Ruggie and Leona

As the only “education” that Ruggie received prior to NRC was in “practical life skills” he struggled in his classes until Leona started providing him with reference books, old exams and advice.

Ruggie says that his grades are now a solid “middling” and it is “a pretty huge deal” for someone to work their way up from the bottom to “somewhere just below the middle”, and “the moral of this story is to stick close to the biggest fish in the pond, and figure out how to make it benefit ya personally”.

Leona seems aware of the fact that he is being used in this way and says that Ruggie’s shamelessness is his strength. He calls Ruggie’s magic “underwhelming” and “barely worth mentioning,” but explains, “Thing is, he knows it. So he sucks up to me and uses me. That’s not bad or something to be ashamed of.”

Leona says that while Ruggie is nimble, a smooth talker, cautious and can handle anything by himself, his problem is he is “practically programmed to think like an underdog lackey”, and needs to approach his problems from a pack leader’s perspective. We see Ruggie take this advice in his dorm vignette where he employs Lucius to handle a problem he had been having on his behalf. 

This comes up again in Vargas Camp, where Ruggie’s initial reaction to the Vargas Monster is for everyone to split up and run in different directions, as his top priority is survival. When Sebek and Jack refuse, Ruggie comes up with a plan that incorporates everyone’s skills and ultimately saves their clubs from being disbanded.

We see Ruggie reminding Leona to attend classes and meetings. Leona says that there are classes he cannot skip because Ruggie will not let him, and if the prefect needs help from him they need to go to Ruggie first, who will pass on the message to him if Ruggie decides it is actually necessary to do so.

Ruggie seems free to refuse tasks from Leona that he does not wish to perform, such as passing on messages from Crowley to Malleus. A reluctant Leona concedes to Ruggie’s wish to stay at Diasomna for Lilia’s farewell party for the free food.

(Lilia: “A soldier who can still eat his fill when standing in an enemy camp is a formidable one indeed. – Ruggie: “Hey, pride doesn’t fill an empty belly. Lilia, I’m happy to take you up on that!”)

Ruggie also refuses to help save Leona or Jack from Eliza during the Phantom Bride event, saying that Leona will find his way back on his own.

Part of Ruggie’s daily routine involves waking Leona up in the morning, though he says, “with how heavy of a sleeper (Leona) is, my success rate is only around 60 or 70 percent.”

Ruggie says that their relationship is “give-and-take” as Leona runs him ragged, but does reward him for his efforts.

Different errands we see Ruggie perform for Leona include dry cleaning (where Leona pays for Ruggie’s cleaning as well), waiting in line at the school store (where Leona gives Ruggie permission to buy whatever he wants with Leona’s money: “you can buy whatever else you want while you’re here”) and cooking.

Ruggie says that all he can do is “throw together whatever’s on hand” when it comes to cooking, but “Leona doesn’t care as long as it’s edible”.

However, we are given hints that—as a prince—Leona does maybe have high expectations for his food: he is one of the strictest judges on the Master Chef course (on par with Vil) and has complained both about the school’s food and the food they are given at STYX.

If Leona typically has high standards for his cooking but Ruggie is not aware of it, it is possible that Leona refuses to complain about what Ruggie cooks for him, or maybe he is partial to Ruggie’s cooking in particular?

Leona has Ruggie gather potential Spelldrive club members in exchange for doughnuts and compensate him in advance for his efforts during Vargas Camp by buying him a new outfit. 

Ruggie also makes repairs to Leona’s clothing, while Ruggie’s school uniform is oversized because “it’s actually an old one of Leona’s”.

(He claims it is an old jacket, but as Leona never wears his own it is possible that Leona gave Ruggie the only one he had.)

Ruggie says that Leona also gives him hand-me-downs to sell or use as he sees fit in exchange for his work. Rook says that Ruggie attended his birthday party to tell him that Leona would not be coming and then helps himself to the food, so it is maybe possible that the free meal was Ruggie’s compensation for the task.

Ruggie spends his labwear vignette trying to do laundry for both himself and Leona, with Trey tricking him into painting roses at Heartslabyul in exchange for laundry detergent.

While Ruggie is talking to himself about how he would like to be taller but “that would come with extra eating expenses”, Leona appears behind him.

It is unclear how much Leona overheard, but when Ruggie asks for money to buy more detergent Leona gives him a wallet full of large bills and tells Ruggie, “take what you need and keep the change” and to not get hung up on the details.

Ruggie reflects, “He wouldn’t even notice if I kept more in change than what the detergent cost, I bet. Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth, though,” seemingly unaware that he this opportunity to help himself to Leona’s wallet may have been an intentional move on Leona’s part.

In other vignettes Ruggie seems against accepting services or money for free. This is possibly why Leona cannot hand money or goods over to Ruggie outright and might instead be helping him with his financial problems by having him perform simple tasks, or by giving Ruggie free rein with his wallet and letting Ruggie believe that he is getting away with something underhanded, as otherwise he will not accept the charity.

Ruggie uses his unique magic on Grim in Book 2 in order to acquire a sandwich for Leona, which ultimately leads to Leona’s downfall: Grim is then able to connect someone having the ability to control others’ movements to Ruggie, which connects directly to Heartslabyul, Diasomnia and Jack putting together the plan that compromises Savanaclaw’s attempts to sabotage the interdorm spelldrive tournament.

Ruggie cripples a number of people in Book 2 on Leona’s orders, including Trey and Jamil.

When Leona comments on how Ruggie is really doing everything for himself Ruggie insists that it is for their cause, together, saying, “All of us want to turn the world upside down.” This is possibly a reference to the JP-language adaptation of Scar’s song, “Be Prepared,” which includes the line “turn the world upside down.”

Leona is not pleased by the revelation that Ruggie was chased around by members of Heartslabyul suspicious of his involvement in the incidents on campus but Ruggie assures him that he has nothing to worry about, saying, “how the world will praise us when they see you standing over a battered Malleus Draconia!”

Ruggie follows with, “Maybe some top corporate recruiters will even take an interest in a little ol’ hyena like me.”

Ruggie goes straight to Leona after his attempt at trampling Malleus in a stampede and Leona praises him for his efforts, but after their failure is revealed Leona decides to bow out of the tournament entirely.

Ruggie tries and fails to convince Leona to try and beat the other dorms in the game instead of abandoning their dreams but Leona claims he was only going along because the others amused him: “You wanna hear the truth? You’re a hyena who grew up in a dump, and I’m a hated secondborn prince who won’t ever be king. And there is no turning that around.”

Ruggie insists that Leona cannot quit and Leona turns on him with his unique magic, mocking him for licking his boots. An injured Ruggie later insists on joining the fight against an overblotted Leona, saying that he will not take Leona’s insults lying down. (Leona: “So even the lowly hyena turns against me?”)

Afterwards Ruggie tells Leona that he hasn’t earned his forgiveness, but “it still paints (him) to see that pathetic look on (Leona’s) face” and using his unique magic to make Leona smile.

In Book 3 Ruggie invokes the incident with “King’s Roar” to convince Leona to let the prefect and Grim sleep in his room, saying, “I still ain’t fully healed up from the interdorm Spelldrive tournament, y’know? I dunno if it was that major magic I chugged a whole potion to use or what, but hard work’s been wearin’ me down more than ever lately. So I’m thinkin’ I’d heal a whole lot faster if I had these guys waiting on you for a while!” 

Leona concedes, and Ruggie seems delighted by the opportunity to “coast down easy street for three whole days,” so it is a little unclear how much he was still suffering from the effects of everything he survived in Book 2 at the time.

Despite the power imbalance between the two characters Ruggie does not hesitate to speak rudely of Leona, both to his face and behind his back. He says Leona’s actions during Fairy Gala make him “embarrassed to be part of Savanaclaw”, praises Kalim for his diligence and motivation setting him apart from Leona and laughs outright at how “cute” Leona looks in Malleus’ ceremonial robes. 

When Leona describes himself as “practically a commoner” for being second in line for succession Ruggie counters by reminding Leona of the time he mistook Ruggie’s home for a doghouse, saying, “I wish my perspective was so warped from a life of luxury.”

Ruggie also teases Leona about Cheka, tells Leona that he is a “pampered prince” who cannot tie his own shoes, dismisses Kalim’s praise of Leona’s Fairy Gala performance, teases Leona about ditching classes and tell Leona to keep his mouth shut at a school assembly.

During Halloween Ruggie tries to escape a group of visitors by sending them after Leona instead, but Leona catches on to his ploy and leaves Ruggie to handle the visitors—and Kalim—by himself in preemptive self-defense.

Ruggie protects Leona from Vil and Deuce when they decide to confront Leona over his failure to tend to the botanical gardens (his punishment for skipping class), refusing to tell them where Leona is.

Leona looks out for Ruggie as well, saying during Fairy Gala that he won’t let anything happen to him. Leona follows through with this promise, distracting fairies that nearly discover Ruggie, Grim and the prefect and giving them enough time to escape. 

Leona also protects Ruggie from falling glass in Book 6, and then puts him in charge of Savanaclaw.

Ruggie asks, “Why’d Leona have to put ME in charge?,” and Rook says that it is because Leona has faith in him: “The dorm is his pride—he knows he can trust you with it.” Ruggie responds, “Yeah, well, trust doesn’t fill an empty stomach. There better be some T-bone steaks in it for me later, or it won’t be worth it!”

Ruggie’s protection of Leona can vary according to the situation: during Fairy Gala preparations Ruggie reveals to Vil and the others how they can infiltrate Leona’s locked bedroom.

Leona and Ruggie seem to look out for one another when it comes to Rook in particular, with both characters telling him that they aren’t together 24/7 when Rook approaches them separately in two different conversations.

When Rook asks Ruggie for Leona’s weakness and Ruggie refuses, he grabs Ruggie by the tail and tickles him into submission.

Ruggie only admits Leona’s weakness of vegetables for the sake of self-preservation after Rook threatens to change his focus from Leona to Ruggie himself.

Even after getting the information he was looking for Rook comments that Ruggie’s fur “would suit a scarf better than a carpet or coat”. 

Later in the vignette we see Ruggie insisting that Leona eat vegetables with his lunch and Rook appears, with Leona telling Ruggie not waste his breath on arguing with Rook. It is revealed that Ruggie had been hiding his earlier interaction with Rook from Leona, but Leona still takes Ruggie along with him when he leaves the table (in response to Rook asking him out to dinner).

Ruggie says that “Savanaclaw couldn’t ask for a better pack leader” than Leona, as he is strong, smart and covers all his bases.

When asked how it is that he earned a spot on NRC’s spelldrive team roster Ruggie credits Leona, saying, “I didn’t grow up playing Spelldrive, and I’m definitely not a born athlete. I was pretty inexperienced at first, but the way ! got on the roster…well, that’s all thanks to Leona, our captain. Doing all those absurd -*cough*—I mean, RIGOROUS assignments gave me the strength to persevere. Now I can handle our toughest practices, no sweat! Leona makes every session worthwhile.”

Ruggie becomes distraught (along with the rest of Savanaclaw) during Tsumsted with the misunderstanding that Leona transformed into a tsum: “To think that lazy expression was the last look of his I’d ever see… Oh, it’s too much!” (Leona: “How stupid can you guys get?”)

During Halloween we see Leona go out of his way to keep up the morale of the Savanaclaw students and, later, he welcomes Jack back to their group.

Leona downplays the situation both times, and both times Ruggie follows with how Leona should really admit the truth: he just wanted to do something nice, and he had been worried about Jack.

We see Ruggie and Leona working well together multiple times, such as teaming up to destroy Azul’s contracts during Book 3, when they attempt to work around the rules for buying mystery bags during New Year’s, and a rare happening during Halloween where Leona allows Ruggie to use his unique magic on him (we have seen Leona throw off Riddle’s unique magic before, making it very likely that Leona could throw off Ruggie’s magic as well, though he chooses not to). 

During Vargas Camp Ruggie sends a message to Leona via Epel about taking a nap in the mines. While suspicious of Ruggie’s ulterior motive Leona does as he is told, leading to both Jack’s team and the Spelldrive Team being able to fulfill their magestone quotas for the day with Leona’s help (and he does get his nap).

Ruggie is the only person we’ve seen who has asked Leona directly about the scar over his eye. Leona claims he cannot remember where he got it.

In Ruggie’s dream of Book 7 Leona is a beloved second prince (“The younger generation here likes Second Prince Leona way more than First Prince Falena”) who has established multiple schools, including at least one with a hyaena-majority student body, and spelldrive teams all over the country.

As Ruggie has never met Leona in his dream the team struggles with how to awaken him. When Ortho recommends “sharing an unforgettable anecdote” Idia asks Jack for ideas, but Jack responds, “Ruggie doesn’t like talking about himself…it’s hard to think of any.”

After Ruggie has been awakened the students of darkness assure him that by staying in the dream he will never go hungry again and point out that they have a good connection with the king. Ruggie responds, “That sounds nice. But I’d rather decide for myself who my king is.”

After hearing the details of their situation Ruggie declares, “Malleus is definitely gonna fold…to Leona!,” and, “Guess it’s time to refocus and wake up our king.”

A dream version of Ruggie appears in Leona’s dream as a ringleader at a protest of citizens standing up against Leona’s rule. Ortho explains that is version of Ruggie crafted from Leona’s imagination. Jack wonders if a similar character from Leona’s imagination—Kifaji—is acting in Leona’s perception of him and Ortho observes, “maybe in these dreams, accurately representing the dreamer’s perceptions—or wishes—takes priority,” It is fascinating that Leona’s perception of and/or wishes for Ruggie and Kifaji are possibly that they will stand up against him.

After an explanation from Idia on what it is that may be happening in Leona’s dream to make it so different from the rest it is Ruggie who guesses why it is that Leona chose failure, saying, “I bet he did it BECAUSE he knew better,” and comparing Leona’s dream to the guilty pleasure of a midnight snack.

After deciding to drag Leona off of his dream throne in order to awaken him in Book 7 it is Ruggie who comes up with the idea of resurrecting Cheka, using his unique magic to control a 3D model crafted by STYX for the task.

(Azul: “Though I’m not sure how to feel about Ruggie performing the same motions at a distance.”)

Having met Cheka in person Ruggie is also nominated to the role of imitating Cheka’s voice for their mission, but he fails to deceive Leona.

Leona seizes Ruggie and reminds him that “treason against the crown is punishable by death,” invoking his unique magic in a recreation of the events of Book 2.

Ruggie is saved by a creation of Leona’s own mind, Kifaji.

The deeper level of Leona’s dream is a recreation of the interdorm spelldrive tournament, but an alternate timeline where Ruggie succeeded in trampling Malleus in his stampede.

Leona and the dream athletes begin plotting to use similar tactics to improve their midterm scores, and when Silver tries to assure Jack that Leona has merely been tainted by the darkness and would surely never attempt such a thing in reality Ruggie responds, “I dunno about that. Deep down, he’s definitely the type that would consider it. I’d know; I am, too.”

Ruggie wonders if they would be able to see Savanaclaw win the entire tournament if they were to let Leona sleep, and when Jack argues that it would be an empty illusion Ruggie agrees, but then explains, “back then…we wanted it so bad, it was all we could think about.”

Jack declares that Leona isn’t the type to ever be satisfied and Ruggie concedes, agreeing to help awaken him.

After Leona awakens the dream begins to collapse into an abyss and Ruggie is caught in the darkness. He begs Leona not to let go of him (“The last thing I want is to go out like this!”) but Leona responds “Guess you can’t win them all,” as if he is going to give up. Ruggie asks, “You wouldn’t! Are you gonna cut me loose again?!,” but instead Leona physically tosses Ruggie at Jack, sacrificing himself to the dark to save Ruggie.

Later Azul observes that he never thought he would see “Leona of all people dive into darkness on someone else’s behalf” and Leona responds, “Well, obviously l’d never abandon my friend. Isn’t that right, Ruggie?”

Ruggie says that he was actually terrified that Leona was going to drop him again like he did in Book 2, and when Leona asks if now they are even Ruggie disagrees: “I’m gonna be milking that for a long while yet, so PLEASE don’t pull any stunts that could endanger your life!”

(Leona: “Would it kill you to just say thank you?” – Ruggie: “Thank you for saving me! Shishishi.”)

On EN Ruggie refers to Leona by his first name (with no honorific), “Your Highness”, “Housewarden” and “Boss”, but canonically he only rarely deviates from “Leona-san,“ and something fascinating happens during Book 2.

In Japanese there are several forms of “you”, but none of them are as polite as referring to someone in the third person.

If you have ever been reading a manga where a character suddenly says “Stop calling me ‘you,’ my name is XX,” this is why: it can be rude to refer to someone by most forms of “you” in Japanese. It is more polite to call someone by their name to their face.

On EN Ruggie only refers to Leona as “boss” when they are alone. When their plot is revealed they start acting like they have nothing left to hide, with even unnamed Savanaclaw students referring to Leona as “Boss”, as though Leona is secretly running his dorm like a gang behind the scenes but now the truth has come to light. 

Canonically, no one ever refers to Leona as “boss” in Book 2. Ruggie not only never stops referring to Leona as “Leona-san”, trying to use an honorific even as Leona is actively choking him to death, but when the extent of Leona’s emotional damage is revealed Ruggie actually refers to him as a form of “you” for the first time, which is a huge development.

Looking at earlier scenes again “Housewarden” and “Your Highness” were added to Ruggie’s dialogue, but what he is originally doing is saying “Leona-san” to Leona’s face as though they are discussing a different Leona who is not in the room.

Since saying things like “If it’s for Leona-san” to Leona himself is odd in English it needed to be localized into “you”, but in Japanese this is not only normal, it is polite. You never, ever refer to a figure of authority as any form of “you” in Japanese; it is just too familiar.

But during and after Leona’s overblot that is just what Ruggie does, referring to Leona as “anta,” a very familiar form of “you.“

It is like the seriousness of the situation causes Ruggie to step outside their power dynamic and approach him as an equal, and it happens again only one other time: in Book 6 with Leona’s surrender.

※ Note: the inclusion of “anta” alone is not what is so revealing.

Vil, for example, refers to everyone from Rook to Kalim using the same word, and it is not saying anything particular about those relationships because Vil uses it all the time, and Ruggie himself uses it when referring to Cater and Riddle.

It is the fact that Ruggie never went as far as to say it to Leona until his overblot. This might be insinuating that Leona’s overblot resulted in a subtle shift in their relationship, and that Ruggie will now be calling Leona out on his behavior when he thinks it is necessary, as we see in Book 6.

More on the characters and the various forms of “you,” here ▶︎