How likely is it that Vegeta at least knew his mother?

[miguelnuva1]

Tarble suffers from sliding scale in anime.

We are told he is weak for a saiyan but he survives againts people who are as strong as Frieza but its only because Goku and Vegeta's kids can play around with Frieza level now.

Tarble likely went from Raditz level at beat to Ginyu level at worst by Yo Son Goku.

[L3anD3RStar]

One thing about Tarble, like you mentioned, him being timid played a major factor.

This might be more of a headcanon thing, but I suspect Tarble is actually OLDER than Vegeta. He was disowned and rejected after his stronger brother was born, because worst case scenario, they could hide his weakness long enough to continue the royal bloodline, and hope the royal grandchild isn’t a disappointment.

None of that was neccessary after Vegeta was born. They were relieved they wouldn’t need Tarble at all, but because he’s older and could still technically threaten his brother, they sent him away.

For instance, it was never said that Gine was 'weak', but because of her soft nature and lower-power level compared to other warriors, she had to get saved a lot.

I admit to not being an expert but are you sure that was the case? That she had to be saved. Gine and Bardock met when she was assigned to his combat squad. Nobody said she was weak or a bad fighter or a liability in combat. She just didn’t have the stomach for full-time planetary extermination and ended up transferring out of the squad to a non-combat planetside job. Which, knowing the Saiyans, was probably technically a demotion, but I bet Gine had no regrets. She had the power to be a great warrior, but not the desire. She probably will fight fiercely to protect herself and her friends, but extermination of the innocent didn’t sit well with her.

I understand that Broly was an exception, being a very powerful Saiyan to a low-class and/or mid-class warrior like Paragus

Broly is also a mutant. I know Paragus reads King Vegeta’s treatment of Broly as just protecting Prince Vegeta’s status as the highest power level of his generation, but personally, I think there might have been more to it then that. Since we met Kale, we know the “Legendary Super Saiyan” condition isn’t exclusive to Broly. I think this mutation must’ve been a known condition that Saiyan children could sometimes be born with, and it made them astoundingly strong but also unable to control themselves, meaning they pose a danger to everybody around them. I imagine kids with this condition don’t live very long. They are just too dangerous, and when they go berserk, they will keep going until they are killed. Turns out there is such a thing as too much power, even for Saiyans. King Vegeta;s decision was cruel but he actually knew what he was doing. Turns out, a planet of monsters is the one place a child like Broly might possibly fit in.

If Tarble were weak, he wouldn't have been able to escape from Abo and his brother.

I don’t think Tarble is “weak” either. I just think he wasn’t the powerhouse his father wanted. Who knows, maybe a reason King Vegeta sold the prince to the Frieza Force was he wanted to make sure this one grows up vicious. The Frieza Force doesn’t stomach weakness.

To me, this speaks more to King Vegeta's lack of foresight. Yes, he was very intelligent and absolutely right about his assumption in Broly, but he always mixes his hubris with his decisions and luckily for Tarble, it resulted in him surviving Planet Vegeta. But still, I feel as if King Vegeta had to be a tad bit dumber than our Vegeta, who would go the extra mile if in the same position...maybe.

I think King Vegeta’s story is a sad one. He was always bowing and scraping to tyrants, letting them take more and more of his dignity and pride, hoping it would make them NOT eventually decide to kill him. But there’s no safety in submission. I think he knew that, deep down. He failed pretty spectacularly as a leader.

[Yasai9001]

This might be more of a headcanon thing, but I suspect Tarble is actually OLDER than Vegeta. He was disowned and rejected after his stronger brother was born, because worst case scenario, they could hide his weakness long enough to continue the royal bloodline, and hope the royal grandchild isn’t a disappointment.

So, it doesn't occur to you that if Prince Tarble were the first born son, that he would use every resource and even take time out of his duty as King to ensure he was the most ruthless and strongest Saiyan he could possibly be? Saying this were the case, this would also just be another perspective of King Vegeta giving up on one of his children.

I admit to not being an expert but are you sure that was the case? That she had to be saved.

Yeah, Toriyama admitted that Gine had been saved in combat a few times by Bardock. I, too, believe it was because of Gine's soft nature and not truly having the stomach for conquering. I believe her and Tarble had that same personality in common, to be honest. For Gine to be on a team with Bardock, who is strong for a low-class, as well as Taro, who's shown to be older and experienced, and an upcoming soldier in Leek, then I believe it stands to show that Gine wasn't weak. It would also help solidify why Raditz was born as strong as he was to not be sent off like trash unlike Goku's fate. I agree that she definitely had no regrets. Death and killing was apart of Saiyan life, and like others, she was desensitized to the notion, but the job solely wasn't for her.

Broly is also a mutant. I know Paragus reads King Vegeta’s treatment of Broly as just protecting Prince Vegeta’s status as the highest power level of his generation, but personally, I think there might have been more to it then that. Since we met Kale, we know the “Legendary Super Saiyan” condition isn’t exclusive to Broly. I think this mutation must’ve been a known condition that Saiyan children could sometimes be born with, and it made them astoundingly strong but also unable to control themselves, meaning they pose a danger to everybody around them. I imagine kids with this condition don’t live very long. They are just too dangerous, and when they go berserk, they will keep going until they are killed. Turns out there is such a thing as too much power, even for Saiyans. King Vegeta;s decision was cruel but he actually knew what he was doing. Turns out, a planet of monsters is the one place a child like Broly might possibly fit in.

You know, this actually makes great sense. It was almost as if King Vegeta had immediately recognized that something was unusual within Broly. While Prince Vegeta was a prodigy, Broly was an outright freak. Like you said, King Vegeta definitely protected his own and his son's status, but he had to have knowledge of Broly's condition considering that Paragus didn't pick up the damn phone 40 years prior because King Vegeta called it, lmao. He told him exactly what was going to happen and perhaps even King Vegeta knew of this 'Legendary Demon Saiyan' that shows up once every 1,000 years; if Caulifla and Cabba were aware of such a thing in a different universe, then why wouldn't King Vegeta? His bloodline had to have been strong dating back to even during Planet Sadala's time and not only did they have the legendary Super Saiyan in Yamoshi, but perhaps this 'Legendary Demon Saiyan', which precisely fits Broly's archetype; such information was kept close to the chest, but the legend of the Super Saiyan was not. (Cabba spoke on it in Dragon Ball Super Manga chapter 38).

I don’t think Tarble is “weak” either. I just think he wasn’t the powerhouse his father wanted. Who knows, maybe a reason King Vegeta sold the prince to the Frieza Force was he wanted to make sure this one grows up vicious. The Frieza Force doesn’t stomach weakness.

Well, excluding the filler content of Dragon Ball, King Vegeta didn't ever sell Prince Vegeta to Freeza, although overtime, I feel as if Prince Vegeta's strength would have been caught onto by Freeza and he would have been closer examined by him. But, going back to Dragon Ball Super: Broly, King Vegeta sure as hell put emphasis on expecting his son growing up to be a vicious ruler; that was a quality that Tarble definitely lacked, and played into why he gave up on his son.

I think King Vegeta’s story is a sad one. He was always bowing and scraping to tyrants, letting them take more and more of his dignity and pride, hoping it would make them NOT eventually decide to kill him. But there’s no safety in submission. I think he knew that, deep down. He failed pretty spectacularly as a leader.

"But there's no safety in submission." You're absolutely right. I truly think King Vegeta was stupid for having trained snipers on him, though. Like, King Cold was probably chill (no pun intended), and didn't want everyone to know just how truly powerful he was. Freeza was boastful and liked to show off to put others in submission. Recall when King Vegeta and Cold greeted one another when Cold was announcing his retirement? King Vegeta tried to shake hands with Cold and treat the man as if they were on equal standing; King Cold shot down this power move immediately and further established his dominance by having his child son rule over them.

The main question comes into play as to how King Vegeta would have planned on overthrowing Cold. Would he have thought allowing Prince Vegeta grow into a promising warrior would have been enough? Would he have pushed his son into harder missions as he got older to increase his strength? Would he try to covertly take pieces of Freeza's army bit by bit? Getting insight to this would have been nice. I think King Vegeta attacked Freeza because like Bardock, he was greatly suspicious of the man asking about The Legendary Super Saiyan and hovering over their planet for a month straight. Even though King of a warrior society, you HAVE to possess some kind of smarts as a King, right?

Nonetheless, not to get too off-topic, seeing Vegeta's mother would have been a nice detail. We see that there are female warriors, and even if Prince Vegeta's mother was just a very powerful low-class warrior who wasn't strong enough to be promoted, she would have been a nice foil to Goku's mother just as Prince Vegeta was once upon a time, a foil to Son Goku.

[miguelnuva1]

Based off Broly King Vegeta and King Cold were more or less friends. Cold greets him like I'm the boss, you follow me and everyone will be happy.

Frieza is the boss that nothing you do is ever good enough and he will find a way show his power over you.

[Dr. Casey]

I assume the families stay together in a traditional nuclear family sense - the idea was nothing new to Vegeta after getting with Bulma and having two kids anyway.

I don’t know. Vegeta ditched his pregnant wife/infant son to go train by himself in space, and made a big show out of not caring about either of their welfare after he came back. That would make more sense of he came from a culture where parental obligations are not really a thing. Maybe he told Bulma that their son should be in a birthing pod so she should just make one of those rather than carry him around all the time, she’s just making more work for herself.

Vegeta didn’t really embrace nuclear family life until after the Majin stuff happened. By the time Bulla came along he was throughly domesticated but I really think he maintained plausible deniability in his own head that just because he lives with this woman and she birthed his children DOESN’T MEAN he has any real obligation towards her, emotionally! He just lives here because she built a gravity chamber for him. Having sex with her is just occasional supplementary cardio training! He doesn’t feel close to these people at all, really!

Good points. Nuclear family structures not existing at all in Saiyan society is credible. At the very least, Radditz' complete lack of a shit about Goku implies that family closeness isn't really a norm. If Toriyama wrote about the Saiyans back in the manga in a flashback or something in the manga's original run, families might have lived together (due either to narrative convenience or just finding it easier to model fictional cultures after your own rather than inventing new rules for everything), but Saiyans were depicted pretty universally in the old days as unsentimental space vikings/barbarians and sociopathic at a species level. Even if parents and kids lived together I can see social attachments being weak to not existing at all. Enough so that Vegeta wouldn't be unusual in neglecting the family. A lot of animal species have family structures that separate quicker than humans do and are looser even while together, so even if Saiyan families do live together at some point it's probably closer to that kind of outline (and even more callous and distant due to the Saiyans' lack of capacity for love and attachment).

[miguelnuva1]

Thinking about it now King Vegeta probaly had several wives and Vegeta and Tarble's mom's are the ones that got pregnant during his reign.

Vegeta's mother would be rewarded for producing Vegeta and Tarble'e mother was punished.

[PowerPhantom245]

Thinking about it now King Vegeta probaly had several wives and Vegeta and Tarble's mom's are the ones that got pregnant during his reign.

Vegeta's mother would be rewarded for producing Vegeta and Tarble'e mother was punished.

I mean, that is possible.
Royalties can have multiple partners.

It still begs a question of who was Vegeta's mother; something that even if Toriyama was still around, wouldn't answered it and remain forever mystery.

[L3anD3RStar]

So, it doesn't occur to you that if Prince Tarble were the first born son, that he would use every resource and even take time out of his duty as King to ensure he was the most ruthless and strongest Saiyan he could possibly be?

It did occur to me, which is why I suspect that Tarble must’ve posed some sort of threat to King and Prince Vegeta’s power in order to justify throwing him away like low-class trash. A less powerful SECOND prince can at the very least be kept around but out-of-sight just in case the first prince dies without any offspring. But if the second son is more powerful, then the King has every reason to throw away the first prince and declare the new child is “Vegeta,” now lets all just agree to pretend my embarrassment of a first son never happened. A weak child born to the royal line is an embaressment, and attempting to somehow groom him into the tyrannical powerhouse is wasted effort when his younger brother is everything his already everything his father wants in an heir.

Yeah, Toriyama admitted that Gine had been saved in combat a few times by Bardock.

Do you have a source for that? I mean, I know where I am so I you probably do, I’d just like to read it for myself.

I, too, believe it was because of Gine's soft nature and not truly having the stomach for conquering. I believe her and Tarble had that same personality in common, to be honest.

I think that between Tarble and Gine and Beets and some of the background Saiyans, it’s pretty clear that the “every Saiyan lives to fight, they are all battle-hungry, bloodthirsty maniacs devoid of compassion or intelligence” line is a lot of propaganda. We’ve met enough Saiyans by now to conclude that they are human. I mean, not human, but they are people. They have their biological urges, but they can control them as well as any other sentient race. The ruthless super warrior who destroys planets and doesn’t afraid of anything may be the Saiyan cultural ideal, but the vast majority of the species are mostly ordinary people doing mostly ordinary jobs, who work in buildings, use tools and drive vehicles and try not to look at the moon for too long, for insurance reasons. It’s not as romantic as thinking they were all planet conquering giant monkey warriors, but it’s more realistic.

It was almost as if King Vegeta had immediately recognized that something was unusual within Broly.

Exactly the word? “Recognized.” King Vegeta looks at this kid and goes, “oh, uh oh, that’s not just a high power level, that’s a BAD thing, we need to get this kid out of here, right now.” I think it makes sense that important people in the Saiyan society would have knowledge of the condition’s existence but the wider population wouldn’t. We know how important high power levels are to determining a child’s life path. I think there would be concern someone would want to use these powerful anomalies as weapons, in the mistaken belief that they can control them. They are always wrong

Did you notice that Paragus still had his tail, even though he removed Broly’s? And we know Vampa had a moon. I think Paragus must’ve used the Oozaru to contain and control Broly. It was the only way he could come even close to matching his power during a rampage. Just in case the slave collar wasn’t brutal enough…

Well, excluding the filler content of Dragon Ball, King Vegeta didn't ever sell Prince Vegeta to Freeza, although overtime, I feel as if Prince Vegeta's strength would have been caught onto by Freeza and he would have been closer examined by him.

I’ve got no doubt that Freeza played mind games with the Prince. He probably did stuff like praise him publically in front of the troops, berate the other Saiyans for not being as powerful as a little child, and then turn around and abuse and insult him for being a dirty monkey who is only still alive because he was too stupid to follow simple instructions, a crime he will be paying for by receiving bottom-of-the-barrel assignments and cut food rations for his whole squad. By the time he was a teenager he’d be seriously screwed up in the head.

I truly think King Vegeta was stupid for having trained snipers on him, though.

I might be reaching but I don’t believe the snipers were there for Cold specifically. I think the palace might just have snipers permanently stationed, and they were watching the situation because, well, their king is having an important meeting right there in the courtyard.

King Vegeta tried to shake hands with Cold and treat the man as if they were on equal standing; King Cold shot down this power move immediately and further established his dominance by having his child son rule over them.

This is a guess but I think there must’ve been a time when King Vegeta had some measure of trust and respect for King Cold. I’m not sure what the basis for that might have been, but he seems actually hurt when Cold pulls rank and puts Prince Joffery in charge. Like, not surprised, he always knew this was a possibility, but he wanted to believe Cold held him in more esteem than that. Being face to face with where he really stood was a nasty shock for him.

The main question comes into play as to how King Vegeta would have planned on overthrowing Cold. Would he have thought allowing Prince Vegeta grow into a promising warrior would have been enough? Would he have pushed his son into harder missions as he got older to increase his strength? Would he try to covertly take pieces of Freeza's army bit by bit? Getting insight to this would have been nice.

I think Cold/Freeza kept the Saiyans on a very short leash. You know all the stories of the ruthless Saiyans who mercilessly destroy planets for fun, eat their defeated foes, and turn into giant monsters? I think the Cold force probably wasn’t NOT responsible for those stories spreading so far, and it left the Saiyans very isolated in the universe. The Cold family was the only one willing to do business with them, and their only suppliers of ships, tech, weapons, medicine, food, and all the other stuff they don’t make on planet for themselves. With no allies or alternate sources of supplies, the King’s hands are pretty tied. I think he thought as long as the Saiyans were useful, they would be safe enough. I mean, they’re easily Freeza’s best shock troops. I don’t think he knew he was running out of time.

Nonetheless, not to get too off-topic, seeing Vegeta's mother would have been a nice detail. We see that there are female warriors, and even if Prince Vegeta's mother was just a very powerful low-class warrior who wasn't strong enough to be promoted, she would have been a nice foil to Goku's mother just as Prince Vegeta was once upon a time, a foil to Son Goku.

I’m also of that opinion. When I imagine Vegeta’s mother, I don’t picture some elegant queen, I picture a tiny firecracker of a low-born warrior, whose attitude and swagger exceeded her power level but who never backed down from a fight. She got beaten up a lot, but it never slowed her down. That indomitable spirit is what intrigued the King. He regrets not getting to spend more time with her.

[Dr. Casey]

I think that between Tarble and Gine and Beets and some of the background Saiyans, it’s pretty clear that the “every Saiyan lives to fight, they are all battle-hungry, bloodthirsty maniacs devoid of compassion or intelligence” line is a lot of propaganda. We’ve met enough Saiyans by now to conclude that they are human. I mean, not human, but they are people.

Sorry for spreading propaganda. My earlier post was about their pre-revival characterization; I know their depiction softened up a lot during the 2010s. I guess you could connect the dots as far back as the Cell and Buu arcs with how Vegeta was already going against the stereotype - marginally so in Cell (in Cell he adhered to it more than he proved it wrong), heavily so in Buu. Even the Father of Bardock TV Special in 1990 was humanizing the saiyans somewhat, though they were still harsh and tribal. Suppose the only era where Saiyans were depicted as pure evil with no humanizing qualities whatsoever would be from October of 1988 (introduction of Radditz in the manga) to October 1990 (Bardock TV Special).

[L3anD3RStar]

Sorry for spreading propaganda. My earlier post was about their pre-revival characterization; I know their depiction softened up a lot during the 2010s. I guess you could connect the dots as far back as the Cell and Buu arcs with how Vegeta was already going against the stereotype - marginally so in Cell (in Cell he adhered to it more than he proved it wrong), heavily so in Buu. Even the Father of Bardock TV Special in 1990 was humanizing the saiyans somewhat, though they were still harsh and tribal. Suppose the only era where Saiyans were depicted as pure evil with no humanizing qualities whatsoever would be from October of 1988 (introduction of Radditz in the manga) to October 1990 (Bardock TV Special).

Haha, yeah, using the word “Propaganda” might be kind of strong, but I don’t know what else to call it. I don’t blame you. I bought the line about Saiyans all being violent and evil up until the story of Baby and the Tuffles, and that story… I know it makes no sense because it was King Kai telling the story and he’s supposed to be all-knowing but… the Saiyans are just so cartoonishly evil in that story that all I could think was, “who wrote this? Freeza?” And that idea just festered. It just seemed like, if you wanted to make the Saiyans look bad, this is the sort of story you’d spread around. And that got me thinking maybe the Saiyans were the targets of a very successful smear campaign, which even reached King Kai somehow. Maybe we are only hearing one side of the story.

[Yasai9001]

he Saiyans are just so cartoonishly evil in that story that all I could think was, “who wrote this? Freeza?”

LMFAO, nah, seriously, though. The likelihood of a whole race of people being evil inherently makes zero sense unless they're something otherworldly like Boo, but even then, Fat Boo learned to be good. Kid Boo was just chaos incarnate. The fact that people believed at one point that infant Saiyan children were evil and meant to conquer was stupid - that makes them not even human at all, and would negate everything about Goku since even a bump to the head wouldn't change his 'evil' ways if he was born evil. Even demons of the demon realm aren't all evil.

Broly is a mutant like Freeza in DBS, but Freeza was born evil, and either Kikono or Beriblu (I forget which), called him an evil mastermind. Thing about it, though, King Cold was evil too but he seemed to have far more reason and diplomacy than his son did. You were on the nose about them being cartoonishly evil, though. For if they truly were, then there would be no chance in ever redeeming Vegeta. At all.