Speaking of which, the "there has to be seven warlords, four emperors and three admirals" thing is so silly. When one warlord is defeated, marine hq be like: "HOLY SHIT THE BALANCE OF THE WORLD HAS BEEN TURNED UPSIDE DOWN, WE GOTTA FIND A REPLACEMENT ASAP! THE BALANCE OF THE WORLD IS SO FRAGILE".
Oda, I love you, but this doesn't even make a fraction of sense.
Well, in fairness, you could instead put this little bit of dumbness on the marine's shoulders rather than Oda's. I mean, we've seen plenty of Shichibukai fall and it didn't didn't really make that much of an impact on anything. Hell, Doffy was ordered to off Moria in the middle of the damn war they were supposed to be oh so instrumental in. Plus we know all the irrational fears that real life politicians hold ("Transgender people using bathrooms will lead to rape!").
It could be fairer to say that taking down a Shichibukai here and there doesn't actually screw the balance and rather just a lot of less than rational characters in OP (hello, Akainu) believe it because they're dumb dumbs.
There, I defended One Piece. Now excuse me while I go scrub my body in the shower for an hour, cleansing myself from the sin
Doflamingo more so. He was supplying weapons to several nations, one of which was in the middle of a war and had to surrender.
This is irrelevant to his position as a warlord.
And also irrelevant to the point that the world would be put back into balance by someone else unrelated to him taking his spot as warlord.
That, but also it's weird how that whole thing was depicted. Like, Doffy is defeated, and the supply line collapses literally within hours, and because of that, that one side has to surrender? If they're ability to win relied that heavily on a single ship of weapons coming in within hours of the conflicts conclusion, I'm gonna go ahead and say they were going to lose anyway.