Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-69.210.33.117-20130720000111

I've read the current entry on Roman Torchwick, and while the info may be correct about the character design, I think it may be a bit off-base in regards to who he really is.

There are two pieces to what started me thinking this way, the first being the name itself. While we know that the main protagonists names will be related to their signature color, nothing quite as pointed has been stated about the names of other characters has been said to my knowledge. Instead, I started thinking about the word Roman itself, which could be a rather unsubtle reference to the Roman pantheon, which is full of gods and demigods and heroic humans in hundreds of myths and stories. While the first characters we've met have been inspired by (or, in the world being created in the series, served as the inspiration for) fairy tales, there's no reason at this point to believe that all the characters will be linked to them. After all, there's a fair amount of speculation that the staff of Beacon are related to the stories of Oz.

Secondly, I thought about what he did in the one episode we've seen thus far, stealing dust and crystals from an authorized dust merchant. Perhaps more pointedly, he requested crystals, starting with "burn, uncut". Essentially, he is there to steal fire.

Take the two points together, a character from the Greco-Roman pantheon known for stealing fire, and you find one specific character:  Prometheus.

Prometheus stole the knowledge of making fire from the gods and gave it to humans, something which changed them forever. From there, they learned to make tools, forge weapons, and create civilization, just as was discussed in the intro narration. Of course, in this story the 'knowledge of making fire' - the ability to use dust - already belongs to humans. This leads to a new question:  Who is Roman stealing the dust for; himself, or someone else?

Again, this is a bit of a wild guess at this point, but I found the name and the parallels of his actions in the first episode to the mythology interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing if they hold up the next time he appears. 