Zulki Crown

"Zulki"

- on the difference between 1st and 2nd class citizens

About
Zulki Crown is Zeth's secretary of Finance and the leader of the northern city of Italia, and as such is a known and powerful politician within the country. Additionally, he is on good terms with the manager of Zeth's cooperative bank in Italia and would occasionally visit him to indulge in his "hobby". He is a good friend of Radon Alphorne, the secretary of Education and the two of them even decided to unite their houses through marriage, with Zulki's son Hassam Crown betrothed to Radon's daughter Emi Alphorne.

Zulki is perhaps one of the best examples of the horror caused by Zeth's magic caste system: he is an extremely corrupt man, managing his city more like a glorified loan shark than a civic leader. His city is littered with distribution machines lending money to uneducated citizens at exorbitant interest rates and killing those who fail to pay the fee. This combined with the lack of any law enforcement has led the lower class district to be particularly rife with mugging and murder.

In addition to this, he is extremely sadistic and considers 2nd class citizens to be worth no more than animals. Working with the manager of the Cooperative Bank, they spread the rumor of a "secret entrance" to the bank through an underground cave which eventually do lead to the vault, but is littered with traps, security systems and even monsters. Many 2nd class citizens ended up captured by this ploy before being used as their own personal playthings, and usually end up mutilated and tortured until their death.

His son more or less followed his father's footsteps of cruelty and under the name of Saberknight, would roam Italia in heavy armor in order to hunt down and kill 2nd class citizens for his own amusement.

Personality and Appearance
Zulki is a fairly tall and thin man with similar red hair to the rest of the Crown family, thick eyebrows, a perpetual smirk on his face and fairly traditional formal attire, with its most distinguishing feature being his purple cape.

He is a cruel and ruthless man with an extremely sadistic personality and is utterly convinced that as a mage, he can do whatever he wants to the lowly 2nd class citizens. He shows absolutely no mercy or empathy to his victims, though he himself is a bit of a coward, and when faced with danger would rather flee or beg for his life than stand and fight.

Abilities
Zulki possesses some magic ability, being able to cast such spells as Silence and Flame Arrow, but as he dislikes fighting himself, he is still fairly weak and was easily overpowered by the magic-less troops of the Pentagon.

Personal History
Zulki as a close associate of Radon was first seen enjoying the latter's slave coliseum, even considering the idea of installing one for himself. When his son Hassam was captured following his crimes as Saberknight, Zulki lamented his mistake in being too obvious and noticed by Punisher Mito. Later on however, when Rance attacks the Cooperative Bank in order to fund Ice Flame, he is forced to flee with the protection of Cutie Band and her men, but soon runs into the Punisher, which he discovers to be none other than the king of Zeth himself. Though officially jailed for his crimes, thanks to his friendship with Radon he is instead sent to the women's prison managed by Emi where he keeps living a comfortable life with his son, and even starts indulging once more into his vicious habit by torturing some of the prisoners. However he makes the mistake of capturing the captured Pentagon knights Elizabeth Lacock, and when Nelson Server and his men come to rescue her, they take the opportunity to summarily execute Zulki and his son.

They are both eventually brought back by some of Papaya's experiments as flesh-eating zombies, but as Sel heard of the disturbance, they are both quickly found and dispatched by Rance and his group.

Trivia

 * Along with his son he is one of the few characters that Rance meets both when he was alive and as a revenant, and one of the few named zombies of the series.