What are Lion's Heart and Little King in Re:Zero? Regulus Corneas's power, explained

Modified Feb 13, 2025 20:30 GMT

What are Lion — Regulus Corneas (Image via White Fox)

Re:Zero season 3 episode 10 continued the battle of Reinhard and Subaru against Regulus. However, the tide seems to turn against the protagonist's side because Reinhard is pushed away from the battle. Fortunately, Subaru got a hint of Regulus' powers, which surprised the Authority of Greed user. So, what are the Lion's Heart and Little King abilities of Regulus?

As explained by Subaru in the episode, Lion's Heart is Regulus' ability to manipulate the time of his body and objects, and Little King is the ability to share the former ability with others. Alone, these abilities are useless, but collectively, they make Regulus close to invincible. However, the weakness of Lion's Heart might beat Regulus, as the protagonist claims.

Disclaimer: This article contains potential spoilers from the Re:Zero Light novel series.

Explaining the Lion's Heart and the Little King ability, Regulus' main weapon in Re:Zero

Regulus as seen in the anime (Image via White Fox)

Regulus, one of the main antagonists of Re:Zero, is one of the strongest characters solely because of the authority the Witch of Greed, Echidna granted him. The Authority of Greed is divided into two parts: the Lion's Heart and the Little King.

The Lion's Heart is the main ability of the Authority of Greed, granting Regulus the ability to manipulate his own time, making him invincible for a limited time, and also the objects he touches. However, the limiting factor of this ability is its time limit, as it can only be activated for about 5 seconds.

Emilia standing with Regulus' wives (Image via White Fox)

However, as Re:Zero's author Nagatsuki Tappei claims, Regulus' wives need to stay close enough to him as long as he can feel the love of his wives. This might hint that another way of beating Regulus would be to stray his wives away from him so far such that Regulus would be reverting to the '5-second' rule. So, both 'Lion's Heart' and 'Little King' work hand in hand to make Regulus invincible.

Lion's Heart ability can also manipulate the time of objects, just like he did against Emilia and Subaru in Re:Zero season 3 episode 10. Regulus stopped the time of a part of water, potentially carrying a tsunami in his hand and unleashing it onto his enemies.

Regulus using his Lion's Heart on water (Image via White Fox)

After this time limit, Regulus will start feeling pain inside his heart and might die of heart failure if prolonged to 10 seconds. However, this is where his Little King ability comes in. The Little King's ability allowed Regulus to share some of his 'Lion's Heart' with his wives. The more people shared these abilities, the more he would stray from needing a beating heart.

Keeping this in mind, Regulus spent a century collecting wives who would beat their hearts for Regulus, making him independent of the 5-second drawback. Logically, the only way to kill Reinhard would be to kill his wives and wait for the '5-second' drawback to kick in.

Final thoughts

Regulus's Authority of Greed makes him overpowered and a kind of his own. The crafting of his abilities was certainly one of the biggest masterclass feats of the author. Despite being an invincible and unbeatable villain, Regulus' life is still dependent on his wives' existence.

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Edited by Toshali Kritika