Bartholomew Kuma’s Bounty at 296,000,000 Berries

This figure pays for a rescue. Bartholomew Kuma had just handed back the throne of the Sorbet Kingdom, never asked for, offered him by the citizens after he demolished the royal palace single-handed, along with the man who had moved in to burn the homes of the elderly. He gave it up because Bekori was coming back, backed by the World Government and by a smear campaign built to make Kuma a despot. He went to sea alone to spare the country. Bekori was waiting with a Marine fleet; Kuma sank the whole armada, and that is the day he became a wanted pirate.

So the word Tyrant comes from the campaign, not from anything he did. It is the title of a man who governed as little as he could, left politics to his adviser Bulldog, and treated the old in a church in his kingdom's south.

What he did with the bounty was circle the world, island after island, looking for a cure for his daughter's Sapphire Scales: Weatheria, the Boin Archipelago, the Torino Kingdom, Tequila Wolf. The list is recognisable: when he scattered the Straw Hats at Sabaody rather than hand them to Kizaru, he sent them to places he had searched himself.

The price was not medical. Vegapunk could treat Bonney; Jaygarcia Saturn, eavesdropping, attached three terms — become a Warlord, become a cyborg, have his will erased — plus a ban on ever seeing her again. He took all of it. As a Warlord he wrote to her from every island, and a Cipher Pol agent tore the letters up before they arrived. His last conscious acts fit into a few minutes at Egghead: a directive in his programming to guard the Thousand Sunny until a Straw Hat came back, his memories left with Vegapunk in a paw bubble, and a request that the doctor wish Bonney a happy tenth birthday for him.