Note: Before I start on this post, I would just like to say this point. This is not a post that excuses or tries to downplay Adam’s behaviour and abuse of Blake, as well as his actions against the people around him. I simply wanted to write what was going on in his mind and delve deeper into this psychology with help of someone who actually has a degree in it!

Adam Taurus is most certainly a hated character in the FNDM and the show, and for good reason. He’s manipulative, violent, and abusive terrorist and wishes genocide and subjugation on innocent people. His actions have severe effects not only on his main victim, Blake, but Yang Xiao Long, the cutting off her arm by him leaving her with PTSD and exhaustion from her trauma.

But how exactly did he end up to be this person?

It’s very much the argument of not only nature vs nurture but also how underlying mental issues can impact on someone through the years. We’ll see through Adam’s history and see how the events of the past have had an affect not only on Adam, but the cycle of abuse in relation to his character.

Adam’s Childhood in the SDC

Adam’s childhood has never been shown or explored in canon material, so much so that we don’t know at what age he was branded, escaped or even joined the White Fang, but we at least have some idea from what we’ve seen in RWBY and in other materials.

From his theme song; Lionized, and what Blake had given about the treatment of the Faunus under the SDC, we can safely assume that Adam’s childhood in the dust mines was not that of a normal childhood. His own parents were never mentioned, whether they were there at all or dead is unknown, but that would leave Adam in a very poor situation; no positive role models and people to teach him important lessons.

A child needs positive role models in their life because it’s through the people around them that the child learns not only how to act when around other people, but also how to behave in society as a whole. If that role model is not a positive influence, or even there at all, then the child is left either learning that toxic behaviours are okay or having to learn lessons themselves. This just increases the risk of the child learning the wrong lessons, but also has them landing hard when they failure without the adult there to cushion the consequences of the child messing up.

In the working environment of the SDC, Adam was probably raised in an environment that is extremely damaging to a child. His primary source of socialization, a role that is given to parents and siblings in a family dynamic, is not there in Adam’s case because all the workers are on the same level with the superiors of the company above them in a position of power that is canonically abused. This would leave Adam alone with no one around him to teach him like a parent would, and so he has had to stumble around while growing up in a home where someone would be abused severely if they did something wrong.

This culminates in his branding. The reasons behind his branding are unknown, but he has said that people have hurt him before, in all different ways, so it’s likely that this branding was done specifically to hurt Adam. This is an incredibly painful lesson for a minor to learn, and because of this isolation that Adam suffered from previously is never resolved, he would have had to deal with this traumatic experience alone. Eventually, it was just buried and never properly dealt with in a healthy way to allow Adam to move on from it.

This isolation stemmed from his childhood explains his behaviour later on in life. Adam had no one to rely on, he had no concrete role models to learn from or to be taught important lessons as he grew up, and this meant that when he eventually found someone that he loved, Blake, he treated the relationship in a toxic and abusive way.

First Years in the White Fang

Adam had been in the White Fang for longer enough that he saw Ghira in charge, before he stepped down five years before the start of the series. Most of his years during this time is shown in his character short just before Volume 6′s release,and it’s where we’ll be looking at most for this part of the topic.

It’s unknown how old Adam was when he joined the White Fang, but he had already been branded by the time he did so. All throughout the short, we are shown how he changes over the years with his mental state and past trauma affecting him, as well as the events that happen to him. With the White Fang, Adam is finally in a group where he’s on equal ground with everyone except Ghira and Sienna, who are both in a position of power over the rest of White Fang members.

His sense of identity had been brought down from his time in the SDC as a worker, especially with his dehumanization because of his Faunus heritage, and it’s a problem in the White Fang that continues. He isn’t now seen as his own person, but rather a part of an overall group, and both Sienna and Ghira actually don’t seem to care enough to change this fact. In fact, both their behaviour would likely confused Adam even more just because of how contradictory they are.

This isn’t to say that they are at fault for Adam becoming a monster. His actions are his own, but I found it interesting on the effect it would have on him with how both leaders treated him. All of Ghira’s shown interactions with Adam have been negative reinforcement, and it comes at a time where we see that Adam actually isn’t as violent as he would be later on in his life. He handled all the humans attacking the Faunus group in an effective non-life threatening way, the only life he takes comes when he had no other choice, and he would believe that it’s the only way he can protect Ghira.

So when Ghira chastises him for doing so, Adam’s body language shows that he’s actually ashamed of what he did. His head is hung low, his shoulders are down and he doesn’t look up at Ghira. I noticed while watching that Ghira doesn’t actually explain why Adam’s actions were wrong in a way that Adam would take in, he’s more angry and scolding rather than calmly explaining. Going off what we said about Adam not having someone in his early life teaching him right from wrong and explaining why he couldn’t do certain things, it shows just why Adam doesn’t seem to take the advice to heart after that.

I’m not saying that it’s Ghira’s responsibility to teach Adam because of his age and the fact that he isn’t Ghira’s son, but I am saying that this behaviour does have an effect on Adam nonetheless. If Ghira doesn’t explain something in a constructive way, how is Adam supposed to learn a lesson that he’s never been taught?

All of a sudden, Sienna’s positive reinforcement completely contradicts what Ghira is saying. All of a sudden what Adam did was right rather than wrong, and he is clearly surprised that people who previously did nothing when Ghira told him off were cheering what Adam did. He would definitely stick to any positive interaction he can get, and that’s why he goes to Sienna over Ghira. Both of these would no doubt confuse him even more because they both validate and invalidate his actions at the same time, and without the emotional maturity that he should have at that age,

I’d also like to add that his mask also adds to the dehumanization Adam feels, and it’s telling that he continues to wear it even when he’s in the White Fang, a place he’s supposedly among allies and fellow Faunus. Him pushing other Faunus to wear them could be Adam pushing his own dehumanization onto others, as well as the obvious implication that he’s ashamed of his scar.

Egotistical and Egocentric

There are plenty of characters that I would call egotistical, most of all Jacques, but I do have to explain the differences in which egotistical and egocentric are used and how it applies to Adam.

Egotistical is a person who is excessively conceited or obsessed with themselves. It’s basically someone who thinks of themselves in high regard.

Egocentric is a person who thinks more of themselves in terms of their problems, showing an inability to take into other peoples’ accounts.

Because of this, egotistical is more self-importance while egocentric is more isolationist, and I would use the term egocentric to describe Adam as opposed to egotistical. His whole problem is what Blake told Sun in Volume 5, that Adam had been so hurt in the past that he can no longer see past that trauma and would instead hurt the world in the exact same way. He’s grown spiteful and believes that his problems are the only ones that matter, and that everyone else who’ve suffered are weak and pathetic.

Adding onto that, the term egocentric is also applied to the period in a child’s life, usually between the ages of 2 - 7, where they have a very black and white view of the world in which they’re the only one that matters. Reading into Adam’s behaviour and words later in his life, and I can pretty safely say that he’s never been raised out of that part of his life because of his situation. This stage going into the White Fang where he’s now being praised for his actions doesn’t push Adam to grow out of it, and we’re now left with a man who reacts violently when people challenge those same decisions.

If we start looking at his actions with these points in mind, then it makes his character and mindset much more interesting.

Foil to Yang & Their Relationship to Blake

Adam serves as a foil to multiple people in RWBY; Sun Wukong, Ilia Amitola, and Yang Xiao Long. Because of the other two either not having a deep enough backstory form to compare, or being a less major character story wise, I will be focusing solely on the foil between Adam and Yang.

Yang was very much raised in a normal household with Summer Rose and Taiyang, but even then it wasn’t completely happy after Summer’s disappearance and Taiyang’s depression. Despite this rough part of her life, Yang was still raised with a deeply mature outlook on life despite her seemingly carefree nature, she is deeply empathetic and is even the voice of reason during her time in Beacon. She understood that Ruby needed other people to bring her out of her shell, and was willing to given Blake a chance to explain after her revelation over being a Faunus. It’s clearly obvious that Taiyang, and Summer in her early years, had managed to raise Yang past that stage that Adam has been stuck in.

On the other hand, Adam didn’t have that same security in a family and was raised in a strictly abusive environment. This would have the effect on him not only knowing what healthy relationships looked like and believe that what was done to him is the right thing to do, but also meaning that Adam lacked that same maturity and empathy that Yang herself possesses. He’s unable to comprehend people who don’t think the same way that he does, and because of that he simply believes that their wrong in thinking that way.

It’s most apparent in his interaction with Blake during the fall of Beacon:

Blake: I never wanted this! I wanted equality! I wanted peace!

Adam: What you wanted was impossible!

He can’t understand why Blake would want equality or peace with the humans, because that’s not what he wanted. In his mind, because her beliefs contradicted his own, that meant that Blake was wrong in thinking so and that what she wanted could never be achieved.

This difference in their raising continues on to how they both handle their similar fears; the fact that they don’t want to be left alone, and how this fear had then affected their relationship with Blake. Adam and Blake’s relationship was not only incredibly toxic and damaging for Blake, but only served as something that Adam could use to chain the one person he cared about to himself. His idea of love is emotional manipulation and gaslighting, and when the person of his affections acts out, he quickly shuts it down with shouting or physical violence, because that’s what’s been done to him when he did the same thing, and he had never learnt that behaving this way is not healthy.

That fear of being alone is in direct connection to the fact that when Adam had been severely traumatised, he was left to deal with the consequences alone. The thought that Blake would leave him in that situation would push him to do whatever he could to keep her with him, and when she ultimately left him, he couldn’t handle that isolation again and instead turned it to anger because he thought it was Blake’s fault for leaving, that it was her fault for not behaving or loving him enough. It’s very similar to Yang’s idea that everyone ultimately leaves them in the end, but it’s how they deal with this fear is what sets them apart so much.

Unlike Yang, Adam never got over this fear.

Yang herself had been shaped so much by people leaving her behind that she has severe abandonment issues, that like Adam she took Blake leaving her negatively because of this past trauma. However, unlike Adam’s reasonings being that it’s all Blake’s fault for leaving, Yang was only angry at Blake because she wasn’t told why she left, just like she never knew why her biological mother left either. Yang never thought that she had the right for Blake to stay, whereas Adam did.

Even with her abandonment issues, Yang is clearly miles better mentally than Adam even after her dismemberment and developing PTSD. She has never took out her frustrations on anyone around her, rather internalizing the problems and going on to help others, and even when she snaps at Weiss and Ruby in Volume 5, she’s clearly remorseful and goes to remove herself from the situation.

Adam does not know how to deal with fear, frustration or anger in a healthy way like Yang does, and because of this he instead takes it out on people in the way that it had been taken out on him, because that’s all he knows. He shows in knowledge in when he’s overstepped a boundary, and when he does, Adam shows no remorse in his actions. Even when he rarely apologizes for his behaviour, such as in his short, he does so in a way that the attention is brought back to him and his own problems in that egocentric manner.

I find it interesting in how they handle their decline in mental health. Whereas Adam keeps going down in this downward spiral, ultimately ending up in this place of isolation just like he was in the beginning, Yang ultimately pushed herself to recover and surrounded herself with her friends and family. She ends up in a better place with companionship to offset Adam’s isolation, and it’s this distinction that separates their relationship to Blake.

Adam’s relationship with her is now completely destroyed, and it ends with Blake finally killing Adam in self defense. Yang’s relationship with her is restored, and they both can start to recover after the trauma they both have suffered.

The Cycle of Abuse

Adam’s not the only character to portray this subject in RWBY, especially when Salem was given an entire episode where we saw what she went through and why she developed into this villain, but he was the first abuser to appear in the show with his debut in the Black Trailer.

Ultimately, he embodies the very real idea that a person who had been abused and hurt in the past is at risk of becoming that same abuser to another victim later on down the road. His branding and childhood in the SDC wasn’t an excuse for him to become the monster he did, but they did explain why his mind state had decayed to the point that we saw in the show.

I know that some people actually don’t really like his writing, and I will admit that at first I particularly didn’t, but after going through this post, I feel that at least his actions aren’t completely random or one-dimensional now. To me at least, they make sense given what he’s been through, and I believe that this is what makes him at least a competent villain in the writing sense even if some of his writing still doesn’t appeal to me.

That’s all I really have to say about this character. I likely have missed something in my jumbled notes, but honestly this is the basic jist of what I wanted to get across. Please, don’t take any of this as myself saying that everyone except Adam is responsible for his behaviour, because ultimately it was Adam’s decision to do all the things he did. I’m only offering explanations, never excuses.

Either way, thanks for reading this!