User blog comment:Neowitch/722 - Royally messed up Royalty/@comment-4904935-20130926010136/@comment-1595565-20130926032858

The biggest monkey wrench in this is the SBS picture of him as a kid. That aside, my guess is his situation was similar to Sabo's, where he failed to fall in line, the only difference being that his status let him get away with it. As for his joining the Shichibukai, for all we know he could have used his status as a World Noble to walk onto it. The position would solve two problems. It would justify leaving a bounty on a World Noble, and it would prevent the laws from coming into conflict with one another. How do you deal with someone with global diplomatic immunity committing deliberate acts of piracy? You bring him in under government protection and allow him to do it.