Slade Ruari

Slade Ruari (ロリー スレイド, Ruari Slade), which means Valley of the Red King, or "Rory" as he is called by his closest of family and friends, is the name of the main protagonist of Death Note: Endgame. Finding and mastering the | Death Note, Slade evolves from a promising college honors student into a criminal mastermind and simultaneously the embodiment of the hand of Justice, using his supernatural power to mold the world as he chooses. He becomes known to the world as the Red King (赤い国王), the leader of an underground international society that seeks to change the world with their power and influence, primarily using the Death Note to meet those ends.

Appearance
Slade Ruari is a Caucasian American specifically of German decent, though he is rumored to come from a long line of criminals in a dark family tree, dating back far beyond the formation of Europe. He has neck length dirty blonde hair with nose length bangs and unreadable gray eyes that are prevalent throughout the series. His mouth is of medium width, and his expressions range from a blank face or slight frown to a confident grin. He has fair skin with broad shoulders and a muscular build and is shown to be very athletic. Each of these physical traits are typically associated with attractiveness, making Slade fairly popular among the ladies.

Along with being well kempt, Slade is shown to mostly wear formal clothing, varying from slacks, button up and long sleeve shirts, polos, and a suit and tie. His footwear alternates between Sperry's during non-casual occasions and wing tipped dress shoes when the situation is formal.

Relevant to the Symbolism shown in the series, Slade initially is shown wearing only dull colors such as black, gray, white, and khaki, but as his involvement in the plot and his usage of the Death Note increases, the gradual addition of red to his wardrobe is evident. At first, this seems to be something he is unaware of, that is until he assumes the moniker of the Red King and makes the color his trademark. As previously described, Slade's eyes are gray, however, during intense moments in which the persona of the Red King emerges, they are are depicted as being a sinister crimson or to have an unnaturally red glare to them.

Character
Slade is characterized as one of the most intelligent characters-if not the most intelligent character-in the entire series. He is described as a young man with his head in the clouds, uninterested in the usual conformations of his peers, mainly school work. It is stated that he spent the majority of his high school career in a daze, never studying, lazily completing his assignments, and conserving his thoughts for matters such as the purpose of existence and the pointlessness of the current society. A tribute to his intellect is that he still managed to graduate with exceptional grades and get an honors scholarship to attend a top ranked university.

Slade chose the field of Criminal Justice and Criminology, finding the psychology of the criminal mind and how to profile it to be one of the only things he takes an interest in. This is due, in part, to his background as a miscreant in his early youth and discovery that his ancestors were in fact murderers. He has a sincere belief that those who have been through the darkness are the only ones fit to understand and judge others, and his Death Note gives him the right and means to shape the dismal cycle of society into his own utopia.

Being a human being, Slade was not born devoid of guilt or emotion, however, he realizes that believing in the good nature of man and relying on means provided by a system of justice fabricated by imperfect beings is useless. For this reason, he feels no remorse when killing others in order to reach a goal he sees as beneficial to the world. In addition to this, he is a master of manipulation, quickly assessing and profiling anyone he wishes to use as a pawn and molding their psyche to inadvertently do his bidding. His high intelligence quotient provides him with overwhelming conceptualization and tactical powers, of which he uses to conduct his complex and often successful plans.

Slade's favorite game is chess, one he has proven to be a master at playing.

Trivia

 * Similarly to myself, Slade is left-handed.
 * My preferred voice actor for Slade would be David Gallagher, the voice of Riku from the Kingdom Hearts video game series by Disney and Square Enix.

Themes
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Character, Human, Death Note Owner