Character from RWBY by Rooster Teeth
General of the Atlas military and headmaster of Atlas Academy, Ironwood is a half-cybernetic soldier whose desperate need to protect his kingdom drives him from hero to authoritarian tyrant across the series.
Ironwood is the tragedy of a good man who cannot stop escalating. Every crisis he faces is met with more force, more control, more sacrifice of the things that made the fight worth having in the first place. He brought an army to a school festival because he was afraid of an attack. He was right. This taught him exactly the wrong lesson. His cybernetic body is the literal metaphor — he has replaced so much of himself with military hardware that the line between the man and the machine has blurred. He makes decisions with mechanical logic, cutting away the parts that hurt (civilian evacuation, international alliance, basic human rights) to optimize for the parts he can control (military strength, fortress walls, absolute authority). In early volumes he is genuinely admirable — a leader carrying impossible burdens who still tries to do right. By Volume 8 he has declared martial law, abandoned Mantle's population to Grimm, shot a council member, and threatened to bomb his own city. The slide from protector to dictator is gradual enough that he never identifies a single moment where he went wrong, which is precisely the point.
Tall and broad-shouldered with black hair streaked with grey at the temples, stern blue eyes, and a jawline that could anchor a battleship. The right half of his body is cybernetic — metal endoskeleton visible at the neck and right arm, concealed elsewhere beneath his white Atlas military uniform with blue accents and gold rank insignia. Later volumes show increasing cybernetic replacement as he literally sacrifices more of his humanity. Wears a white overcoat with a blue interior and carries a pair of revolvers, Due Process — one white, one black.
Also known as: James Ironwood, Ironwood, General Ironwood, Jimmy, The General