Rock’s actual full name is Rocks D. Xebec, so why is his pirate crew the Rocks pirates instead of the Xebec pirates or something else relating to him? I don’t actually think there are any pirate crews with the captain’s last name as the crew’s name, the closest I’m aware of is the Big Mom pirates, and that’s Charlotte Linlin’s nickname, not her last name, or even her actual name. So, with that, why is the crew called the Rocks pirates? We’ll get into that later, but first I have something else to discuss.
As we all know, the Rocks Pirates all were gathered on Fullalead Island, an island that is literally known as Pirate Island. Like the Rocks Pirates, Fullalead is also shrouded in mystery, but there are a couple things we understand about it:
– It was home to the Rocks pirates (In Chapter 1049 Kaido went to Fullalead Island, and then in the next scene was shown to be part of the Rocks Pirates, so we can assume that Kaido came to Fullalead knowing that Xebec was there, or at least someone strong).
– It is known as Pirate Island, and is the place where the Davy Back Fight is from.
– Fullalead’s centerpiece is a massive shape of rock that looks like a skull with a bandana and a scar through its right eye.
– According to the One Piece wiki, it is inspired by Tortuga Island and Port Royal in Jamaica, which were both large pirate havens for Caribbean piracy in the 1600s, with Port Royal specifically being called the “Sodom of the New World” and a pirate utopia.
With all of those hard facts about Fullalead Island and the Rocks Pirates established, let’s move on to the bulk of the theory itself.
Now, back to the question of why the Rocks Pirates are named the way they are. It is clearly inspired by Xebec’s last name, Rocks, but why call it Rocks and not something else?
Obviously, we don’t know enough about the whole picture to say anything for certain, but there are a few key questions to ask about Fullalead Island. Why is it so infamous to the point where it is named after piracy itself, the driving force of this era, and why would someone construct a massive skull built to look like those on a pirate flag?
Well, to gain the title of something like Pirate Island, Fullalead must have had a very deep history of piracy, potentially being a Pirate Haven, similarly to Port Royal. This thought of it being a pirate haven is backed up by the reactions of people on Fullalead Island at the defeat of the Rocks Pirates at God Valley in Chapter 1049, referring to the group as a separate entity, proving that there were other pirate groups on Fullalead Island that aren’t members of the Rocks Pirates.
Fullalead is also called “a paradise for pirates” by Blackbeard in chapter 925, and is stated to have become a paradise for pirates “a long time ago”. Additionally, Fullalead was where Davy Back Fights were created, which adds credence to the idea of Fullalead’s importance in pirate history, although we don’t know if they were invented before or after Fullalead was christened Pirate Island.
However, this opens up another question. If Fullalead was so important, why hasn’t the Navy attacked it? Well right now, that’s because it’s home to Blackbeard, who’s a Yonko and is strong enough that it wouldn’t exactly be a very trivial task to attack him at his home base, and we can assume there was a similar situation when Xebec was on the island.
That implies that even before Xebec’s time, Fullalead was home to some powerful individuals, powerful enough to be able to hold the Navy at bay from destroying their “pirate paradise”. These hypothetical individuals would also likely act similarly to Blackbeard, who acted very much like the King of Fullalead Island, worrying about Moria “disturbing the peace … on Pirate Island”, living in the massive monument at the center of the island, and even had a den-den mushi by him in what appears to be a throne room of sorts that can give announcements to the entire island.
How about the second question? Well, I believe that this pirate skull was actually constructed by those powerful individuals from the past either in the period right before or right after Fullalead gained its title as Pirate Island.
My reasoning for this is that the building essentially acts as both a castle for the rulers of Fullalead and as a monument to Piracy itself. There is in fact, even more evidence for this. If you look at all of the images of Fullalead, the skull is shown to absolutely dwarf the rest of the buildings on the island by a landslide.
Additionally, the material that the skull (and the rest of the buildings) are made out of look completely different to the rest of the terrain that we can see on the island (a grey stone), so they would have had to get that massive amount of material from somewhere else, and that’s not even mentioning the insane amount of time and manpower it would take to create it.
The only people who could actually successfully manage a project of that scale would have to have enough influence on the island in order to do it, the ability to actually order a massive amount of people around to do it, enough ships to actually be able to transport that much material efficiently, and the strength in order to protect all of it from raids from other pirates and the Navy.
The sheer scale of the project and the expenses it would take to make it would surely mean those who reside inside of it the best of the best, pirates great enough to rule over a paradise full of countless other pirates.
Now, how does this all connect back to Rocks? So far, our timeline of rulers is as follows:
– Year ???? (“a long time ago”): Initial founder of Pirate Island and the person who built the skull → Countless other leaders → Year ???? (closer to present day) to Year 1487 (38 years ago): Rocks D. Xebec until his death at God Valley → Year 1487 (38 years ago) to Year 1523 (2 years ago): ???? → Year 1523 (2 years ago) – Present: Marshal D. Teach (Blackbeard).
As we can see, there is a massive gap between Fullalead’s founding and Xebec’s reign of an undetermined quantity of years, and given we know that Fullalead became a pirate paradise “a long time ago”, we can assume this is quite a while, although we don’t really know where it would be relative to the Void Century (I won’t be really discussing how the Void Century ties into all of this in this theory though).
Now, given Fullalead Island’s moniker and the two known rulers, it’s pretty safe to assume that both the founder and the rest of the rulers between our two known ones were also pirates.
Now, what is the connection between the two known rulers, Xebec and Blackbeard? There have already been countless other theories on this subject, and it’s been talked to death, so I won’t bother to explain this thread fully. Basically, there are a ton of different connections between Xebec and Blackbeard, and one of the more prevalent thoughts in the community is that Blackbeard is Xebec’s son or related to Xebec in some shape or form.
If we know that two of its rulers are related, would it be a stretch to say that many of the rest are as well? It would explain why the Navy continuously hasn’t invaded Fullalead, if it has always been ruled by a series of powerful pirates, a ruling class of “pirate kings or queens” that have kept the island safe from invading forces for centuries and helped maintain Fullalead’s reputation as Pirate Island, being perpetually ruled over by ones.
So what does this mean? I believe that the Rocks family been ruling over Pirate Island for centuries, with Rocks D. Xebec and Blackbeard simply being the latest members of the Fullalead Royalty.
Let’s bring this back to the question that started this all: Why are the Rocks Pirates called the Rocks Pirates? Well, if the Rocks family have been Fullalead’s Rulers, the Rocks Pirates could be a generational pirate crew, always captained by the current ruler of Fullalead.
This could actually explain a lot of things, such as the peculiar way in which Big Mom describes being in the Rocks Pirates, saying “so this is your first time teaming up with Rocks?” to Kaido in chapter 1041.
Because the Rocks Pirates would persist long after the previous generations of the crew’s members have died, there would need to be a system in which to recruit other pirates who found their way onto Fullalead Island into the Rocks Pirates, to be able to make sure there are always members in the crew, to allow it to persist. And what is this system? Davy Back Fights.
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the rules, but I’ll go over them pretty quickly here. Two pirate crews play some sets of games, and whichever crew wins a match can take either a crewmate of the losing crew, or the loser’s jolly roger.
This system would be very useful for the Rocks Pirates to gain new members, as Fullalead is full of countless different pirate crews due to its status as a pirate paradise. Between expeditions, the Rocks Pirates could stop by at Fullalead and challenge the other strongest crew on the island at the time to be able to gain new members.
There’s actually still even more to it. Why is the system to preserve the Rocks Pirates called Davy Back Fights? Well, in chapter 306, Sanji says “Davy takes whatever he likes from the sea, just like how the winner takes what he likes from the loser. So they named the game ‘Davy Back Fight'”, which means that the system made by the Rocks Pirates to preserve their crew is intrinsically linked to Davy Jones.
From that, we know that whoever created and named the Davy Back Fights had a special relationship with Davy Jones, to the point where they would name one of the most important functions of Fullalead Island and the Rocks Pirates after him.
Why would Davy Jones be so important to the Rocks? Well, that’s because he may have been one himself, maybe even the original founder of Fullalead himself! Davy Jones was likely his nickname or epithet, like how Marshal D. Teach is generally called Blackbeard instead of Teach, so Davy Jones very well could have been a Rocks himself.
We’ve dived deep into the history of Fullalead Island and the Rocks Pirates, and uncovered so much, so I’ll quickly go over all of the main points:
– Fullalead Island is incredibly old, with a rich history and has had a ruling family throughout most of its history.
– Said ruling family are the Rocks.
– The Rocks Pirates are a generational pirate crew, being held intact throughout the past via Davy Back Fights.
– The original ruler of Fullalead, the one who constructed the skull, is Davy Jones.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed my theory!
Theory by HomieSeal (https://www.reddit.com/user/HomieSeal)
