The Greater Will that abandoned the Elden Beast, Metyr, Placidusex, and the Fingers thousands of years ago and is actually the void of space... I'm pretty sure that St. Trina (who is complicite in all of Miquella's crimes and shouldn't be discounted as evil) just made that whole thing up to create additional justification for us to fight Miq so she can have a proper death.
@@zachariahjonahmaldonado5897 The third person in internet saying Trina is not full good, nice! Anyway, i think yes and now. Prison possibly not because GW but because... well, Marika ruled as God and look how things are now for her and her entire family.
I think the overall purpose of the shattering was obvious from the very start of the game, it's to make the greater will finally abandon the lands between, the lore presents that abandonment as a negative development, but it's overall positive given the themes of freedom of the game, the guidance of grace simply leads the tarnished to lead them to the ending that marika herself envisioned for the lands between, the age of fracture.
This is why she took grace away from the tarnished, then gives it back after the Greater Will's influence left. I feel this last bit of grace was the last she had. Which is why she's a dead husk now. She doesn't have the gold Amber inside her body like Radagon does. She had to do this as her 3 feminine children were chosen to be Empyreans. She didn't want them locked in, or perhaps Marika once had Empyrean sisters or friends that she had to kill to become the only. Like the GEQ.
@JKurayami i think she basically stripped the tarnished of their grace to make them 100% dependent on human strength, in order to make them usher in an age of freedom and humanity, rather than an age of subservience to the greater will.
Doesn't this conflict with the Informations we got in SOTE about The Greater Will, and that it was gone from the start? You know, the entire Ymir and Mother of Fingers questline.
Even if the GW remains in contact with the fingers and not Metyr, Gw is pretty... not caring. At all. Gw do 3 things: Create Universe/Life, be angry with the Nox (And Japanese say they fleed into the underground for fear, not banished) and go away. At some point one of the Empyreans is even born with Scarlet Rot but she was still chosen to be heir and even in the end, if the Frenzied Flame takes the World, GW seems to still not care. The theory of free everyone not works so well if the "Big Bad Divine" do nothing.
I always thought it was weird marika was imprisoned but radagon just hops on down to fight if it was the greater will imprisoning her. It makes much more sense that radagon did so.
That's not Radagon. Radagon was a famed swordsman who invented Golden Order Fundamentalism and married into a sorceress's family to learn moon magic. He uses none of these skills, you probably even have his sword. He only uses Elden miracles associated with the Beast, seems lethargic and jerky, is visibly hollow, and swings at you with *Marika's* hammer, likely because that's what she was holding when they shattered the ring. What's left of him is even turned into a sword by the Elden Beast. You're fighting a meat puppet being controlled by an Eldritch star monster, not Radagon.
That dosnt make sense. Radagon only hops down to fight us when the Thorns have been burned away. He is as much of a prisoner as Marika, more so even. The notion from the community that Radagon placed the Thorns has no evidence. I don't understand how no one questions it.
Very much enjoyed your video! I especially appreciate how there was one continuous line of thought without getting lost in dead ends. It's one of the most concise writeups I've seen.
A thought I had when you mentioned the night of black knives and how godwyn was the first to fall, it may have not just been that black knives were needed to kill demigods, but that Godwyn being killed set precedent for someone even attempting to assassinate one of Marika's children, and may have sparked a civil war between competing powers within the golden order. I also think that killing Godwyn was the Nox' plan but not Ranni's. I won't get too deep into it, but basically it is heavily implied that the Nox were trying to create their own Lord of Night, and had undergone many gruesome experiments towards this end. I wouldn't put it past them to take the assassination of Marika's most powerful and influential child as an opportunity to use his body for this under the guise of helping Ranni bring about her age of stars. To me it's too big of a coincidence that you find his body at the foot of the erdtree, near an unnamed Nox city in what would've been part of Leyndell before being moved.
Great top-down break down. I feel that it is always the case with Miyazaki games that there is a real story with specific people having done very specific things at the stories root. He just willfully removes enough information to make the story less apparent and makes a games around that shell, kind of like a person might use a balloon as a form for paper mache , only to pop the balloon and remove it after the form has hardened. The only thing I would add to your theory is that I've had a sneaking suspicion that Ranni was set to marry Godwyn. My main evidence of this is simply that their, "deaths," feel strangely romantic, a la Romeo and Juliet. That and a combination of Ranni (the Moon) with Godwyn (the Sun) might be the basis for an eclipse. I admit that my evidence is weak but I can't shake my suspicions. Great video, I've subbed for more. =)
I feel like Radagon was being puppeted when we fight him. When Marika shattered the ring, the Elden Beasts was like "this bish tripping" and took control of their body by the ring itself. Then it started The process of trying to repair it. The Gloam Eyed Queen was probably another personality in this Saint Jar styled silver tear like creature that posed a threat because of her role as a perpetuator of death.
Great video. For me, marikas' reason for the death of godwyn would be for the shatter wars to reach a stalemate. I would imagine the "gold" will seize the power of the lands again if godwyn was there. Thank you again for this beautiful video,looking forward to more content
I think Marika never followed the Two Fingers, or even the Greater Will. She co opted their image, sure. But was never their vassel. Which I think is why the Two Fingers declare other Emperyons, they want a God they *can* control. Think about what we know about Marika. Like heck she's going to do anything anyone tells her to do. You think she's letting Radagon of the Plumber's Crack keep her chained? Radagon doesn't even use his sword or sorceries in the boss fight, he's using Marika's hammer. After what happened to her people, she's no one's slave, least of all two fingers and an Ebrietas wannabe. I don't think the Golden Order failed. The ruined state of the world is because of The Shattering, with flavour text and dialogue indicating that the areas were until very recently prosperous, and some like the Raya Lucara Academy and Lyndell are basically fine. The Lord of Stormveil quest indicates that lorewise, Limgrave is still a functioning civilization. The timelines are confusing but I don't think anything is that ancient. I think the Shattering was a fairly recent event, if we take Millicent's apparent age as literal and presume that Malenia's bloom and thus the end of the Shattering are her 'birth'. Godrick's various defeats are fairly recent, going by that he's still employing mercenaries and press ganging. The siege of volcano manner is an ongoing event. No one seems to know that the Erdtree is refusing prospective lords. Emperyon doesn't meant anything anyways. Marika became a 'God, in truth' her own way and Miquella does the same later on. Ranni was an Empheryon but killed her mortal coil so it clearly isn't a want to be thing. I think it's just a title the Two Fingers applies to people they think can schloop in after Marika is disposed of. I think Marika hijacked the Hornsent's doomed attempts to attain Divinity, paid unto them what they paid unto her, and then busied herself with conquest in an Alexander the Great type war for personal glory with civilization building as a distant second goal. That complete, throwing off the Elden Beast, Two Fingers, Metyr, and the Greater Will became her goal because, again, she ain't about to let Spacs Godzilla presume to Lord over her. And everything she did after conquering the Lands Between was part of a guardian rebelion to shake off those dweeb. Mixing bloodlines with Godfrey, a mighty warrior, later marrying Radagon, a proficient mage, merging with him and selfcesting two children etc, and creating the Tarnished. I don't think she cared who would succeed her, and had a 'to the strongest' It Has To Be This Way violence breeds violence mentality. What happened after she shattered the ring didn't matter to her. Though I do think Godfrey was in on this plan and supposed to swoop in if her Demigod children dropped the ball. Marika controls the Grace, she's the one who points it wherever. The thing that sat on my head most is why it points you to the Lionen Misbegotten in the Weeping Peninsula. But worth noting is before the Godfrey fight, the Guidence of Grace points towards *you*. To whatever extent Marika had plans for Miquella and Malenia, again, I don't think she's the one who designated Empyreons, and didn't seem to care that Radahn claimed a great rune despite not even being a contender. I think she knew that Miquella was every bit as cruel as her but had the ability to charm people, traits she considered ideal. And I think she thought Malenia useless to her because she was supporting Miq's claim anyways, already charmed by him, and her body the vessel of an outer god / mystical plague. I also don't think Radagon would have been opposed to Miquella, who lore indicates he was quite fond of.
If we follow the correct (imo) notion that the grace of gold is marika's will alone but to the order left behind, after she shattered herself, the grace of gold is indicative of the presence of the greater will, then maybe Marika shattering herself and operating as a gold shimmery wind was her way of liberating her spirit as ranni did. And after her imprisonment she would trick radagon into thinking he was the only one able to influence the order, the elden ring and the world at large. While Marika's will would be instructing the tarnished on usurping the current order. All this makes me think of how manipulative and powerful Marika really was throughout all of the events of the game. And Miquella definitely followed in her footsteps, as a copycat almost, while Ranni could see through all of her schemes and was the only one that reached quite close to the core of Marika's psyche. Great video and love the use of this theme as background music, helped me focus for some reason. Keep up the good work!!
I believe that Marika wanted to kill herself when she got Ranni to steal a shard of the rune of death. The basis of the Golden Order is that Marika is the one true God, so for me the only reason as for why she’d allow death to be present in the lands between again would be to usher in a new age, the one she orchestrated for Miquella to have. The only way to do so is to root out the source of the Golden Order: Marika.
This is to me, the most important question people interested in the lore have to ask, and I think you did a great job of presenting a viable answer. Good work.
I've not ever noticed anyone mention this, and I'd like to know others' thoughts. In the base game, the only living two fingers is the one that Ranni kills. All the others are dead atop the divine towers and the roundtable hold is a memory so the one there is a remembrance of a two fingers.
@Dankmemeslover69 they were summoned directly to the lands between by the great caravan (potentially from the land of shadow) and since they vanish into you when marking your character their presence in the lands between is actually closer to the elden beast while carrying out the task of the two fingers
@@Dankmemeslover69 if you look at his body he's not marked by the fingers he's simply infected by frenzy and the frenzy matured over time through his endurance of the pain
Marika had great kindness within her, as well as great cruelty, and she dispensed both in equal measure, often at the same time. All I can say for certain is that Gideon was right: she wanted us to struggle, to suffer. Why does she want this? Why would she do this to us? Well, to ask why we must suffer in Elden Ring is to ask why we must suffer in real life. Life is a blessing, yet to live is to suffer. It is simply the human condition. Nature demands that all living things struggle, compete, grow stronger. Only through suffering can we be forged into something greater than ourselves. Perhaps Marika wishes us to suffer, so we might become a Lord.
Personal head canon for Marika’s reason to tarnish Godfrey and his warriors is that they had a child together after Radagon became 2nd Elden Lord. She dimmed all their eyes so they would forget the secret child, and the child is the player character. Demi-god son/daughter of Godfrey would consequently be heir to all that is gold, not Godrick.
So i just got done with a 4 hour video that FINALLY explained Twin Peaks DEFINITIVELY and answered ALL my questions despite Lynch being the Miazaki of Cinema (or rather Miazaki is the Lynch of Gaming). All i could think (besides FINALLY) was man I wish someone could do this for Elden Ring
@@Rooster_Ric hes probably referring to twin perfects video "twin peaks actually explained", which does indeed explain everything about twin peaks definitively. definitely do not watch it unless you are finished theorizing about twin peaks
Great video, man. Nice calm speaking voice, great thoughts and good open minded conversation and seeing everything from multiple angles. I subscribed and liked! Off to watch the rest of your collection 😮
If this theory is right, maybe Marika wanted the Rune of Death stolen because she wanted it used against herself, to completely die. But Ranni was afraid that would make someone (Miquella, herself, Malenia) become trapped into the same cycle by the Elden Beast.
Great video, but i want to give you some int about translation, because japanese is a bit more complicated and, yet, explains it even better. -Jar saints are not a thing. Saint it's used in a way to say Good People, not Holy People. Jars we're not meant to be an ascention, but a punishment covered by a veil of sanctity. -About Radagon imprisoning Marika, very probably the Elden Beast was the real guilty. One of its attacks literally crucify you in the same way Marika is, and in the end is the Elden Beast using Radagon's body to defend herself (The dark mist inside Radagon's body) -For Marika's talks, two points. In the bedroom, she calls Radagon not Loyal Hound of the Golden Order, but Dog of the Golden Order. In japanese she imply a mock and a tone used to people inferior to her. (Even because Radagon's title is Consort King, and Consort King is still a rule but DAMN inferior to the Queen). At the same time, Marika's dialogues are always with a tone of "I'm the rule, you're shit", while the one in the church talks to people like Comrades, and the dialogue is very connected to Fundamentalism, and Radagon is associated to Fundamentalism more than Marika. So, probably that dialogue belongs to Radagon, not Marika. -For Ranni's Ending, yes, that is the only one where Marika is free to die, but the Elden Ring remains. Simply, Ranni takes it and bring it away to the Lands Between. The connection with the world remains, but now no one could touch and edit it again or do shit like Marika -Maliketh's betrayal has no target and it can be translated to Failed. More probably, instead of She Betrayed Him, it could be He Failed Her. (Even because, if she was the only God in the lands between, why do all this mess with assassins, Ranni and Nox instead to say "Maliketh, please, give me the Rune of Death.") -For the theory empyreans=mending with Gods, it's pretty nice but i want to add you one thing. Empyreans in japanese means "People connected to the divine" or something llike that, while Miko, the original name of Marika's Shamans, are a class of women with a great connection with the spirit world. All Marika's children shows some capacity to melt with other creatures (Godrick and Godfroy with Grafting, Rykard with the Snake, Godwyn with Erdtree roots, maybe even Radahn resisting in the body against the Scarlet Rot), but probably only Empyreans have a strong connection with spirits and divine beings. And St.Trina more than a God is another part of Miquella himself, like Radagon for Marika.
I think the crucifixion attacks is the only evidence of the elden beast imprisoning Marika, while i believe there is far more evidence of it being Radagon. The evidence of the jarring process being used as more than just a punishment in lore is substantial, i say in the video that it WAS used as a punishment, but that there was a more sinister purpose. And the evidence for this is too substantial for you to claim that it is simply a punishment.
@@livingjarcletus Fo Radagon, please, tell me why you think that, because probably the solution is 50/50 or at least something like that. For the jars, we know the rules of elden ring, from death come lifes and power, and watching both the hornsent's relationship with the Crucible and the Divine Gate, they knew that and used it in rituals/punishments, with some results as some Jars are alive. At the same time, Saints like Divine, even not talking about the original jap description, sounds a bit strange watching the context. A culture so "racist" and "Fanatic" blessing criminals and, probably, ereticals, giving them the chance to become Saints? Even because the saints should be the people in the jar, while Miko where used just as glue for them, not even the main part of the ritual.
We are stuck in a prison and Marika is the main inmate, while we are the Jailkeeper, who she has made to loss their momery. We do are task because everyone else remembers and we are a God, meant to exact justice, over and over again, infinitum.
Great video! I don't know if you're someone who'd interested in critical theory in academia, but the kind of criticism you're making about the developer's intentions with count Ymir (around the 8.30 mark) would loosely be called a rhetorical analysis. It's becoming an increasingly popular lens and technique for close reading. Just wanted to mention in case that kind of thing strikes your fancy.
It does, and i have considered making videos on the purpose of various characters throughout the game, through the eyes of the developer. Such as “the purpose of goldmask” and then trying to dive into WHY the developer chose to include this character. Thanks for the comment
Great video with great concepts. However - for your future audio recording I strongly suggest using soft fade out/ins instead od hard chopping your audio voiceover. It sounds like an over agressive noise gate, and since your ambient background hum is quite high it makes it pop out more. Keep the good work !
Surprised you didn't mention the wicker men when you were talking about burning for fertilizer because that was the original role of the wicker men, at least irl.
So many options for sure. But at the end of the day, I think it was that the beginning of Marika’s desire of power came from the suffering of her people, the golden order was built on her trama of losing all her loved ones, her finally realizing she over corrected, Radagon (her other half) trying to stay the course, and her agony when her desired fragment(Miquella) betrayed her and her plan. Miquella being the manifestation of her youth and innocent self, began the same Machiavellian path she did eons ago. She saw that her fragmented self was doing the same damn thing. (At the final fight, Miquella’s eyes are gray and devoid of light). She effed the world up, and when her plan to fix what she broke started to fall apart, she realized she was wrong. So her final plan, was to create an army of unstoppable warriors, made from the soldiers that built her up, to bring an end to her rein. Allowing someone else, to make the choices, she had failed to make.
Your video confirmed alot of head cannon for me ggz. Think Marika intend godwyn as Miquellas lord. Flipping the whole plan when the one son she saw as worthy was assassinated.
Good point in this whole blending part. I too believe that Marika was suposed to merge with the Elden Ring and became a mere vessel, but instead Radagon, who was suposed to become the only god had blended together with Marika, becoming a twisted god of duality. One of many subtile hints that the rule of the fingers and the Elden Beast were doomed from the start. After she figured out that her rule was rotten from the ground up, she decided to shatter everything. The world she built became stale after sealing destined death, the realm of death overflowing with spirits, unable to return. Her children all afflicted by her sins or giving away her secret - Radagon. This rule was a giant shitshow and Marika had to fix her mistake by shattering the ring and paving the way for a new lord. The Elden Beast had to die, the fingers had to die. They were a curse to the world. There is nothing great about the Greater Will - if it even existed and isn't just a metaphor for describing the essence of life that created all life (including us). The Frenzied Flame is proof for that. Its mere existence is evidence enough. The fingers were just rambling foreign life, creating chaos and destruction.
36:35 I think I have an idea to answer this, in part anyhow. I believe Marika did not care for godwyn. She says to her children to become a god or a lord, but if you don’t she doesn’t care about them. Miquella was her favorite because he sought to be a god. Godwyn (coincidence with the god paired with wyn, the dynastic name used by mohg) the namesake of her plan was befriending her enemies and was only reaping the rewards of his standing. He had no ambition and for the son of Godfrey I don’t think would do
I thought about that but here's my hang up. Thats what she *said*. People say weird things all the time, people say dumb things. People say things I'm sure they thought at the time they said that but then grew a lot as a person in the time since and now regret. People also lie, or speak from a position of insincerity or nievete. Who's to say that she *meant* what she said. I'm sure she probably thought that her children were just more warlords but I also doubt she felt nothing when Godwyn died.
I don't think this was her saying she doesn't care about them if they don't become gods or Lords. I think this is her saying they will be used or manipulated by forces outside her or their control if they do not become great in SOME fashion. By this point in history where she says this (if i recall the timeline correctly) it's right before she shatters the ring, before choosing to go through with an extreme act that she knows will destabilize everything and lose herself. In my personal interpretation, she is warning them to be powerful and protect themselves because they would not have her there to protect them much longer.
She doesn’t tell her kids she doesn’t care. She tells them quite blatantly that if they fail to become aught at all, they will be sacrifices. Whether to Marika, the Erdtree, or just in the sense that someone other than them will sacrifice them. I think it’s tough love measured up to eleven out of ten.
I’m hoping you make a video on your Ranni theories. But you mentioned in another video that Marika’s children (offshoots) are divine pieces of her that she didn’t want (abyssal serpent, scarlet rot, etc). If that is the case should we assume Ranni is the part of her associated with night and the moon? And if her chosen “empyrean” children posses her ability to be fused with another being could the mysterious Snowy Crone be Ranni’s other self? Her version of Radagon or St. Trina?
what if, and this will sound crazy. Marika intended to further contact the greater will but was stopped midway by radagon. what if her crucified pose was merely her trying to raise both of her hands fully upwards to contact the greater will like she did in the DLC trailer. And Radagon took to using the tpose as a way to defy it
Great video! I just have 2 points of disagreement: 1. IMO Radagon backed Miquella and Marika backed Ranni. Reading several item/spell descriptions, Radagon taught Miquella golden order fundamentalism and the two had a close relationship. However, since fundamentalism could not help Melania, he went a different route. Hence, Shadow of The Erd Tree's storyline. Ranni's hatred of the fingers is so deep and abiding it speaks of deeper knowledge, which she may have gotten from Count Ymir who was a Carian noble and retainer of her aunt Rellana(before Messmer's crusade). OR directly from Marika, who tricked(gulled is the word they use in game) Malekith and provided her with the rune fragment. The BKAs were numen(shaman related imo) and handmaidens of Marika's as well. However, Ranni chose to break free of the whole thing causing her to lock up Alecto in an evergaol and beef with the remaining assassins, leading to Iji's death and almost Blaidd's( till we kill him). 2. Sites of Grace, resemble humanity from the Dark Souls series; literal and physical expression of the human soul. Marika's body might be trapped in the tree but her will/spirit is directing us is a compelling theory and even more convincing as to why she backed Ranni. Miquella's age of compassion, is a sham where he strips all people of their free will and eliminates the potential influence of outer gods by replacing it with his own total domination. This would free Marika, but damn the rest of the world. Ranni's ending frees Marika, we see her body at least dissolving into dust which imdicates she has truly died and Ranni takes her runes aka becomes the new Goddess by way of absorbing them into herself. Ranni also wishes to take the elden ring and the order it forms away from the lands between into the stars. This would potentially limit the influence the outer gods could attain because they can't overwrite reality with the ring e.g. if Melania had went for the ring then the world would resemble Caelid OR they lose interest in the planet with the ring gone. Ranni's solution frees Marika AND everyone else from the fickle nature of gods and potentially the over arching influence that the outer gods command.
Random thought while listening to this. Is it possible the betrayal of Maliketh and the betrayal mentioned in the DLC are the same or at least connected? He held the rune of death and the Land of Shadow is where all manner of death wash up to be suppressed. Not a complete thought, but wanted to throw it out there and see if it made sense to anyone or its just a dumb thought 😂
From a human psychology aspect, we're dealing with a self that's undergoing survivors guilt and doesn't know how to deal with the loss of a loved one. Order represents resolve. The inner world is created through chaos (a traumatic experience), and the great one is the ignorant fake inner god, aka the self. Marika represents the Ego, and her order represented suppressing death. This resulted in a lingering pain and suffering (rot) throughout the inner world, because the main traumatic experience was never directly confronted. Miquella represents the divine inner child archetype, and his order represents the suppression of pain and suffering. His sister, represents the wounded warrior archetype. Melina represents the wise old man archetype, she's the one that explains the world to us, and guides us where the self has lost its guiding light, which is Farum Azula. Farum Azula represents Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the self's guiding light. To break the cycle, the tarnished (determination) and the maiden (willpower) have to both confront the traumatic event, which is death. Basically, we're trying to restore balance, by merging all the different flames, which represents the divine inner flame. "You can't run away from your problems.", which is what we've been seeing from the self in Elden Ring. If you have any questions, need examples... just ask. Or, if you're keen to play more games with similar world building, I can drop some titles :)
Really great video, I agree with the central point. But Why do you think Radagon imprisoned Marika, not the Elden Beast. The Elden Beast fights us and Marika triedto smash the ring. which is the beast, so is not aligned with Marika. The Elden Beast has grab attack which puts you on a rune arch and impales you, like how we find Marika.
To answer your question, i believe that the crucifixion attack is the only piece of evidence of the beast imprisoning Marika, while the evidence that Radagon was behind it is far more substantial. That does not mean Radagon didnt use the beast to imprison her, but i do see your point
@@livingjarcletus It could also be both in a way. The Eldem Ring is referred to as the Golden Order itself, Radagon is a vessel for its vision, the beast is the ring. Radagon is Radagon of the Golden Order. When the Elden Beast appears it turns Radagon into a tool it wields to fight us. So I think there is a metaphor there about how Radagon is a whiling prisoner and puppet of the Elden Ring and Marika is an unwilling prisoner and puppet.
For the erdtree carving on the erdtree, the top one looks a lot like the scadutree picture on the helmets of the mesmer souldiers (Hawkshaw points this out in one of his videos). I think it is showing the "and so shadow was born" thing.
Couple of things I disagree with; 1) Radagon can’t have imprisoned Marika because based on what we’ve seen they literally share a body so only one of them can be active at any given time. I suspect the imprisonment was done by the Elden Beast given it has an attack that crucifies the player in the exact same way. 2) I think Marika’s reign is a lot longer than 1000 years but only because of her removal of Destined Death and lack of any challenge since she did that (bearing in mind it was a direct consequence of the Gloam Eyed Queen). I think we’re approaching 10s of thousands of years of rule but it was a byproduct of events rather than direct intention. 3) I don’t think Marika or the Fingers ever knew that they weren’t acting on current orders/guidance from the Greater Will because I don’t think any of them ever knew the Greater Will had abandoned The Lands Between. The guidance was “unhinged” because it was based on eons old rules that no longer make any sense. Last point isn’t necessarily a disagreement per se but I actually think Marika’s first choice was Godwyn rather than Miquella. Whether that couldn’t happen because he was never chosen as an Empyrean in the first place or because he was but was killed I’m not sure but I do think Miquella was second choice not first. Given what we know of Miquella’s power now Marika may not have chosen Miquella at all but he may have “compelled” her to choose him.
Oh completely forgot as well, I don’t think Marika was involved in the Night of the Black Knives, I actually think it was Miquella in an attempt to force the transition to his godhood
I think there's a lot to be said about how our expectations are subverted when it comes to the guidance of grace. We all expected the guidance of grace to be from the Greater Will (God figure, grace, etc). Right? At least I did. But it was always from Marika, who in fact is the God of the Lands Between. I'd say we can expect based on that for Marika to be more important than the Greater Will than we expect in all things. I mean, the DLC says as much. It simply must've always been just Marika, if the Greater Will was never even in contact.
All this but Radagon for a bunch of it. I believe he turned the root-like collection of runes into the ring shape they are. Hence his affinity for discs. No more spiral, but a circle instead. I believe he used the Great Rune of the Unborn to Make the Twins of Malenia and Miquella just like him and Marika. Radagon was busy trying to craft Miquella into a better Marika that he didn't pay any mind to Malenia like Godwyn did to both of his youngest siblings. Seeing how his father wasn't helping Malenia, he decided to make his own tree far away from the Erd Tree and the influence of the Golden order. Brings to question who was their Shadows if they were empyreans. Are there any locked up or strangely placed wolf knight boys in any of their areas?
I like to think Miquella charmed their shadows into killing themselves, or killing each other. That's how powerful Miquella is in game. It only takes one or two embraces, and you are done for.
I wonder... if the burnt figure holding a yellow/golden bud could be a newly released from jar-servitude Marika. And that she simply (shed her skin) when she became a god. The firsr cardinal sin... was the burning of the erdtree...
Why does Grace's guidance lead Godfrey to the PC Tarnished during the cutscene where you meet him? Is Marika contradicting herself or conflicted over whose lordship she actually wants, or is Radagon leading his own champion to oppose the Tarnished?
It isn't Marika and it's not the guidance of grace. It's Morgott's body de-materializing into light as Godfrey holds him, and the fragments of light that made up his body are getting blown by the wind in our direction.
To me, this is a plot hole. Godfrey's appearance at the end is never explained. Why wasn't he encountered earlier? Why didn't he attempt to claim one of the Elden Ring shards from one of the demigods? Was there some taboo against fighting his children/stepchildren that forced him to fight us at the end? I like to think the Tarnished winning might have been an unforseen accident, or what The all-knowing meant by no Tarnished becoming Elden Lord.
Maybe the original plan of the night of black knives was that Marika, feeling imprisoned by her godhood, wanted to use a shard of the rune of Death to kill _herself_ so that Ranni could rise as the god of a new order. It would have saved the Tarnished the trouble of collecting shards, burning the tree, and fighting Radagon/Elden Beast. Maybe the assassins killing Godwyn was a mistake (oops, wrong blonde person!) or a change to the plan made by Ranni, which is why Marika was both implicated in planning the scheme, and yet so upset over its results. Marika being supportive of Ranni's ascension also explains why Ranni was able to freely live in her tower with her crew despite Marika likely knowing of her involvement in the Night of Black Knives, and why grace points the Tarnished to her. There was plenty of time before the player Tarnished arrived that the assassins could have attacked Ranni and crew, but they waited until this moment - why? Maliketh's lament of betrayal could be that, as a shadow bound beast bound to protect his empyrean, he was ultimately given the task of holding one of few powers that could end the life of demigods/gods. Marika made him into a dangerous and unstable weapon prone to outbursts instead of the trustworthy guardian as he was programmed to be. For an empyrean's shadow, whose entire purpose is about being a protector, to be known as "death of the demigods" must be an awful thing.
The Crucible Knights are relics that represent the prehistoric Crucible era which predated the Age of the Erdtree. The Crucible Knights are named after three sequential geological periods from the Paleozoic Era. From oldest to youngest, they are Ordovician (Ordovis), Silurian (Siluria), and Devonian (Devonia). Ordovis is named after the Ordovician, which lasted from 485.4 million years ago to 443.8 million years ago. Siluria is named after the Silurian, which followed the conclusion of the Ordovician and lasted until 419.2 million years ago. Devonia is named after the Devonian period, which was about 419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago. if knights could live millions of years with the rune of death bound to the elden ring. marika being a god with a stripped rune death, she should be eons or epochs old. even as a immortal god, they even call her the eternal.
I do. I think it's her trump card, and proof she's no defenseless or dead throughout the gane. She gives her grace to our Tarnished, and heals him/her throughout the game. She's trapped, but not powerless.
The only other entity it could come from without any leaps of logic is the greater will, who is said to have left the lands between by multiple trustworthy characters. And it continues to guide the tarnished toward/after committing the first cardinal sin. Also, Marika was the one who created and originally lead the tarnished by granting them grace. So it makes sense to me she would have some supernatural influence over them. Theres also this line from Marika on the Tarnished: "Then, after thy death, I will give back what I once claimed. Return to the Lands Between, wage war, and brandish the Elden Ring. Grow strong in the face of death. Warriors of my lord. Lord Godfrey."
I really liked that Miquella called us champion kf the erdtree, solidified that we are fighting to free marika and mend the world. I bet miyazaki was happy most people followed rani.
Most people followed Ranni because they're simps and were excited to able to marry a doll if it meant they could pretend they had a girlfriend for once in a Souls game. I think they think y'all are actually lovers because she says 'dear' consort instead of 'fair' consort if you exhausted her dialogue earlier. She got all her friends killed, made Godwyn soul dead, and faked a suicide to not have to be a god, everyone and everything is just a tool for her to dodge responsibility. She doesn't love you, she never will. Go Frenzied Flame ending to see a real maiden.
Im sorry - why couldnt the elden beast be the one that imprisoned Marika? Cus it doesnt seem like Radagon and Marika can be in the same place at the same time because they only have one body that they share, so from a practicality aspect how could one disable the other? And on top of that Marika is dropped from her crucifix when we enter, if that was possible for Radagon to do at any time, what was rhe point of putting her there in the first place? Whereas we see the elden beast able to manipulate their body seemingly however it wants, so wouldn't that make way way way more sense?
I hear you and thats an interesting take. I see the dlc lore of the fingers as “proof” of Radagon imprisoning Marika because i dont think it could have been anyone else. And when i say Radagon imprisoned her, im implying that he imprisoned himself, therefore, imprisoning her. I believe that anyone else lacks the power. The elden beast wouldnt have lacked the power to do so, but given that the elden beast IS the elden ring, which dwells inside both Marika and Radagons body, i dont see how this could have been done. However the elden beast “crucifixion” attack does sort of imply that this could have been the case so i could see it
You say that Dark Souls lore is pretty well agreed upon, vs Elden Ring. As someone who knows little to nothing about DS, was this true after DS1 or did it take a sequel or two to reach that consensus? I feel like the truly fundamental unanswered questions of ER are left open, at this point, to be tackled later, even though talk of a sequel is sketchy at best from Miyazaki.
Interesting point because truly, many answers didnt come until dark souls 3. Fairly concrete answers that is. Dark souls 2 has TONS of lore, but a lot of people find it unreliable. I dont think its safe to assume there will be a sequel to elden ring, and if there is it may not be Miyazaki who makes it. He never REALLY wanted to make a sequel to dark souls but was pressured to do so. Thats why the dlc ending for dark souls 3 is almost comical with the painter, who wants to let the world burn so she can paint a new one. Its fairly well agreed upon that this is miyazaki illustrating his desire to move on from dark souls and work on new projects
Speculative theory: GEQ and Marika are twin sisters. More grounded theory: Radagon was planning to reunite DD with the Elden Ring after Marika sealed it. With it, the Ring is complete, and their cyclical body would be immortal. When Marika discovered his intentions, she plotted the NoBK to create a new Death Rune to have it hidden. The Shattering would trap Radagon and delay his plans until someone worthy enough could end him and the Elden Beast.
It's the best bet that Marika shattered the Elden Ring to bring about a new order, after Ranni had made her move. She shattered the Elden Ring to weaken the Golden Order so they would not triumph over the machinations of the aspiring Empyreans. Especially since it's implied that Radagon was trying to - or in the process of becoming in control of her. It was now or never and she wasn't going to have Radagon become a god.
Marika mentions that “you will be left to sacrifice should you not become anything be it a lord or a god” now ik that godwyn was the golden son but she hated the golden order, he slept with dozens of people having possible hundreds of children while no other demigod has any. To me godwyn feels like a representation of a dystopia. Everything looks good but isnt. The finger reader even refers godwyn as a martyr for destined death. Personally i think she had no problems killing godwyn considering her lack of empathy for other children and the fact that he never truly aspired to be something even though he showed great promise like defeating the dragon in lendyll
We know for sure that Marika wants the Elden beast killed. My guess is because the Elden Beast is the one creature above her in the hierarchy. Once it’s dead, she can move forward with the rest of her plans. I think she orchestrated the night of the black knives. Ronni rid her self from control of the golden order by killing Godwins soul and I think Marika did at the same time as well. That’s why we see Radagon take control of their body but not Marika. She’s not in there anymore. I think she used Radagon just like she used everyone else. She did the crime and made him do the time while she uses the guidance of grace to lead the tarnished, any tarnished, to kill the Elden Beast.
I think marikas rule honestly lasted only 6-7 or so centuries sure characters repeatedly speak of events like they happened in the distant past but it wouldn’t hurt the shorter time frame since they would still be living for centuries so there perspective on time could be warped from living so long. But her rein being 1000 years could be very plausible since miquella and ranni say 1000 years specifically almost like over this time span there ages would naturally lose there power and luster like the erdtree went from being as warm as the sun to no warmth I also think marika destroyed the elden ring not just because godwyn died but because he was pretty much the “golden” child aka not only the favorite but the “best” in marikas eyes since he not only was born free from any affliction, he was handsome, beloved by both her and the people. But was also the only demigod to step to the dragons when they broke down the capitals walls. So that means he’s also the most loyal he doesn’t even own any land rather he resides with the capital itself one could view this like him being the only “pure one” to be able to stay in the capital since he’s so untainted and loyal unlike all of her other offspring so him being killed and turned into the “prince of death” he became the very antithesis of what the golden order stood for not only did he die and not live eternally, her most beloved child had been turned into a vile “creature” just as her people so long ago. But he also brought death back the thing she wanted gone. All of that could have marinated with marika for who knows how long sinking deeper and deeper till she one day finally snapped and shattered the elden ring. Out of sorrow for all her efforts being in vain her becoming a god doing all of this killing just for a family member to be killed once more.
Great video! You did good job putting the story from Marika’s perspective. I agree that she wanted to finish her golden order and Miquella is a replacement plan that went sour when he (intentionally or not) failed his tree project and discovered the truth about his mother’s ascension
Prob 3000. History more or less works in 100s. Rome was so great because it lasted 300. USA is in a similar bucket. I think she lasted 3000 years. 1000 for her intro. 1000 for the golden order. And 1000 for Radagon’s (Marika’s imprisonment). The finger crone in the hub even says “it could be thousands of years before they move”. Meaning that Marika as a good was unnaturally long. So ima go with 3000 years. Which means our boy Thop’s waited close to 1000-2000 years in that church. He does say, he is VERY patient
The 300 years thing is baseless, stupid, and wrong. Numerology is a psuedoscience. The USA is no where near its nadir, Rome lasted a truck of a lot longer than 300 years. The Soviet Union capped out at 80,
Ymir always seemed like a maddened manipulator to me. He sends us to Metyr, but throws obstacles in our path (his doll, Anna, whom he made into a doll/puppet) and yet he tells us we will join the stars, but really it is implied that Metyr can either transform humans into Fingercreepers (Yuri) or that Ymir BELIEVES she can and has. He seems so contradictory in all he does. He KNOWS we are a warrior and sends us to Metyr, then gets upset when we slay Metyr. Or does he covet Metyr's Remembrance for himself? The guy is so twisted and seeks cross-purposes.
He's a true unreliable narrator. He could be completely wrong, or half-right. There's no way of telling because it's clear the fingers are starting to die, and his scheming doesn't work either. Brilliant bit of world building by having none of our questions definitively answered about Metyr and Marika's true gameplan for the Lands Between.
@dadevi I do not think the world-building works much, tbh. There were clearly many changes during development (to the main game and the dlc) that it comes off as quite a mess narratively. St Trina the Cradlesong and her Third-Eye adult form were squandered, for instance. The GEQ and her lore was not satisfactory (for me). Radahn's motivations have been clearly changed more than once since he is a Godfrey fanboy, but also sought to protect Sellia from falling stars. Yet, when we defeat him the falling stars do not hit Sellia at all and instead open up a path to Nokron. Originally he was the God of War. The insect-aspect of Miquella was mostly removed, even though there are lots of Albinaurics cocooned in Elphael. So much is underbaked or outright retconned in the dlc. Romina and Rellana do get much setup. I have already pointed out Ymir's nonsensical nature. Of course, thematically the dlc makes no sense anyway since we are "helping" Miquella, but actually aspiring to defeat him. Leda, the paranoid, welcomes us into her confidence, and even turns against some of the others, but somehow does not realize what we are doing until the end, even if we side with Ansbach against her. Her comrades are still summonable for fights after the falling out. Bayle's and Greyoll's lore is contradictory because Bayle is called the "oldest, vilest dragon" while Greyoll is the "mother of all dragons". Meanwhile there are Ancient Dragons that despise Drakes, but Drakes suffer from devolution. Yet, if Drakes are "devolved" forms then that would imply that Ancient Dragons had to first evolve from Drakes, otherwise it is not devolution. I suppose the Laws of Causality and Regression could be at play, especially since Beast-Men actually drop human bone shards rather than "Beast-Men bone shards". But that also makes a mess and obfuscates things more. Melina is the Kindling Maiden, but her character is not enlightened much (except at the Forge, har har). And Midra, while interesting, is not really given much background. The storylines are like the open world itself: a lot of ground to cover, but not very developed.
The Tarnished and Ranni were a contingency plan for when Marika's plan went awry. Marika planned on her family to work together to continue the Golden Order. That didn't work, so she chose to invest her remaining resources into Miquella. THAT didn't work, so she shattered the Elden Ring in order to enact her contingency plans. Why? No one was listening to her. Miquella found a way to FORCIBLY make someone listen to you. As Tarnished, we don't like being told what to do. So we stopped Miquella, ushering in our own Age-of-whatever. Because Elden Ring is a choose your own adventure game and you can use the Flame of Frenzy to COMPLETELY wipe Marika's plans clean from reality. Dung Eater did nothing wrong.
Here’s the deal with the lore and motives in Elden ring most of the lore hunters that are putting on videos tend to not mention one thing George RR Martin. Think about the visceral motivations in Game of Thrones the betrayal in that sense how petty families would fight for power against each other. I think when you apply some of that type of thinking to this family and the world that they have created, it lends itself to this story that has more realism, depth, and it’s easier for me to understand.
Seems to me Marika just wanted to be put down after an eternity of losing her children. She is much older than just a few thousand years, and i imagine everyone gets weary after a while.
The Shattering seems like the Elden Ring version of a reality show with everyone competing to be the next God. A reality show with just clues and hints, and no real host, if you think about it.
A 1000 year voigae yet the tree lost its golden hue. So that might insist that the golden order lost controll pver the lands between. And marika got to godhood with godfrey. And a 1000 years later shemaybe did thesame with her alterego Radagon. And somwhere in that time periode she removed the rune of dead witch brought her in to a fight for controll with radagan and ended up destroying the elden ring.
Personal head canon is that the player character IS Marika. After being imprisoned she sent out a shard of her soul into the corpse of a Tarnished and set the Guidance of Grace to essentially guide herself because she knew that the reincarnation process would wipe her memory. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, it’s just a fun idea for me.
- She was the mother of the serpentine Godskins. Just like she was the mother of serpentine Messmer. - The snake skin in Bonny Village. You'll say it's Messmer's shed, but it doesn't look like messmer's serpent form. And Messmer isn't going around turning into a snake. He's had the Supressing Eye thing since Marika was still around him. If it can be Messmer's shed from way back, why can't it be the GEQ's? It's the Gloam Eyed queen's shed. And it's pointing toward the whipping hut. - Who were the gods the Godskins were hunting? Before Marika removed the rune of Death? The gods of the hornsent. - She was defeated by Maliketh, her shadow, after which Marika removed the rune of death and gave it to Maliketh. She was a different person than Marika, just like Radagon is. That's why she was an opposite, in a way, and that's why Marika discarded her because she was creating an Order without death. Just like St. Trina is a different person than Miquella. Just like Miquella severed St. Trina before ascending to Godhood, Marika severed the Gloam Eyed Queen before ascending to Godhood and creating the Golden Order. The Gloam Eyed Queen IS Marika.
Not believing Count Ymir for being crazy is stupid af. He is likely there for thousand of years. He knows more about the greater will than anyone else. He studied the fingers and Metyr for a loong time. He knows about the Abyss. ... But they think he is crazy because he wants to be the new mother.. While we don't even know what a mother is in this setting..
Well he wants to become a mother of fingers, that's why the finger creepers come out of him once you allow him to take the title. He officially becomes mother that births fingers, more eldritch take.
You assuming that Marika did not want to kill godwyn, because it's her child, and she could not have been that evil. Remember that she basically locked her firstborn son messmer away in the lands of shadow, for her own purposes. Do not assume marika won't do the things that are necessary to achieve her goals.
She abandoned him, but didn't kill him. She didn't kill her cursed twins, either. Marika is a tiger mom, meaning she wanted everyone to be a God or a Lord, like 3rd world country immigrant parents want their kids to be lawyer or a doctor. If she was as cruel as most think, she could killed most of her kids in one way or another.
I would say marika’s age of plenty probably lasted about a thousand years, and everything after that was her refusing to accept that the erdtree’s time had passed. The formation of the golden order by sealing away destined death and calling herself the eternal, plus taking her other self as Elden lord always struck me as an act of defiance after she put down the gloam eyed queen - flipping the table so to speak. The fingers accept this outcome as the desire of the greater will and go along with marika’s new order. Later down the road she begins to doubt the golden order and eventually realizes she messed up horribly, which leads her to shatter the Elden ring.
The snake is one of her forms. I believe a snake is one of the first beings she merged with, that allowed her to survive being a shaman used by the hornsent. I have a fanfic in the works if you're interested in reading it.
The removal of Death has to predate things like Midra’s punishment or even the Living Jars. Processes that would normally kill them if Death was still affective. Also, I feel like Ranni was who Marika supported but Radagon supported Miquella
Mel was born afflicted by the Rot God, shares body with Blue Dancer. Miq was born afflicted by the Blood God/ The Mother of Truth, and shares body with St Trina.
It's so nice to hear the description of tooth whip. Again. For the thousandth time. Seriously, I am beginning to hate the DLC because every video since reads this item description. Want to tell us about the Tooth whip again?
@livingjarcletus Since it's so great, people should know the description without constantly retreading the same thing. If we stop watching lore videos over it, then what happens to the channel? We know the item description. There's no way we could not. Content creators need to quit reading it just to stretch the video length a little bit more. Not respecting time is not valuing my time. Like you said, "Why should I keep watching?", when I can just watch something I haven't heard repeatedly.
Every Loretubing video is someone's first loretubing video. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out from comments that GEQ was Gloam-Eyed Queen because Loretubers get so lost up their own arses that sometimes they forget there are filthy casuals watching these videos.
@@zachariahjonahmaldonado5897 But you figured out what GEQ means. Plus, this isn't even like that. It's an item description read verbatim from the game. Lore newbs can't read items descriptions??
Marika: so you are 100% sure you can put it back together after I break it?
Radagon: how hard could it be?
Radagon: “…Ok, maybe trying to repair the Elden Ring with the same hammer that broke it wasn’t such a good idea.”
Being a god is a curse. Living eternally, as a slave for the greater will. This is the reason she wanted out.
The Greater Will that abandoned the Elden Beast, Metyr, Placidusex, and the Fingers thousands of years ago and is actually the void of space... I'm pretty sure that St. Trina (who is complicite in all of Miquella's crimes and shouldn't be discounted as evil) just made that whole thing up to create additional justification for us to fight Miq so she can have a proper death.
@@zachariahjonahmaldonado5897 The third person in internet saying Trina is not full good, nice! Anyway, i think yes and now. Prison possibly not because GW but because... well, Marika ruled as God and look how things are now for her and her entire family.
I think the overall purpose of the shattering was obvious from the very start of the game, it's to make the greater will finally abandon the lands between, the lore presents that abandonment as a negative development, but it's overall positive given the themes of freedom of the game, the guidance of grace simply leads the tarnished to lead them to the ending that marika herself envisioned for the lands between, the age of fracture.
This is why she took grace away from the tarnished, then gives it back after the Greater Will's influence left. I feel this last bit of grace was the last she had. Which is why she's a dead husk now. She doesn't have the gold Amber inside her body like Radagon does. She had to do this as her 3 feminine children were chosen to be Empyreans. She didn't want them locked in, or perhaps Marika once had Empyrean sisters or friends that she had to kill to become the only. Like the GEQ.
@JKurayami i think she basically stripped the tarnished of their grace to make them 100% dependent on human strength, in order to make them usher in an age of freedom and humanity, rather than an age of subservience to the greater will.
Doesn't this conflict with the Informations we got in SOTE about The Greater Will, and that it was gone from the start? You know, the entire Ymir and Mother of Fingers questline.
@@JKurayami that’s more or less how I see it as well. We are sleeper agents, once grace is returned we are the beginning of the end
Even if the GW remains in contact with the fingers and not Metyr, Gw is pretty... not caring. At all. Gw do 3 things: Create Universe/Life, be angry with the Nox (And Japanese say they fleed into the underground for fear, not banished) and go away. At some point one of the Empyreans is even born with Scarlet Rot but she was still chosen to be heir and even in the end, if the Frenzied Flame takes the World, GW seems to still not care. The theory of free everyone not works so well if the "Big Bad Divine" do nothing.
I always thought it was weird marika was imprisoned but radagon just hops on down to fight if it was the greater will imprisoning her. It makes much more sense that radagon did so.
That's not Radagon. Radagon was a famed swordsman who invented Golden Order Fundamentalism and married into a sorceress's family to learn moon magic. He uses none of these skills, you probably even have his sword. He only uses Elden miracles associated with the Beast, seems lethargic and jerky, is visibly hollow, and swings at you with *Marika's* hammer, likely because that's what she was holding when they shattered the ring. What's left of him is even turned into a sword by the Elden Beast. You're fighting a meat puppet being controlled by an Eldritch star monster, not Radagon.
That dosnt make sense. Radagon only hops down to fight us when the Thorns have been burned away. He is as much of a prisoner as Marika, more so even.
The notion from the community that Radagon placed the Thorns has no evidence. I don't understand how no one questions it.
Very much enjoyed your video! I especially appreciate how there was one continuous line of thought without getting lost in dead ends. It's one of the most concise writeups I've seen.
A thought I had when you mentioned the night of black knives and how godwyn was the first to fall, it may have not just been that black knives were needed to kill demigods, but that Godwyn being killed set precedent for someone even attempting to assassinate one of Marika's children, and may have sparked a civil war between competing powers within the golden order.
I also think that killing Godwyn was the Nox' plan but not Ranni's. I won't get too deep into it, but basically it is heavily implied that the Nox were trying to create their own Lord of Night, and had undergone many gruesome experiments towards this end. I wouldn't put it past them to take the assassination of Marika's most powerful and influential child as an opportunity to use his body for this under the guise of helping Ranni bring about her age of stars. To me it's too big of a coincidence that you find his body at the foot of the erdtree, near an unnamed Nox city in what would've been part of Leyndell before being moved.
I agree. I always thought of the Tarnished as part of her plan from the beginning. I feel satisfied with you video, so neatly put together :D
Great top-down break down. I feel that it is always the case with Miyazaki games that there is a real story with specific people having done very specific things at the stories root. He just willfully removes enough information to make the story less apparent and makes a games around that shell, kind of like a person might use a balloon as a form for paper mache , only to pop the balloon and remove it after the form has hardened.
The only thing I would add to your theory is that I've had a sneaking suspicion that Ranni was set to marry Godwyn. My main evidence of this is simply that their, "deaths," feel strangely romantic, a la Romeo and Juliet. That and a combination of Ranni (the Moon) with Godwyn (the Sun) might be the basis for an eclipse.
I admit that my evidence is weak but I can't shake my suspicions.
Great video, I've subbed for more. =)
Impressive/thoughtfully produced, giving credit to ideas when they are referenced, good job ❤
I feel like Radagon was being puppeted when we fight him. When Marika shattered the ring, the Elden Beasts was like "this bish tripping" and took control of their body by the ring itself. Then it started The process of trying to repair it. The Gloam Eyed Queen was probably another personality in this Saint Jar styled silver tear like creature that posed a threat because of her role as a perpetuator of death.
Great video. For me, marikas' reason for the death of godwyn would be for the shatter wars to reach a stalemate.
I would imagine the "gold" will seize the power of the lands again if godwyn was there.
Thank you again for this beautiful video,looking forward to more content
I think Marika never followed the Two Fingers, or even the Greater Will. She co opted their image, sure. But was never their vassel. Which I think is why the Two Fingers declare other Emperyons, they want a God they *can* control.
Think about what we know about Marika. Like heck she's going to do anything anyone tells her to do. You think she's letting Radagon of the Plumber's Crack keep her chained? Radagon doesn't even use his sword or sorceries in the boss fight, he's using Marika's hammer. After what happened to her people, she's no one's slave, least of all two fingers and an Ebrietas wannabe.
I don't think the Golden Order failed. The ruined state of the world is because of The Shattering, with flavour text and dialogue indicating that the areas were until very recently prosperous, and some like the Raya Lucara Academy and Lyndell are basically fine. The Lord of Stormveil quest indicates that lorewise, Limgrave is still a functioning civilization.
The timelines are confusing but I don't think anything is that ancient. I think the Shattering was a fairly recent event, if we take Millicent's apparent age as literal and presume that Malenia's bloom and thus the end of the Shattering are her 'birth'. Godrick's various defeats are fairly recent, going by that he's still employing mercenaries and press ganging. The siege of volcano manner is an ongoing event. No one seems to know that the Erdtree is refusing prospective lords.
Emperyon doesn't meant anything anyways. Marika became a 'God, in truth' her own way and Miquella does the same later on. Ranni was an Empheryon but killed her mortal coil so it clearly isn't a want to be thing. I think it's just a title the Two Fingers applies to people they think can schloop in after Marika is disposed of.
I think Marika hijacked the Hornsent's doomed attempts to attain Divinity, paid unto them what they paid unto her, and then busied herself with conquest in an Alexander the Great type war for personal glory with civilization building as a distant second goal. That complete, throwing off the Elden Beast, Two Fingers, Metyr, and the Greater Will became her goal because, again, she ain't about to let Spacs Godzilla presume to Lord over her.
And everything she did after conquering the Lands Between was part of a guardian rebelion to shake off those dweeb. Mixing bloodlines with Godfrey, a mighty warrior, later marrying Radagon, a proficient mage, merging with him and selfcesting two children etc, and creating the Tarnished.
I don't think she cared who would succeed her, and had a 'to the strongest' It Has To Be This Way violence breeds violence mentality. What happened after she shattered the ring didn't matter to her. Though I do think Godfrey was in on this plan and supposed to swoop in if her Demigod children dropped the ball.
Marika controls the Grace, she's the one who points it wherever. The thing that sat on my head most is why it points you to the Lionen Misbegotten in the Weeping Peninsula. But worth noting is before the Godfrey fight, the Guidence of Grace points towards *you*.
To whatever extent Marika had plans for Miquella and Malenia, again, I don't think she's the one who designated Empyreons, and didn't seem to care that Radahn claimed a great rune despite not even being a contender. I think she knew that Miquella was every bit as cruel as her but had the ability to charm people, traits she considered ideal. And I think she thought Malenia useless to her because she was supporting Miq's claim anyways, already charmed by him, and her body the vessel of an outer god / mystical plague.
I also don't think Radagon would have been opposed to Miquella, who lore indicates he was quite fond of.
If we follow the correct (imo) notion that the grace of gold is marika's will alone but to the order left behind, after she shattered herself, the grace of gold is indicative of the presence of the greater will, then maybe Marika shattering herself and operating as a gold shimmery wind was her way of liberating her spirit as ranni did. And after her imprisonment she would trick radagon into thinking he was the only one able to influence the order, the elden ring and the world at large. While Marika's will would be instructing the tarnished on usurping the current order.
All this makes me think of how manipulative and powerful Marika really was throughout all of the events of the game. And Miquella definitely followed in her footsteps, as a copycat almost, while Ranni could see through all of her schemes and was the only one that reached quite close to the core of Marika's psyche.
Great video and love the use of this theme as background music, helped me focus for some reason. Keep up the good work!!
I believe that Marika wanted to kill herself when she got Ranni to steal a shard of the rune of death. The basis of the Golden Order is that Marika is the one true God, so for me the only reason as for why she’d allow death to be present in the lands between again would be to usher in a new age, the one she orchestrated for Miquella to have. The only way to do so is to root out the source of the Golden Order: Marika.
This is to me, the most important question people interested in the lore have to ask, and I think you did a great job of presenting a viable answer. Good work.
I've not ever noticed anyone mention this, and I'd like to know others' thoughts.
In the base game, the only living two fingers is the one that Ranni kills. All the others are dead atop the divine towers and the roundtable hold is a memory so the one there is a remembrance of a two fingers.
There are also three fingers of frenzied flame and they’re very much alive
@Dankmemeslover69 they were summoned directly to the lands between by the great caravan (potentially from the land of shadow) and since they vanish into you when marking your character their presence in the lands between is actually closer to the elden beast while carrying out the task of the two fingers
@@DamienTenebrous so if they vanish into the tarnished and disappear who marked Midra then? Another set of fingers?
@@Dankmemeslover69 if you look at his body he's not marked by the fingers he's simply infected by frenzy and the frenzy matured over time through his endurance of the pain
@@Dankmemeslover69 likely one of the aging untouchables if Midra is the one talked about in the notes found in the manse
Very interesting theories ! Looking forward to future vids.
Marika had great kindness within her, as well as great cruelty, and she dispensed both in equal measure, often at the same time. All I can say for certain is that Gideon was right: she wanted us to struggle, to suffer. Why does she want this? Why would she do this to us? Well, to ask why we must suffer in Elden Ring is to ask why we must suffer in real life. Life is a blessing, yet to live is to suffer. It is simply the human condition. Nature demands that all living things struggle, compete, grow stronger. Only through suffering can we be forged into something greater than ourselves. Perhaps Marika wishes us to suffer, so we might become a Lord.
No Gideon was tricked by Radagon Lord of the current order.
@@WeAreTheReapers If you say so
Survival of the fittest. One day a promised lord would come to free Marika from herself.
Personal head canon for Marika’s reason to tarnish Godfrey and his warriors is that they had a child together after Radagon became 2nd Elden Lord. She dimmed all their eyes so they would forget the secret child, and the child is the player character. Demi-god son/daughter of Godfrey would consequently be heir to all that is gold, not Godrick.
wait that’s actually pretty good
So i just got done with a 4 hour video that FINALLY explained Twin Peaks DEFINITIVELY and answered ALL my questions despite Lynch being the Miazaki of Cinema (or rather Miazaki is the Lynch of Gaming). All i could think (besides FINALLY) was man I wish someone could do this for Elden Ring
Can you link the video please?
@@Rooster_Ric hes probably referring to twin perfects video "twin peaks actually explained", which does indeed explain everything about twin peaks definitively. definitely do not watch it unless you are finished theorizing about twin peaks
Smoughtown has a few 10 hour videos on the entirety of the lore
Bookhouse Boys forever!
Great video, man. Nice calm speaking voice, great thoughts and good open minded conversation and seeing everything from multiple angles. I subscribed and liked! Off to watch the rest of your collection 😮
Hope you enjoy it
Great work man
If this theory is right, maybe Marika wanted the Rune of Death stolen because she wanted it used against herself, to completely die. But Ranni was afraid that would make someone (Miquella, herself, Malenia) become trapped into the same cycle by the Elden Beast.
Solid analysis. Interesting points. I always assumed it was more like 5000 years but hell I dont really have a compelling reason at the moment
Great video!
The guidance of grace pointing to castle mourn because it's tied to the best ending of the game. The Frenzy Flame Ending.
Marika is, without a doubt, the Gloam Eyed-Queen.
Does it involve growing mangoes in Tahiti?
Nailed it
So with all this being stated in this video, how then does it makes sense that marika and radagon are one and the same?
Great video, but i want to give you some int about translation, because japanese is a bit more complicated and, yet, explains it even better.
-Jar saints are not a thing. Saint it's used in a way to say Good People, not Holy People. Jars we're not meant to be an ascention, but a punishment covered by a veil of sanctity.
-About Radagon imprisoning Marika, very probably the Elden Beast was the real guilty. One of its attacks literally crucify you in the same way Marika is, and in the end is the Elden Beast using Radagon's body to defend herself (The dark mist inside Radagon's body)
-For Marika's talks, two points. In the bedroom, she calls Radagon not Loyal Hound of the Golden Order, but Dog of the Golden Order. In japanese she imply a mock and a tone used to people inferior to her. (Even because Radagon's title is Consort King, and Consort King is still a rule but DAMN inferior to the Queen). At the same time, Marika's dialogues are always with a tone of "I'm the rule, you're shit", while the one in the church talks to people like Comrades, and the dialogue is very connected to Fundamentalism, and Radagon is associated to Fundamentalism more than Marika. So, probably that dialogue belongs to Radagon, not Marika.
-For Ranni's Ending, yes, that is the only one where Marika is free to die, but the Elden Ring remains. Simply, Ranni takes it and bring it away to the Lands Between. The connection with the world remains, but now no one could touch and edit it again or do shit like Marika
-Maliketh's betrayal has no target and it can be translated to Failed. More probably, instead of She Betrayed Him, it could be He Failed Her. (Even because, if she was the only God in the lands between, why do all this mess with assassins, Ranni and Nox instead to say "Maliketh, please, give me the Rune of Death.")
-For the theory empyreans=mending with Gods, it's pretty nice but i want to add you one thing. Empyreans in japanese means "People connected to the divine" or something llike that, while Miko, the original name of Marika's Shamans, are a class of women with a great connection with the spirit world. All Marika's children shows some capacity to melt with other creatures (Godrick and Godfroy with Grafting, Rykard with the Snake, Godwyn with Erdtree roots, maybe even Radahn resisting in the body against the Scarlet Rot), but probably only Empyreans have a strong connection with spirits and divine beings. And St.Trina more than a God is another part of Miquella himself, like Radagon for Marika.
I think the crucifixion attacks is the only evidence of the elden beast imprisoning Marika, while i believe there is far more evidence of it being Radagon. The evidence of the jarring process being used as more than just a punishment in lore is substantial, i say in the video that it WAS used as a punishment, but that there was a more sinister purpose. And the evidence for this is too substantial for you to claim that it is simply a punishment.
@@livingjarcletus Fo Radagon, please, tell me why you think that, because probably the solution is 50/50 or at least something like that. For the jars, we know the rules of elden ring, from death come lifes and power, and watching both the hornsent's relationship with the Crucible and the Divine Gate, they knew that and used it in rituals/punishments, with some results as some Jars are alive. At the same time, Saints like Divine, even not talking about the original jap description, sounds a bit strange watching the context. A culture so "racist" and "Fanatic" blessing criminals and, probably, ereticals, giving them the chance to become Saints? Even because the saints should be the people in the jar, while Miko where used just as glue for them, not even the main part of the ritual.
you've opened my mind to alot. I think Marika helped Ranni to steal the rune of death
We are stuck in a prison and Marika is the main inmate, while we are the Jailkeeper, who she has made to loss their momery. We do are task because everyone else remembers and we are a God, meant to exact justice, over and over again, infinitum.
Great video! I don't know if you're someone who'd interested in critical theory in academia, but the kind of criticism you're making about the developer's intentions with count Ymir (around the 8.30 mark) would loosely be called a rhetorical analysis. It's becoming an increasingly popular lens and technique for close reading.
Just wanted to mention in case that kind of thing strikes your fancy.
It does, and i have considered making videos on the purpose of various characters throughout the game, through the eyes of the developer. Such as “the purpose of goldmask” and then trying to dive into WHY the developer chose to include this character. Thanks for the comment
Great video with great concepts. However - for your future audio recording I strongly suggest using soft fade out/ins instead od hard chopping your audio voiceover. It sounds like an over agressive noise gate, and since your ambient background hum is quite high it makes it pop out more. Keep the good work !
Marika was imprisoned by the Elden beast. It has a rare grab attack where it crucifies the player like Marika and pierces you with a ton of spears.
Oh yeah yellow eye was standing on a moon when I gave him the power.
Surprised you didn't mention the wicker men when you were talking about burning for fertilizer because that was the original role of the wicker men, at least irl.
So many options for sure. But at the end of the day, I think it was that the beginning of Marika’s desire of power came from the suffering of her people, the golden order was built on her trama of losing all her loved ones, her finally realizing she over corrected, Radagon (her other half) trying to stay the course, and her agony when her desired fragment(Miquella) betrayed her and her plan. Miquella being the manifestation of her youth and innocent self, began the same Machiavellian path she did eons ago. She saw that her fragmented self was doing the same damn thing. (At the final fight, Miquella’s eyes are gray and devoid of light). She effed the world up, and when her plan to fix what she broke started to fall apart, she realized she was wrong. So her final plan, was to create an army of unstoppable warriors, made from the soldiers that built her up, to bring an end to her rein. Allowing someone else, to make the choices, she had failed to make.
Your video confirmed alot of head cannon for me ggz. Think Marika intend godwyn as Miquellas lord. Flipping the whole plan when the one son she saw as worthy was assassinated.
Good point in this whole blending part. I too believe that Marika was suposed to merge with the Elden Ring and became a mere vessel, but instead Radagon, who was suposed to become the only god had blended together with Marika, becoming a twisted god of duality. One of many subtile hints that the rule of the fingers and the Elden Beast were doomed from the start.
After she figured out that her rule was rotten from the ground up, she decided to shatter everything. The world she built became stale after sealing destined death, the realm of death overflowing with spirits, unable to return. Her children all afflicted by her sins or giving away her secret - Radagon.
This rule was a giant shitshow and Marika had to fix her mistake by shattering the ring and paving the way for a new lord. The Elden Beast had to die, the fingers had to die. They were a curse to the world. There is nothing great about the Greater Will - if it even existed and isn't just a metaphor for describing the essence of life that created all life (including us). The Frenzied Flame is proof for that. Its mere existence is evidence enough. The fingers were just rambling foreign life, creating chaos and destruction.
36:35 I think I have an idea to answer this, in part anyhow. I believe Marika did not care for godwyn. She says to her children to become a god or a lord, but if you don’t she doesn’t care about them. Miquella was her favorite because he sought to be a god. Godwyn (coincidence with the god paired with wyn, the dynastic name used by mohg) the namesake of her plan was befriending her enemies and was only reaping the rewards of his standing. He had no ambition and for the son of Godfrey I don’t think would do
Also as I watched on, the intro cinematic says ‘tarnished the dead who yet live’ Godwyns curse of living death makes that possible
Very interesting analysis
I thought about that but here's my hang up. Thats what she *said*. People say weird things all the time, people say dumb things. People say things I'm sure they thought at the time they said that but then grew a lot as a person in the time since and now regret. People also lie, or speak from a position of insincerity or nievete. Who's to say that she *meant* what she said. I'm sure she probably thought that her children were just more warlords but I also doubt she felt nothing when Godwyn died.
I don't think this was her saying she doesn't care about them if they don't become gods or Lords. I think this is her saying they will be used or manipulated by forces outside her or their control if they do not become great in SOME fashion.
By this point in history where she says this (if i recall the timeline correctly) it's right before she shatters the ring, before choosing to go through with an extreme act that she knows will destabilize everything and lose herself. In my personal interpretation, she is warning them to be powerful and protect themselves because they would not have her there to protect them much longer.
She doesn’t tell her kids she doesn’t care. She tells them quite blatantly that if they fail to become aught at all, they will be sacrifices. Whether to Marika, the Erdtree, or just in the sense that someone other than them will sacrifice them. I think it’s tough love measured up to eleven out of ten.
I’m hoping you make a video on your Ranni theories. But you mentioned in another video that Marika’s children (offshoots) are divine pieces of her that she didn’t want (abyssal serpent, scarlet rot, etc). If that is the case should we assume Ranni is the part of her associated with night and the moon? And if her chosen “empyrean” children posses her ability to be fused with another being could the mysterious Snowy Crone be Ranni’s other self? Her version of Radagon or St. Trina?
I have a video called what is a god, you should go watch it. You will enjoy and i cover this
This world is the painting from DS3
what if, and this will sound crazy. Marika intended to further contact the greater will but was stopped midway by radagon. what if her crucified pose was merely her trying to raise both of her hands fully upwards to contact the greater will like she did in the DLC trailer. And Radagon took to using the tpose as a way to defy it
This is a cool idea. Not a lot of evidence to support but could definitely be the case
Great video! I just have 2 points of disagreement:
1. IMO Radagon backed Miquella and Marika backed Ranni. Reading several item/spell descriptions, Radagon taught Miquella golden order fundamentalism and the two had a close relationship. However, since fundamentalism could not help Melania, he went a different route. Hence, Shadow of The Erd Tree's storyline.
Ranni's hatred of the fingers is so deep and abiding it speaks of deeper knowledge, which she may have gotten from Count Ymir who was a Carian noble and retainer of her aunt Rellana(before Messmer's crusade). OR directly from Marika, who tricked(gulled is the word they use in game) Malekith and provided her with the rune fragment. The BKAs were numen(shaman related imo) and handmaidens of Marika's as well. However, Ranni chose to break free of the whole thing causing her to lock up Alecto in an evergaol and beef with the remaining assassins, leading to Iji's death and almost Blaidd's( till we kill him).
2. Sites of Grace, resemble humanity from the Dark Souls series; literal and physical expression of the human soul. Marika's body might be trapped in the tree but her will/spirit is directing us is a compelling theory and even more convincing as to why she backed Ranni.
Miquella's age of compassion, is a sham where he strips all people of their free will and eliminates the potential influence of outer gods by replacing it with his own total domination. This would free Marika, but damn the rest of the world.
Ranni's ending frees Marika, we see her body at least dissolving into dust which imdicates she has truly died and Ranni takes her runes aka becomes the new Goddess by way of absorbing them into herself. Ranni also wishes to take the elden ring and the order it forms away from the lands between into the stars. This would potentially limit the influence the outer gods could attain because they can't overwrite reality with the ring e.g. if Melania had went for the ring then the world would resemble Caelid OR they lose interest in the planet with the ring gone. Ranni's solution frees Marika AND everyone else from the fickle nature of gods and potentially the over arching influence that the outer gods command.
Okay, so the chances of this being not just another setup is 99%. However it is also 99% perfect.
The second tree looks more like the Scadutree than the Haligtree.
Random thought while listening to this. Is it possible the betrayal of Maliketh and the betrayal mentioned in the DLC are the same or at least connected? He held the rune of death and the Land of Shadow is where all manner of death wash up to be suppressed. Not a complete thought, but wanted to throw it out there and see if it made sense to anyone or its just a dumb thought 😂
Hey man. I was just wondering, how did you make this video? Like what Mic and Editing software did you use?
From a human psychology aspect, we're dealing with a self that's undergoing survivors guilt and doesn't know how to deal with the loss of a loved one. Order represents resolve. The inner world is created through chaos (a traumatic experience), and the great one is the ignorant fake inner god, aka the self. Marika represents the Ego, and her order represented suppressing death. This resulted in a lingering pain and suffering (rot) throughout the inner world, because the main traumatic experience was never directly confronted. Miquella represents the divine inner child archetype, and his order represents the suppression of pain and suffering. His sister, represents the wounded warrior archetype.
Melina represents the wise old man archetype, she's the one that explains the world to us, and guides us where the self has lost its guiding light, which is Farum Azula. Farum Azula represents Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the self's guiding light. To break the cycle, the tarnished (determination) and the maiden (willpower) have to both confront the traumatic event, which is death. Basically, we're trying to restore balance, by merging all the different flames, which represents the divine inner flame.
"You can't run away from your problems.", which is what we've been seeing from the self in Elden Ring.
If you have any questions, need examples... just ask. Or, if you're keen to play more games with similar world building, I can drop some titles :)
Really great video, I agree with the central point. But Why do you think Radagon imprisoned Marika, not the Elden Beast. The Elden Beast fights us and Marika triedto smash the ring. which is the beast, so is not aligned with Marika. The Elden Beast has grab attack which puts you on a rune arch and impales you, like how we find Marika.
To answer your question, i believe that the crucifixion attack is the only piece of evidence of the beast imprisoning Marika, while the evidence that Radagon was behind it is far more substantial. That does not mean Radagon didnt use the beast to imprison her, but i do see your point
@@livingjarcletus It could also be both in a way. The Eldem Ring is referred to as the Golden Order itself, Radagon is a vessel for its vision, the beast is the ring. Radagon is Radagon of the Golden Order.
When the Elden Beast appears it turns Radagon into a tool it wields to fight us. So I think there is a metaphor there about how Radagon is a whiling prisoner and puppet of the Elden Ring and Marika is an unwilling prisoner and puppet.
For the erdtree carving on the erdtree, the top one looks a lot like the scadutree picture on the helmets of the mesmer souldiers (Hawkshaw points this out in one of his videos). I think it is showing the "and so shadow was born" thing.
Love Hawkshaw, one of my favorite lore creators. And i STRONGLY disagree with that analysis. The side by sides are too clear for me
@livingjarcletus i respect that, in the end Im not sure either way :)
Couple of things I disagree with; 1) Radagon can’t have imprisoned Marika because based on what we’ve seen they literally share a body so only one of them can be active at any given time. I suspect the imprisonment was done by the Elden Beast given it has an attack that crucifies the player in the exact same way. 2) I think Marika’s reign is a lot longer than 1000 years but only because of her removal of Destined Death and lack of any challenge since she did that (bearing in mind it was a direct consequence of the Gloam Eyed Queen). I think we’re approaching 10s of thousands of years of rule but it was a byproduct of events rather than direct intention. 3) I don’t think Marika or the Fingers ever knew that they weren’t acting on current orders/guidance from the Greater Will because I don’t think any of them ever knew the Greater Will had abandoned The Lands Between. The guidance was “unhinged” because it was based on eons old rules that no longer make any sense. Last point isn’t necessarily a disagreement per se but I actually think Marika’s first choice was Godwyn rather than Miquella. Whether that couldn’t happen because he was never chosen as an Empyrean in the first place or because he was but was killed I’m not sure but I do think Miquella was second choice not first. Given what we know of Miquella’s power now Marika may not have chosen Miquella at all but he may have “compelled” her to choose him.
Oh completely forgot as well, I don’t think Marika was involved in the Night of the Black Knives, I actually think it was Miquella in an attempt to force the transition to his godhood
could it be possible that miquella might have enchanted marika to break the ring?
I think there's a lot to be said about how our expectations are subverted when it comes to the guidance of grace. We all expected the guidance of grace to be from the Greater Will (God figure, grace, etc). Right? At least I did. But it was always from Marika, who in fact is the God of the Lands Between.
I'd say we can expect based on that for Marika to be more important than the Greater Will than we expect in all things. I mean, the DLC says as much. It simply must've always been just Marika, if the Greater Will was never even in contact.
All this but Radagon for a bunch of it. I believe he turned the root-like collection of runes into the ring shape they are. Hence his affinity for discs. No more spiral, but a circle instead. I believe he used the Great Rune of the Unborn to Make the Twins of Malenia and Miquella just like him and Marika. Radagon was busy trying to craft Miquella into a better Marika that he didn't pay any mind to Malenia like Godwyn did to both of his youngest siblings. Seeing how his father wasn't helping Malenia, he decided to make his own tree far away from the Erd Tree and the influence of the Golden order.
Brings to question who was their Shadows if they were empyreans. Are there any locked up or strangely placed wolf knight boys in any of their areas?
I like to think Miquella charmed their shadows into killing themselves, or killing each other. That's how powerful Miquella is in game. It only takes one or two embraces, and you are done for.
@ That is a good idea.
I wonder... if the burnt figure holding a yellow/golden bud could be a newly released from jar-servitude Marika. And that she simply (shed her skin) when she became a god.
The firsr cardinal sin... was the burning of the erdtree...
Marika wanted that shard so she could end herself dude 😥
I wish that in 10 years miasaki would publish the true lore of elden ring.
But in the meanwile we are open to theory craft our own
Where is it stated that Radagon imprisoned Marika and not the Elden Beast? You randomly went off about Metyr
I have a plan. We Just. Need. More. Money. Tarnished!
Why does Grace's guidance lead Godfrey to the PC Tarnished during the cutscene where you meet him? Is Marika contradicting herself or conflicted over whose lordship she actually wants, or is Radagon leading his own champion to oppose the Tarnished?
It isn't Marika and it's not the guidance of grace. It's Morgott's body de-materializing into light as Godfrey holds him, and the fragments of light that made up his body are getting blown by the wind in our direction.
To me, this is a plot hole. Godfrey's appearance at the end is never explained. Why wasn't he encountered earlier? Why didn't he attempt to claim one of the Elden Ring shards from one of the demigods? Was there some taboo against fighting his children/stepchildren that forced him to fight us at the end? I like to think the Tarnished winning might have been an unforseen accident, or what The all-knowing meant by no Tarnished becoming Elden Lord.
Maybe the original plan of the night of black knives was that Marika, feeling imprisoned by her godhood, wanted to use a shard of the rune of Death to kill _herself_ so that Ranni could rise as the god of a new order. It would have saved the Tarnished the trouble of collecting shards, burning the tree, and fighting Radagon/Elden Beast. Maybe the assassins killing Godwyn was a mistake (oops, wrong blonde person!) or a change to the plan made by Ranni, which is why Marika was both implicated in planning the scheme, and yet so upset over its results. Marika being supportive of Ranni's ascension also explains why Ranni was able to freely live in her tower with her crew despite Marika likely knowing of her involvement in the Night of Black Knives, and why grace points the Tarnished to her. There was plenty of time before the player Tarnished arrived that the assassins could have attacked Ranni and crew, but they waited until this moment - why?
Maliketh's lament of betrayal could be that, as a shadow bound beast bound to protect his empyrean, he was ultimately given the task of holding one of few powers that could end the life of demigods/gods. Marika made him into a dangerous and unstable weapon prone to outbursts instead of the trustworthy guardian as he was programmed to be. For an empyrean's shadow, whose entire purpose is about being a protector, to be known as "death of the demigods" must be an awful thing.
The Crucible Knights are relics that represent the prehistoric Crucible era which predated the Age of the Erdtree. The Crucible Knights are named after three sequential geological periods from the Paleozoic Era. From oldest to youngest, they are Ordovician (Ordovis), Silurian (Siluria), and Devonian (Devonia).
Ordovis is named after the Ordovician, which lasted from 485.4 million years ago to 443.8 million years ago.
Siluria is named after the Silurian, which followed the conclusion of the Ordovician and lasted until 419.2 million years ago.
Devonia is named after the Devonian period, which was about 419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago. if knights could live millions of years with the rune of death bound to the elden ring. marika being a god with a stripped rune death, she should be eons or epochs old. even as a immortal god, they even call her the eternal.
I gave the purple power to a dude. I assumed was God and then he gave me back 9%. Call me old friend and had bright yellow dragon eye...
If Ranni told Marika that Godrick was the target, Marika would have tossed Ranni the rune with her blessing.
What makes you think guidance of grace comes from Marika?
I do. I think it's her trump card, and proof she's no defenseless or dead throughout the gane. She gives her grace to our Tarnished, and heals him/her throughout the game. She's trapped, but not powerless.
@dadevi apologies but that doesn't really explain why you think it comes from her
The only other entity it could come from without any leaps of logic is the greater will, who is said to have left the lands between by multiple trustworthy characters. And it continues to guide the tarnished toward/after committing the first cardinal sin.
Also, Marika was the one who created and originally lead the tarnished by granting them grace. So it makes sense to me she would have some supernatural influence over them.
Theres also this line from Marika on the Tarnished:
"Then, after thy death, I will give back what I once claimed. Return to the Lands Between, wage war, and brandish the Elden Ring. Grow strong in the face of death. Warriors of my lord. Lord Godfrey."
I really liked that Miquella called us champion kf the erdtree, solidified that we are fighting to free marika and mend the world. I bet miyazaki was happy most people followed rani.
Most people followed Ranni because they're simps and were excited to able to marry a doll if it meant they could pretend they had a girlfriend for once in a Souls game. I think they think y'all are actually lovers because she says 'dear' consort instead of 'fair' consort if you exhausted her dialogue earlier. She got all her friends killed, made Godwyn soul dead, and faked a suicide to not have to be a god, everyone and everything is just a tool for her to dodge responsibility. She doesn't love you, she never will. Go Frenzied Flame ending to see a real maiden.
@@zachariahjonahmaldonado5897I agreed with everything up until the frenzied flame, then you took a sharp left lol
Im sorry - why couldnt the elden beast be the one that imprisoned Marika? Cus it doesnt seem like Radagon and Marika can be in the same place at the same time because they only have one body that they share, so from a practicality aspect how could one disable the other? And on top of that Marika is dropped from her crucifix when we enter, if that was possible for Radagon to do at any time, what was rhe point of putting her there in the first place? Whereas we see the elden beast able to manipulate their body seemingly however it wants, so wouldn't that make way way way more sense?
I hear you and thats an interesting take. I see the dlc lore of the fingers as “proof” of Radagon imprisoning Marika because i dont think it could have been anyone else. And when i say Radagon imprisoned her, im implying that he imprisoned himself, therefore, imprisoning her. I believe that anyone else lacks the power. The elden beast wouldnt have lacked the power to do so, but given that the elden beast IS the elden ring, which dwells inside both Marika and Radagons body, i dont see how this could have been done. However the elden beast “crucifixion” attack does sort of imply that this could have been the case so i could see it
You say that Dark Souls lore is pretty well agreed upon, vs Elden Ring. As someone who knows little to nothing about DS, was this true after DS1 or did it take a sequel or two to reach that consensus? I feel like the truly fundamental unanswered questions of ER are left open, at this point, to be tackled later, even though talk of a sequel is sketchy at best from Miyazaki.
Interesting point because truly, many answers didnt come until dark souls 3. Fairly concrete answers that is. Dark souls 2 has TONS of lore, but a lot of people find it unreliable. I dont think its safe to assume there will be a sequel to elden ring, and if there is it may not be Miyazaki who makes it. He never REALLY wanted to make a sequel to dark souls but was pressured to do so. Thats why the dlc ending for dark souls 3 is almost comical with the painter, who wants to let the world burn so she can paint a new one. Its fairly well agreed upon that this is miyazaki illustrating his desire to move on from dark souls and work on new projects
Speculative theory: GEQ and Marika are twin sisters.
More grounded theory: Radagon was planning to reunite DD with the Elden Ring after Marika sealed it. With it, the Ring is complete, and their cyclical body would be immortal. When Marika discovered his intentions, she plotted the NoBK to create a new Death Rune to have it hidden. The Shattering would trap Radagon and delay his plans until someone worthy enough could end him and the Elden Beast.
It's the best bet that Marika shattered the Elden Ring to bring about a new order, after Ranni had made her move. She shattered the Elden Ring to weaken the Golden Order so they would not triumph over the machinations of the aspiring Empyreans.
Especially since it's implied that Radagon was trying to - or in the process of becoming in control of her. It was now or never and she wasn't going to have Radagon become a god.
Marika mentions that “you will be left to sacrifice should you not become anything be it a lord or a god” now ik that godwyn was the golden son but she hated the golden order, he slept with dozens of people having possible hundreds of children while no other demigod has any. To me godwyn feels like a representation of a dystopia. Everything looks good but isnt. The finger reader even refers godwyn as a martyr for destined death. Personally i think she had no problems killing godwyn considering her lack of empathy for other children and the fact that he never truly aspired to be something even though he showed great promise like defeating the dragon in lendyll
We know for sure that Marika wants the Elden beast killed. My guess is because the Elden Beast is the one creature above her in the hierarchy. Once it’s dead, she can move forward with the rest of her plans.
I think she orchestrated the night of the black knives. Ronni rid her self from control of the golden order by killing Godwins soul and I think Marika did at the same time as well.
That’s why we see Radagon take control of their body but not Marika. She’s not in there anymore. I think she used Radagon just like she used everyone else. She did the crime and made him do the time while she uses the guidance of grace to lead the tarnished, any tarnished, to kill the Elden Beast.
I think marikas rule honestly lasted only 6-7 or so centuries sure characters repeatedly speak of events like they happened in the distant past but it wouldn’t hurt the shorter time frame since they would still be living for centuries so there perspective on time could be warped from living so long. But her rein being 1000 years could be very plausible since miquella and ranni say 1000 years specifically almost like over this time span there ages would naturally lose there power and luster like the erdtree went from being as warm as the sun to no warmth
I also think marika destroyed the elden ring not just because godwyn died but because he was pretty much the “golden” child aka not only the favorite but the “best” in marikas eyes since he not only was born free from any affliction, he was handsome, beloved by both her and the people. But was also the only demigod to step to the dragons when they broke down the capitals walls. So that means he’s also the most loyal he doesn’t even own any land rather he resides with the capital itself one could view this like him being the only “pure one” to be able to stay in the capital since he’s so untainted and loyal unlike all of her other offspring so him being killed and turned into the “prince of death” he became the very antithesis of what the golden order stood for not only did he die and not live eternally, her most beloved child had been turned into a vile “creature” just as her people so long ago. But he also brought death back the thing she wanted gone. All of that could have marinated with marika for who knows how long sinking deeper and deeper till she one day finally snapped and shattered the elden ring. Out of sorrow for all her efforts being in vain her becoming a god doing all of this killing just for a family member to be killed once more.
Great video! You did good job putting the story from Marika’s perspective. I agree that she wanted to finish her golden order and Miquella is a replacement plan that went sour when he (intentionally or not) failed his tree project and discovered the truth about his mother’s ascension
Prob 3000. History more or less works in 100s. Rome was so great because it lasted 300. USA is in a similar bucket. I think she lasted 3000 years. 1000 for her intro. 1000 for the golden order. And 1000 for Radagon’s (Marika’s imprisonment). The finger crone in the hub even says “it could be thousands of years before they move”. Meaning that Marika as a good was unnaturally long. So ima go with 3000 years. Which means our boy Thop’s waited close to 1000-2000 years in that church. He does say, he is VERY patient
The 300 years thing is baseless, stupid, and wrong. Numerology is a psuedoscience. The USA is no where near its nadir, Rome lasted a truck of a lot longer than 300 years. The Soviet Union capped out at 80,
Doesnt the game kinda explain that the elden ring is Marikas idea, not the greater wills?
The elden ring has been around far longer than Queen Marika. See lore on Placidusax, farum azula. Elden Remembrance
Ymir always seemed like a maddened manipulator to me. He sends us to Metyr, but throws obstacles in our path (his doll, Anna, whom he made into a doll/puppet) and yet he tells us we will join the stars, but really it is implied that Metyr can either transform humans into Fingercreepers (Yuri) or that Ymir BELIEVES she can and has. He seems so contradictory in all he does. He KNOWS we are a warrior and sends us to Metyr, then gets upset when we slay Metyr. Or does he covet Metyr's Remembrance for himself? The guy is so twisted and seeks cross-purposes.
He's a true unreliable narrator. He could be completely wrong, or half-right. There's no way of telling because it's clear the fingers are starting to die, and his scheming doesn't work either. Brilliant bit of world building by having none of our questions definitively answered about Metyr and Marika's true gameplan for the Lands Between.
@dadevi I do not think the world-building works much, tbh. There were clearly many changes during development (to the main game and the dlc) that it comes off as quite a mess narratively. St Trina the Cradlesong and her Third-Eye adult form were squandered, for instance. The GEQ and her lore was not satisfactory (for me). Radahn's motivations have been clearly changed more than once since he is a Godfrey fanboy, but also sought to protect Sellia from falling stars. Yet, when we defeat him the falling stars do not hit Sellia at all and instead open up a path to Nokron. Originally he was the God of War. The insect-aspect of Miquella was mostly removed, even though there are lots of Albinaurics cocooned in Elphael. So much is underbaked or outright retconned in the dlc. Romina and Rellana do get much setup. I have already pointed out Ymir's nonsensical nature. Of course, thematically the dlc makes no sense anyway since we are "helping" Miquella, but actually aspiring to defeat him. Leda, the paranoid, welcomes us into her confidence, and even turns against some of the others, but somehow does not realize what we are doing until the end, even if we side with Ansbach against her. Her comrades are still summonable for fights after the falling out. Bayle's and Greyoll's lore is contradictory because Bayle is called the "oldest, vilest dragon" while Greyoll is the "mother of all dragons". Meanwhile there are Ancient Dragons that despise Drakes, but Drakes suffer from devolution. Yet, if Drakes are "devolved" forms then that would imply that Ancient Dragons had to first evolve from Drakes, otherwise it is not devolution. I suppose the Laws of Causality and Regression could be at play, especially since Beast-Men actually drop human bone shards rather than "Beast-Men bone shards". But that also makes a mess and obfuscates things more. Melina is the Kindling Maiden, but her character is not enlightened much (except at the Forge, har har).
And Midra, while interesting, is not really given much background. The storylines are like the open world itself: a lot of ground to cover, but not very developed.
Good God so many ads
The game implies the gloam eyed queen was marika so much its not even funny
No it doesn’t. That’s just your headcanon
The Tarnished and Ranni were a contingency plan for when Marika's plan went awry. Marika planned on her family to work together to continue the Golden Order. That didn't work, so she chose to invest her remaining resources into Miquella. THAT didn't work, so she shattered the Elden Ring in order to enact her contingency plans. Why? No one was listening to her. Miquella found a way to FORCIBLY make someone listen to you. As Tarnished, we don't like being told what to do. So we stopped Miquella, ushering in our own Age-of-whatever. Because Elden Ring is a choose your own adventure game and you can use the Flame of Frenzy to COMPLETELY wipe Marika's plans clean from reality. Dung Eater did nothing wrong.
Here’s the deal with the lore and motives in Elden ring most of the lore hunters that are putting on videos tend to not mention one thing George RR Martin. Think about the visceral motivations in Game of Thrones the betrayal in that sense how petty families would fight for power against each other. I think when you apply some of that type of thinking to this family and the world that they have created, it lends itself to this story that has more realism, depth, and it’s easier for me to understand.
Seems to me Marika just wanted to be put down after an eternity of losing her children. She is much older than just a few thousand years, and i imagine everyone gets weary after a while.
The Shattering seems like the Elden Ring version of a reality show with everyone competing to be the next God. A reality show with just clues and hints, and no real host, if you think about it.
A 1000 year voigae yet the tree lost its golden hue. So that might insist that the golden order lost controll pver the lands between.
And marika got to godhood with godfrey. And a 1000 years later shemaybe did thesame with her alterego Radagon. And somwhere in that time periode she removed the rune of dead witch brought her in to a fight for controll with radagan and ended up destroying the elden ring.
Your video is excellently written. Offers a lot of new lore perspectives although many had been speculating given
Personal head canon is that the player character IS Marika. After being imprisoned she sent out a shard of her soul into the corpse of a Tarnished and set the Guidance of Grace to essentially guide herself because she knew that the reincarnation process would wipe her memory. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, it’s just a fun idea for me.
Kinda, not really. The Tarnished is a bastard demigod themself, but the guidance of grace is Marika's will.
@ As I said, “personal head canon.” Wasn’t presenting a theory.
i like this head canon
Have you seen the video that theorizes we are a demigod? I cant remember the name of the creator but i think every player should watch it
I like this headcanon! It's a fun idea to entertain 😊
Thou send ...y ears
The Gloam Eyed queen wasn't in play because she was Marika. Is this not fact by now?
- She was the mother of the serpentine Godskins. Just like she was the mother of serpentine Messmer.
- The snake skin in Bonny Village. You'll say it's Messmer's shed, but it doesn't look like messmer's serpent form. And Messmer isn't going around turning into a snake. He's had the Supressing Eye thing since Marika was still around him. If it can be Messmer's shed from way back, why can't it be the GEQ's? It's the Gloam Eyed queen's shed. And it's pointing toward the whipping hut.
- Who were the gods the Godskins were hunting? Before Marika removed the rune of Death? The gods of the hornsent.
- She was defeated by Maliketh, her shadow, after which Marika removed the rune of death and gave it to Maliketh. She was a different person than Marika, just like Radagon is. That's why she was an opposite, in a way, and that's why Marika discarded her because she was creating an Order without death.
Just like St. Trina is a different person than Miquella. Just like Miquella severed St. Trina before ascending to Godhood, Marika severed the Gloam Eyed Queen before ascending to Godhood and creating the Golden Order.
The Gloam Eyed Queen IS Marika.
Not believing Count Ymir for being crazy is stupid af.
He is likely there for thousand of years.
He knows more about the greater will than anyone else.
He studied the fingers and Metyr for a loong time.
He knows about the Abyss.
...
But they think he is crazy because he wants to be the new mother.. While we don't even know what a mother is in this setting..
Well he wants to become a mother of fingers, that's why the finger creepers come out of him once you allow him to take the title.
He officially becomes mother that births fingers, more eldritch take.
You assuming that Marika did not want to kill godwyn, because it's her child, and she could not have been that evil. Remember that she basically locked her firstborn son messmer away in the lands of shadow, for her own purposes. Do not assume marika won't do the things that are necessary to achieve her goals.
Abandoning messmer may have been a byproduct of the shattering. It might not haven been on purpose.
I did not say that she didnt want to kill Godwyn because it was too evil
She abandoned him, but didn't kill him. She didn't kill her cursed twins, either. Marika is a tiger mom, meaning she wanted everyone to be a God or a Lord, like 3rd world country immigrant parents want their kids to be lawyer or a doctor. If she was as cruel as most think, she could killed most of her kids in one way or another.
I would say marika’s age of plenty probably lasted about a thousand years, and everything after that was her refusing to accept that the erdtree’s time had passed. The formation of the golden order by sealing away destined death and calling herself the eternal, plus taking her other self as Elden lord always struck me as an act of defiance after she put down the gloam eyed queen - flipping the table so to speak. The fingers accept this outcome as the desire of the greater will and go along with marika’s new order. Later down the road she begins to doubt the golden order and eventually realizes she messed up horribly, which leads her to shatter the Elden ring.
Marika is a shapeshifting snake.
The snake is one of her forms. I believe a snake is one of the first beings she merged with, that allowed her to survive being a shaman used by the hornsent. I have a fanfic in the works if you're interested in reading it.
@ sounds intriguing. Pass it on. Sure someone else will also enjoy it.
To shake shit up
👏
The removal of Death has to predate things like Midra’s punishment or even the Living Jars. Processes that would normally kill them if Death was still affective.
Also, I feel like Ranni was who Marika supported but Radagon supported Miquella
Mel was born afflicted by the Rot God, shares body with Blue Dancer. Miq was born afflicted by the Blood God/ The Mother of Truth, and shares body with St Trina.
Saint Trina
I don't get what fingers mean
It's so nice to hear the description of tooth whip. Again. For the thousandth time. Seriously, I am beginning to hate the DLC because every video since reads this item description. Want to tell us about the Tooth whip again?
greatest lore item of the dlc. I can see this upsets you. Maybe, stop watching these videos?
@livingjarcletus Since it's so great, people should know the description without constantly retreading the same thing. If we stop watching lore videos over it, then what happens to the channel?
We know the item description. There's no way we could not. Content creators need to quit reading it just to stretch the video length a little bit more. Not respecting time is not valuing my time.
Like you said, "Why should I keep watching?", when I can just watch something I haven't heard repeatedly.
Every Loretubing video is someone's first loretubing video. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out from comments that GEQ was Gloam-Eyed Queen because Loretubers get so lost up their own arses that sometimes they forget there are filthy casuals watching these videos.
@@zachariahjonahmaldonado5897 But you figured out what GEQ means.
Plus, this isn't even like that. It's an item description read verbatim from the game. Lore newbs can't read items descriptions??
At least it’s not hayetta’s dialogue for the millionth time