Monarch (The Venture Bros.)
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| The Venture Bros. character | ||||||||||||||
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| The Monarch | ||||||||||||||
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The Monarch is one of the main characters and primary antagonist on the Adult Swim show The Venture Bros.. He is a parody of a supervillain, who has modeled himself after the Monarch butterfly. He is voiced by Christopher McCulloch.
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[edit] Personality and relationships
The Monarch is Team Venture's archenemy — at least in his own mind. He overestimates his own lethality, and often takes time out to "remind" people how dangerous he is ("Home Insecurity"). In the series' pilot episode, Monarch was initially portrayed as being evil yet incompetent; as the series progressed, the writers shifted his character so that, while still incompetent, his evil nature has now been replaced with vanity and bravado. He has had the opportunity on numerous occasions to significantly harm Dr. Venture, but when faced with the prospect of actually succeeding at one of his goals, he loses interest, preferring to live out an unending hero/villain fantasy than actually be victorious, which could be taken as parody of the neverending struggle in the mold of Batman vs. The Joker.
As of the second season of the show, his hatred for Dr. Venture has never been explained; at various times, there have been hints as to what the Monarch's motivation might be (The Monarch wanted Venture's father, Jonas, to be his arch rival, but because of Jonas' death, he is living out the fantasy by proxy; Dr. Venture made fun of The Monarch's poetry in college) but the concrete reason has never been addressed. Dr. Venture, due to the Monarch's ineptitude and lack of motivation, considers him little more than a nuisance. While the Monarch still claims that he has a reason to hate Dr. Venture, by the second season Dr. Venture himself has ridiculed this and said it's getting a little old.
Keeping with his theme, the Monarch's entire campaign against Dr. Venture is modeled around butterflies in one way or another: His base of operations is a giant, floating cocoon (the inside of which is decorated pink and purple), and all of his weaponry is modeled (often erroneously) on physical traits of butterflies. In spite of his fascination with them, The Monarch remains oblivious to the actual biology and physical capabilities of butterflies, believing them to be deadly, poisonous insects. In the first season of the show, The Monarch had a sidekick/lover named Doctor Girlfriend, a gravelly voiced woman with a striking resemblance to a young Jackie Kennedy; unlike most of the other characters on the show, the possibility that her voice is a result of a sex change operation never occurred to The Monarch. The two were assisted in their schemes by a seemingly endless supply of henchmen, most of them known by ID numbers ranging from 1-83, the rest being given designated nicknames. Their presence served as a convenient means of stress relief for the Monarch, as he was prone to kill and/or maim them when angered. In spite of The Monarch's homicidal tendencies, he and Dr. Girlfriend shared a bizarre parental relationship with the henchmen; many of the henchmen are passionately loyal to the Monarch, and it is suggested many of them were down on their luck or troubled when he recruited them and gave them a purpose.
When the Monarch doesn't abandon his plans they end up failing anyway for a number of reasons—amongst them henchmen incompetence, bad planning, and bizarre circumstances.
The Monarch opposes Hank, Dean and Brock due mainly to their affiliation with Dr. Venture, but has realized how much neglect the boys suffer and ironically began to act as a second father to them. Early in the series, he kidnapped them and threatened to kill or torture them to harm Dr. Venture, but instead had flashbacks to his own traumatic childhood and baked the boys cookies. In another episode, having secured Hank as collateral in a hostage situation, he lets him dress up in one of his henchman costumes and play in his throne room. In the first season finale, after the boys ran away from home and were arrested, they encountered an incarcerated Monarch, who counselled them to lead clean lives and go back home. The same episode found The Monarch apparently ordering his henchmen to murder the boys, an act which he claimed was only supposed to be symbolic, but can be blamed on Dr. Girlfriend telling him that the Venture brothers had set him up for murder, while he was in a state susceptible to hypnotic suggestion.
Although the Monarch's henchmen fear Brock greatly, they also seem to have a measure of profound respect for him, seeing him as something of an idol. After the henchmen are forced to work with Brock, the henchmen exclaim things such as "I forgive you, Brock Samson!", "I was asking for it!" and even going as far as to say "I love you, Brock Samson!" despite Brock's slaughter and injuring of many of the henchmen in the past. The Monarch also refers to Brock as a "Walking Swedish Murder Machine."
Brock and the Monarch have a bizarrely amicable relationship, due to neither believing the other to be a legitimate threat; indeed, on the Monarch's birthday, Brock gave him an elaborate present - by storming the cocoon, he enabled the Monarch to be "a real supervillain."
[edit] History and activities on the show
The Monarch was the apparently only child of a wealthy couple who died when their private plane crashed in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. For months (though no quantitative time frame was given, he mentions that the plane crash happened in the summer of his ninth year), the Monarch lived in the forest amongst a colony of Monarch butterflies, which he claims adopted him. One day (in mid-September - right around his birthday, he narrates - as the leaves were starting to turn orange, which would allow him to build more convincing wings), however, they departed, migrating to Mexico; devastated, the Monarch hitch-hiked to the city and collected his sizable inheritance. The rest of the childhood was likely spent in New York City as The Trial of the Monarch revealed Monarch's connection with the 1980s New York punk scene. With the money, the Monarch was able to go to college, where he shared a creative writing class with Dr. Venture; apparently, the Monarch devoted all of his assignments to butterflies (which led Venture to initially assume he was a "closet case"). This is where his hatred of Venture began and in Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny, it is revealed that he caused the accident that cost Baron Ünderbheit his jaw in an attempt to kill Venture. The episode also revealed that the Monarch's real name is Malcolm. According to his resume (displayed in Home Insecurity), The Monarch then graduated with a BA in Creative Writing.
According to Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny, The Monarch became a henchman known as 'Shadowman 9' for none other than Phantom Limb. During this time, he moonlighted as the alter-ego that would become The Monarch, unsuccessfully arching on a young Dr. Venture. He also worked as a henchman for three other villains during his erratic non-guild approved career as the Monarch: The Sea Anemone, Helicoptro, and Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Nightmare Coat.
However he "donned the colors" of the Monarch for love later, seducing Queen Etheria, the scantily clad sidekick of Phantom Limb; she changed her alias to Dr. Girlfriend and became The Monarch's lover/sidekick. Both of them immediately left Phantom Limb, as the Monarch had apparently been waiting for his trust fund to come out of escrow. Somewhere along the way, the Monarch joined the Guild of Calamitous Intent (for the "full dental and partial health package") as a supervillain and used his vast fortune to build a giant, floating military base from which to launch his attacks on Dr. Venture. He and Dr. Girlfriend's happy relationship fell apart, however, after a tell-all book published by The Monarch's henchmen (according to the Monarch, "filled with lies and pictures of also-lies") brought to light her salacious past with a variety of other supervillains. She left him and went back to Phantom Limb, who in turn framed The Monarch for murder so that he could have Dr. Girlfriend to himself. At the beginning of the second season, The Monarch escaped prison and is now married to Dr. Girlfriend, in an official Guild ceremony.
He also for unknown reasons (though it was insinuated from at least since college) chose Dr. Venture for his archenemy, and attempted several odd plots against him, such as kidnapping the boys in Tijuana, lowering them into the Amazon river so candirú would swim up their urethrae, sending a henchman to use a tarantula to kill Venture in his sleep (only for an Ünderland soldier to interfere), and perhaps most bizarrely, turn Dr. Venture into a giant caterpillar. in addition to said plots being bizarre, they also show a misunderstanding of other animals besides Monarch Butterflies, as Tarantulas are neither deadly nor do they attack unless provoked. However, he is, to a certain extent, correct about the candirú - they do exist (which Dr. Venture erroneously denies), and there are documented instances in which the fish had become lodged in the urethrae of the victims. At one point, he and Dr. Girlfriend managed to sneak into the Venture compound, but were appalled by how pathetic Dr. Venture's life really was. It took an unexpected fight with security agents to get him back into his old habits, at which point The Monarch gave a grandiose monologue and used a grappling hook to get him and Dr. Girlfriend out of the lab... only to get stuck and be forced to wait out the night to avoid detection.
[edit] Equipment and abilities
The Monarch has a giant flying cocoon as his base. He brags to Hank that it is continuously moving and its location at any point is unknown even to him (though, for the bulk of the series, it is hovering in the Grand Canyon). It has a hilariously hideous pink-and-purple color scheme inside and he refers to the central workstation as his 'throne room'. The master bedroom's bed doubles as an escape pod, shaped like a smaller cocoon. Its internal defenses were personally designed by him, which may explain why Brock could easily nearly take it out single-handedly. He also has a car, the Monarch-mobile, also decked out in purple, as well as a butterfly-shaped aircraft (with cargo/henchman room in the abdomen) that was only shown once.
Monarch once commanded a set of eighty-three henchmen all known solely by number (except for junior henchmen), and frequently killed them when he was in a bad mood, resulting in what looked like an inexhaustible supply. These men were not particularly bright or capable, and most, with two notable exceptions, defected to a villain named Monstroso while the Monarch was incarcerated. After a brief recruiting snafu which resulted in the cocoon being taken over by a gang of street thugs, the Monarch appears to have replenished his supply of dozens of identical butterfly henchmen, and during his association with Dr. Henry Killinger some of them were outfitted with much more impressive armor and weaponry as Black Guards.
His costume conceals large butterfly wings crafted by Dr. Girlfriend that allow him to fly, and he also has two wristbands that shoot out a number of tranquilizer darts (though at times the darts are depicted as lethal), which he depends on extensively.
In the episode Dia De Los Dangerous, The Monarch explains that he was raised by butterflies, which involved living off milkweed, "ensuring his toxicity to this day."
[edit] Notes
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- The Monarch is very loosely based on the Black Manta. The Monarch's voice comes from the fact that both Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer were under the (mistaken) impression that Black Manta had a shrill voice and yelled frequently[citation needed].
- In more general terms, The Monarch is a parody of comic book villains such as Black Manta, The Penguin, and The Cheetah, who choose to model their personas after creatures.
- Apparently, The Monarch never removes his cowl, even while showering and having sex.
- Oddly, Dr. Venture and the Monarch share some similar physical traits - red hair, beards, pointed noses, pale skin, and thin builds. The Monarch's beard is even styled similarly to Dr. Venture's. Dr. Girlfriend mentions in "Mid-Life Chrysalis" that the two have a lot in common. Whether these similarities are clues or coincidences has not been explored. It is also interesting to note that in various flashbacks, they appear even more alike than as adults. (See Careers in Science for young Dr. Venture, and Dia de Los Dangerous!). There is also the odd parallel that The Monarch is not a particuarly successful villain, while Dr. Venture's major scientific successes (reanimating the dead, making a psychic device from an Orphan's heart) are disturbingly 'villainous.'
- The Monarch's hair color gradually changes from brown to red. When he is shown as a child in a flashback, he has brown hair, and by the end of the second season his hair is a bright shade of red. It should be noted, after taking a shower in Hate Floats, the hair under his cowl is briefly shown to be black.
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