Vegeta - Personality

Personality

When Vegeta is introduced in the series, he is seen as sadistic and merciless, and prideful individual murdering his long-time comrade Nappa, seeing the latter's inability to defeat Goku as an unforgivable weakness. He is the son of the great king Vegeta, one who ruled planet Vegeta, the home planet of the Saiyan race. During this time, Vegeta is seen to have a fierce desire for immortality and galactic rule. He desires to seek vengeance for the genocide of his race, murder of his father, and destruction of his planet by the hands of the evil tyrant, Frieza in which he worked for. Following Frieza's defeat at Goku's hands, Vegeta's personality changes from a sadistic killer to a vengeful anti-hero, obsessed with becoming the strongest and surpassing Goku. Because of his arrogance, attitude, and past wrongdoings, Vegeta gains a lot of disdain and mistrust from those around him (particularly Piccolo), except Goku, who is often friendly and cheerful despite the animosity Vegeta has towards him. After a long time, Vegeta becomes romantically involved with Goku's close friend Bulma, after which she bears him a son named Trunks and later on a daughter named Bra (Bulla in the English adaptation). As a result of his love for Bulma and the birth of his son, Vegeta soon simply becomes a rival of Goku's, and thinks of Earth as a good place to settle down and live. As a result of this change he sees within himself, Vegeta attempts to return to his old sadistic self by willingly letting the wizard Babidi control him with his spell and thus becoming Majin Vegeta. However, the devotion that he feels towards his family soon overcomes the evil within him. In the end, he becomes Goku's closest ally, and even a good friend. Despite this, Vegeta is still annoyed by Goku's ignorance and ability to surpass him in power. His change in personality is shown in the last episodes when he decides to finally join the party and became more of a friendly rival and no longer obsesses himself with defeating Goku. However, he still desires to be the strongest. Another example is when he is defending innocent people (though sometimes through force).

Overall, Vegeta is displayed as being extremely proud of his Saiyan heritage, frequently referring to himself as the "Prince of all Saiyans" and always addressing Goku as "Kakarot" even when everybody else calls him "Goku", possibly to remind him of his Saiyan ancestry. Vegeta's pride often gets in the way of things and puts himself at risk and others around him. as he is never the one to defeat any of the main antagonists. Yet he later plays an essential role in saving the Earth from its aggressors.

Vegeta's personality is primarily based on his rivalry with Goku, and how Goku was able to change him over the course of time, despite his obsession with surpassing Goku in power. Vegeta has a deathly fear of worms as shown in Dragon Ball Z episode 259, "Mind Trap" (although this could be regarded as non-canon, as most of the episode is filler, yet that this could explain why he often insults people that he disliked as "miserable vermin").