Van Hohenheim

Van Hohenheim (ヴァン・ホーエンハイム, Van Hōenhaimu) - also known in the 2003 anime series as Hohenheim of Light (光のホーエンハイム, Hikari no Hōenhaimu) - is a deceptively ancient and extremely powerful alchemist as well as the estranged father of Edward and Alphonse Elric. Despite disappearing suddenly during their infancy, Hohenheim returns during the course of the series in order to right the wrongs of his mysterious past.

Appearance
Van Hohenheim is a fairly tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with the appearance of a man of relatively healthy middle-age. He wears his long, golden-blond hair in a loose, shoulder-length ponytail with two loose strands of hair falling over his brow and sports a full Donegal-style beard and spectacles over his golden eyes. He has been described as "very handsome" by several women over the course of the series. In the manga, Van Hohenheim frequently wears a white dress shirt and tie under a black vest with matching slacks and a brown overcoat. In the 2003 anime series, Hohenheim sports a slightly doughier build, a softer jawline and slightly darker hair.

In his youth, Van Hohenheim greatly resembled his son Edward, albeit being taller and having a slightly more pronounced jaw.

Personality
Though Hohenheim's devotion to alchemy and the mysterious circumstances under which he was witnessed abandoning his young wife and infant sons gave the man the impression of being cold, he is an unexpectedly softhearted, kindly individual who is quick to give compliments but loath to accept them. Hohenheim appears to care very little for his own well-being, much less his dignity, and is therefore often put in situations that give him the impression of being goofy or eccentric, adding greatly to the series' comic relief. Slow to anger and apparently a bit of a pacifist, Van Hohenheim would much rather talk out disputes than fight, frequently doing so even while he himself is under vicious attack. Chief among his personality traits appears to be his hopeless romanticism, given his propensity for spouting sappy lines about his love for Trisha Elric, his readiness to weep openly over her and his charming treatment of women in general. Van Hohenheim lacks the ambition of other, clearly content to take his time dealing with things that do not demand urgency, but in his youth had a hair-trigger temper much like that of his son and became irrationally angry when taunted for his ignorance.

Relationships
Trisha - The love of Hohenheim's life, Trisha is personally responsible for bringing about changes in the aloof man's worldview. Having discovered a person with whom he truly and deeply connected, Hohenheim fell immediately in love with Trisha and began to desire a normal life so as not to be left existing without her. Though he loved her dearly, his purpose for leaving was to find a way to join his love in death when her time came.

Ed and Al - Estranged from his two sons due to his own faults, Hohenheim feels a great deal of guilt over leaving them alone and is unsure how to deal with them upon his return. While attempting to shakily create a relationship with his boys, he absorbs Edward's hatred and abuse with good nature while nurturing Alphonse's indelible affection for his father. In the meantime, Hohenheim recognizes that Edward has a great deal in common with him and tries to let his furious child know that he understands the hardship he has been forced to endure, mentoring him casually and providing advice and guidance for the future.

Father - Brought into being through the use of Van Hohenheim's blood, the Homunculus known as "Father" initially held a great deal of gratitude toward his blood kin for giving him life, and showed that gratitude by granting Hohenheim three treasures - a name, knowledge and immortality. However, the last of these gifts proved to be a curse and came at a heavy price due to the Homunculus' own unquenchable hubris. Now, sharing a face and a history, the two have become enemies as Hohenheim has vowed to prevent the next phase of his blood kin's plan.

Dante - Hohenheim Elric's first wife in the 2003 anime series, Dante shared in the ancient alchemist's misguided passions and mistakes but failed to learn from them, continuing their reprehensible research long after being abandoned by her lover. However, now that she has made his beloved sons her new targets, Hohenheim of Light returns to melt away the Deep Forest's darkness.

Abilities
As a Human Philosopher's Stone, Van Hohenheim's body is capable of the same level of miraculous regeneration as those of the Homunculi and as such, he has been rendered incapable of death or even aging - having been preserved in the prime of life and health for roughly four hundred years. With nearly four centuries of life experience and alchemical study accumulated, Van Hohenheim's level of alchemical knowledge easily dwarfs that of any other human alchemist in the history of the world. With over half a million souls powering his stone, Van is not only capable of performing transmutations without the use of a Transmutation Circle, but can also transmute without moving his body at all and can even perform biological transmutations and circumvent the law of Equivalent Exchange with ease. Additionally, since he has become capable of conversing directly with each of the 536,329 human souls which make up his Philosopher's Stone, Van's alchemy is extremely versatile and can be implemented in multiple locations at once even without his own will to actively guide it, so long as he has deposited some of his souls there. It is likely that the alchemy he learned during his youth in Xerxes serves as the basis for the Xingese art of Alkahestry.

In the 2003 anime, Hohenheim is not a Philosopher's Stone, but rather an alchemist who has discovered a method of detaching the soul from the body and transferring it to another body using the Philosopher's Stone to circumvent Equivalent Exchange. By this method, he has managed to elude death for roughly four hundred years, but is still as vulnerable to attack as any human. Additionally, the instability experienced when a soul inhabits an incompatible body causes the body to rot more and more prematurely with each body transfer. Of his skills, his most significant is the ability to transmute light, shaping it into a physical form of his choosing and manipulating it remotely, earning him the nickname "Hohenheim of Light". Soon after his appearance in the 2003 anime, he is seen shaping light into golems which he causes to attack his enemies.

History
The young man who would later go on to be known as Van Hohenheim grew up during the 16th century in the capital of the ancient and advanced country of Xerxes. As a youth, he was the twenty-third house slave of a renowned alchemist in the King of Xerxes' personal employ and was known simply as "23". Though content in his lowly position, without freedom, any knowledge of the world or even a name, the youth's life would change dramatically in his mid-teen years when his master chose him for a particular alchemical experiment which involved taking some of the young man's blood. While cleaning his master's laboratory one day soon afterward, 23 encountered the product of this experiment - a nearly shapeless, sentient shadowy creature kept in a flask and calling itself a Homunculus. Grateful to Slave 23 for the blood that had given it life, the Homunculus decided to give the young man a name. Though 23 decided that the name Homunculus had initially planned for him - Theophrastus Bombastus Van Hohenheim - was far too long for him to remember, he accepted "Van Hohenheim" as his name. But when the Homunculus realized that, as a lowly slave, Van was too ignorant to read or write, it explained that with knowledge, he would be able to escape the bonds of slavery and make something of himself in the big, wide world. As its second gift to the being it called its "father", the Homunculus began tutoring Van soon afterward, using its own mysterious knowledge to teach him reading, writing, arithmetic, science and basic alchemy.

Elated with the new-found sense of pride that came with his knowledge, Van began giving lessons to the other slaves and when the master discovered his remarkable skills, Van declared that, with his knowledge of alchemy, he could be a more valuable asset to the master than a mere slave. Soon afterward, the master released Van from slavery and instead took him on as his assistant. As he grew into manhood as an up-and-coming alchemist, Van thanked the Homunculus for giving him the knowledge necessary to overcome his days on the bottom rung of society and voiced his hope that he would be able to start a family, despite the Homunculus' distaste for the human existence's dependence on "breeding". When Van asked what would make Homunculus happy, it merely replied that it would like some day to escape its flask without dying. Soon afterward, however, Van and Homunculus would begin spending less time together, as the shadowy creature's mysterious knowledge was requested by the King of Xerxes in order to search for a way to make the monarch immortal. It would take at least a decade for the immortality ritual put forth by the Homunculus to become complete, but when that day came, it became immediately apparent that Homunculus had engineered some sort of base treachery. By feeding the King's court misinformation so that the center of the massive circle would be slightly askew, the Homunculus orchestrated the situation so that Van Hohenheim (holding the flask) would inadvertently stand at the true center. The over one million people living in Xerxes had their souls immediately pulled from their bodies and condensed at the center when the circle was activated, pulling the two through the Gate and endowing them with the energy of roughly half a million souls each. When Van awoke the next morning, he was mortified to find the capital a mausoleum and Homunculus inhabiting a humanoid body identical to his own. Explaining the situation, Homunculus revealed that he had sacrificed the people of Xerxes in order to escape his glass prison as well as give his blood kin Van Hohenheim one last gratuity - eternal life and a body that would never age.

Filled with despair, Van fled east from his empty homeland, wandering aimlessly through the Great Desert and became aware of the movements and anguished cries of the thousands of people milling about inside his soul. Left with no one, he began to talk to them, separating individual souls out from the endless chorus of screams until he collapsed from exhaustion in the sand. Found still alive by travelers from the eastern nation of Xing, Van Hohenheim was brought there and regained his strength while coming to an understanding with each of the souls inside him and teaching rudimentary alchemical principles to the Xingese people.

It is unknown to where Van Hohenheim traveled after arriving in Xing, but after spending several centuries abroad, accumulating knowledge regarding the world's different customs and practices, he appeared in the growing country of Amestris and settled for a time in a small East Area town known as Resembool, presumably some time in the 1860s. There, he became good friends with the townsfolk, particularly a young woman by the name of Pinako. Decades later, Pinako would introduce the ageless Van to a young woman named Trisha Elric with whom he fell immediately in love. Near the turn of the century, the two consummated a union and in 1899 Trisha bore Van a son named Edward with a second son, Alphonse, to follow a year later. But, in watching time affect the infant boys who shared his blood in ways that were lost to him and his immortal body, Hohenheim became concerned. Though Trisha and Pinako had never judged or antagonized him for his amaranthine existence, Van began to fear the prospect of watching his new family growing old and dying without him as he had so many others over the past centuries. Thinking himself a monster, he began to show reluctance toward direct contact with his sons lest he somehow infect them with his curse as well, but Trisha sensed his unease and decided to hire a photographer to take a portrait of the four of them. As she placed the smiling young Edward in his father's arms for the picture, Trisha expressed her desire to Van that they all stay a closely-knit and loving family regardless of each person's appearance and urged him not to distance himself from his family and call himself a monster. As the camera flashed and tears of gratitude streamed down Van Hohenheim's face, he resolved to find a way to end his immortality - to grow old and die together with his beloved Trisha.

Unfortunately, while perusing countless alchemical texts in order to find a way to reverse the effect of what the Homunculus had done to him, Van made a shocking discovery: that the very nation of Amestris was built and designed from scratch as to be a much larger and more devastating repeat of the tragedy that had befallen Xerxes - a gigantic Transmutation Circle for the purpose of turning all of the country's inhabitants into a new Philosopher's Stone. Realizing that only the Homunculus could be responsible for such a plot, Van decided that he would be the one to stop it, for the sake of his beloved family and all his dear friends. After explaining to Trisha that he was leaving and promising that they would die together, Van Hohenheim departed from the house and Resembool in 1904.

Preparation
When offically introduced in the manga, Hohenheim returns to Resembool to find his house has been burned down. Later encountering a very hostile Edward in front of Trisha's grave, Hohenheim plants the suggestion that the creature Ed and Al created when attempting to resurrect Trisha might not have even been a bad copy of her, but something quite unrelated. Before leaving, he warns Pinako Rockbell to leave the country for her safety. After he leaves Resembool with an old family portrait of himself, his sons, and wife tucked into his jacket, his carriage is held up by bandits, who promptly retreat after shooting Hohenheim multiple times, to no effect apart from damaging his clothes. He later resurfaces and reveals to Izumi Curtis, of his nature as a "Philosopher's Stone in human form" while reordering Izumi Curtis' ravaged internal organs to the most favorable arrangement possible merely by sticking his flat hand into her abdomen in order to convince her to help him.



Hohenheim then moves on to Liore, where he meets Rose. She and the Old Shopkeeper lead him to an underground reservoir, where he walks across the poisoned water, forming a stone pathway under his feet as he walks, and has a short battle with Pride. He tells Pride to tell Father that "Number 23" is coming to see him and then heads back to Liore. Hohenheim encounters Al for the first time in twelve years in Chapter 80, and exclaims, "My vintage armor!" Hohenheim, who considers himself fairly accurately a failure of a father, allows himself to be removed from the situation as quickly as possible, but Al goes after him, and they have a wonderful heart-to-heart talk in which many things are explained. In chapter 85, Hohenheim meets Edward again. After Edward gets one good punch at his father, Hohenheim tells Ed the story of his early life. He dryly asks whether Ed wants to use him to regain their lost bodies, but Ed declines vociferously, having gone off the Philosopher's Stone ever since he learned its key ingredients. In chapter 88, Hohenheim seals Alphonse Elric and Pride (Selim Bradley) in an earthen prison with no light, so that Pride will no longer be able to harm anyone. This enrages Edward, but Hohenheim explains that this was Alphonse's plan.

The Promised Day
After the fight against Pride, Hohenheim becomes the de facto leader of the expedition to take Father down. He mentions a plan ready to counter Father's nation-wide transmutation circle if it was to be activated but say's he'd rather prevent its activation in the first place. Upon entering Father's subterranean lair, he organizes the group in two teams and goes alongside Lan Fan, whom he later allows to go on her own looking for Ling Yao/Greed while he reaches Father. He greets his "friend from the flask" stating that "there is no need for a big group to punish one misbehaving child". The living Philosopher's Stones start to fight each other.

After having dodged few attacks, he is stabbed by Father who claims his Stone, but the 536 329 restless souls that composed it (with whom Hohenheim managed to come to an understanding with) destroyed Father's human-like container from the inside. However Father's Homunculus form, shaped like when he was in the flask emerged, leaves Hohenheim in a bad situation. Father later appears to Edward, Izumi and Al, having absorbed Hohenheim to his body. Father then tells Edward, Izumi, and Al that Father had initially tried to absorb all of Van Hohenheim's philosopher's stones, which would kill him. However, because Hohenheim had managed to communicate to and understand the stone's souls (which was something Father couldn't do), Hohenheim survived the incident, and instead had his head and legs sticking out of Father's homunculus body (the rest of his body are inside but are not separated). Father can then push Hohenheim inside his body, but Hohenheim can also resist and come back out with his head protruding, which is what he did to warn May about Father's powers. When Greed slashes Father but fails to kill him, Hohenheim is then released from his body but still in Father's grasp. As Father assembles Hohenheim and the others as sacrifices to open "The World's Gate", Hohenheim and the others then have large eyes surrounded by a mock of shadows on their torsos, which starts to fight back against the other gates. As Father succeeds in opening the gate, Hohenheim, Izumi, Roy, Riza, May, Greed/Ling, Pride, Al, and Ed are the only ones left alive while all the citizens of Amestris are dead. Father is then seen in a fog of smoke as he explains that in order to contain God within himself required an enormous amount of energy, which the people of Amestris provided. Now both they and God reside within him. As the smoke clears, Father has now gained a new body that resembles Edward as he says "And I have you to thank for that my friends."

Hohenheim fends off Father's attacks, draining many lives from his Philosopher's Stone. After Father retreats above ground to try and replenish his Stone, Hohenheim follows, along with Ed, Al, May, and Izumi. He chastises Father for berating humans, telling him that it was humans that created the Philosopher's Stone in the first place, which in turn gave birth to Homunculi. He then watches as Father creates humans out of the souls of the long-dead Xersisians, and is caught in the blast that follows as he uses himself to shielding Izumi from the bulk of it. His Philosopher's Stone almost gone, he can do little more than watch the battle as it progresses. After Ed finishes off Father, he offers his remaining life as the price to bring back Al. Upon being questioned, he replies that because he is their father. He explains it is not about necessity or purpose, but because they are his sons and want them to be happy. He also says that it was his partly his fault the brothers attempted to bring back Trisha because he wasn't there for them when they needed him and apologizes. However, Ed scolds him for even suggesting the idea while shedding tears and accepting him as his father, implying that Ed forgave his father.

At the end of the manga, he is seen in Resembool. Pinako finds him kneeling in front of Trisha's grave, only to find that he had died in that position with a smile on his face. His last thoughts contemplated that he didn't have a meaning in life until Trisha and his sons came into his life. By now, he didn't want to die at all. Several years after this, his grave was seen in a photo next to Trisha's grave.

In the 2003 anime
Approximately four centuries old in soul, forty years old in his current body, 'Hoenheim of Light' remains behind the scenes throughout most of the series. Most of his past is kept under wraps, save for a few key points, revealed quite late in the series. Hohenheim is a tall, rather well-built man, standing in at at least six feet tall at first glance. He's rather gentle and weary, and soft-spoken as well, which is most likely due to the extensive amount of time spent alive, under his assorted burdens. This disposition is clearly demonstrated when Edward actually punches him in the face and kicks him in the stomach, with very little reaction. He is shown to be an extremely powerful alchemist, possibly the strongest in the series, showcasing his talents in transmuting light (hence his nickname), perform a continuous reaction, and does not need to make hand contact with his target in episode 45, "A Rotted Heart".

In the anime, Hohenheim's official debut is in episode 43, "The Stray Dog". Here, he meets Winry Rockbell, confusing her for a woman named Sara. Winry promptly flees, but soon realizes that since Sara was her mother's name she may have been taken for her mother. Hohenheim then appears at the Rockbell residence, where Pinako introduces him as Ed and Al's father.

Background
His past is fairly murky, save for a few key moments shown in the series. Approximately four hundred years prior to the series, Hohenheim created the Philosopher's Stone, using people captured in a witch hunt and those dying of the plague. The resulting reaction nearly caused Hohenheim's death, but out of love and concern for her lover, Dante used the stone to attach his soul to another man's body. It's from here on out that the two jump from body to body, living on, and obtaining a so-called eternal life, although Hohenheim had only intended to live as long as the stone lasted, alongside Dante. It's not known if Dante and Hohenheim were actually ever married, but their relationship produced one son who died at the age of 18 of mercury poisoning. Hohenheim performed a human transmutation on his son, which, in turn, failed, producing the first-ever Homunculus, Envy. Regretting what he had done to his son, Hohenheim fled (although he left Dante some of the Stone). Later, Hohenheim renounces ever loving Dante, stating Trisha Elric as the only woman he ever truly loved.

Where Hohenheim was in the ten-year gap between his leaving the Elrics and turning up again isn't exactly clear. He had explained to Trisha shortly before his departure that he was leaving to do research of some kind, but never came back. In episode 50, "Death", it is revealed that Hohenheim's stolen bodies rot more quickly every time he takes a new one. Also knowing that Dante was out there, somewhere, he assumed that staying in hiding would, perhaps, make her vanish for good. But once he found out that Dante had her eyes set on his sons, he emerged to face her, only to be immobilized by the Homunculus Sloth, who bore a striking resemblance to his late wife Trisha, and was consequently sent into the Gate, where his mind, body, and soul were separated. He was able to reassemble himself, however, and emerge on the other side, in London, and eventually becomes an advisor to Winston Churchill. When Edward's soul was sent there by Dante, he learns about Hoenhiem's past. When he offers to find a way to bring Hohenheim back to their home world, he declines, revealing that the act is impossible due to his entire being on this side. At the end of the series, he is living in Germany, siding himself with the Thule Society, secretly finding a way to send his son back to Amestris, caring for him until Edward left for Romania to find the means of world travel.

Conqueror of Shamballa
In the movie which concludes the 2003 anime, Hohenheim doesn't appear much, save for a couple of pivotal scenes. Hohenheim is used as a sacrifice on Germany's side of the Gate, fixed in the mouth of Envy, who was captured by the Thule Society when he arrived on Earth, trapped in a serpentine form. He tells Edward that he is a sinner, from creating Envy to the making of the Philosopher's Stone, destroying thousands of lives in the process indirectly. Despite Edward's pleas not to, Hohenheim tells him to give Alphonse his regards as he uses Envy to create a gate to Amestris. He gets Envy to bite down on him, killing him and using his own blood and Envy to activate the gate.

Trivia

 * The character of Hohenheim is seemingly inspired by Phillip von Hohenheim, a Renaissance Swiss alchemist and early scientist who later adopted the name Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim and the sobriquet Paracelsus. Paracelsus credited himself with creating a homunculus out of various human bodily fluids. This is further proven by the fact that the original homunculus was going to give him the same name as mentioned, but Hohenheim thought it was too long and was shortened to just Van Hohenheim.
 * In the anime-exclusive recap episode (Episode 27: Interlude Party (2009 series)), it is shown that Hohenheim knew Trisha since she was a child.
 * It's said that Hohenheim has come to an understanding with every single one of the souls that comprise his Philosopher's Stone, and that they willingly participate with him to make Father atone for his actions. However, before this is known, Hohenheim is seen using all kinds of (stone-powered) alchemy that is unrelated to bringing down Father, such as rearranging Izumi Curtis' ravaged insides. It is unknown if Hohenheim has burned off any of the souls by doing this kind of alchemy, or perhaps he only uses bits and pieces of each soul, to not use a full one.
 * Also, due to his ability to communicate with the souls of his stone, his alchemy is much more powerful than an individual simply utilizing the energy of a stone. This is evidently due to the souls of his stone actively aiding him in his endeavors. It also allows for his stone to essentially use itself, as can be seen when the souls of the stone independently activated the nationwide transmutation circle created by the umbra.
 * Hohenheim is both the person Father cared and hated the most.
 * Just as Ed is offended at being called short, Hohenheim, back when he was the same age, seemed to get just as angered when called stupid.
 * Technically, in the 2003 anime, Ed and Al aren't really even Hohenheim's children at all, but rather the kids of the man from whom he stole that body from. This raises questions about how his son Envy's true form (who's at least over a century old) bares any kind of resemblance to the Elric Family at all.