Are the colonies satisfied now? Are they satisfied? I'll never forget! And I'll never let them forget what happened today!
 

	Sex:	Believe it or not... quite definitely male.
	Age:	15
	Nationality:	Arabian. No, that isn't a funky typo.
	Home Colony:	The Winner family has lived in the L4 cluster for several generations now.
	Gundam:	Sandrock, Sandrock Custom
	Height:	156 centimeters
	Weight:	41 kilograms (but he's short, so the small weight sits well with him - *unlike* Trowa! <eat, boy!>)
	Eye Color:	Aquamarine, turqouise, sapphire, whatever you choose to call it... but always a very clear blue-green.
	Hair Color:	Golden Blond (very very blond ^_^)

Family:

Quatre has twenty-nine sisters, all test-tube born - he's the youngest child in the family and the only natural-born (though he thinks he's test-tube born as well). His mother Quaterina Winner died giving birth to him, and his father suicided before Quatre's and his sister Iria's eyes after the revolt of L4 citizens against the Winner family.

Background:

(MAJOR SPOILERS FOR QUATRE'S EPISODE ZERO BELOW... actually now that I think of it, this is more like a *summary* of his Episode Zero... Well, hey, it's background ain't it?)

Quatre is the sole heir to the extraordinarily wealthy Winner family. The Winner family basically ran the L4 colony cluster, but they were always very good to the people - anything the people asked for, they got. Though Quatre in the series is a kind, empathatic boy with a clear sense of self-esteem, he wasn't like that when he was a child.

You see, on the L4 colony, space conditions made it hard-put for women to have children, so it became illegal for women to have children naturally. This changed in A.C. 100, when the problems were conquered and women could have children through childbirth once more. However, the Winner family still experienced some genetical anomalies in childbirth.

Mr. Winner had thirty children, of which Quatre was the last, but only Quatre was naturally born. However, Quatre's mother died during the delivery. So Mr. Winner never told Quatre about his birth, believing that if Quatre knew his mother had died giving birth to him, he'd be wracked by grief.

This wasn't the wisest choice for Mr. Winner.

You see, on the L4 colony, test-tube-born children were looked down on, and all of the best positions went to those who were natural-born. A different type of prejudice, one might say. Now, we all know that Quatre's sensitivity is so strong he's for all purposes psychic. Imagine what growing up in such an environment must have done to him. He truly believed that as a test-tube child he was worth less than a "real" human being. He figured that his father had created him and his sisters to be puppets, to do whatever Mr. Winner wanted. He behaved like a rich spoiled child, but all of the hatred and apathy he seemed to emanate were really directed towards himself. He was a kind person who couldn't stand his own kindness, as he tells Dorothy when they fence towards the end of GW.

Okay, so, um, once upon a time a shuttle Quatre was on got jumped by the Maguanac Core. [Maguanac means "family" in some language...Muslim? Arabian? It's anyone's guess.] They radioed a message saying to follow their instructions explicitly and not cause any trouble. When the pilots hurry to tell Quatre, Quatre tells them that it doesn't involve him, and that he's tired and is going to take a nap. The pilots' reaction is, "There's no help for it, he's a Winner, born out of a test tube."

So the Maguanac Core gets on the ship, ties people up, but lets Quatre walk around freely for some reason. Quatre asks what they're going to do with him, and another Maguanac named Auda informs Quatre that he's a hostage until the Maguanacs can escape from the shuttle they were being forced to labor in. Quatre says, "Sorry, but I don't have any value, except as a collection of organic materials. I don't think I'll be much use as a hostage. No one loves me, and I don't love anyone. And...they can make as many of me as they want." Yes, at this point I had a strong urge to cuddle and reassure Quatre as well. He looked so bitter when he said this, a look completely unsuited for Quatre's face.

Rashid then contacts Mr. Winner to tell him that they're sending the workers held captive on the shuttle back home to Earth, with their families. Mr. Winner supports this move and says that he will do his best to ensure that Rashid's goals are carried out - then he requests to talk with his son. Rashid obliges and Quatre's put on the phone with his father. Here's their conversation:

Mr. Winner: What are you doing there?

Quatre: *Almost smiling, and looking almost sad and almost defiant.* You're surprised that one of your tools did something on its own, aren't you?

Mr. Winner: You... You're still talking like that?!

Quatre: *Upset now.* Of course! You just created me and my sisters to suit the needs of the Winner family! Because you wanted people who would do exactly as you told them to!

Mr. Winner: Quatre! That's not true!

Quatre: *Clenching his fist.* I'll prove it to you!

Quatre: I'll prove that even people like us can think for ourselves and do things ourselves and talk for ourselves!

Mr. Winner: Is that why you're running away to Earth?

Quatre: What's wrong with that?!

(c) The GW Archives, translations by Katherine

Quatre is extraodinarily bitter because of the attitude that's been presented to him all his life, furious that Mr. Winner supposedly created him just to do his bidding, and underneath this all is a terrible despair - is it true that all he's worth is as a package of organic material?

No... it can't be! He can't accept it - he won't and he doesn't care what other people think, because it's their fault he's like this in the first place! He wants everyone who ever doubted him to see that even a test-tube child like him can do everything that natural-borns can - and better!

Well, okay, after that little outburst, Rashid gives Quatre what was coming and whams the kid a good one, admonishing harshly, "have a little more pride in yourself!" Then he admits that he is also a test-tube child. Quatre stares, unable to believe it.

But yanno what, Quatre? Test-tube children are just as valuable as natural-born children, and he keeps getting [metaphorically] slapped in the face with proof. He ends up capturing a traitor within the Maguanac Core, a traitor who transmitted the location of the Maguanacs to the Federation. The traitor, Judas (a little too obvious, GW artists, but I'll forgive you) says that he's just looking out for himself. Quatre by this time has tied him up, saying that he as well was thinking only of himself. Rashid says, "You have a much better look in your eyes now..." and Judas, seeing a chance, seizes a gun from one of the Maguanacs. Quatre yells "Look out!" and pushes Rashid out of the way, taking the shot in his shoulder. The bullet only wounds Rashid's upper chest. Nanny nanny boo boo to Judas! Especially since one of the Maguanacs shoot him and he goes GUACK and dies.

Somehow, this forces Quatre's [beautiful sparkling] eyes right open. He stops whining about how he was created to serve, telling the Maguanacs to look out for Rashid, their captain - he's important to them. Then the Federation arrives, and some fighting begins. Quatre pleads to be allowed to fight for them, feeling that it's his fault that Judas ever shot Rashid in the first place - Quat-kun thinks he should have tied the ropes better! (Well, he should have, but...) Auda basically tells him to get lost, not thinking Quatre's serious. But another of the Maguanacs, Ahmad, realizes that Quatre isn't playing games by asking. He asks Rashid for permission to allow Quatre to battle and permission is granted. Quatre wants to fight because, he says, he wants to grow into someone with a little bit of pride - he wants to prove that he can help other people, that he is worth something, and that he isn't made less by being test-tube born. He's beginning to realize that that doesn't matter... that what matters is what he can do and how his actions affect others. ^_^

So Quatre is tossed the Captain's goggles - a symbol if I ever saw one. He politely calls Auda "Auda-san" while ordering the Maguanacs into place and all (Quatre is a born tactician), but Auda tells him to scratch the 'san' - Quat's wearing the Captain's goggles, after all! Quatre is definitely pleased, the little sweetheart positively beams. I think because it's the first time he's ever been made to feel truly important, not just because he's the only heir to the Winner fortune, but because he's really helping other people. And if I'm not mistaken, he likes the feeling of being helping others by giving as much as he can.

The other Maguanacs drool all over Quatre's piloting at this moment.

Quatre, newly selfless, orders the other Maguanacs to withdraw, saying that he alone can pursue the enemy and destroy the twenty remaining mobile suits. The Maguanacs go O_o, but Quatre's determined, saying that he probably still hasn't proven himself worthy of being a Maguanac yet. Rashid tells him that he's done MORE than enough and invites him to come to Earth with the rest of the Maguanacs, giving a shining description of the planet. Quatre likes how that sounds, thinking that he's not going to Earth any longer to run away, but to find himself... out loud, he tells Rashid that he has to be stronger, and he doesn't know how long it will take, but he will join them one day!

Rashid radioes the rest of the Maguanac Core, telling them impatiently to withdraw. Then he says that if all the Maguanacs return safely to Earth, "it's because of that gentleman."

Ahmad (another Maguanac) goes O.o, and says, "You're talking about that kid?" But Rashid orders him to call Quatre "Quatre-sama." Auda enthusiastically responds that it doesn't even need to be given order status - they've fallen in love with Quatre. (NOT LIKE THAT...)

And I quote, "There was no more uncertainty in Quatre's eyes..."

My Take:

I love Quatre, I really do. He's sensitive, caring, emotional, passionate and kind. He'll feel responsible for the death of your three hundred year old second cousin once removed if you don't stop him. And of course, the killing he has to do as a Gundam pilot weighs as heavily on him as it does on the others. He bears it, though - he's doing what he believes is right and he will hold to that. Quatre is not a quitter, whatever else you may see fit to call him. I happen to think he's the most humane of the Gboys (not saying anything bad about the others - you know how I feel about Duo!). He gives the enemy every chance to surrender before he kills them, and when he does kill them, he apologizes. Heh, Quatre the Considerate Terrorist, oughta be on PBS... Anyway, Quatre went nearly mad with grief after he found out what he had done to that colony and to Trowa after Zero System messed with his head. Quatre's like Duo in that neither of them just live life, they experience it.

Quatre is the only pilot whose crying scenes are unladen by bitterness - and indeed, whose tears are even recognized as such! Duo simply does not cry (boys don't cry), Heero's probably not even sure what a tear is, Trowa's disassociative in the extreme (he didn't recognize his own tears!), and Wufei cried only after killing Treize. (Shit, man, did that scene get anyone else going?)

I don't care if Quatre cries the most in the series, he's emotionally the strongest out of the five. Granted, the Zero System does make him positively mad, but that's in the beginning. (Not to mention that his father had committed suicide beforehand, and like I said, Quatre experiences life - he loves people.) Quatre is able to control the Zero System well enough the second time he uses it. (Hehehe, though the scene where Heero informs Quatre that he's installed the Zero System was priceless. Poor Quatre went into near-hysterics!) As a matter of fact, the Zero System reveals him to be a master tactician and strategist - he forces the Gboys into one cohesive battle unit in the space of one battle. That's extraodinary, considering that those independent teenage Gboys are not used to working together. Those angelic looks and that innocent face hide a formidable intelligence and patience. (Nixers's Dead Parrot story comes to mind....)

Plus, Quatre is charismatic. He just... is. He won the eternal loyalty of the Maguanac Core due to his genuineness and sincerity. After his father's death, he became the president of Winner Enterprises, a multi-billion dollar corporation that had a monopoly on L4. People are simply drawn to him - he always has an answer or at least an idea. Quatre's the driving leader force behind the Gundam pilots. He's the kind of person that is incapable of phoniness. He'll be sincere all his life.

In short: yes, he's small. Yes, he looks more like a decorative seraphim than a human - but there's so much more to Quatre than the mildly wimpy-looking exterior. You think Quatre doesn't have some sort of muscle under that shirt? What, you think it's all flaccidness under there? Hardly. May I remind you that he is a Gundam pilot, after all, which is not an easy job? That tells you that there's more than what you see. Don't judge the book by its cover! I admit, he's been through less in his life than the others have. I mean, Duo was a street orphan, Trowa was Nanashi, Wufei's wife died at 14, and Heero was raised by an assassin. That doesn't mean that what Quatre went through isn't significant. He may have been more sheltered than the others, but he did not have a happy childhood. He thought he was worth less than four-day-old dog crap. He was constantly at war with himself, hating himself for what he was. That's pretty bad. Thank goodness he grew out of that, with time. Now, the only thing that bothers me about Quatre is how he's such an altruist. He barely ever thinks about himself. He never acknowledges himself or what he might want to do. He's always acting for other people. His heart overflows for the welfare of others. Damnit, Quatre, show some good old-fashioned human selfishness! ^_^

Oh yeah, and I just thought of something! ::beams:: Quatre's like Relena in that he wholeheartedly desires peace. But, unlike Relena, he's pretty clued. I mean, come on, when Relena and Dorothy are debating or whatever in the Sank Kingdom, Dorothy asks her what she'll do if stupid war-loving Romefeller barbarians attack the kingdom. Relena replies, "I don't believe anyone in this world is stupid." As kumiko said - geez, Relena, wake up and smell the MS fuel! That's why Relena and Quatre are different. ::grudgingly:: Granted, I suppose Relena fights for peace in her own way, since she certainly can't pilot no MS. But she's blind to reality (like the fact that Heero was never *hers* to begin with, so what the hell is she doing screeching out of windows for him to come back to her? grrr). Quatre, though his primary objective is peace, keeps a sense of perspective, and doesn't dismiss the bad possibilities despite inherent optimism.

Special Characteristics:

The uchuu no kokoro, of course! This is the crux of Quatre's quasipsychic abilities. Uchuu no kokoro translates as soul of the universe or heart of the universe. It's extraordinarily weird - it seems to be a tie between Quatre and the other four pilots, allowing him to feel what they are feeling. In the episode where Heero self-destructs, Quatre's uchuu no kokoro allows him to feel the reactions of the OZies (namely Une, Noin and Zechs). He lurches forward in his Gundam, clutching his heart, eyes glazed over as you hear the OZies' incredulity. Later on, however, Quatre realizes that the Space Heart is Heero. Think about this - through Heero, Quatre is able to feel the emotions of others? This says something about Brickman. . . But since this isn't Heero's profile, let's move on.

There's also how Quatre's really the only Gundam pilot in the series who cries. It shouldn't be surprising that the G-boys don't cry - they're hardened guerilla terrorists at the age of fifteen, they don't have the time to indulge in such a luxury as tears. Their tears happen rarely, though when they do, they are made doubly powerful. For example, Trowa does cry in the series, when he destroys Duo's beloved Gundam, but he has no idea he's doing so, and remarks "Those sparkly things... they're my tears," with no real inflection. Wufei cries only when he kills Treize, managing to say "I thought I would lose." But Quatre doesn't choke himself on his tears, something which perhaps helps to make him the most stable of the Gboys. He cried - or rather, his eyes filled with tears - when he saw Trowa at the circus after that Zero System fiasco and saw that Trowa was safe. ^_^ He gets teary when his father suicides; when Sandrock wouldn't self-destruct with him inside it; when he sees Heavyarms in the hangar right after Heero and Quatre have been captured; when he locates Trowa, at the circus... (Notice how most of these are "Trowa, Trowa, Heavyarms, Trowa...")

Romantic Pairings:

A special characteristic of Quatre that I did not mention previously is his relationship to Trowa - I didn't mention it because, obviously, such a discussion belongs here. Even if you don't think they're together, you have to admit that they have some sort of relationship. After the Zero System disaster, Quatre was convinced that Trowa had saved his soul. He would not be convinced otherwise, and actually went to Trowa when he still had amnesia, eyes shining, to tell Trowa so. They have, at the very least, a link, though of best-friendship or of lovers is up to you to decide. I seriously doubt that Trowa would have surrendered to Heero or Duo. Then again, Quatre had surrendered first...

My opinion is that they're head over heels for each other and you'll have a hard time convincing me otherwise. (Check out sea's excellent episode guide at her site, Subtle Hints, which goes through the series episode by episode, picking out hints.) When Quatre is mad in the Zero System, Trowa actually gives an impromptu, 90-second speech to him and only to him - "Quatre, we've become nothing more than redundant soldiers... please return to being the nice guy I once knew." It's pretty clear that Trowa isn't addressing his speech to Heero, but to Quatre, to try and draw him out of the haze. Quatre's hesistant to shoot Trowa, even driven to cracking point by Zero. However, when he finally does break and shoot, Trowa allows it to happen, enduring it, in hopes that Quatre will return to sanity. How can I know that he does it for that reason, you ask? Well, the last thing he thinks of before he falls unconscious is, "Heero, don't be too hard on Quatre." I can just imagine a defensive streak running on from there - "it's not his fault, yadda yadda." I really don't think Trowa would have done something like that for any of the other Gboys - at the very least, he wouldn't have taken such an approach.

::cough:: Okay, back to Quatre. So after Trowa's drifting away into space among the debris of the Vayeate (or the Mercurius, whichever), Quatre snaps back to reality. Heero beats on him without mercy as Quatre becomes even more frantic - "Kill me so that you can go save Trowa!" he cries out, and "Trowa's dying!" (something akin to that). Heero, who can read people a lot more easily than people can read him, snaps back, "And you're the one who killed him!" Now why on earth would Heero accuse Quatre of that particularly heinous deed, if not to make Quatre feel like shit? There's also how it seems that, for Quatre, the single most terrible thing that happened to him in Zero was not that he nuked two colonies, but that Trowa got hurt. o.O After Zero, when Quatre and Heero are in the Sank kingdom and neither know what the hell happened to Trowa, there's a sad scene that occurs. Quatre is playing the piano - a melancholy tune, as Noin puts it. You can see his depression written all over his face. You can argue that it's not over the fact that Trowa's drifted off into space, but over his father's death. However, Noin comes in telling him not to blame himself for things that happen like that. Sounds like she knows what happened with Quatre out there in Zero. And she is definitely referring to Trowa.

Hee. Plus, Quatre and Trowa have no female counterparts. Quatre and Dorothy hate each other - well, not hate, but they certainly don't like each other very much - and Catherine is Trowa's sister, may I repeat his sister. I don't think either of them are into incest.

And of course, there are those precious scenes in the early episodes. Trowa leaves from one of Quatre's estates, after they both surrendered to each other. Quatre plays violin; Trowa leans in to hear the music, then quietly removes a flute from a glass showcase and plays together with Quatre. Quatre positively lights up. This scene doesn't advance the plot or anything, just gives us this wonderful music and a beautiful scene that can make 3x4 fans everywhere cheer. May I add that the music is on the Operation 1 CD, under the category of "Affection," and has been translated as "sparkling harmony." ::pauses for dramatic effect:: If Quatre were a girl, people would be jumping up and screaming that Trowa and Quatre belonged together. But since Quatre's a guy, people are reluctant to say anything. Geez. Americans.

Oh yeah, and there's also (in the same episode? can't remember) when Trowa leaves that estate. Rashid asks whether or not Quatre's worried that Trowa will return to kick butt on the place. Quatre smiles slightly, and says, "I almost wish he would. That way at least I could see him again."

I could reach out and touch the longing there.

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