Ronan the Accuser (portrayed by Lee Pace) is a villainous character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing as the main antagonist of Guardians of the Galaxy. He was a Kree warlord who was obsessed with the purity of the Kree Empire, believing that Kree were superior to all others and should always remain so. However, the Kree signed a peace treaty with the planet of Xandar, a world they had previously been at war with for centuries. Ronan was disgusted by the treaty and refused to acknowledge it, determined to carry out the destruction of Xandar himself and allying himself with the Mad Titan Thanos in order to do so.
History[]
Seeking the Orb[]
In Thanos' quest to obtain the Infinity Stones, Ronan, who sought to bring about genocide against the Xandarian race, agreed to aid Thanos in his search for the Orb in exchange for Thanos' promise to attack the Xandarian homeworld. To aid him in his quest, Thanos send his daughters Gamora and Nebula to serve Ronan. Under the order of Thanos, Ronan led an attack on the homeworld of the warrior Drax the Destroyer. The population was randomly divided into two parts and one of them was slaughtered. Ronan personally killed Drax's wife, Hovat and his daughter, Kamaria. In the hunt for the Orb, Ronan discovered that it was hidden on Morag, he sent his soldier Korath the Pursuer and a small unit of Sakaarans to Morag to retrieve it from the Temple Vault.
On the Dark Aster, Ronan was dressed in his armour before he began a ritualistic killing of a member of the Nova Corps. When the Corpsman insisted that he would never be able to rule Xandar, Ronan told the Corpsman that he intended to cure Xandar before crushing his head with his Cosmi-Rod. As Ronan watched the Corpsman's blood draining away, Nebula informed him that Korath had returned from his search mission on Morag. Korath informed Ronan that the Orb had been taken from him by a Ravager outlaw who called himself Star-Lord; Korath explained that his sources had learned that Star-Lord intended to sell the Orb to a man named the Broker on Xandar. Ronan, unwilling to be denied his chance for vengeance and desiring not to incur the furious wrath of Thanos, made his decision and ordered Nebula to travel to Xandar and retrieve the Orb from Star-Lord, by any means necessary.
Gamora, however, insisted that she should be the one to go as she knew Xandar and Nebula would likely get herself killed. Ronan agreed and sent Gamora to Xandar, telling her not to fail in her mission. Ronan, however, was unaware that Gamora had decided to leave her life as a killer and planned on betraying him and Thanos by selling the orb to a third party: the Collector, using the money to escape from her family and her life of killing.
Soon, Ronan was informed that Gamora had been captured during her mission and incarcerated in the Nova Corps prison of Kyln. When the Mad Titan learned of Gamora's capture and betrayal, he summoned Ronan and his other daughter Nebula to the Sanctuary to discuss the recent events. Although Ronan still insisted that Gamora was likely simply captured and was still planning on delivering the Orb to them, The Other informed him that Thanos had sources inside the Kyln who confirmed Gamora's betrayal and demanded that he could speak to him immediately in person.
Once they arrived at the Sanctuary, the Mad Titan's servant, the Other, spoke for Thanos, accusing Ronan of being the cause of Gamora's betrayal and demanded Ronan show Thanos respect. However, Ronan insisted that Thanos was to blame for everything that had gone wrong. When the Other's taunts began to annoy him, Ronan killed him by breaking his neck with his Cosmi-Rod, demanding that Thanos face him and take the situation more seriously.
Thanos was unaffected by his servant's death; however, he mocked and threatened Ronan, claiming that his politics bored him and his entire demeanour was pathetic. Once Ronan was unable to speak out of fear of the Mad Titan, Thanos insisted that he would still honour their agreement to destroy Xandar, but if he failed him again, then he would bathe the starways in his blood. Nebula then confirmed that Ronan would never win a war against Thanos.
To Knowhere and Back[]
Thanos ordered Ronan and Nebula to raid the Kyln in order to locate the missing Orb and capture the fugitive Gamora. By the time they arrived with their army of Sakaarans, Gamora had already escaped from the prison with their prize along with her new allies as she continued her quest to sell the Orb to the Collector and escape her life of violence and death that Ronan had forced upon her.
Furious that he was once again failing in his quest to locate the Orb for the Mad Titan, Ronan ordered Nebula to capture and torture the guards in an attempt to learn Gamora's location but found the guard did not know. Realizing that the Nova Corps was coming to retake the prison and that none of the staff had any information, Ronan ordered Nebula and their Sakaaran soldiers to cleanse the prison and have everybody inside executed to keep them silent.
Ronan and his subordinates eventually tracked Gamora and her allies to the planet Knowhere, home of the Collector, thanks to a message from Drax the Destroyer who desired revenge for Ronan killing his wife and daughter years earlier. When Gamora attempted to flee, Ronan turned to pursue only to be confronted and attacked by the furious Drax and so had Nebula pursue her instead while he stayed behind. Drax launched numerous ferocious attacks upon Ronan, but Ronan was easily able to evade Drax's attacks, as his furious rage made him predictable and foolish. As Drax continued to attack his foe, Ronan overpowered him several times while landing several powerful strikes of his own and soon disarmed him of his knives. To prove a point, Ronan even allowed Drax to repeatedly punch him in the stomach to no effect, only watching while Drax's furious rage continued to grow.
Eventually, Ronan beat Drax half to death and slammed his body onto the ground, claiming that he could not recall slaughtering his family and would unlikely ever remember killing him either. With Drax the so called Destroyer defeated and unable to defend himself, Ronan left him to drown in a vat of Celestial spinal fluid. Nebula then called Ronan, having retrieved the Orb and, with this information, Ronan returned to the Dark Aster to claim his victory.
With the Orb now in his possession, Ronan returned to the Dark Aster and contacted Thanos to report his success. However, when Thanos demanded that Ronan bring him the Orb immediately, Ronan told him that he had reconsidered their deal now he was aware that the Orb contained one of the Infinity Stones and questioned his need for Thanos' assistance in his quest for revenge. Nebula handed the Orb over to Ronan who, ignoring the demands of Thanos and Korath's fears, ripped it apart in order to reveal the powerful stone within. Unafraid of its power, Ronan ripped the Power Stone from the Orb and consumed its energy, causing explosions all around him before he attached it to the Cosmi-Rod in order to control its force, becoming more powerful than even the Mad Titan himself, who watched in silence at the betrayal.
As a result, Ronan decided that he no longer needed Thanos' help in invading Xandar and so severed ties with the Titan. Ronan then roared at his former master that, for his insults and mockery, after he ensured that Xandar was destroyed in the name of the Kree Empire, he would be coming to destroy him next. Nebula, having resented Thanos' treatment of her over the years, joined Ronan and vowed to help him destroy a thousand planets if he destroyed her monstrous adoptive father, starting with Xandar.
The Battle of Xandar[]
As they approached Xandar ready to begin the destruction of the planet, the Dark Aster was confronted by the Guardians of the Galaxy along with the Ravagers, led by Yondu Udonta. Still confident in his power, Ronan remained calm and watched as the Ravagers' Eclector fired a wall of flame at the ship before attempting to breach the side, with Nebula sending out their own fleet of Necrocraft to battle them above the skies of Xandar while Ronan looked on, remaining confident even when the Nova Corps arrived to assist the Ravagers in the battle, forming a blockade around the Dark Aster to stop its movement.
Ronan ordered that the Dark Aster continue pushing forward while his Sakaarans battle the attacks in the sky and when the battleship was boarded by the Guardians after Kraglin Obfonteri had breached the side of the ship, Ronan sent Nebula to kill them as he believed their only focus should be to reach the planet's surface so he could destroy it. The Nova Corps stalled the ship's approach on Xandar while Rocket Raccoon and the Ravagers protected the civilians.
Unfazed by his enemies' attack and filled with more power than all of them combined, Ronan responded by standing before the fleet of Nova Corps ships and Accusing them before sentencing them to destruction. Ronan then used the Stone's power to fire a powerful blast from the Cosmi-Rod which destroyed the Nova Corps' entire fleet, as the burning remains of the army flew to the ground below and Ronan looked at the destruction with a sense of satisfaction as he saw the pain he was causing to his enemies.
While continuing to watch the battle unfold, Ronan found himself confronted by Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, and Groot after they had defeated Nebula and Korath. The Guardians subdued his bodyguards and shot Ronan in the chest with the Hadron Enforcer, causing a small explosion. However, Ronan was barely affected by the blast and was merely knocked off his feet. Ronan then easily overpowered the group with a single shockwave blast from his hammer.
Drax attempted to fight Ronan once again on his own, but Ronan simply grabbed his throat and began to choke him as he lifted him off the ground while mocking him about his dead family, claiming that he recalled their screams which he viewed as pitiful. However, before Ronan could finally destroy the team, Rocket Raccoon crashed his ship into the Dark Aster, knocking over Ronan, heavily damaging the ship, and causing it to crash.
Final Showdown[]
The Dark Aster crashed to the surface of Xandar, as Groot sacrificed his life to save his fellow teammates from the explosion. However, Ronan was unharmed as he walked calmly out of his ship's wreckage, to the horror of the citizens looking on. Rocket Raccoon furiously attempted to attack him in revenge for killing his dear friend Groot, but Ronan easily used an energy blast to shoot him away.
Smiling to himself at the desperate and pathetic attempts to stop him that had been proved to be worthless, Ronan mocked the Guardians of the Galaxy and prepared to unleash the Stone's power to annihilate Xandar. The moment before he could unleash the power, he became distracted by Star-Lord, who had challenged him to a dance-off. Genuinely confused by this turn of events, the distraction allowed Rocket enough time to repair the Hadron Enforcer allowing Drax to fire it at him, destroying Ronan's Cosmi-Rod and disarming him, leaving the Power Stone hovering in the air before him.
In a desperate move to gain the advantage in the battle and kill each other, both Ronan and Quill attempted to catch the Stone during the split second it hung unprotected in the air before them. Despite Ronan's best efforts to regain the powerful weapon and complete his plan, however, Quill was a moment faster and quickly caught the Stone while Gamora called out in horror, as she was aware of what the Stone's power would do to an ordinary human.
The moment the Power Stone was touched by Quill's hand, it unleashed a massive amount of energy, causing a shockwave which threw Ronan backwards as flames engulfed their group. As Ronan watched on with a sense of delight, the Stone's incredible and near uncontrollable power almost killed Quill as his body was slowly ripped apart from the inside by the Power Stone. Ronan then laughed as he watched Quill screaming in horrific pain, believing that once Quill was dead, he could then reclaim the Power Stone.
However, Ronan witnessed Gamora, Drax and Rocket come together as a team and grab Quill's hand, helping with the burden of the Stone's power and gaining complete control over it. Ronan looked on in horror and demanded to know how that was possible for a human to survive such power, and Quill informed him it was because together they were a team, before directing the Stone's energy at Ronan, destroying his body and killing him.