need to be reminded of. He is a powerful entity, and according to the story, he is the son of the Soul King. But how was Yhwach born? And does he have a mother, as well as a father? The anime has given us a glimpse of that, and in this article, we will explain it to you.
Yhwach is the son of the Soul King and an unknown mother, whose existence was revealed in the Bleach anime, significantly expanding Yhwach’s background. It is unknown how exactly he was born, as it happened 1,200 years ago when the Soul King had already been sealed, but it probably has some Biblical parallels, as Yhwach’s story has a lot of these references in it. As a child, he could not move, hear, see, speak, or anything, but he could heal people and give them strength, and this would later return to him when they died. While he was receiving that energy back, he started to grow and develop his senses, thus becoming Yhwach, the Quincy Emperor.
The rest of this article will tell you what you need to know about Yhwach’s backstory and what happened to him 1,200 years ago when he was born. The manga had initially revealed some details related to this, but not too many, whilst the anime finally expanded on that and revealed more details about Yhwach’s origins. In this article, we will present all the known facts about this event. Of course, if you’re not fully up-to-date with everything, we have to warn you that the article will contain many spoilers.
Yhwach was born to the Soul King and an unknown mother, but the exact circumstances are unknown
Yhwach, commonly addressed as Your/His Majesty by his subjects, is the emperor and founder of the Wandenreich and the father of all Quincys, the progenitor of the Quincy people. Like all of his Sternritter, Yhwach bears a letter representing his special ability, “A” – “The Almighty”.
Yhwach is also the son of the Soul King. After Yhwach was defeated and killed in battle by Ichigo Kurosaki, Yhwach’s dead corpse, still possessing the Spirit King’s immense powers, was made the new Spirit King and the pillar of the world to maintain the balance of souls. And this is his story sublimed in one paragraph, but this is not what interests us here. What interests us here is Yhwach’s past, i.e., his birth, as it is one intriguing story that we really think you should find out about.
So, it all started 1,200 years ago. At the time, the Soul King had already been sealed, as his sealing happened a long time ago (we know this because Yamamoto is roughly 2,000 years old, and the Soul Society existed before his birth, and we know that the realms were created after the Soul King was sealed). This means that Yhwach was, as the son of the Soul King, not born in any natural way and that the circumstances of his birth are a big mystery.
So, what happened? The original manga was not overly detailed about the circumstances of Yhwach’s birth, but the anime revealed more details. One, they revealed that Yhwach did have a mother and that he was born as her baby.
The woman was only seen as a Reishi-like silhouette holding the baby in her arms, but her name, her role in the story, and how she became pregnant with the Soul King’s child… well, these are all questions that we do not have the answer to, but the manga at least confirmed that he was born like every regular baby.
Seeing how he did not have a father and how he can be perceived as the child of god (there are many Biblical parallels and references here), we assume that it was something similar to how Jesus was born, but in a more twisted and evil way.
Namely, when Yhwach was born, he was just a baby; he was alive, but nothing happened. He could not see, hear, speak, or even move, and he was only… alive, but he was basically useless. He couldn’t even cry, but he was not afraid because he instinctively knew he would not die.
Namely, Yhwach was born with the strange ability to grant pieces of his soul to others, which is why the people revered him as a god. He would heal them and give them energy, and although everyone who touched him died not long after, people still came to him and worshipped him as a god.
They did not know that the soul fragments of those who had died returned to Yhwach, which, in turn, made the baby stronger. In time, he could use his senses, and soon after, he became fully functional in every way imaginable. He grew up to become a powerful person, and when he realized the nature of his ability, he wanted to use it as best as he could.
The people of the time called him Yhwach, so when he grew up, he simply accepted it and adopted it as his own name, becoming – Yhwach, the progenitor of the Quincy.
He, of course, shared his soul to create the Quincy and later discovered how to make the Sternritter, who were even more powerful Quincy. And the rest is history. We don’t really know how he was made, but we assume that the fragments of the Soul King’s power somehow formed the baby that would later become Yhwach. And while he was more or less useless in the beginning, he grew up to be one of the series’ strongest characters.