Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!

Keldorâ„¢ Bio

Real Name: Keldorâ„¢ of the House of Miro

Banished from the royal palace, in part due to distrust for the rare blue-skinned Gar race, Prince Keldorâ„¢ became an outcast. He traveled Eternia seeking knowledge and guidance, eventually discovering the ancient spirit of Hordakâ„¢. From him, Keldorâ„¢ learned of the dark arts, and came to realize that to truly unite Eternia, he would need to take command of the planet himself. He gathered an army of fellow outcasts and led them in battle against his brother, Captain Randorâ„¢. Eventually defeated, and near death, Keldorâ„¢ once again turned to Hordakâ„¢ who, in exchange for his own freedom, agreed to save Keldor’s life by merging him with Demo-Manâ„¢, twisting Keldorâ„¢ into Skeletor — Lord of Destructionâ„¢!

Portrait Art Source: MYP Model Sheet

We’re quickly catching up to these things! Only a few left.

Anyway, Keldor–where to start with this one? I recommend you revisit my original discussion of the Skeletor bio, along with this follow-up. Probably wouldn’t hurt to check out King Randor’s bio too.

While we saw quite a bit of Keldor in the 200X cartoon, the bio fleshes his story out even more. We learn he spent at least some time in the royal palace because, like Randor, he was of the House of Miro. So he’s Randor’s brother, or half-brother (we still don’t know which was the elder and thus, presumably, heir to the throne).

Someone banished Keldor from the royal palace, however. As I’ve mentioned before, the question of Keldor and Randor’s mothers raises all sorts of possibilities for Shakespearean machinations and betrayals, but the line about the “distrust for the blue-skinned Gar race” confuses some of those thoughts. I mean, how could the King’s own son be banished for what sounds a lot like racism, unless his own father was actually a racist? Or if not the King himself, then his closest confidants?

The timeline here is very tricky, but here’s my latest guess:

• Count Marzo starts the Great Unrest and causes King Miro to vanish;
• Keldor and Randor team up to defeat Marzo;
• After Marzo is defeated, Keldor–the elder brother(?)–prepares to claim the throne and is somehow betrayed and “banished” from the royal palace (my favorite suspect for this is Randor’s mother, presumably the Queen, but we don’t know who did it);
• Keldor gathers his army and attacks the Elders;
• Randor defeats Keldor’s forces, Keldor is mortally wounded and driven beyond the Mystic Wall and becomes Skeletor;
• The Elders appoint Randor king.

The fact that the Elders have to “appoint” Randor king suggests that Keldor is indeed the elder brother, and thus the rightful heir to the throne.

A lot of fans have felt that this bio “softens” Keldor/Skeletor and makes him more sympathetic. It does this in two ways.

First, by bringing up the whole “Gar racism” angle, it paints Keldor at least partially as a victim, and puts some of the responsibility for his evil acts on those of the royal palace who wronged him. Some people really dislike the idea of Skeletor having even the slightest justification for his hatred of Eternia, preferring him to be a being of true evil. I myself tend to think of Skeletor as a personification of evil, but just by introducing the Keldor angle, that concept is weakened. Having Keldor help banish Count Marzo further confuses the issue (though perhaps at some point we’ll learn that Keldor did it solely for his own ends, i.e., removing a major rival for control of Eternia).

The other thing is this “motivation” for Skeletor’s attempted tyranny: that he wishes to “unite” Eternia, for what is implied to be positive ends–i.e., uniting people of all skin colors, so Gar don’t get banished from royal palaces and denied their birthright. Here’s where my mind really starts to split. On the one hand, I do like Skeletor as a being of pure evil; on the other, I tend to hate it when villains actually think of themselves as villains and have no understandable motivation for their evil actions. So I’m actually OK with Skeletor’s belief, however deluded, that he’s trying to unite Eternia for its own good.

Of course, I’d also like to know more about this “disunity” he’s seeing. We saw a lot of this in the 200X series, actually–the feuds between the Andreenids and the Avians, for instance, or the Caligar and the Speleans.

So, lots of ideas introduced in this bio. Your thoughts?