Baskerville





Three-Headed Baskerville (３つ首のバスカビル Mittsu-Kubi no Basukabiru) is the gigantic, three-headed Chief Justice (裁判長 Saibanchō) on the island of Enies Lobby, in the service of the World Government and the Marines. He is a walking tribunal, and each of his three heads has a mind of its own: On the left and controllng the left hand is Left Baskerville, on the right and controlling the right hand is Right Baskerville, and in the middle is Center Baskerville, who prefers to call himself such things as "Center Freeway" and "Center Lone Mainline" instead of his actual name. In addition, each head has a distinct personality, and legal opinions to match: for example, Left Baskerville is in favor of punishing the Straw Hat Pirates because they are criminals, while Right Baskerville takes the opposite viewpoint and recommends letting them go. Center Baskerville, as his self-styled nicknames suggest, is a wild card: he consistently offers the "compromise" of execution, which is more extreme than either of the other two heads' viewpoints. This leads to Left and Right Baskerville yelling at him.

When they are chopped up by an attack from Paulie, it revealed that Baskerville is actually three people. Center Baskerville is a man with very large legs but small arms, and Left and Right have very large arms but small legs. Left and Right actually sit on Center's thighs. Right's real name is Bas, Left's real name is Kerville, and Center calls himself Princess.

Eiichirō Oda seems to have drawn from a number of British sources as inspiration for Baskerville. The character's name comes from the famous Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Oda also paid homage to the novel by having Baskerville's elite subordinates direct packs of military canines. Baskerville himself appears to be based substantially on the Three-Headed Knight in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which shares a general resemblance in costume and argues with itself in much the same manner as Baskerville does. Combined with the character's speech quirks and stereotypical British faces (particularly that of Right Baskerville), it seems abundantly clear that the idea for Baskerville was inspired by sources from the United Kingdom.