With Chapter 1083 revealing the existence of the God Knights, one question popped up. Is Shanks a Celestial Dragon. Then with One Piece chapter 1086 and the reveal of Saint Figarland Garling the question evolved. Is Shanks actually – Celestial Dragon Saint Figarland Shanks?

Based on all the clues we found around the series , we have put together an article trying to show if Shanks really is a Celestial Dragon or not.

To answer in short – Shanks is a celestial dragon and chapter 1095 all but confirms it. Let’s go over those one by one to get a better idea why.

The God Valley incident: Shanks was the baby?

A good chunk of our answer comes by asking the question – What is the God Valley Incident? From what we have pieced together so far, it was the Rocks Pirates who tried to attack God Valley, to try and overthrow them and gain influence in the world.

And when did exactly did it take place? 38 years ago. Keep this information handy because it might blow your mind soon.

Now, we have strong reasons to believe the man who started it all for our protagonist Luffy, might actually be part of a noble Celestial Dragon lineage. What makes us believe so? Our key reason lies in the fact that during the Oden flashbacks, Rayleigh and Roger mention that they hadn’t had a baby on the crew in a long time.

Since Ace wasn’t born yet and nothing is known about the children of other crew members, our thoughts first went to Buggy and Shanks. Nothing much is known about their past, so it was natural to assume that both were either orphans or babies that had been taken in by the crew.

With the release of One Piece Film Red many new pieces of information came to light about Shanks and his history. Towards the ending of the movie, it was shown that the Red Hair Pirates had just fought and won a battle and while leaving with the spoils, they found a baby Uta lying in one of the chests.

And for 1 brief frame, we also see Roger and Rayleigh both looking down at something, a POV shot if you will.

By reading the One Piece Volume 4000000000, titled “Red” (a free volume distributed to the first 5 million viewers), all of this becomes clear.

What was shown on the screen was actually Shanks’ old memory. He was indeed found by the Roger Pirates the same way the Red Hair Pirates had found Uta, laughing in a chest. And guess what? They found Shanks while they were leaving God Valley escaping the marines.

This series of events can only imply that Shanks was found in a chest looted after the incidents that occurred on God Valley.

If just the flow of the story wasn’t enough for you already, let me tell you something else. Like I mentioned before the God Valley incident took place 38 years ago. Guess how old Shanks is? (Drumrolls….. and no prizes for guessing) 39 years old.

This would make him around an year old when the incident took place. And that also lines up with the child that we got to see in the panel of “Vol. Red”.

Now how do we link this to the Shanks being a Celestial Dragon? Keep reading to find out!

Meeting the Gorosei:

Coming to our main reason, we believe that Shanks is indeed of Noble descent, due to fact that he was able to get an audience with the Five Elder Saints.

As we have seen recently, the Five Elder Saints are very exclusive in who they meet (it’s a given as they are the “leaders” of the World Government). They only interact with Admirals, Vice Admirals and in the newer chapters even “supposed-to-be-Celestial-Dragons” like King Cobra.

Despite all of this they went out of their way to hold a meeting with Shanks! Not just that, they said something very peculiar about how Shanks, given his standing, should have nothing to do with politics. The five elders also went ahead and said that they had arranged time for the meeting on Shanks’ request, something that they probably wouldn’t have done for the likes of Kaido or even Whitebeard.

Now why might this be? Well one could say that it was because he was “the most diplomatic Emperor”. Out of the 4 Emperors that time, 2 were blood thirsty monsters. 1 was an old man with a slight temper, leaving Shanks as the only one to try to make peace first and fight only when that failed.

However, I am inclined to believe in the second possibility. The Five Elders could have agreed to meet with Shanks precisely because he was a Celestial Dragon.

The Celestial Dragon blood certainly holds weight in the One Piece universe and it has been displayed before.

Remember how Dofflamingo had a certain influence in the World Government, due to his status as an ex-Celestial Dragon. That influence went a very far way in getting him out of all the troubles he would have had.

Shanks’ is from Figarland Family??

When the Figarland family was first mentioned in Film Red, we couldn’t really make much sense of it. From the context of the scene we could make out that it was some important family, that had a small chance of being one of the first founding families, but nothing was out there yet.

When they mentioned at Uta could be Figarland blood again we were unsure of the role it played. But now it all makes sense.

The assumption is that Shanks is an estranged Figarland family member and the Elder Saints know it. And they believed that Uta was Shanks’ biological daughter, thereby them telling that she could be part of the Figarland Family.

That whole scene shows that the Figarland Family name has some weight in the decisions taken by the Elders.

From what we have seen, the Don Quixote family is just one of the other families. They aren’t the Nerona Family, the families of the 5 elder saints and not even from the Figarland family (this seems to be the hierarchical order ).

If they were willing to go so far for a normal family, then of course they would be willing to meet with an estranged member (and maybe even the heir) of the Figarland Family.

In chapter 1095, we get to see a younger version of Saint Figarland Garling, and he looked an awful lot like a young Shanks. This gave more credence to the fact that Shanks is a celestial dragon and of a noble lineage.

Shanks and the Holy Knights?

Finally we get to the last reason. The one that had most people start the speculations in the first place.

In Chapter 1083, when Dragon, Ivankov and Sabo were discussing the events of Reverie, we get a single panel showing us silhouettes of the “God’s Knights” or the “Holy Knights”, and taking the context into consideration, they are supposed to be pretty dang powerful.

It was a few chapters after this when the Champion of God Valley, Saint Figarland Garling was revealed and stated to be the Supreme Commander of these Holy Knights. (Another irrelevant as of yet detail is that in the panel, the background behind the Holy Knights is very similar to the one behind Kaku and Kalifa when they were given their devil fruits).

What started pushing this whole “Shanks is a Celestial Dragon” Theory was the silhouette in the middle. One that was wielding a sabre and looked oddly very much like the Red Haired Emperor.

Since then fans have spiraled out of control with theories that Shanks himself is a member of the holy knights. That might contribute as a reason to why Shanks is indeed so powerful. There are some more thoughts floating around the internet that say “Shanks is the person in the panel” and what not but honestly those don’t make much sense.

The whole Holy Knights agenda is an open ended case that can go either way depending on how Oda plays it. From past experience, we know that silhouettes can be completely irrelevant sometimes and also the most important thing other times.

The story of Shanks – the celestial dragon!

In Chapter 1086, we first see Saint Figarland Garling – “Once the ruler of God Valley, he is now the Supreme Commander of the Holy Knights”. As this says, he was once the ruler of the God Valley, which would have stopped once the God Valley incident took place and the island itself went missing.

We’re finally here , using all the points discussed above, we have come up with a plausible sequence of events that might’ve taken place during the God Valley Incident – “After the Rocks Pirates attacked, Saint Garling and other warriors might have been fighting against Whitebeard , Shiki , Big Mom and Kaido while Garp and Roger took on Rocks.

Fearing for their child’s life someone put a baby in a treasure chest and tried to get him to escape. This baby was later found by the Roger Pirates and was raised to be one of then before the crew disbanded with Roger’s death.

That very baby later grew up to become the Red Haired Yonko Shanks.”

To be honest how it goes from here is completely in Oda’s hand. It’s almost conclusive that Shanks is a celestial dragon, and there are many bits and pieces out there that fit too well to be a mere coincidence.