The TRUE villain of the 2003 series

This is spoilers ahead for FMA 2003. Forgive me for any errors- this is my first Reddit post ever. It’ll be really long. Please credit me if you use this theory on the internet

As we know in FMA 2003, the main villain manipulating the Homunculi and military state from within to wage war against nations like Ishbal, Liore, Xerxes and Drachma is none other than Dante, Izumi’s alchemy teacher and Hohenheim’s first wife.

She uses her Philosopher’s Stone to transfer her soul into another body so she can escape death, but her soul is decaying. She is considered heartless and arrogant.

I think there’s more to it than at first glance. Here’s a theory that the TRUE villain of the series isn’t Dante- it’s Hohenheim of Light. Dante was being used the whole time, and Hohenheim trying to protect his sons is his first act of genuine goodness in this series which ultimately led to a good ending. Brotherhood hohenheim is an absolute saint compared to this man.

This is a bit tenuous and speculative since 2003 wasn’t based on the manga, I can’t state if this theory is truly valid. Please bare with me.

Hohenheim and Dante met 400+ years ago. During a time of witch hunts and plague.

During this time, it is likely that Hohenheim and Dante are two high-ranking members of the old society due to their scientific education. Dante states in their reencounter that Hohenheim chose to seduce her by whispering words of love into her ear when she was ‘an innocent’. Suggesting he made the first move.

Dante refers to witch hunts, and suggests that legally, she and Hohenheim were permitted to use the victims of these hunts to forge a new stone, which suggests there were deep levels of sexism within this society. It is likely then, that Hohenheim seduced Dante because of her knowledge or intellect of alchemy, inflating her ego and using her as a tool. It is possible, as he claims Trisha is his first and only true love, that he never truly loved Dante or even cared about her, just her alchemical prowess and devotion attracted him to her. We can see this sort of behaviour later on when he openly flirts with Lieutenant Ross in the town where his first wife lived and died. Either he is lustful or simply loves attention from women.

Dante did love him however and saved him from the dangerous transmutation that nearly killed him by using the stone to attach his soul to another body. She didn’t know what would happen as the stone was a valuable new invention. Dante was essentially his devotee.This is where their game of immortality starts.

Dante followed Hohenheim as they became gods, ascending humanity and death, feeling elated with him and loving the world of alchemy so much that she later chooses to mentor Izumi despite seeing her as nothing more than a potential body to steal. It is likely, since Dante can’t make the stones herself, that she and Hohenheim destroyed the city of Xerxes together, explaining why Hohenheim has a Xerxesian body.

However, following the death of Hohenheim and Dante’s first son, Hohenheim may have truly felt remorse and chose to bring him back with human transmutation. As per 2003’s alchemy laws, this created the homunculus Envy. But as we see, Hohenheim doesn’t pay a physical price for this transmutation. By this time Hohenheim had already swapped bodies, meaning that any physical punishment from the gate would’ve been rendered pointless. Hence I propose (it seems tenuous but makes sense given his departure from both Dante and Trisha) that Hohenheim lost his ability to love himself at this time. All the pride he had, the empires he and Dante destroyed, it came crashing down on him. (I know it seems tenuous- keep reading) He realized that he is a human, not a god, and abandoned Envy and Dante, leaving them with the stone to pursue a life of pleasure before dying, something that he thought the stone would save him from. However he didn’t think about the consequences for the next 380+ years until it was almost too late. This abandonment is what spurs envy’s hatred of his father to such an extreme compared to the other homunculi.

Dante was likely devastated. Her son was an unrecognisable homunculus and her husband was gone. With no one left to sustain her bloated ego, she found a new husband in her new body using the stone Hohenheim left with her. Likely an affluent man who could replicate the Sense of power Hohenheim left her feeling. But she outlived him, and out of fear of being alone, tried to resurrect him with human transmutation while keeping the skull of her husband.. This ended up becoming the homunculus Greed. In the process of creating him, Dante lost her ability to truly love anyone which is why she lives alone in the estate and doesn’t enjoy her eternal life anymore. As a result, she goes further into the field of human alchemy and perfects the homunculi. She intentionally performs human transmutation with the intent of creating the homunculus known as pride, sacrificing her ability to ever admit that she is less than a god, turning her into a purely narcissistic being, and uses her new Pride homunculus to manipulate the world from within, now a broken husk of a human who is no better than a homunculus herself. After the birth of greed, she had no choice but to continue down a darker path. All she had left was what Hohenheim saw in her: that she was smarter than everyone else. And that only she deserved to live and Lord over all of the barbaric humans.

Now, back to Hohenheim. We know Hohenheim is AWARE that Dante is still out there. The fact that he has a Xerxesian body and the way Dante confirms she or maybe even she and Hohenheim destroyed Xerxes confirms that he knows she’s willingly killing people to make the stone and doesn’t care. It isn’t until he ‘truly loves’ Trisha and has kids that he can settle down and be happy before departing. It isn’t until he learns nearly 400 years later, that his sons are trapped in Dante’s game, that he wants to stop her. Rather than staying and talking to them about Dante, due to the price he paid he is unable to face Ed and Al without hating himself for leaving them, he chooses to find Dante himself, seeing it as his burden. But he doesn’t ask her to stop making the philosophers stone.

He just asks her to stop using Edward and Alphonse. He flat out doesn’t care about the massacres he knows she’s been committing, and he also knows that Dante will eventually die due to her accelerated decay from soul transfer, which leads to my final point: Had it not been for the paternal love he has for Edward and Alphonse and his desire to protect them, Hohenheim would’ve let Dante continue using the stone until she eventually died, swooping in at the last minute to steal her stone and fend off death for as long as he can, knowing that immortal life is impossible, a fact which he himself claims. He’s just trying to live and enjoy as long as possible before finding true love. This is corroborated by his actions on the other side of the gate, such as revealing to Ed that he didn’t want his sons to see him in a decaying and crippled state, as well as his sacrifice in Conqueror Of Shamballa when his inability to love himself and forgive his actions leads to him sacrificing himself to open the gate, eliminating his greatest mistake, Envy, in the process.

Tldr: Hohenheim sus

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