Rereading One Piece I am fascinated by the Blue seas and I am trying to figure out what Bellemere was.
So all through One Piece we see the highest ranking marines in the East Blue was 1 commodore, Pudding Pudding. Then we saw three Captains: Morgan, Smoker and Nezumi.
So Pudding Pudding was likely the highest ranking individual stationed in the East Blue. If you want to go off US Army ranks to help equivalent those ranks, it would be a brigadier general, the lowest of the generals.
Now officers wear the coats with ‘justice’, so Bellemere was some rank of officer. Now according to the SBS in volume 24, officers starting at Lieutenant Commander start wearing suits under their jacket. Now we know not everyone follows that, but they do usually wear some kind of civilian clothes.
Bellemere had a standard uniform on though, so my bet is she was a lieutenant or lieutenant junior grade. Now how much respect would this get her in the East Blue? Well let’s look at another Lieutenant in the East Blue.
Now let’s use US Army ranks to help us again. This is equivalent to a Captain in the US Army. A Captain usually is the first time an officer is in command. From what we have seen in the East Blue, they are about halfway up the chain of the officers in the East Blue. So Fullbody shouldn’t be a person easily recognized by the public. But it does seem the average citizen of the East Blue has a lot of respect for the marines.
And in a world full of islands with pirates on the seas and bandits on the land, I can see why they see it that way. So maybe Bellemere was someone people in the East Blue would have recognized, but honestly I don’t think she had enough rank or accomplishments to do that.
On the other hand we see the marines don’t have a huge presence in the East Blue. We know of only 4 bases in the East Blue but sadly we don’t know enough about the other seas to judge that. We know the East Blue is seen as the lowest threat, so I imagine there are at least more bases and Vice Admirals in the other Blue’s.
Those are just some random thoughts.