A Path Through Three Prisons--The path of Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy

This was originally published as a three-part series at Mockingbird five years ago as a critical analysis not just of The Dark Knight Rises but of the Dark Knight trilogy as a whole. My first guest piece for Mockingbird was an analysis of Toy Story 3 that was also an analysis of the Toy Story franchise that far, which was a trilogy at the time.  I would eventually write a long-form analysis of the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy of Edgar Wright later on, too, which meant that I ended up writing a trilogy of three-part analyses of cinematic trilogies, only two of which have remained trilogies in terms of announced titles. 

Thanks to Nolan's film being released in 2012 the 20th anniversary of Batman: the animated series was more or less sidelined by comparison within the DC media scene of that year. Considering what a revolutionary show the series proved to be for American mainstream animation I would have thought there would have been more about the series but so it goes.  For the 25th anniversary there has been a little bit more. 

So I got the idea of republishing all of the older criticism I wrote about Batman: the animated series and about Batman more generally for Mockingbird as a way to note the 25th anniversary of the series.  This will lack the visual panache and artwork of the mbird versions of the essays but I can present the essays in the continuous long-form idiom they were intended to be in. 

But before we get to that, here's "A Path Through Three Prisons".

http://www.mbird.com/2012/07/a-path-through-three-prisons-bruce-wayne-in-nolans-batman-trilogy-pt-1/
http://www.mbird.com/2012/08/a-path-through-three-prisons-bruce-wayne-in-nolans-batman-trilogy-pt-2/
http://www.mbird.com/2012/08/a-path-through-three-prisons-bruce-wayne-in-nolans-batman-trilogy-pt-3/


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However strong and intelligent and wealthy and resourceful Bruce Wayne may be his path is continually marked by failure. In fact, in each of Christopher Nolan's three Batman films we see a Bruce Wayne who journeys into three prisons in which he is confronted with his own guilt and weakness.  In the first prison he is lost and is invited to take a path that will make him a legend. In the second prison he is manipulated into a game that brings him failure and infamy.  To the third prison he is sent, broken, to die and yet from this prison he emerges to become the savior of his beloved city, a city that many people don't believe is worth saving. In each prison Bruce Wayne is invited into something but it is only in the third prison that what he is invited into is in any way liberating. While Batman may be a persona created to battle injustice Batman is forged in prisons and in these prisons we are shown glimpses of what Bruce Wayne scarcely realizes he is struggling to be free from.

THE FIRST PRISON: BATMAN BEGINS

Batman begins, literally and figuratively, with Bruce Wayne in a prison somewhere in Asia. He is fighting and defeating six men who are trying to kill him.  Locked in solitary confinement Bruce discovers that he is not alone.  Bruce is asked, "Are you so desperate to fight criminals that you'll lock yourself in to fight them one at a time?" An enigmatic man named Ducard tells Bruce that whatever he was looking for he has become truly lost; he also tells Bruce that the means to fight injustice exists within the League of Shadows.  If Bruce will join Ra's al Ghul he has an opportunity to discover what he is really seeking. When Bruce asks, sincerely, "And what was I looking for?" Ducard says "Only you can know that."

Of course we know Bruce accepts the offer and he arrives at the residence of Ra's al Ghul saying that he wants the means to fight injustice, a way to use fear against those who prey on the fearful. Ducard replies that to manipulate fear in others you must first master your own.  Ducard sees that Bruce is not afraid of him. What, then, is Bruce afraid of?

We are shown through various nightmares and flashbacks that Bruce is afraid of bats.  We are also shown how this fear of bats played a fateful role in the death of Bruce Wayne's parents.  The child Bruce Wayne feels responsible for the murder of his parents because of his own fears. "Do you still feel responsible for your parents' death?" Ducard asks Wayne.  Wayne replies, "My anger outweighs my guilt."  As training continues Ducard tells Wayne, "You have learned to bury your guilt with anger. I will teach you to confront it."

Ducard tells Bruce that his parents' death was not his fault but the fault of his father who had neither the courage nor will to do what was necessary. When Bruce objects that his father was untrained in fighting and the mugger had a gun Ducard replies that the training is nothing and the will is everything.  But if this were true why would Ducard waste so much time training Bruce Wayne?

As training continues Ducard tells Wayne, "You're stronger than your father" Bruce, again, objects, "You never knew my father." Ducard explains, "But I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief until the memory of your loved one is just a poison in your veins, and one day you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed so you'd be spared your pain."  Ducard shares that once he had a wife, who was taken from him.  "Like you, I was forced to learn there are those without decency who must be fought without hesitation, without pity. Your anger gives you great power [Bruce] but, if you let it, it will destroy you, as it almost did me."

When Wayne asks what changed Ducard's path he receives a one word explanation, vengeance.  But Bruce Wayne can't avenge his parents' death because Joe Chill was murdered for being willing to testify against Gotham's mob king Carmine Falcone.  When Bruce confesses to his childhood friend Rachel Dawes that he spent years wanting to kill Joe Chill for killing his parents, Dawes slaps Bruce and says "Your father would be ashamed of you." Bruce stands on the pier and is filled with fury and self-loathing at the realization that, in his anger and desperation, killing Joe Chill would have transformed him into the kind of desperate and amateurish mugger who killed his parents. Bruce Wayne may be full of a hatred that desires to kill but Wayne can't permit himself to kill.  Ducard was wrong, Bruce's anger has not buried his guilt, it is informed by his guilt. Ducard's path is one of finding a scapegoat so that anger may be justified and guilt averted. Ducard has not taught Bruce to confront his guilt at all and Bruce cannot escape the guilt he feels. 

Yet as Ducard finishes Bruce's training he tells him: "You've traveled the world to understand the criminal mind and conquer your fears, but a crminal is not complicated. What you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power, your anger, the drive to do great or terrible things." We know that Ducard has a vision for Bruce Wayne to do terrible things, destroying Gotham as a way to symbolically move humanity toward a "better" path.

Now it can be easy to underestimate the significance of Ducard's instruction to Bruce Wayne.  How did Ducard teach Bruce Wayne to confront his guilt? He blamed the victims of murder for their own deaths!  Ducard also tells Bruce Wayne that his anger, an anger that horrifies Bruce with its murderous intensity, is what gives him power and makes him strong.  Bruce is afraid of the murderous rage in his heart and wants to channel it into something positive, something that will save rather than destroy lives.  Ducard's tutelage includes physical conditioning and combat training but increasingly comes to inclue insults and judgments against Bruce's parents. 

When Bruces' training is complete and he is told that the League of Shadows is ready to destroy Gotham.  Just as Ducard took vengeance on those who took his wife from him the League of Shadows plans to take vengeance on Gotham as a symbol of human corruption, injustice and decadence.  If the city that symbolizes human failure is destroyed then balance will be restored.  Bruce refuses to accept this path. Ducard warns Bruce, "Compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share."  Bruce replies "That's why it's so important. It separates us from them." 

By now we should all know that Ducard turns out to be Ra's al Ghul (or you need to see Batman Begins already).  Without reciting the plot points in detail let's consider some contrasts between the path that Ducard took and the path that Wayne took because these contrasts play out through the rest of Nolan's trilogy. 

Let's start at the beginning of each man's journey. Ducard chose to become Ra's al Ghul and wove a massive and fraudulent legend about the League of Shadows as a society devoted to checking human corruption over millenia. Ra's al Ghul, however, is not immortal but, as Wayne puts it, uses a cheap set of parlor tricks to conceal his true identity. These parlor tricks were what Ducard used to recruit Wayne into the League of Shadows. Ducard claimed that the path of Ra's al Ghul saved him and his associates from the darkest corners of their hearts but Ra's al Ghul merely offered scapegoats through which murderous impulses could be considered noble. Ducard spins a giant fable about Ra's al Ghul being a legend, immortal, a name feared by the criminal underworld. These parlor tricks were to keep Ducard's real identity secret.

By contrast, Wayne's path toward becoming Batman has within confession. "It's my fault" Bruce says to Alfred after he's seen his parents die. As an adult Bruce confesses to Rachel, "All these years I wanted to kill him [Joe Chill] and now I can't." Ducard can recognize what he considers the guilt of others but never his own. Bruce Wayne's path is a recognition of guilt. The dual identity of Ducard served to protect Ducard from discovering who he is while Bruce Wayne adopted his dual identity to protect those he loves.

Wayne does not differ from Ducard with respect to guilt and the motive for a dual identity.  Ducard's path as Ra's al Ghul led him to make disciples, Bruce Wayne's path as Batman began by being a disciple. Wayne's journey as Batman continues not by recruiting others to follow him but by seeking out mentors. Relying on Alfred Pennyworth, his father's servant, Bruce begins to assemble the tools to become Batman.  Turning  to his father's colleague Lucius Fox, Bruce finds the weapons he needs for his war on crime and finds a man he trusts with managing Wayne Enterprises. Famously, Batman finds an ally in James Gordon, one of the few good cops in Gotham when Wayne returns from abroad. It was Gordon who comforted Bruce Wayne the night his parents were murdered.   It is no mere coincidence that in these men Bruce has found people who share his father's values and are able to be surrogate fathers to him. 

Without these mentors Bruce Wayne would have died of endless panic attacks at the hands of the Scarecrow before the League of Shadows destroyed Gotham by poisoning its water.  But with Fox, Pennyworth, Gordon and Rachel Dawes to help him Bruce Wayne is able to defeat the League of Shadows.  Having been chastened by the realization that saving Ducard's life meant he had saved the life of a genocidal terrorist Bruce tells Ducard, "I won't kill you but I don't have to save you." Bruce is willing to let Ducard be broken by the results of his own schemes. Bruce Wayne believes that in Batman he has found the persona and tools to battle darkness and evil in Gotham.  The truth he he has only managed to defeat evil that has come to Gotham from without.  Leagues of Shadows ultimately pale compared to the heart of darkness within the city itself. It was only fitting that Nolan's second film would be the dark night of the soul for the Dark Knight.

 

 

THE SECOND PRISON: THE DARK KNIGHT

The Dark Knight opens with a swift and violent bank robbery masterminded by the Joker. Various masked robbers engineer each step of an intricately planned robbery and double-cross each other to their deaths until, finally, the Joker kills the last hired thug and makes off with millions of the mob's money. We are shown that a new breed of criminal has emerged in Gotham.  Bruce Wayne is about to discover that Batman's training and tools are inadequate to this new and improved criminal that has sprung up within his beloved city.

The mob leaders are desperate.  Gordon and Batman have shut down all of their money laundering operations and only the services of Chinese national Lau remain.  Lau offers a plan that will preserve the mob's money.  Gordon and Batman form an uneasy alliance with new district attorney Harvey Dent to finally shut down the mob.  But Dent and Gordon are uneasy about each other.  Dent distrusts Gordon's officers, all of whom he investigated in Internal Affairs.  Gordon distrusts Dent because Dent's office has spies for mobster Salvator Maroni tipping off the mob to Gordon's plans.  Batman, meanwhile, is convinced that the highest priority should be finally defeating the mob.

But Gordon is unsure.  A new criminal with a taste for the theatrical has emerged, the Joker.  Gordon asks Batman what he thinks and Batman replies, "One man or the mob?  He can wait."  Batman doesn't know that the Joker has offered to kill him for the mob and in exchange wants half of the mob's money. The mob leaders want to trust Lau's plan to protect their money but Joker points out that Batman has no jurisdiction and will find Lau even in China and make him squeal.  Then the mob will get hammered by the cops and lawyers even more.

Sure enough, Batman pulls off a daring kidnapping mission that brings Lau back into Gotham where he squeals, letting Gordon arrest more than 500 mobsters.  In desperation the mob agrees to Joker's offer without realizing what they have brought on themselves. 

Joker announces that Batman must turn himself in and unmask himself or people will die.  Joker does this by way of killing one of the various men who have made themselves into Batmen to fight criminals.  Joker begins to kill judges and lawyers the mob is afraid of and plans to personally kill Dent.  Dent, however, is saved by Bruce Wayne, who confronts the Joker as Batman.  Joker improvises an escape plan by dropping Rachel Dawes off of the tower where Wayne has been holding a fundraising party for Dent.  At length the cat and mouse game culminates in Batman and Gordon capturing the Joker and putting him in a holding cell.  It is in this second prison cell that Bruce Wayne has his famous conversation with the Joker.  The Joker, unlike Bruce Wayne, has no other alias or name.  He has no dual identity and though he can scheme better than anyone the schemes themselves do not really interest him. What interests him, endlessly, is the Batman.

Famously, the Joker meets Batman and begins by correcting his interrogation and torturing methods.  "Never start with the head. The victim gets all fuzzy. He can't feel the next--see?"  Already we can see that Batman is hopelessly in over his head and doesn't realize it yet.  There is nothing in what Ducard taught Bruce Wayne here.  Batman comes to the Joker confident of the Joker's guilt but the Joker turns the tables on him--Batman's dithering on turning himself in gave the Joker the opportunity to kill. "I wanted to see what you'd do and you didn't disappoint. You let five people die.  And then you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me that's cold."  The Joker has deftly pinned the guilt for the death of five people on Batman as much as himself.  

Joker shares that he never had the slightest interest in killing Batman.  He'd strung the "mob fools" along with a story they wanted to hear. If the Joker didn't have Batman he'd have no one to play with.  Of Gotham's citizens Joker says "You see their morals, their code, it's a bad joke, dropped a tthe first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down these `civilized' people will each each other." As soon as Gotham doesn't need Batman they will reject him. 

Bruce Wayne has discovered too late that theatricality and deception are useless weapons against a man like the Joker. For theatricality and deception Batman is no match for the Joker. Alfred warned Bruce that this was not a man who could be bought off, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with.  The Joker laughs at Batman's methods and motives.  "You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength."

Where Ducard invited Bruce Wayne on to a path the Joker drags Batman kicking and screaming into an impossible game. With only minutes left Joker tells Batman that killing is making a choice, choosing one life over another, and that now Batman has to choose whether to save Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes, his blushing bride-to-be.  Joker tells Batman where to find both Dawes and Dent but he's lied about who is trapped where.  Batman goes to rescue Rachel but discovers Harvey Dent. Gordon and his team go to rescue Dent but don't arrive in time to save Rachel from being incinerated.

Batman's capture of the Joker should have been his greatest victory but the Joker has transformed it into Batman's most humiliating and heartbreaking defeat.  Dawes dies and Dent is savagely burned.  Realizing his lies and schemes cost Rachel her life Dent is furious but, like Ducard, he turns his wrath outward.  He blames Gordon for not realizing how corrupt his team was.  Dent accepts the derogatory nickname Two-Face that Gordon's crooked cops came up with for him while he worked at Internal Affairs. Dent goes on a killing spree while Gotham is terrorized by the Joker.  Though Batman stops the Joker from blowing up two ferries full of Gothamites the Joker retorts, "You didn't think I'd bet everything on the battle for Gotham's soul in a fistfight with you?  No, you need an ace in the hole.  Mine's Harvey." 

Joker tells Batman, "I took Gotham's white knight and I brought him down to our level."  While Batman and Joker do battle over the fate of thousands of Gothamites Harvey Dent cuts a path of death as Two-Face across the city.  He kills cops and mobsters who double-crossed him and Rachel and makes his way back to Gordon's family.  Batman arrives in time to save Gordon and stop Two-Face from killing James Gordon Jr., but at a terrible price.  The Joker predicted that Batman would break his one rule and it proved true--Bruce Wayne had to push Harvey Dent off a precipice to stop him from killing a child.

In the prison cell Joker told Batman, "They're only as good as the world allows them to be." When Batman tells Dent that what happened was not an accident and that Dent, Gordon, and Batman are responsible Dent obliges by shooting Batman and prepares to kill Gordon's son.  Harvey Dent was only Gotham's white knight for as long as he could make his own luck and once he couldn't he chose to become Two-Face. Because Dent's murderous spree would compromise all the arrests he made of mobsters Gordon frets that Gotham will lose hope.  Batman and Gordon had bet everything on Dent and dent turned out to be a selfish, murdering monster in the end.  "The Joker won", Gordon says despairingly.  In his final hours Dent tells Batman, "You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time but you were wrong." 

Having let Dent take the fall for Batman, Batman decides to take the fall for Dent, to accept responsibility for Dent's crimes and for the death of Harvey Dent.  Bruce Wayne doesn't want the city he loves to give up hope and he concludes that "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more, to have their faith rewarded."  This is a deeply disturbing and ambivalent ending.  Batman and Gordon gamble on building a new peace for Gotham on a lie.  Unlike Ducard Bruce Wayne chooses to become the scapegoat rather than find a scapegoat but by founding the peace of Gotham on deception Bruce Wayne shows that he has learned the lessons of Ducard too well and does not realize that he cannot bear the weight of these lies he and Gordon promote to preserve the peace of the city. Batman has "won" against the Joker and Two-Face but these victories are horrible ones.  Batman has to promote a lie so that the Joker cannot win and he stopped Two-Face by killing him.  In another terrible irony the Joker tells Batman "You truly are incorruptible" but the Joker's mercurial schemes and killings have, in fact, corrupted the Dark Knight. 

In the superhero genre we have been presented time and again with a villain telling him he must choose between one life or the other.  In earlier films the superhero gets to have it both ways.  Not so in the Dark Knight. Here Bruce Wayne fails to save the woman he loves and fails to save the district attorney, who then becomes a vengeful killer with a death wish.  Bruce laments to Alfred "Batman was meant to be a symbol to inspire good, not madness, not death" and in the prison cell with the Joker Bruce Wayne is confronted with a terrible reality, that his weapons of deception and theatricality are useless against the Joker.  Eight years later Bane will wonder which would break first, Bruce Wayne's soul or body.  Bane fools himself into thinking that he has managed to break both.  Bruce's spirit wasn't broken by yet another overconfident scheme from yet another member of the League of Shadows. Bruce Wayne's spirit was broken by the realization that the only way to "win" against the madness and killing of the Joker and Two-Face was promoting a lie. The Dark Knight doesn't rise until he stops trying to outsmart the truth and lets it have its day. 

 

THE THIRD PRISON: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

In the third Nolan film eight years have passed since the events of The Dark Knight.  Bruce Wayne has been physically and emotionally battered by his campaign against crime as Batman, and has gone into seclusion and self-imposed exile.  He pines for the loss of Rachel Dawes, believing that she was going to wait for him, not realizing she had chosen Harvey Dent.  To keep Harvey Dent's work from being undone by his murderous spree as Two-Face Bruce Wayne has Batman accept responsibility for Dent's crimes.  Using Dent's reputation as a crusader the Dent Act is passed that allows Gordon to arrest and imprison without parole a thousand men connected to organized crime.  But as an increasingly frustrated Alfred tells Bruce Wayne, "Maybe it's time to stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day."

                                                                                                                 
That day turns out to be terrible.  From the sewers of Gotham a terrorist calling himself Bane emerges, who claims to be the new leader of the League of Shadows.  Where Batman forged an alliance with Jim Gordon Bane forms an alliance with John Daggett, who has been working for years to take over Wayne Enterprises.  Bruce Wayne sunk half his fortune into a cold fusion reactor and mothballed it, costing his company so much money it no longer funds the orphanages in which a young cop named John Blake lived after his parents died. Although Bruce would like to blame Lucius Fox for ruining Wayne Enterprises Fox tells Wayne the awkward truth, "Actually, Mr. Wayne, you did." Lucius asks Wayne to humor him so that he can show Wayne an arsenal of tools Batman would have at his disposal.  Bruce is impressed but says with a smile, "I'm retired."

 

It is John Blake who appears at Bruce Wayne's home telling him that Bane is threat enough to bring the Batman out of retirement.  Blake tells Wayne that he knew years ago that Bruce was Batman.  Blake's mother died when he was young and unable to remember it, "But a few years later when my dad was killed over gambling debt, I remember that just fine."  Blake saw through Wayne's facade even as a child.  Few people know what it's like to be angry inside your bones, Blakes tells Wayne--they "understand" but they don't know how it feels and after a while they want the angry little kid to just move on.  But Blake knows that the truth is you can't just move on and that Wayne, like him, is in the same place. 

Bruce Wayne takes up the mantle of Batman but this time it is hardly a matter of choice.  Bane's revival of the League of Shadows is a threat that the police are no match for.  Alfred fears that Bruce Wayne wants to die in a final battle with Bane and leaves him.  An early attack on Gotham's stock market allows Bane to use identity fraud to take every cent from Bruce Wayne's name and ruin Wayne Enterprises.  In a desperate move to keep John Daggett from taking over his company Bruce entrusts his company to philanthropist Miranda Tate. 

Bruce is beginning to discover that the people he has trusted most are telling him terrible things he doesn't want to hear.  Alfred is so desperate to prevent Bruce from donning the cape and cowl to stop Bane he tells Bruce the truth about Rachel Dawes, that she chose Harvey Dent over Bruce and that he hid this from him to spare him pain.  Lucius Fox tells Bruce that he is responsible for getting cold feet about activating a fusion reactor and that this has put his company in jeapordy.  Bruce gets forced to realize that his decisions have not been helping Gotham or his company.  He has been trying to hold on to the life he thinks he has and does not know that he is about to lose it.

Batman returns to stop Bane but Bruce Wayne can't keep control of his company.  Bane's identity theft scheme (set up by John Daggett with the super-thief Selina Kyle) has put Bruce in such bad repute even Lucius Fox has to concede that Bruce Wayne's publicly documented decisions (even if fraudulent) have meant he can't have any controlling influence in his family's company.  Bruce is left with no money, a tarnished reputation, and a body that is not up to a fight with Bane.  Bruce willingly went into battle before and now goes, Alfred fears, to die. 

When the battle finally comes Bane reveals that he knows Bruce Wayne is Batman.  He declares that theatricality and deception are powerful agents to the uninitiated but to those in the League of Shadows these are nothing.  "You merely use the darkness," Bane taunts, "I was born in it. I did not see the light until I became a man and I saw that it was blindness."  Bane savagely beats Bruce and breaks his back.  Bane has also discovered the hidden armory of weapons Lucius Fox made to hide Wayne Enterprises weapons prototypes from others.  Bane uses this hidden armory to begin a reign of terror within Gotham and uses the fusion reactor as a way to simultaneously isolate and then destroy the city.  The tools that Bruce Wayne was afraid would be turned into weapons get turned into weapons anyway.  Sold out by Selina Kyle so that she won't be killed by Bane, Batman is unmasked and beaten nearly to death.  It is at this point that Bruce Wayne journeys into his third and final prison, his body broken by Bane and his soul still stained by the false peace he and Gordon wrested from the crimes of the Joker and Two-Face.

Bane dumps Bruce Wayne into the prison he once languished in. Bane tells Bruce that there can be no true despair without hope.  A man who does not fear death cannot be punished by death and so Bane resolves to crush Bruce Wayne's soul be destroying his beloved city and selling them the false hope that he is there to liberate them from corruption and injustice.  Only after Gotham has been reduced to ashes will Bane let Bruce Wayne die.  This is, of course, the classic sadistic weakness of super-villains in virtually every movie.  This by itself would tip us off to the possibility that Bane is not who he claims to be.  He claims to be the League of Shadows in the flesh, come to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny.  In a delirium of pain as his back is being reset, Bruce Wayne has a vision of Ducard explaining that he obtained immortality through a son, Bane.  The prisoners paid to keep Bruce Wayne alive have begun to furtively share stories of  a mercenary who secretly married the daughter of a warlord. The warlord was angry and decided to throw the mercenary in prison but his daughter insisted on taking her husband's place.  There she was pregnant with the mercenary's child. She died in childbirth but the child grew up in the prison and eventually escaped.  Bruce deduces that Bane is the child, and has taken up control of the League of Shadows to complete what Ducard could not.

Bruce begins to train his body for battle and is told by an imprisoned doctor, "You think that because you don't fear death this makes you strong. It makes you weak."  In the earlier prisons Bruce Wayne was forced to recognize he was lost and powerless.  In this prison he is told that what he thought made him powerful robbed him of power.  Bruce answers, "I'm not afraid. I'm angry. I don't want to die here while my city burns with no one to save it."  If Bruce is going to die it won't be in this prison, he'd rather die trying to save the city he loves and the people in it than to just die. 

Up until now Bruce Wayne's weapons as Batman relied on what he was taught by Ducard.  Only in this third prison has he learned the truth.  Ducard claimed that evil men took his wife, his great love from him.  The truth was that Ducard willingly let his wife take his place in a prison so he could continue his mercenary work.  Bruce has learned the full extent to which the "legend" of Ra's al Ghul was a massive lie created by Ducard to make himself more than a man. 

Ducard told Bruce that Ra's al Ghul saved him from the darkest corners of his own heart but the truth revealed in the third prison is different--Ducard used the path of Ra's al Ghul and his fabricated legend as a self-deluding rationale for defending his own thirst for murder.  It was easier to blame his father-in-law than himself for his wife dying in prison. The truth has its day not only for Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon but even for Ducard, years after his death.  He is finally shown up to be the deluded, deceiving terrorist ideologue he could never admit to being.

Bruce manages to escape the prison and returns to defeat Bane but does not realize his discoveries have not ended.  The true child of Ra's al Ghul is not Bane but Miranda Tate, named Talia by her mother.  For years Talia hated her father for letting her mother die in prison.  Ducard returned to wreak vengeance but by then it was too late.  Talia escaped the prison at a young age and fled to her father and her father trained both her and Bane to be members of the League of Shadows.  But Ducard was ashamed of Bane's disfiguration and affection for Talia. He could not accept either of them and so excommunicated them from the League of Shadows.  Until Ducard died at Batman's hands Talia wanted to kill him but after his death she chose to champion his cause and achieve what he could not.  Where everything Bruce Wayne fought for was motivated by love of his parents and his city, Talia took on the identity of Miranda Tate to complete her father's work as a perverse way of simultaneously honoring him but bringing spite to his name. Her best revenge on her long-dead father would be to succeed where he failed. 

Bruce Wayne has discovered, however, that however ugly the truth may be it can still set you free. As Batman he joins forces with Gordon, John Blake, and Selina Kyle, all of whom told him things he didn't want to hear, and together they are able to stop Miranda Tate and Bane from destroying Gotham.  Bruce spent years hiding tools he was afraid would become weapons.  When they end up being used as weapons anyway Bruce is drawn out of himself and out of his self-imposed exile.  Though Bane and Talia presumed to have broken Bruce's spirit they broke only his body.  When terrible truths came to light about the lies about Dent Bruce is not broken, the truth sets him free.  Gordon's inadvertant confession through the scheming that Bane intended to break the city catalyzes both Gordon and Bruce Wayne to redouble their efforts to save Gotham even if Gotham doesn't deserve it. 

Bruce comes to discover that the monster he created to fight crime has become a prison for him and that it has broken him.  In Selina Kyle he has discovered a kindred spirit and by the end of this trilogy Bruce has discovered that the greatest prison he has needed to break free from has been the corrupt and terrible tutelage of Ducard and Ducard's legacy that set him on the path to being Batman to begin with.  In Selina's mockery Bruce is able to hear a rebuke that was given to him by Carmine Falcone decades earlier, "You don't know desperate. You're Bruce Wayne, prince of Gotham. You'd have to go a thousand miles before you met someone who didn't know your name."  Selina mocks Bruce's unrealistic belief that he has helped the city, not knowing that she is dancing with Batman.  Yet Bruce chooses to trust in the goodness of a woman who cons and betrays him and in this Bruce resembles his father Thomas Wayne, who chose to believe in the best and trust a city whose residents gunned him down.

And Bruce Wayne, as Batman, has unwittingly gained a disciple in John Blake, who not only discovers that Wayne is Batman but takes up the mantle after helping Wayne defeat the League of Shadows.  Where Ducard made disciples to bring death Wayne made a disciple without realizing he had, a disciple who came to him to remind him of who he truly was when Bruce himself had forgotten what he was really fighting for. Ducard and Thomas Wayne both have children who continue their respective legacies, Ducard of a life of deceit, self-delusion, and murder; Thomas Wayne a legacy of sacrifice, giving, and generosity to even those who would seem unworthy of it. It is only once Bruce Wayne is able to cast off the last vestiges of the tutelage of Ducard and understand the truth about Ducard's awful legacy that the Dark Knight rises and overcomes. The Dark Knight has to discover the truth about a demonic father of lies (Ra's al Ghul means "head of the demon") and remember the love and legacy of his true father before he becomes the legend Ducard never truly became. Bruce Wayne is ultimately able to cast off the persona of Batman and build a quiet life with Selina Kyle. Though he took up the mantle of the Dark Knight his quest was not to continually channel a murderous rage into fighting crime but to, like his father, sacrificially give of himself to make life better for others, to give them hope and the opportunity to begin a new and better life.