Degwin Sodo Zabi

is a fictional character in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam universe. He was the absolute dictator of the Principality of Zeon and came to power in UC 0068 after the suspicious death of Zeon Zum Deikun.
Rise to Power
Degwin was Zeon's chief of staff and claimed that on his deathbed, Zeon, with his dying words, declared Degwin his successor. Given this much, general consensus tends to automatically connect Degwin Zabi with the sudden death of Zeon Deikun, but nothing concrete has ever been uncovered.
Degwin initiated a purge of Deikun loyalists and declared Side 3 colony the Principality of Zeon and himself as Sovereign. He initiated a war with the Earth Federation and set his children up in high ranking positions.
War with the Federation
While initially fiercely promoting war with the Federation, Degwin is also consumed by the intrafamilial feuding between his ambitious children, most notably Gihren and Kycilia.
Also, Degwin never recovers from the death of his youngest and most unspoiled son Garma. He falls into a depression and leaves most of the day to day operations to Gihren, his eldest. As a result, Gihren effectively becomes the self-styled "führer" of Zeon, leaving Degwin as little more than a figurehead.
Although Gihren dismisses his father as a tired old man, Degwin does not hide his disgust for Gihren's ruthlessness. Never having any respect for Gihren's lofty ideals, Degwin once humiliated his son by stating that he would never be Zeon's idea of a Newtype but only a caricature of Adolf Hitler. And he anticipated that as with Hitler, Gihren's own followers will eventually want to kill him.
Death
Although Degwin gives Gihren approval for the Solar Ray laser project, Degwin is genuinely tired of war and arranges for a meeting with General Revil to discuss peace negotiations. When the two sides' fleets arrive at the neutral area for discussion, Gihren arranges for an "accidental" firing of the Solar Ray laser that incinerates his flagship, The Great Degwin, as well as the flagship of General Revil and much of their accompanying fleets. However, in the novelizations by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it is simply mentioned that he was dethroned on Zeon with no further details, suggesting that he survived the war.

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