Sorry for the reupload. I'm working with a different audio setup this week, so the initial upload had messed up audio-- hopefully this version is better. Also, this version should be in 2k. Sorry for all the missing comments; there are already a bunch on the previous video here: ua-cam.com/video/Kzq_WC_bZXM/v-deo.html. But please feel free to write them again if you want to. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Malenia never beat Radahn as you stated bro she bloomed knocked herself still couldn't kill a nerf radahn and got carried away by outside forces. Doesn't sound like a win right? Base malenia nor blooming malenia could take down nerfed radahn
Theres something in the game that said the Radagon came to Rennala with a baby Ranni, it is why Ranni is an Empyrean, born of one god, theres no way she can be an Empyrean without this being cannon
The Gloam Eyed Queen maybe is a manifestation of the Rune of Death, like Marika plucked the Rune from the Elden Ring to make the demigods immortals, but in the process she created a being, named Melina as she said was born at the foot of the erdthree, but she get astray from the real purpose, became a queen for the beings who want to kill the gods, like the godskin, and in a sense she is a daughter of Marika since she create her, but in the same, she is not, like she created her, and Marika command Maliketh to sealed the Destined Death and defeat the Gloam Eyed Queen, and the title was given by the one's who follow her, believing that she can defeat the gods, remmember that boc calls you a lord, without you being a real lord, could be not a real status given, but taken, by submition or demonstration of power, the power of the rune of death, remmember that Marika too is a Shamam, she was not a descendant of royalty, she came to be called Queen by her power, not by title given.
My theory is that FA was once attached to Caelid, at the Bestial Sanctum, and also to the Mountaintops, bridging the two. This is why you can see the same giant skeletons in both Caelid and the Mountaintops. My theory goes that FA was once the capital of the Gloam Eyed Queen, and Placidusax was her consort and Elden Lord. This is also why there are dragons all over the northwestern side of Caelid, where FA would have been attached. It's also why the Godslayer Greatsword is beneath the Divine Tower in Caelid, near the Bestial Sanctum. The statue in Maliketh's arena is the Gloam Eyed Queen, and that arena is where Maliketh defeated her. Upon her defeat, Placidusax was hidden beyond time in his arena within FA, awaiting for the return of his God, the GEQ. It's also why the Godskin Duo fight happens in FA. The tapestries in the Godskin Duo arena match the tapestries in the Bestial Sanctum, and the trees outside the Bestial Sanctum match the trees at the bottom of FA, where the wormface's are. The scatted ruins across the land have matching symbols and architecture with FA, so my theory goes that upon the GEQ's defeat, Marika/Greater Will created a tempest that ripped FA from the ground and carrier out to see, making it impossible to reach. When this happened bits and pieces were flung all across the land. This is why you find the sanctuary stones, and ruins pieces on those ruins, as well as at the secret place below the Bestial Sanctum. Marika was removing the capital of her former adversery. She made Maliketh guard the Rune of Death there, making doubly hard to get at (it's nearly impossible to reach FA for anyone, and even if you do, you then have to fight Maliketh). The GEQ was imprisoned in the Erd Tree, and she eventually was able to create/use Melina to gain access to the outside world and look for a tarnished (one who is sure to seek the Elden Ring) and use/manipulate them in to burning the Erd Tree, thereby releasing her from her prison. Any of the endings work for this, except for the Frenzied Flame, since it destroys everything, which is why the GEQ (now freed, and no longer using the vessel Melina, so she looks like herself now) shows up at the frenzied flame ending and vows to bring you Destined Death. Torrent used to belong to the GEQ, not Miquella (there are several spectral steeds, not just one, as evidenced by the skeletons of them all over the place - plus Miquella's steed is a whiter color than Torrent, and Torrent has saddle bags, Miquella's does not). This is why the GEQ, during the Frenzied Flame ending, specifically picks up Torrents whistle from the ash, with sadness and anger. Ranni sought out the GEQ, in order to learn more about the Rune of Death, and how it might be used to free her from her empyrean bonds. The GEQ taught Ranni the dark ritual necessary to carry out her plan, knowing that Ranni would need to burn the Erd Tree to be successful - which would also free the GEQ from her prison. This is why Ranni knows who Torrent's former master is, and it's why she gives you the three wolves spirit ash.
This is pretty solid head canon, ngl. It’s very strange that the statue with the 3 wolves is that of a young person. She doesn’t appear the type to incite apostles dedicated to flaying the skin of gods, either. But very little in this game is as it first appears
@@WilliamWallace-ts6qh I’m curious to hear your opinion after the DLC. I agree with you about the Farum Azula, very interesting observation. Not sure what to think about GEQ being imprisoned. If I remember correctly, it was Marika who was imprisoned at the roots of the Erdtree. Now, of course, there is plenty of space for both of them, I suppose. I still think the theory about Melina being an offshoot of Marika is more likely simply because of all the parallels with Millicent. Also, your theory does not explain who is Melina’s “mother” who gave her a purpose.
I also find it strange that Ranni the witch has 3 wolves outside at her doorstep at rannis rise, and then three dedicated followers. Then there's that statue in malikeths boss room of a young woman and three wolves....
Three Eternal Cities. Three Sisters of Caria Manor. Three demigod children. Three randomly located non-boss versions of Red Wolf of Radagon. Three towns for the inheritors of the Eternal above ground. _Three_ _co-conspirators_ _during_ _the_ _Night_ _of_ _the_ _Black_ _Knives._
There’s actually one key visual clue that connects Melina’s sealed eye with the beast eye. The beast eye item has very distinct three stripe markings, so far the closest match to the clawmark seal on Melina’s left eye (much more so than the deathbird claws to which many are drawing the connection!)
The question is who *isn’t* Marika. Can you prove you’re not secretly Marika; how do I know I’m not Marika? I’m not deep enough in the Elden haze to understand this video yet
Each character simultaneously having 3+ different versions of themselves, while also having multiple conflicting aspects within 1 body is a recurring thing in Elden Ring. It's best not to think too logically about characters being separate entities or not.
something i feel worth noting that further contextualizes the idea of divine beings producing "offshoots": there are many kami that have multiple shinto shrines dedicated to them. from the perspective of judeochristian theology, that might not seem all that significant, considering our abundance of worship buildings dedicated to a single deity, _except_ ... there's no symbolic or mystical connection between a kami and its shrine, the kami is meant to be _literally enshrined within the premises._ while kami are spiritual beings, they're also connected to the physical world to such an extent that cutting down a kotodama's tree doesn't upset it simply because it's an insult to its domain, it upsets it because you just destroyed what's both its home and its physical body. so it isn't as though kami are everywhere at once, nor do they just exist in multiple places simultaneously, least not in the traditional sense. they _can_ just up and leave a shrine to visit another, but it's still _leaving_ and the shrine is left without its principle kami. and while a minor kami attending two or three shrines through mundane methods might work out fine, even the divine start to sweat when they look at a situation like inari's and their thirty-two *_thousand_* shrines the solution to this is incredibly simple: if the single inari cannot attend all 32,000 shrines, then there simply needs to be 32,000 inari yes, kami can just be ritually divided into multiple instances, albeit "divided" describes the process moreso than it does the result. when a kami undergoes bunrei, you do not end up with two halves of the kami, you end up with two of the kami - almost like biological fragmentation ( which, yes, plants are capable of ) if both fragments instantly regenerated back to full health. the two kami share the same power, spirit, domain, and identity as the original, but importantly they _are no longer the same kami,_ and so their domain and mythos can develop fully independently from one another, to such an extent that they cease being recognized by the same names. inari, again, is a fantastic example as this, as while they've kept their name and their association with foxes throughout their many divisions, they've also become known as the kami of just about anything because the inari of different shrines have branched into their own spheres of influence, and when there's 32,000 of them all doing that, well,
Not my theory, but I saw the basis of it somewhere in a comment on another theory video (I dont remember which, i've watched a lot today) and was able to fill in the details and gaps from what I heard: The Gloam Eyed Queen was the true original Empyrean that lived with and ruled over the Hornsent. Marika, enraged by what the Hornsent did to her and her village, created/became Radagon and then sought out the Gloam Eyed Queen to reproduce with her and then murder her. The union between the Gloam Eyed Queen and Radagon created Melina and Messmer. The story trailer for the DLC was Markia transforming back from Radagon, stealing the Empyrean golden thread from the now dead Gloam Eyed Queen and taking her place as the chosen Empyrean God for the Two Fingers. She then stole Messmer and Melina (since they were not her kids, but Radagon's) acted as a surrogate mother, and then sent them by her orders off on to their respective damning missions. The original sin, and the seduction, betrayal, and the affair from which gold arose- were all of these actions done by Marika.
thank you for outright saying you're staying spoiler free, as am I. Can't tell you how many videos I've had to just stop early because I was unsure where they were going and it seemed like spoiler territory. You're the best, Crunchy.
Awesome. Tons of hours played , and a bunch of videos like this one, and I never felt satisfied by any explanation of Melina I heard, until now. Earned a subscribe.
Given your discussion of snakes, and their relationship to the Erdtree, I'm surprised that you didn't point out all of the "snails" in the game are actually snakes disguised with a shell. It's clear if you look at frozen images of them, and you can fight "snail" skeletons in some of the graveyards, despite snails being invertebrates.
So Marika, the Gloam-Eyed Queen of the Godskin Apostles who she raised to be the death of the gods was convinced she could use her dominion of Destined Death to cheat her own and become Eternal. As she began to realize her actions would leave her to Eternal suffering she began to lose blind faith in her own Order and a new alter-ego formed as Radagon who seeked perfection. And as her unwanted children were born with curses and deformities, as her Order continued to show faults, she was pushed to the brink and set a plan in motion to undo everything as to be free from the prison of Eternity she jailed herself into. As the the Night of the Black Knives and The Shattering took place, Melina also sprung forth.
My schizo theory about Maliketh is that he is literally Marika’s Shadow and figuratively defeated the GEQ as he was made manifest, taking the rune of death from her god slaying blade and sealed into his own. His only memory is of Marika, which is why he appears so confounded when she later betrays his only purpose. Edit: I’m thinking along the same lines as when Darth Vader killed Anakin circa Order 66.
the talk about "seduction", maybe that's the greater will seducing marika with the promise of eternity and order, cause i dont believe she reached that conclusion by herself and set her goals without external influences
@@Rockngames1 Totally. I imagine there was a whole chain of seduction and betrayals all the way down, from whatever The Greater Will is, to the people that would become her subjects under this new order.
in support of Marika being GEQ, her statues in the dlc are posed like the rune of death (like in the church of benediction). this contrasts the rune of life pose her statues take in the lands between
Amazing video yo The being on the briar greatshield and its description, the mention of solitary ascetics from a foreign land, the vague reasoning of the guilty, Marika's crucifiction at her own churches and the description of numen.These are some of the reasons pre-dlc, I figured Marika is the gloam eyed queen. After the dlc, finding out she can meld with others, the shed snake skin near the o mother gesture, the shadow of Messmer's serpent coiling around Marika, and the mutual hatred the hornsent have towards snakes, Marika and her children. Are more reasons I still think she is the gloam eyed queen, that started the golden lineage with Godfrey. Possably by grafting a golden lion to Horah Loux. Idk how to explain this, but at dusk and dawn, you can see the sun casting what looks like grace on the water. I've always took the fleeting beauty of it only lasting for a moment, as something similar to the descriptions of the erdtree's perfection being a fleeting thing, like life itself. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the golden glow on the water might also be considered a gloam, which would be like saying the golden eyed queen, but a gold that fades and comes back in the morning. Maybe you could put my foolish ambitions to rest, that the golden order wasn't created until after Radagon's union with Renalla? I'm currently under the impression Marika's origional order up untill the golden order, was called the erdtree faithful? with some uprising in volcano manor keeping a priest or something in a jail, but it makes me think there could have been something else entirely at volcano manor before an uprising, with erdtree faithful having something to do with it. It's just very strange that you get the golden order seal where you'd expect the erdtree seal to be, with erdtree seal in prison town, and golden order seal at minor erdtree church? I take it as the golden order could have usurped the erdtree faithful
Listen to me, please. Learn about "crown sprouting," grafting and cloning in trees, "root suckers" and pyrophilic reproductive cycles. Tldr- if we treat the Tree as Marika’s reproductive organ, she can create children with pollination from others, she can pollinate others like the Carian queen, and she can clone herself by replanting a branch. The GEQ can be a similar situation to D- 2 bodies and 2 minds, 1 soul. Radagon can be a clone, a tree version of a mimic tear. Melina can be an unpolinated seed- gentically identical child. Ranni can easily be a case of Pollination by Marika- Radagon is her male reproductive organ, after all.
I think the gloam eyed queen was marika before she betrayed the hornsent. She was the jar saint serpent queen and bride of hoarah loux in the age of the crucible. She betrayed the hornsent to the two fingers and the greater will, divesting herself of flame, serpent and integrity in the form of messmer and melina in the process. It could be that she was meant to be fed to a great serpent/god devouring serpent at the gate of divinity but killed it instead and ascended to godhood herself by creating a great rune. The same serpent (a serpent never dies) later seduced rykard. I'm rambling idk
To me that makes a lot of sense... After she slayed the snake Marika toke the essence of the GloamEyedQueen and then blended that at the Gate with herself. Have you noticed that "outside" the gate of divinity its dark like purple and "inside" bright like golden and between those the flesh.It seems to me almost as the colours of an Eclipse where Sun and moon unite and since Marika is a Shaman that might be the moment she unites the GEQ with herself to get divine and then lock her in the eye of Melina.
And then to get truely rid of the GEQ Marika has to get rid of both of her Qualities: The Spiritual which is sealed in LEFT eye and the physical sealed in Messmers RIGHT eye. They were both there at the time Marika wanted herself to be not anymore one with the GEQ.
Since the dawn of Souls lore Miyazaki has actively gone out of his way to make the lore as hard to understand as possible, Elden Ring is his Magnum Opus in confusing/mocking us
@@guardianvalor962 I wonder if by abstract he means a game with less real world analogs than in Elden Ring. While ER does have some crazy metaphysical concepts you need to figure out there's plenty of not abstract references to the real world in the game to build its narrative. The lore in ER is extremely vague and whatnot but there's parts of it that are not really that abstract. Look at Tarnished Archaeologist if you want some examples lol
This has some amazing points! I do think you're really missing the mark on Malenia however. Saying that she whipped out the rot just because she couldn't stand to lose to gigachad Radahn and she was just butthurt or something hugely undermines who she is imo. She has never known defeat, sure. She definitely takes pride in that. (And I agree that Millicent represents her pride which she was forced to shed in that battle) But above her pride is her loyalty to miquella and her belief in him. She unleashed the rot because Radahn /had/ to lose that fight for miquella's goals to happen. There's the eclipse of castle Sol for one, and now the fact that he's required for the dlc, which we know is basically miquella's whole story now. Malenia def wasn't fighting him for funsies. Miquella's driving motivation (or one of them) is to cure his sister. She trained with the blind swordsman. We know for a Fact that Malenia likely despises the rot. She wouldn't have let herself succumb to it over hurt pride. That's just not who she is. And while that's a lot deeper into her than you may have wanted to go in your Melina video, all too often I see this fandom fall into this really weird, mildly misogynistic, and most importantly boring read that it's the gigachad Radahn vs the soy rotcucked Malenia. It totally misses our on her character and how tight she is Plus like, Radahn is cool enough as is without needing to shit on Malenia. Brother fought space and won. Let them both be cool
Let them both be cool, but not flawed. Good idea. This had some amazing points! Unfortunately, now we are trying to get into Malenia’s head (impossible) and how would we know the reason she nuked Caelid? We would not! No offense to you but I don’t think that while she was self-desctructing she was thinking of Miquella. She wishes she could introduce herself to Radahn as many times as she does to the Tarnished, but she basically hit a brick wall until she used a status effect to erode that wall. Also. Radahn doesn’t have feet anymore. This entire reply was a ruse just to get to this point. Why are the cripples some of the coolest fights in Elden Ring? (Albinaurics on wolfback are Not Cool.)
Out of all the theories regarding Melina's identity, this one makes the most sense. The Tarnished player character being Godwyn is one I'd like to see you do a video on next... It explains the reason why they're the only Tarnished that is seemingly immortal among other things (such as two of the game's endings, a certain boss' dialogue etc)
Correct me if there's in-game evidence that contradicts this, but I believe the reason our Tarnished can come back from death where others can't is because we are the only ones actively receiving the guidance of grace. Rogier confirms that he could once see it but no longer can, and I kind of extrapolated from that the other Tarnished we meet are in the same boat as him. As an aside, I've also always assumed that this is what the Tabel of Lost Grace's purpose is. It's literally a well for the grace bestowed onto Tarnished, and when that grace is removed it is returned to the well (i.e. why there is more grace gathered above the table than anywhere else in the game). This is really interesting because it implies that grace might be an expendable resource that needs to be recycled, rather than just "created" infinitely by Marika for new and upcoming Tarnished, and could explain why the guidance of grace is taken away from Tarnished who could once see it. Statistically speaking, the more Tarnished who can see grace, the higher the chance that one will become Elden Lord and follow whatever Marika's plan is, so why take it away from them at all?
@@jackhague3828 That was my initial impression as well, but apparently the Volcano Manor Tarnished and Hoarah Loux can also see it. Yet none of them seem to be able to immediately vanish upon death only to respawn after some time like the player character can.
@@W_W-f8ydon't forget Gideon. He he can see the guidance of grace too right? (I honestly forgot if he's just lazy or not when it comes to gathering runes. Or he physically can't cause he doesn't have grace to guide him)
i don't know about the "being Godwyn" thing. but Zayf the scholar just did a video, where he presents evidence that the player could be a demigod from one of the walking mausoleums. (we can here there bells, stomps, etc. in the intro cinematic when we awake.) wich would also explain our immortality.
@@petespeedsxp4967 yeah there is another version of that theory out there according to which that demigod is none other than Godwyn (or his disembodied soul?). That's why the Tarnished is shown waking up inside an area that heavily resembles the room Radagon can later be found in instead of a walking mausoleum
So much to think about. I think you've nailed a lot of valid points! What if the God of the lands between is always the same matter, just broken down and reused, like soil when growing a crop or tree? There's so much of the lore that can be contextualized in terms of crop plant genetics, where the demigods get rid of traits by selectively removing them when they regenerate through different acts. At the same time, I would also suggest Marika is also the erdtree. By the time the game starts, it's been burned at least once (see the ashes all over Leyndell), but not destroyed, just like most of the evidence of Marika. Also, Marika has two full arms while hanging from the remains of the rune arc in the erdtree, but when she becomes Radagon, he's missing significantly more of his body, like he's burning away. And finally, if his name is an anagram of "a dragon" then could her name be read as "kimara" or chimera? Since she's capable of being a mix of many things?
...the "strawberry-blond" hair is one of the most bonkers obvious things I've never put together. Of COURSE there's some sort of Radagon/Marika stuff going on with that. Of COURSE!
yes brooooo finally!! I definitely fuck with the idea that marika was the GEQ. Been doing a lot of research and that was one of the theories I had. Thanks for putting this out there!
Is anybody not somebody else? Maybe the Frenzied Flame already won, and chaos has already taken the world… it’s just forgotten, in the chaos of it all 😂
Indeed. The true eclipse is the frenzy flame and gold mask conjoined, the formless mother has merged with frenzy, you can see bloodflame emanating from the character.
This is an old write-up now, with some recent updates from the DLC. Marika is the Gloam/Dusk-Eyed Queen. - There's a red and black spike of death impaling Marika and keeping her in place when we find her at the end. Only Maliketh wields this power, and only he could even defeat a God like Marika. But he's so loyal to her, why would he? - Maliketh "defeated" the Gloam/Dusk-Eyed Queen. We know Shadowbound hounds have to attack their former master if The Fingers feel like the Empyrean is acting against them. We play through this reality with Ranni's quest, and both she and Iji know Blaidd will go mad as she enacts her vision. How do they know this happens? They saw/heard of it happening to Maliketh and Marika already. - 7 seemingly Grace-tinged faces adorn the aprons of the Godskin Nobles. There are 7 Walking Masoleums in the game. A ghostly NPC mentions in a prayer to Queen Marika that a local one contains "your unwanted child..." within. The corpses we find within are seemingly skinned. - Only Marika would be able to guide Ranni to the location of the Rune of Death and how to use it for it to be stolen in the first place to forge the Black Knives. Remember, "Marika... is this what it is to sin?" "Why gull me..." Marika, after all, had only one use for Maliketh in the end, after the other work was done... a vessel to seal away Destined Death. And even then, she betrayed him. - The Beast Eye is a purple, scratched up eye. It's Marika's eye from being defeated and imprisoned by her Shadowbound. No other Queen or Empyrean is "defeated" but not slain, as the text implies there except Marika. And who but her purpose-made hound could even stop her, a God? The one entity empowered enough by the Ring/Fingers to be able to do so should the need arise. - Dominula Village is much like the Hinterlands and the Shaman Village. We find a skinning ritual and a Godskin Apostle there in Dominula. We learn that the "festival" is old and tacitly accepted by the Golden Order. The aesthetic of these villages is much the same, and they're intimately tied to Marika herself. - Gideon gives us a boon in the form of a secret rite known only to him, Black Flame Protection. He is alleged to have peered into the will of Queen Marika and shuddered at the end that should not be. - The Scadutree is of a dual nature. So is Queen Marika. When Gold arose, so too was Shadow born. Gold and Shadow exist as necessary contrasts to each other, yet in a God, in Marika, this duality exists in coalesce, or it did once. - No other characters are named as Queen or Empyrean that aren't already accounted for/ruled out to be the GEQ, and by that I mean Melina, she was given purpose by her mother at the foot of the Erdtree and that means she is a daughter of Marika, not old enough to be the GEQ but possesses traits of both Marika and Radagon. Eye color and hair color are passed down traits we see in game. Well, sure enough, Melina shows us a purple/gloamy eye in one ending. Inherited trait from her mother, the Queen in Black. Marika's eyes are never shown to us to judge their color. - Duskborn ending sees Godwyn rise to ascendancy and sees Death restored, with him as the Prince of Death itself. These titles aren't meaningless. Duskborn? The "Prince" of Death? Well, who would the Queen be? If Godwyn is Duskborn, and if he is a Prince, his mother would, of course, be associated with "Dusk" and be a Queen. And we know his mother is Queen Marika. - Godwyn is referred to as the "Prince of Gold" in an item description. If a Prince of Death could have been a Prince of Gold, why couldn't his mother hold this potential as well, even necessarily so? We see from the Death Knights that Gold and Death can somehow synergize even still... Gold and Shadow, born at the same time, same as it ever was. - Fia is hooded with a black cloak and comes from some other land. She also helps create Godwyn's Duskborn ending and is Death-aligned. We see Marika wearing black hooded garb in a statue where she also is holding the twins Miquella and Malenia. Her tattered clothing as we find her at the end is also black. She is also associated with the Nox/Numen race and the Black Knife Assassins that come from there as well. - Statues of Marika in her crucified pose all show her with a flowing black cloth that wraps behind her in almost the exact same shape as the Godslayer Greatsword, which was the weapon or ritual sword of the GEQ/DEQ. You have to pivot the camera a bit to get a good view, but the shape is very similar. Coiled and then open, with one flap slightly longer than the other, same tip design on the Godslayer Greatsword. It's possible that she was propped up by the Hornsent culture and then part of the betrayal was killing other Gods in their pantheon, but what's maybe more possible is as Centered Tarnished pointed out, that Marika culled some other of her "unwanted" children after learning the truth of the broken Fingers and flawed foundations of her Order. - Hewg prays to Queen Marika about his given task to craft a Godslaying weapon. Very interesting and specific task. Marika wants a God slain. He mentions "the sheer terror of Her..." regarding Marika. Godskins certainly take an interest in killing a God. Who was their leader? A "defeated" Queen who was once an Empyrean. Marika. - Raging Wolf Vargram is a would-be Shadow. Wolf imagery is on his armor. He wields the Godslayer Greatsword. The weapon art is "The Queen's Black Flame", of course. A statue of Marika exists in Farum Azula, depicting her with three wolves. - Marika learned the secrets of the Golden Order and realized her children would "amount only to sacrifices" as she instructed them. She knew the Erdtree was a soul parasite, and by sealing Death away, she weakened the Erdtree over time. She also had Godwyn buried at the roots of it, knowing that he would grow and overtake them, choking the Erdtree further. As he was, Godwyn was an "unwanted" child since he embodied the Golden Order, and she was a prisoner to it. He would end up much like Miquella would, a caged divinity of some kind. She was likely opposed to the Erdtree and Greater Will/Fingers for a long time, weaving plots in secret until the Shattering. She realized, only too late, that ultimate power has a way of becoming a curse when the truth of the nature of it all is finally revealed. Just as Marika shined so brightly with her Golden Order, another aspect of her was as deep as the abyss and as dark as any shadow.
@@cwill14 I was surprised and it was kinda funny, because i was searching related videos about it and saw your comment then changed video again only to see the same comment at the start
I like your theory. This made me think of Hyetta divining the words of the 3 fingers. Specifically, she mentions from the "Great One" came fractures and births and souls. What if fractures referred to Gods, such as Marika? What if empyreans are only possible when a god fractures, like you pointed out as "off shoots" in the video?
I believe Malenia didn't let the scarlet aeonia bloom out of pettiness for losing to Radahn but that she sacrificed herself and gave in to the outer god of rot to give Miquella's new order a fighting chance. If Radahn becomes Elden Lord he would uphold the status quo of the golden order, damning all that Miquella tries to accomplish.
I do agree, that Beating Radahn was important for Miquella’s motives. But I think it’s deeper than that. It could be, like you said, that Radahn threatens the seat of Elden Lord… but I think his necessary death is MUCH more related to the stars. Miquella likely wanted Malenia to kill Radahn, and resume the movement of the stars. What do we know about Stars in Elden Ring? Well, the basics of it are that they control the fate of the demigods (Amber starlight). Stars are also particularly important because it is a Star that birthed the very, and titular, Elden Ring (Elden Stars incantation). Obviously, I won’t know for sure right now what Miquella needed Radahns death for, but it’s surely related to Miquella’s goals and fate. It’s much deeper than Miquella feeling threatened by Radahn’s possible lordship. Radahn’s death was SO important for Miquella’s goals that Malenia felt it NECESSARY to abandon her sense of self and honour for the benefit of the greater picture.
she rotted because they came to a standstill, dex charm description tells us the curved swordsman trained melina, the dancer charm implies hes the one to stop the rot god in the past. most likely he taught her how to suppress the rot, blue cloth cowl description says as water turns fowl, stagnation to decay, gideon always says the fight came to a standstill, its pretty clear the game is telling us she needed to keep moving or her flowing water would go fowl, which is the name of her attack, water fowl dance. nor water flow anymore
We learned that you need to divest your physical being and whole aspects of yourself to reach godhood in the DLC. Melina and millicent may be such divested fragments.
It's crazy watching this after what we learn in the DLC. About St Trina being an offshoot of Miquella. Same as Marika and Radago. Miquella divested many parts of themselves. Not hard to believe Marika did too
@@chancefreely which could just add Messmer to the list of divested pieces of Marika. Besides, there's a lot of ground to cover when it comes to the implications of having children with a divested piece of yourself.
@@Cephal0god I love theory crafting, but I gotta be honest. There’s little to no chance of that actually being the case. Aside from the fact that Marika and Miquella explicitly only have one other half, those “divested” bits you’re talking about were individual aspects of Miquella. It wasn’t like he was spawning a different Miquella at each of the crosses. Each part of himself he divested was each symbolically representative of something. In fact, there’s another demigod that divested themselves of something as well: Ranni. She divested herself of life itself, yet there aren’t two Ranni’s running around. With your logic, it could apply to literally all of her children, which is just incompatible with the lore of the game. Each demigod had completely different motivations. To say they’re all the same person, or even a few of them are the same person, is ridiculous. This whole video is ridiculous really. The GEQ was an enemy and rival empyrean to Marika from what we know in the lore. They couldn’t possibly be the same person, much less somehow her daughter/enemy/herself.
@@chancefreely I agree that they aren't all divested parts of Marika, but I just wanted to say that Ranni didn't exactly divest herself of her body in the same way Miquella did. She used a Black Knife to literally kill her body lol. We don't know how Miquella did it, but I doubt it was like that.
This is my exact theory to a t!!!! Of course I love hearing new perspectives I never wouldve considered even when it goes against mine but... I gotta admit, it feels nice to get your own theory validated by a sick Loretuber 😅💖🔥 Thanks for what you do!
Just wanted to clarify that you've fleshed it out a lot more than my lil theory about offshoots tho 😅 you gave me so much to think about 💖 you even got my gears turnin on a few other things too. Great vid
One criticism I have is that the world seems to be painted in a way so that Marika and GEQ are likely at odds with each other. Given that Marika is the one who removed destined death from the elden ring, and was against it. There aren't many hints suggesting it was Marika who fought Maliketh, I think Melina is almost certainly a direct daughter of Marika, which is boring but most likely. Cutscenes with Melina have been data mined as "Daughter of Marika" and she refers to her mother as being within the erd tree, I take this as literal. One of the biggest connections with GEQ (other than frenzy flame ending) is the fact she was Empyrean. The only known Empyreans other than GEQ are children of Marika/Radagon. It is not required to be a child of Marika but it seems her offspring and close relatives are ideal candidates for being such. I also heavily subscribe to the butterfly theory, the smoldering being reference to Melina. My headcannon after this is that Maliketh in the process of sealing destined death and killing Melina(GEQ) caused her physical body to be destroyed, the sealing of destined death during this process however made her soul immortal, returning to the erd tree where she was reborn. This process was so visceral it partially destroyed her soul, eliminating most of the memories Melina had. This isn't far from how Ranni experienced destined death, the exception being she had a vessel for her soul to inhabit after physical death. We know Marika's children were all very powerful and rulers, and had a faction they resided over. The GEQ's followers are lost (godskin), all over the map. This fits with Melina's story as being a former image of herself.
I don't think Melina's body was done in by Malekith, my theory of events is like this: - Melina was born after Messmer, and became the GEQ. - Marika seals the Rune of Death. - Messmer due to the abyssal serpent, burns Melina, maybe cuz in his eyes Melina's acts as the GEQ were a sin against their mother. - Marika is horrorized by Messmer actions and puts the eye seal on him. - Marika still unsure about Messmer, decides to kill two birds with one stone: send him to kill the Hornsent and seal Enir Illis so nobody can reach godhood, while sealing Messmer in the Realm of Shadows. - Then the base game story takes place, she marries Godfrey and such. - After realizing the GW link to the two fingers has been severed due to the death of Godwyn, she knows the guidance she has been receiving is a lie, shatters the ER and places her hopes on Melina, whose spirit was dormant in the Erdtree since that's where all spirits go (could be Marika gave Torrent to her after Miquella left to make his Haligtree). - Melina doesn't remember much about her either due to Messmer's killing her or Marika trying to shield her from the painful memories, but sets on a journey with Torrent to find a Tarnished. - Torrent having belonged to Miquella could have given him some insight into finding Tarnisheds with potential. idk but I think it could have gone like this, wdyt?
I would say this: after Godwyn died Marika saw the flaw in her own order, her order could not give him a true death. So she understood that her own order had failed her own wants and desires. When she "later" says to Radagon "lets be broken together" she will try to fix her own mistake and let Radagon deal with the broken elden ring. They are both working on fixing something that isnt working properly and from Marikas point of view death has to be incorporated into the elden ring once again because that is the what she perceives to be the problem. I think the gloam eyed queen is aptly named, gloam eyed could simplemeans she sees death, she could had been the queen of death within the golden order before Marika, but before Marika had lost Godwyn she believed the world would be better without a proper death. So she asked Maliketh to take the rune of death from the gloam eyed queen so she could create her own golden order without death. Now the gloam eyed queen has no power in the world anymore but she isnt dead, she is a spirit without a purpose. So queen marika wants death within the world again, she breaks herself and her golden order so her new found purpose can find line again. We know melina doesnt know who she is, that she doesnt remember that fits perfectly with the gloam eyed queen, and her mother is that one that bring her back to life, and there is no life without a purpose to that life, which in other words means, a meaning to life. The frenzied flame represents that life should have no meaning, everything should be reduced down into the same, and if everything is the same you can not have a purpose or a meaning because those things represents something better.
I think you're hitting the nail. I've been thinking the same thing since finnishing the DLC. The confirmation of Marika's closeness to the fingers, the Godskin's sigil being similar to Metyr and her wounded abdomen that shows an attempt at murder (probably with the fingerslayer blade from Nokron) , the apparent mesh of things Marika is if we are to believe that she is the Saint that the Hornsent were trying to create. And also a more clear understanding of how Empyreans work. And the point of convergence it's exaxctly what you show in your title, and the fact that empyreans change their titles: Miquella, the Unalloyed/Kind/etc, Marika, the Eternal/Marika, the Gloam Eyed Queen.
What if the empyreans are like Marika and Radagon, two halfs of one being. Marika found this out and separated these halves of her empyrean children. She then beheaded and entombed the unwanted half's in the walking mausoleums. This could be why Malenia seems half of herself to other npcs and Miquella can't age.
Ive always thought that the Shield of the Guilty a reference to Melina. The item description reads: “Shield made to venerate a maiden whose eyes were crushed by Briars of Sin before being reborn in these lands.” The shield depicts a maiden with her left eye being gouged by briars, the same eye Melina had blinded. Food for thought
Good video. If Marika was the Gloam-Eyed Queen, then perhaps she herself was an offshoot like Millicent. Let's say the Gloam eyed queen was a snake. The snake goes against the greater will. Then Maliketh "kills" off the Gloam-Eyed Queen. But rather than actually die, she sheds an important aspect of herself. The aspect of death. Sealing that aspect in Maliketh. Being reborn in the new identity Marika. Marika is different than the Gloam-Eyed Queen, because she doesn't want to see any more deaths. Thus, creating the new golden order. It could also be that in the DLC trailer, we're actually seeing Marika pulling the threads of the elden ring from her old snake corpse. The new Marika being the subservient half of The Gloam eyed queen, doing the greater will's bidding. While Melina is something of the free will version of the Gloam-eyed queen. Suppressed as death has been sealed. She probably wouldn't really have an identity of her own until a fragment of the the rune of death was used in the plot to kill Godwyn. With that fragment taken from Maliketh, enough of destined death was unsealed to allow Melina to project herself into the world in a limited capacity. And then, like you say, when Maliketh is defeated, destined death is entirely unsealed, allowing Melina to fully exist in the world, as an avatar of destined death.
I don’t believe Malenia released the rot because she was losing necessarily, as they’re depicted as both fighting to a stalemate. I thought it was apparent that she released her rot in an attempt to gain favour in the fight, but it wasn’t enough to destroy Radahn. Leaving both of them incapacitated. Thus a stalemate regardless. But I guess we don’t have enough evidence to really say for sure 🤷♀️
@@CrunchyVideos Truee she does say that, I keep looking back on the short scene we get of the Malenia and Radahn on the battlefield. And they seem to be at a resting point after already taking some swings at one another. I truly believe she was capable of holding her own against Radahn, she just wasn't able to get a win over on him because he was so powerful. So she released the rot and even that wasn't enough. But I really have a hard time believing she was close to losing, or that she necessarily would have suffered a bigger loss than Radahn would have. I honestly thought they were a match in strength, Malenia with her Rot, and Radahn with his gravity magic.
I'm currently thinking that Melina and Messmer are both children (or offshoots) of the Gloam-Eyed Queen and Radagon, but the nice thing is this theory and the video's one don't necessarily disprove each other! I can see where you're coming from and it mostly made good sense to me. If an aspect of Marika was the snake-like GEQ, who then betrayed the Greater Will and the Two Fingers, then that also explains why snakes are considered to be traitors to the Erdtree; because Marika is their chosen one.
snake part is a stretch? imho marika the GEQ gained her immortality by slaying (maybe having a child with?) the immortal snake god. hence god-slaying flame (what god did it slay?), godskins being snakelike, eiglay church skin, etc. but the serpent hunter spear suggests there literally was a gigantic monstrous immortal serpent god in history, before Rykard found one of its children and fed himself to it. And the serpent god, formless serpent assassins etc don't seem related to the Godskins. I think that official trailer opens with a shot of Marika, the GEQ, immediately after killing the immortal serpent god and taking its divinity for herself, becoming a god, and the godskin nobles & apostles are wearing that god's skin.
I've been thinking about this for a long time, finally someone voiced it! Thank you. I have another thought. I see 2 things in Marika: 1 Marika is a person who knows the universe. According to Hegel, man is the highest form of matter that knows itself. The principles of dialectics are presented in the game and explain many events in the game. For example, "Unity and the struggle of opposites." in Simitic religions, Cognition/Naming is the main creative activity and divine purpose of man. Elden Beast - Great Attractor / True reality - space in which stars were born (gold) Also similar to the simplest forms of life (looks like a cell, ciliates...) and the first forms of life (Dragons born from stones and rocks under the influence of hurricanes, storms and lightning) The structure of gold in Elden Beast repeats the spine and fractal processes that are found in the nervous system, branching of trees, division of the hand into 5 fingers, etc. These fractals are like a divine pattern/template for everything in the universe. Elden Ring - Marika's idea of the world order, the universe(Elden Beast). foundation. Dominant ideology. Elden Ring - Man’s idea of the universe, his worldview, the result of a collision/reflaction of consciousness with Elden Beast. Shattering - Crisis of worldview/civilization/religion/world views. Shattering is Marika's way of reassembling her knowledge with the help of the tarnished-оnes. tarnished and her other children are in some way “Marika’s thoughts.” Odin had 2 Raven spies - "Huginn" and "Muninn" = "thought" and "memory" Combat is a kind of learning/cognition of a thing/understanding 2 Marika - heavily inspired by Hera (ox-eyed) . The cult of Hera is very ancient (before the Greek pantheon) and complicated, she was also an androgyne with a predominantly feminine principle. Androgynous deities in early cultures represent an ideal human being, not divided into sexes. A balanced being that combines/contains both principles. Also, “human” is a more general concept than "man" and "woman" - more specific, which are lower in the hierarchy of concepts. In the Talmuds, Adam was the first ideal person without gender. And then God divided him into man and woman. In many religions there is a “Golden Age”, a time when there was no evil and death, when the world was ideal, then the Fall occurred, corruption of this order, and since then we have been living in an imperfect world.
The fact that so many people have commented on this video being like, "The DLC says bla bla" baffles me. The dude was making predictions. Its Souls lore, all of this stuff is built on less than a novella's worth of vague item discriptions. Chill.
A bit unrelated: but I don’t think Malenia cheated via being “dissatisfied” with her “undefeated” title. It’s pretty obvious that the “blade of Miquella” served their entire purpose to Miquella, her brother. Malenia even threw away her godgiven duties as Empyrean, to become Miquella’s Blade. She cared not for glory, as glory is what came with her dedication to her Brother. She cared not for the Great Runes, because she’d have Godricks by now. This was completely unrelated, I know. Sorry. But it’s just a tangential aspect of the vid I’d like to talk about, considering how much people misconstrued Malenia’s character. Yes, she abandoned her Pride - as Millicent is a representation of this. Not to win for personal glory, but more that she abandoned her honour for Miquella’s “promise”, for Miquella’s greater cause…. Whatever that means. Radahn is a mandatory death for the DLC. So we’ll learn why exactly Miquella had Malenia march on caelid
Bro thank you for making this video. I've been theorizing the same thing recently just didn't have all the connections u made. There's symbolism and connection between so many characters and the fact that identity is confirmed to be convoluted suggests this theory's possibility
@@i3looi2 Marika is a numen, with shamans seemingly being just a tribe of numen women just like how the black knife assassins were all numen women close to marika. The numen are capable of taking on aspects of other flesh which is the reason they were used in the saint jars to bind flesh together as well as being the reason why grafting is possible for people of her blood like godrick/godefroy. It's not unheard of to think a numen could take on inhuman aspects as long as they properly graft it.
@shirokun002 which is a plot hole. Why would the numen serve a carian princess and I also thought all the numen were dead when marika went back to the village
Does the spirit actually appear in the age of stars ending? I vaguely remember it being just the doll. That’s the only time we see her after killing Blaidd, if we actually bother killing him.
i mean, theres more than one symbolical meaning for snakes in the mythologies that elden ring draws off of so varied snake imagery would make sense. theres jörmungandr, an ourobouros like sea serpent in norse myth that brings the end of the world should it ever let go of biting its tail, nidhogg, another snake from norse myth that chews on the roots of the greattree, in christianity theres obvioulsy the serpent of eden, theres the caduceus and aesclepius, staffes with snakes (two for the caduceus one for the aesclepius) that often symbolize medicine, used in greek and roman myth aswell as alchemy and later commonly adopted by christian apothecaries, and that list can go much longer if you want to include asian serpentine dragons or various forms of sea serpents
oh my god you mentioning blaidd being ranni's divested primal part just made me realize that he is her shadow not just because he follows and protects her or is part of her, but also because he is an embodiment of her Jungian shadow
I think you nailed it. There are different kinds of serpents as well - Godwyn in the form of a sea serpent (like the Shinto deity Susanoo god of the sea and storms who was banished to the underworld and there became the god of serpents), Miranda of the Flower Crucible and the poison Formless Serpents and so on. Ranni Is the joining of her Dark Moon spirit and the form of Renna the Numen Black Moon, Lord of Night and the guide to the stars. The Demihuman Queens Gilika (note part of Marika's name), Maggie and Margot. I think all of the Id qualities - her shadow self, her base human self, her dark seductive side, her beastial side all were split off as if pruned from her and grew into different less strong versions vulnerable to whims of outer gods. Note that grafting terminology is important - scions, buds, etc. She was pruned to perfection but she could not escape the passing on of her shadow self to her offspring. Her cursed children were only cursed from the perspective of the GW - anything that inhibits the growth of gold is cursed. All endings are destined to fail - all mending runes would be needed to fully restore Marika but we can only choose one. I think that is the message - *all* parts of the cycle (ring) are critical. There is no good or bad, just necessary for better or worse.
An interesting detail about the blade of calling is that you find it in a hidden office in the tower leading to the snowfields. This implies it's a blade given to people of decent rank within the erdtree governmental hierarchy. It's similarities with the black knife implies that the black knife assassins didn't just come up out of the eternal cities with black knives in hand, but may perhaps have been members of the erdtree government and given these blades of calling, and then modified them with the rune of death to commit the night of the black knives assassinations. Also, immediately after the tower with the hidden office you see the vulgar militiamen along with a blackblade gargoyle and the red-tinged gold grace (think: crucible) floating through the air which reasonably matches the colour of the spike through Marika's womb. All of this links to Malekith in some way. So if when Malekith defeated the gloam-eyed queen he did indeed defeat Marika herself it would shed light on why Malekith is lamenting. I've had a long-running theory that the gloam-eyed queen was responsible for burning down the erdtree, so if Marika was the gloam-eyed queen then it gives a stronger link to Melina. But perhaps the order of events is not quite right. The first cardinal sin of the erdtree refers to kindling being lit, and I wonder if that kindling actually refers to these body doubles like Melina, which implies she was alive before the tree was burnt down.
@@mattb6616 I did another playthrough to have a look again and there are a few interesting details worth mentioning. 1. The door opens inwards but does not have a handle on the inside. Meaning it probably couldn't be opened from within. 2. The door has a bolt lock on the inside implying it could be locked from within. Could just be a reused asset. 3. The guy sitting outside the door has the Official's Attire body armour which is a part of the Bloodsoaked set. This item talks about the gruesome acts of magisterial officials. 4. The Blade of Calling item description talks specifically about the kindling maiden. This implies that this particular Blade of Calling we find here was Melina's. We know there were others because we see Pollyanna use one against O'Neil. By the way how the heck did Pollyanna get a Blade of Calling? Following that thought, if we assume Gowry gave her the Blade of Calling we can follow that link to the Sage's Cave where you can find the Candletree shield. There's also a black knife assassin in this cave. There's a tenuous link here but it splits into a thousand paths because of the dozen other items in this cave. Need to dig further into the deal with the sages.
I believe Melina picking up the ring scene "Beast Death Marika" (her game file name is daughter of Marika) while I believe beast is referring to Torrent. In the DLC while traversing The Abyss - Torrent will not come out as he is afraid, afraid of the frenzied flame. Descriptions found on items say the Frenzied flame kill spirits for good. On another note- Many items in the DLC help flesh out the picture surrounding these characters and set Melina as the burned/forgotten daughter of Marika/Radagon.
@@thekaelixchamber In technical sense, it appears so or even hivemind? There are a few items which talk of what the flame is and how accepting it guarantees one a destined death. Godwyn is a peculiar case, we have yet to learn much of why only his soul died but his body did not, Is it still Godwyn at that point? We find his knights but it only speaks of guarding Godwyn's cadaver here and there.
@@KindredSunlight Yeah I'm sad they couldn't just give us enough of an explanation of how the world of The Lands Between works. Lots of aspects and attributes left unexplained such as spirit like peoples like Torrent and Melina, how does one bear children alone is it like divesting oneself of their aspects? Like Marika and Malenia? What about the outer gods? My copium is telling me that they left it like this to explain further in Elden Ring 2
@@thecia9498 He seems to posses only dead people, as he mentions yuria's body was there for him to take as he would not be using it anymore. (died at the end of elenora quest.)
Nah Melina is a daughter to Marika and Radagon. This is confirmed as she’s represented by a butterfly. The butterflies we can find in game all represent the children of Marika and Radagon. Nascent butterfly represents Miquella, Aeonian butterfly represents Malenia, Smouldering butterfly represents Melina. And then in the dlc we’re introduced to Messmer and Black Pyreflies. I like to believe that the children of Marika and Radagon come in twos. First came the twins Melina and Messmer, and then came Miquella and Malenia. The later share a contrasting theme, Miquella is cursed with eternal youth while Malenia is cursed with Scarlet Rot which caused her to rapidly decay, symbolizing old age and death. And then we have Melina and Messmer who both share the theme of fire. Messmer has his own flame, a flame which is notably different from any other pyromancy in the game, his fire is more red and more aggressive. He is able to share his fire with his followers, his fire knights who cast incantations of Messmer’s flame. Then when we kill Messmer, we obtain his flame as a physical item. Now Melina’s flame was black flame, and in contrast to Messmer’s flame which could burn away all physical things, Melina’s black flame could burn metaphysical things (being burned by black flame does hp damage because it’s burning your very soul) and just like Messmer, Melina was able to pass on her black flame power to her own ‘knights’ the Godskins. And so Messmer went on to use his flame to burn the enemies his mother pointed him at, where as Melina desired to burn the things that she could, she wanted to burn the Erdtree. Marika couldn’t risk Melina tearing down everything she had worked for, so she had Maliketh confront Melina and defeat her. Maliketh then took Melina’s black flame just as we take Messmer’s flame, and he converted it into destined death, giving Maliketh sole control over the only thing that can kill the soul, thus truly killing someone once and for all. (Note, Maliketh didn’t have destined death when he defeated Melina, which is why she’s still around, he killed her, but couldn’t get rid of her for good, nor did he need to once he took her power away.) So when we meet Melina, she doesn’t know who she is or what her purpose is, but in time, she ultimately arrives at the same conclusion once again, she wants to burn the Erdtree, even without her black flame, she’s still the same person. We can then see to her wishes and use her to burn the Erdtree OR we can spare her and burn the Erdtree with the flame of frenzy. And then in the flame of frenzy ending, we see Melina take on a new form, her original form, the form of The Gloam-Eyed Queen. Why has she reverted to this old form? Because we kill Maliketh and unleash destined death, thus returning Melina’s black flame power to her. The idea of Melina and Messmer being twins is backed up further by their association with the serpents. Messmer’s association with the serpents is obvious, where as Melina’s connection relies on the theory of her being the Gloam-Eyed Queen, where she’d then be associated with the Godskins, and we know the Godskins are associated with serpents.
This is great stuff! Really appreciate your way of seeing Melina as the Gloam Eyed Queen. I agree about the twins of Marika and Radagon. I think Messmer and Melina were born of their separation. And Miquella and Malenia were born when they re-merged. I doubt that any of the demigods were actually born through normal sexual reproduction.
Excellent write up!! What if Maliketh defeated Melina/the Gloam Eyed Queen, but let her be. Deafeated doesn't mean killed. It's possible she was burnt and bodiless because Messmer destroyed her. Marika already makes him do her dirty deeds with his subjugation of the shadowland, isn't it possible he requested he burn his sister so she could better control her as a spirit? Things that don't really gel : why would Melina be "queen" of anything. Where would she have ruled? If she's an empyrean, as we know she was, where is her shadow bound beast, and more importantly, why wasn't Messmer? We know both Miquella and Malenia have no shadows (as far as we can tell) but were also both Empyreans despite the curse. Perhaps it's because Melina inherited Grace, while Messmer didn't. Perhaps the flames aren't the curse, but only the serpent inside of him. Making him uneligible, not only for grace, but also for empyrean status. Now that I think about it, there's NOTHING to support this, but it's possible that Melina could have been the queen Marika puts in charge of all the shadowlands while she's off with Messmer in the Lands Between. There is a lot of death there. Maliketh and Messmer could have come for her together, Messmer burning her/returning her to Marika to control (and use later on).
@@Oveyz perhaps the idea of Melina being the ‘Queen’ comes from the idea that perhaps she planned to overthrow the Golden Order? So it was somewhat of a self proclaimed baseless title, and then in the lore, any time the “Gloam-Eyed Queen” comes up, she’s specifically mentioned by that name, intentionally distancing Melina from her past self. I also like your idea of Maliketh simply defeating Melina. I only mentioned ‘killed’ just because we know Melina is a spirit, so I figured her current status is a result of physical death without the use of black flame or destined death. And then regarding the whole Empyrean but seemingly absent of a shadow, well, we know of quite a few empyreans who are never revealed to have a shadow, so it’s a hard bit of lore to really understand clearly. Though, if Melina is truly a daughter of Marika and Radagon (which, let’s be real, that’s truly all but confirmed) then she IS an empyrean, and what little we do know of the Gloam-Eyed Queen also tells us that she was an empyrean.
@@tristanlambert658 I guess then for me the next thick bit of Lore is going to be Messmer. He's clearly Marika's golden child. While Godwyn was golden in name and deeds, there's few hints Marika care much for him, especially if you subscribe to the school of thought of Marika planning the entire coup and using Ranni and Rykard, and everyone along the way (Godfrey and the Tarnished, Maliketh, Godwyn as sacrifice, etc). Messmer gets special healing vials, is trusted with safeguarding her village and collating a lot of knowledge (the stone tablets in her chamber are the same as in Messmer's storehouse). he's a mama's boy, etc. I basically have a theory that Marika hides him in the Land of Shadow not just to hide him away out of shame if his/her secret comes out about his serpent, but also to protect him from any such backlash, AND her future plans. Mogh and Radahn are both *optional* bosses. Miquella could be blue balled into inifinity and eradicated with the rise of a new lord if we decided to skip these bosses. The realm of shadow is borderline impossible to reach, especially for us who cannot truly die. Messmer could literally not be in a SAFER place in the entire game. I'm wondering if Marika didn't stash him there to avoid embroiling him in her shenanigans when she began to plot the downfall of the Elden Beast. He's also a believer in her dogma, and not in the loop (literally nobody freaking is lol) Meanwhile then what of Melina? I feel like it's possible she was used. She has no story the way Messmer has no story. It was suppressed, or what we have is from the GEQ. Then she becomes without clear sense of memory or self, just a given purpose. It's possible that she isn't cursed, is an empyrean, and was given some freedom to fuck around/rule for Marika, and was taken out when she became an issue. While messmer was cursed with the serpent and stuck to Marika, doing her deeds and being rewarded with safety in an out of sight and mind cage. But what's with the serpent? Near Bonny village there's a shed skin that's the same model as the great serpent corpse in that Gelmir church. Oddly specific. And Messmer also has winged snakes, in his own flesh, which are told to keep the serpent at bay, and are his friends and companion. Meanwhile, the serpent feeds on the kindling at his core. It's called a kindling, not a flame. "A dark thing, eaten away at by a wicked serpent." The serpent that eats at him, and the snakes that eat at the serpent, has fantastic 1:1 correlation with some depictions of Ouroboros : 64.media.tumblr.com/9d57e90153cf4d6e835244def9e5e192/5af979f4fb4dfc48-a7/s640x960/534c37a33bce5800c96ebb3b35a18e097cfe5c91.jpg That ouroboros theme, keeping him in a perpetual state of balance, could represent that. While Melina is the end, the true death, Messmer could be a cycle. Things being fed on, to stay in balance, while Melina's erases and destroys, even gods. Also the vague possibility that Melina was meant to be the kindling Maiden to Messmer's flame, burning down the erdtree, and so separating them was important. Making it a good reason to keep one giant alive, so that another flame can be used. Gosh I'm sorry I'm just spitballing wildly.
This is actually a genius way to do lore, interpreting GRRM's history of Elden Ring thru 5k years of decay. i mean, look how people today are still interpreting greco-roman lore.
Interesting theory. I definitely think you’re onto something about Melina’s relation to Marika, but I’m not convinced of the GEQ as an alternate persona of Marika. There’s 3 points I’d make against the theory: 1. The language around her suggests she was more of a rival to Marika that Marika defeated than simply another name Marika used. If she and Marika are the same person, it’s in the same way that her and Radagon are - different bodies, different wills, same soul/essence/identity. The writing seems pretty clear to me that the GEQ was an early rival to Marika for the position of godhood who was an immediate threat, and who was rendered impotent by the sealing of Destined Death. 2. The Godskins are portrayed as an entirely separate culture and faction from the Leyndell society. There’s essentially zero overlap between them and Marika’s followers, suggesting they have nothing to do with Leyndell at any point. 3. Marika already has an alter ego in the form of Radagon. Adding a second on top of this feels...kinda dumb, in a way that her having an offshoot (that’s intimately related to Radagon anyways, in your theory) doesn’t. I don’t think the GEQ is anyone we meet in-game…kinda. I think that Melina takes on the form of the GEQ, or similar to the GEQ, because she is the aspect of Marika which Marika discarded in sealing Destined Death. She’s Marika’s regrets in creating the Golden Order made manifest, taking the form of someone closely tied to that decision. The GEQ was a rival Empyrean in the running with Marika for the position of Elden Ring host god, who was defeated by Marika and then prevented from ever rising up again by the sealing of Destined Death.
1. I don’t think there’s anything which even implicitly puts Marika and the GEQ in the same context, except for Maliketh defeating the GEQ, which as I point out is odd in that Marika isn’t mentioned. I think you intuit, as I do, that there is some kind of Marika/GEQ duality going on, but I think this only has to mean the GEQ was a rival if you assume that Marika was initially pro-Golden Order; if she was bound by outside forces, then that rivalry could be embodied in the GEQ-Marika vs Radagon. This is why I think it’s important to look at Marika as *an* Eternal, ie someone closely connected with a culture that was opposed to the Greater Will. 2. True, but there are many things about Marika’s past that are deliberately veiled. People think she killed the Fell God, but it still lives in the Fire Giant. Fire is taboo, but the Erdtree Guardians seem to share a cultural lineage with the Flame Guardians. The Death Rites share a cultural lineage with the Erdtree. Her Erdtree came from the Crucible, but everything about the Crucible is verboten. She hid her own crucibly sons in the sewers. Her connection to the crucible being veiled is especially important because the Godskins are explicitly compared to the Crucible. 3. I agree, there is something unique and thus not as satisfying about this aspect. One way to patch that is maybe by just saying that the GEQ is just Marika, and Radagon is the one alter ego of the Marika-GEQ. Another point to bring up is Maliketh, who is also “part” of Marika. Another way to go is to say that Marika is special, and that actually she has all sorts of offshoots and pieces and alter egos; she’s the GEQ, Maliketh, Melina, Miquella, St. Trina, Malenia, Millicent, Ranni, Godwyn, etc. The metaphor of a tree with multiple branches, all deriving from a single trunk. If you’ve seen Attack on Titan there’s some parallels that I would draw.
Surprisingly, I disagree with almost everything in this video. Firstly, the idea of distancing Melina from the GEQ on the basis of gloam not being purple - I think it's clear based on all the Godskin's jewels that the color of the GEQ's eye is purple. Additionally, if we say that Melina has a sealed eye because their shadowed aspects are sealed away, where is Melina's shadow? Or, if Melina is Marika's shadow, why is it that neither Blaidd or Maliketh themselves have sealed eyes? Or Marika herself for that matter, though we never see her unbroken face as far as I know. Secondly, there's this idea that Ranni represents freedom from the Greater Will and subjugation to God, but in light of the fact that we need to free the stars in order to have the fate they've dictated for her come true, I'm not sure that's the case. In a similar vein, this idea that Malenia choosing to cast off her sense of self and unleash the Scarlet Rot is the result of a weakness of character. It could easily be said that if she had chosen to prioritize her pride and sense of self, that's just as much of a flaw as the opposite. Is it really better that somebody choose death over change? In this way, if we say that Marika shattered the Elden Ring and set all of this in motion to avoid becoming Radagon and to die as herself, is that actually supposed to be a good thing?
I don’t think the jewel makes it obvious; “Gloam-Eyed” doesn’t have to refer to a color at all. She could just have an eye for gloam, ie a worldview aimed at dusk in some metaphorical sense. In any case, I do eventually agree with the idea that Melina is meant to connote the GEQ, even if I don’t think the evidence is strong that she *is* the GEQ. As for the sealed eyes, perhaps I wasn’t clear, but I think Melina is an offshoot of Marika, so her sealed eye corresponds to Marika’s shadow of Maliketh. Essentially, I think Marika would have looked a lot like Melina at some point. The second question is a bit more complicated, and I probably could have spent more time on that. I think that Miyazaki rarely presents binary moral choices, so looking for the “good” alternative is a bit misleading in my view. The game deals with the idea of free will and duty in a nuanced and ambiguous way. I think it’s saying something about the idea that being a leader means making yourself beholden to those you lead, and a related but different idea that to achieve greatness means sacrificing your humanity. There’s more to it than that, but I wouldn’t say that either option you mentioned is clearly better or worse. I was being cheeky about Malenia, but I think there is both a negative association to her abandoning her dignity as well as a positive association of noble sacrifice, and I don’t think it’s meant to be clear cut.
Melina represents a piece of Marika that has been cut out and sealed away to become bodiless. This was done by removing the Rune of Death (Destined Death) from Marika and the Elden Ring she embodies. Marika cut out her destiny to die and become a death goddess, which resulted in her becoming Marika, Queen of the Golden Order (the Goddess of Life) instead. Ranni shares the sealed eye and bodiless attributes as Melina with the claw of the deathbird tattooed over the eye of her spirit self. These similarities indicate a connection in methodology at least. I believe it's safe to say that Marika and Ranni used a similar technique except Ranni only had 1 soul in her body, so her body just died instead of being taken over by another spirit/aspect. The connection between Ranni, Marika, and the Black Knife Assassins is too close not to be a coincidence. It'd make sense if Ranni learned how to become bodiless from the numen's knowledge of what Marika did with Melina. I believe that Empyreans are essentially the spirits associated with a Rune capable of incorporating the Elden Ring. When these spirits exist within a body, they become fated to become a God by the stars. The Elden Ring is essentially a mishmash of powerful runes held together by the rune of an Empyrean who is then considered God. Outer Gods aren't external beings, they are the pull of fate (the stars) leading characters that have a potential to achieve deific status with their Runes. Miquella's Needle is "unfinished" and has to be used outside of time in order to work properly (fate/time/the stars/Outer Gods are all related). Radahn's study of gravity magic allowed him to pause the fate, which halted the ability of Empyreans to become Gods. Perhaps his use of gravity magic caused an acceleration of Malenia's fate to become the Goddess of Rot, and she bloomed. At some point, (probably after defeating the Fire Giants, as an unintended consequence of her actions) Marika gained a new Empyrean spirit/aspect within her: Radagon. Radagon's rune is a latticework capable of binding the Elden Ring together tightly and represents Totality, so she couldn't just cut him out like she did with Melina. This explains the whole conversation "Thou art yet to become me. Thou art yet to become a God... Let us be shattered, both. Mine other self." Marika has no other way to stop Radagon from replacing her and becoming a God besides completely shattering the Elden Ring and her body. Ranni did not wish to obey her fate as an Empyrean to become a Goddess as she views an individual's will (free will) as being more important than the Greater Will of the universe (fate itself). Ranni's ending is essentially ending the idea of fate, and therefore of Empyreans and Gods, so that everyone can choose their own paths. instead of being lead by fate to become a different person as a God.
@@GeneralTaco155555a Again, I see this idea that Ranni's ending represents freedom and choice, but I don't see how that squares with the idea that she had you unbind the stars so that she could achieve the fate they decided for her. In her ending fate still exists, it's just taken to the stars so that people live in ignorance of what the nature of the world's Order is. And from this we can assume that people will once again return to scrying the stars to discern fate.
@@RevanX77 Radahn halted fate while Ranni was still an Empyrean. Her fate was still tied to the unmoved stars until Radahn is killed. And nah, by not inheriting the Elden Ring, Ranni breaks the cycle of fate and the idea of Gods existing in the Lands Between. Free will is just the absence of direction by the Greater Will. Scrying would be useless because the Greater Will of the universe no longer dictates fate in the Lands Between. You can infinitely say "well free will doesn't really exist if an omnipotent being knows all possible futures," but it's a moot point: For all intents and purposes, it is free will.
@@GeneralTaco155555a She has Radahn killed explicitly so the fate dictated to her by the stars will happen. She's following her fate, not breaking away from it. And I don't see why you think she doesn't inherit the Elden Ring. She says outright that she's implementing her own Order, just keeping it at a far remove. Also you seem to keep conflating ignorance with free will, no that's obviously not the case. If the Order of the world is being decided "under the wisdom of the moon" (a moon that Ranni was warned to fear and evidently didn't), then it's all the same except that people are being kept in the dark.
Glad to see another lore hunter not assume that gloam = purple! The Erdleaf Flower, fwiw, is specifically called a “dusky yellow” so technically anything or anyone with yellow eyes could also have gloam eyes, like the serpents, those who have undergone Dragon Communion, or maybe even those inflicted with the Flame of Frenzy (though that last one may be a bit of a stretch). I do like the idea of the Empyrean Shadows being their psychological shadows as well. And in the 1.00 version, the Beast Eye was explicitly called the “gouged out eye of Maliketh.” I also wonder if the motif of lost eyes could also be an allusion to plucking your eye out if it causes you to sin (Matthew 18:9).
There's also the whole Odin thing of losing an eye to gain a more metaphysical vision. The characters with missing eyes all seem to have extra insight on the world that others don't.
I don't think Malenia transformed because of win or lose sense. I think Malenia had to defeat Radahn because of the Miquella. We know that god's fate holding in stars. Radahn was also holding the stars. So Miquella had to abonden his fate. So Malenia wanted to take down Radahn because of Miquella. If Miquella can't complete his fate then how he can help Malenia? SPOILERS FROM THE DLC DOWNBELOW!!!!!!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT ANY SPOILERSS🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 Maybe, curing demi-gods requires more power or even fate. Because Miquella also healed a Radahn warrior (Freya) effected from Scarlet Rot. But more over, Malenia didn't effected simply from Scarlet Rot. The Rot God associeted with herself. She is it's vassal like the Elden Beast with Golden Order. So Miquella has incredibly amount of healing powers but this power even don't enough for the get rid of from Outer God's influence. So, maybe that's why Miquella abonden his flesh. Because maybe ascending to Godhood means can defeat Rot itself. Not even just sealing away maybe? Being god means you are extra powerful of course. The other interesting part is when Melina dies in the fight, she does a healing spell. And If I remember correctly, we can get this incantation in the DLC. Melina also uses incantations like Marika and has healing abilites like Miquella. So there is a highly chance she and Miquella are siblings. Also to the item description Marika tought this incantation who close to her. That incantation also an ancient one. So, Melina and Marika knows themselves maybe even face to face. They are close, so they are not in like Millicent and Malenia relationship. They know each other.
this is because Shabriri pulled the same exact stunt against Vyke and it worked. Vyke came the closest to becoming Elden Lord and the steps to do so were the exact same, including burning his maiden at the forge. Shabriri appeared and convinced him to spare his maiden and also side with the three fingers. So, if it worked before who's to say it wouldn't work again?
Sorry for the reupload. I'm working with a different audio setup this week, so the initial upload had messed up audio-- hopefully this version is better. Also, this version should be in 2k. Sorry for all the missing comments; there are already a bunch on the previous video here: ua-cam.com/video/Kzq_WC_bZXM/v-deo.html. But please feel free to write them again if you want to. Sorry for the inconvenience.
You get it... THANK YOU.
You should be embarrassed. If you had any intelligence you would delete this awful shit take and never post again.
Malenia never beat Radahn as you stated bro she bloomed knocked herself still couldn't kill a nerf radahn and got carried away by outside forces. Doesn't sound like a win right? Base malenia nor blooming malenia could take down nerfed radahn
Theres something in the game that said the Radagon came to Rennala with a baby Ranni, it is why Ranni is an Empyrean, born of one god, theres no way she can be an Empyrean without this being cannon
The Gloam Eyed Queen maybe is a manifestation of the Rune of Death, like Marika plucked the Rune from the Elden Ring to make the demigods immortals, but in the process she created a being, named Melina as she said was born at the foot of the erdthree, but she get astray from the real purpose, became a queen for the beings who want to kill the gods, like the godskin, and in a sense she is a daughter of Marika since she create her, but in the same, she is not, like she created her, and Marika command Maliketh to sealed the Destined Death and defeat the Gloam Eyed Queen, and the title was given by the one's who follow her, believing that she can defeat the gods, remmember that boc calls you a lord, without you being a real lord, could be not a real status given, but taken, by submition or demonstration of power, the power of the rune of death, remmember that Marika too is a Shamam, she was not a descendant of royalty, she came to be called Queen by her power, not by title given.
noooo, Melina is not evil she gave me a car
A CAR!!! All she gave me was a lousy diapering horse...
@@spencerharmon681 I don’t know what game you’re playing - we all got an Accord!
She offered you an Accord and you took the horse??
A Honda Accord at that! BFF
@tlidd I'm dead!!! That went right over my head
My theory is that FA was once attached to Caelid, at the Bestial Sanctum, and also to the Mountaintops, bridging the two. This is why you can see the same giant skeletons in both Caelid and the Mountaintops. My theory goes that FA was once the capital of the Gloam Eyed Queen, and Placidusax was her consort and Elden Lord. This is also why there are dragons all over the northwestern side of Caelid, where FA would have been attached. It's also why the Godslayer Greatsword is beneath the Divine Tower in Caelid, near the Bestial Sanctum. The statue in Maliketh's arena is the Gloam Eyed Queen, and that arena is where Maliketh defeated her. Upon her defeat, Placidusax was hidden beyond time in his arena within FA, awaiting for the return of his God, the GEQ. It's also why the Godskin Duo fight happens in FA. The tapestries in the Godskin Duo arena match the tapestries in the Bestial Sanctum, and the trees outside the Bestial Sanctum match the trees at the bottom of FA, where the wormface's are. The scatted ruins across the land have matching symbols and architecture with FA, so my theory goes that upon the GEQ's defeat, Marika/Greater Will created a tempest that ripped FA from the ground and carrier out to see, making it impossible to reach. When this happened bits and pieces were flung all across the land. This is why you find the sanctuary stones, and ruins pieces on those ruins, as well as at the secret place below the Bestial Sanctum. Marika was removing the capital of her former adversery. She made Maliketh guard the Rune of Death there, making doubly hard to get at (it's nearly impossible to reach FA for anyone, and even if you do, you then have to fight Maliketh).
The GEQ was imprisoned in the Erd Tree, and she eventually was able to create/use Melina to gain access to the outside world and look for a tarnished (one who is sure to seek the Elden Ring) and use/manipulate them in to burning the Erd Tree, thereby releasing her from her prison. Any of the endings work for this, except for the Frenzied Flame, since it destroys everything, which is why the GEQ (now freed, and no longer using the vessel Melina, so she looks like herself now) shows up at the frenzied flame ending and vows to bring you Destined Death.
Torrent used to belong to the GEQ, not Miquella (there are several spectral steeds, not just one, as evidenced by the skeletons of them all over the place - plus Miquella's steed is a whiter color than Torrent, and Torrent has saddle bags, Miquella's does not). This is why the GEQ, during the Frenzied Flame ending, specifically picks up Torrents whistle from the ash, with sadness and anger.
Ranni sought out the GEQ, in order to learn more about the Rune of Death, and how it might be used to free her from her empyrean bonds. The GEQ taught Ranni the dark ritual necessary to carry out her plan, knowing that Ranni would need to burn the Erd Tree to be successful - which would also free the GEQ from her prison. This is why Ranni knows who Torrent's former master is, and it's why she gives you the three wolves spirit ash.
This is pretty solid head canon, ngl. It’s very strange that the statue with the 3 wolves is that of a young person. She doesn’t appear the type to incite apostles dedicated to flaying the skin of gods, either. But very little in this game is as it first appears
@@WilliamWallace-ts6qh I’m curious to hear your opinion after the DLC. I agree with you about the Farum Azula, very interesting observation. Not sure what to think about GEQ being imprisoned. If I remember correctly, it was Marika who was imprisoned at the roots of the Erdtree. Now, of course, there is plenty of space for both of them, I suppose. I still think the theory about Melina being an offshoot of Marika is more likely simply because of all the parallels with Millicent. Also, your theory does not explain who is Melina’s “mother” who gave her a purpose.
I also find it strange that Ranni the witch has 3 wolves outside at her doorstep at rannis rise, and then three dedicated followers. Then there's that statue in malikeths boss room of a young woman and three wolves....
She also gives you 3 wolfs
Three Eternal Cities.
Three Sisters of Caria Manor.
Three demigod children.
Three randomly located non-boss versions of Red Wolf of Radagon.
Three towns for the inheritors of the Eternal above ground.
_Three_ _co-conspirators_ _during_ _the_ _Night_ _of_ _the_ _Black_ _Knives._
“Radagon is an anagram of A Dragon.” How have I not heard of this yet?
At this point I'm very confident that Melina is everybody
Actually, thats Miquella
There’s actually one key visual clue that connects Melina’s sealed eye with the beast eye. The beast eye item has very distinct three stripe markings, so far the closest match to the clawmark seal on Melina’s left eye (much more so than the deathbird claws to which many are drawing the connection!)
The question is who *isn’t* Marika. Can you prove you’re not secretly Marika; how do I know I’m not Marika?
I’m not deep enough in the Elden haze to understand this video yet
Each character simultaneously having 3+ different versions of themselves, while also having multiple conflicting aspects within 1 body is a recurring thing in Elden Ring.
It's best not to think too logically about characters being separate entities or not.
Godrick is an offshoot of Godefroy
changes the whole lore omg
radagon is marika is gloam eyed queen is placidusax is miyazaki
Finkle is Einhorn
something i feel worth noting that further contextualizes the idea of divine beings producing "offshoots": there are many kami that have multiple shinto shrines dedicated to them. from the perspective of judeochristian theology, that might not seem all that significant, considering our abundance of worship buildings dedicated to a single deity, _except_ ... there's no symbolic or mystical connection between a kami and its shrine, the kami is meant to be _literally enshrined within the premises._ while kami are spiritual beings, they're also connected to the physical world to such an extent that cutting down a kotodama's tree doesn't upset it simply because it's an insult to its domain, it upsets it because you just destroyed what's both its home and its physical body. so it isn't as though kami are everywhere at once, nor do they just exist in multiple places simultaneously, least not in the traditional sense. they _can_ just up and leave a shrine to visit another, but it's still _leaving_ and the shrine is left without its principle kami. and while a minor kami attending two or three shrines through mundane methods might work out fine, even the divine start to sweat when they look at a situation like inari's and their thirty-two *_thousand_* shrines
the solution to this is incredibly simple: if the single inari cannot attend all 32,000 shrines, then there simply needs to be 32,000 inari
yes, kami can just be ritually divided into multiple instances, albeit "divided" describes the process moreso than it does the result. when a kami undergoes bunrei, you do not end up with two halves of the kami, you end up with two of the kami - almost like biological fragmentation ( which, yes, plants are capable of ) if both fragments instantly regenerated back to full health. the two kami share the same power, spirit, domain, and identity as the original, but importantly they _are no longer the same kami,_ and so their domain and mythos can develop fully independently from one another, to such an extent that they cease being recognized by the same names. inari, again, is a fantastic example as this, as while they've kept their name and their association with foxes throughout their many divisions, they've also become known as the kami of just about anything because the inari of different shrines have branched into their own spheres of influence, and when there's 32,000 of them all doing that, well,
99% of people have an identity crisis in elden ring. But no matter what game it is, patches is patches
Patches is in touch with the Self rather than some impermanent self. That’s why his identity is immutable.
Wait for the next video where turns out Patches is an interdimensional being,thus he is the Greater Will itself!
DS3 Lapp? I guess that was amnesia, but I'd still count it as identity crisis, considering his dialogue.
Not my theory, but I saw the basis of it somewhere in a comment on another theory video (I dont remember which, i've watched a lot today) and was able to fill in the details and gaps from what I heard:
The Gloam Eyed Queen was the true original Empyrean that lived with and ruled over the Hornsent. Marika, enraged by what the Hornsent did to her and her village, created/became Radagon and then sought out the Gloam Eyed Queen to reproduce with her and then murder her. The union between the Gloam Eyed Queen and Radagon created Melina and Messmer. The story trailer for the DLC was Markia transforming back from Radagon, stealing the Empyrean golden thread from the now dead Gloam Eyed Queen and taking her place as the chosen Empyrean God for the Two Fingers. She then stole Messmer and Melina (since they were not her kids, but Radagon's) acted as a surrogate mother, and then sent them by her orders off on to their respective damning missions. The original sin, and the seduction, betrayal, and the affair from which gold arose- were all of these actions done by Marika.
This is one of the most interesting theories I have ever seen.
I have been working on putting this together myself and came to the same conclusion. I had no idea others did the same 😮 @@stellar3161
This sounds solid.
dear god he has cracked the case just in time for the DLC
This is brilliant. I love the idea that we can use Milicent to infer where Melina comes from.
thank you for outright saying you're staying spoiler free, as am I. Can't tell you how many videos I've had to just stop early because I was unsure where they were going and it seemed like spoiler territory. You're the best, Crunchy.
SAME!
Awesome. Tons of hours played , and a bunch of videos like this one, and I never felt satisfied by any explanation of Melina I heard, until now. Earned a subscribe.
Video so good had to release it twice.
He's just that dedicated to exploring duality.
@@garrulousgoldmask Totally, freaking Loretubers amirite?
Given your discussion of snakes, and their relationship to the Erdtree, I'm surprised that you didn't point out all of the "snails" in the game are actually snakes disguised with a shell. It's clear if you look at frozen images of them, and you can fight "snail" skeletons in some of the graveyards, despite snails being invertebrates.
Yes, and the Godskin Swaddling Cloth is carried by one of these “snails”
Oh snap
I want to add one thing: the daughter of a queen can also be a queen. I remember Malenia being referenced somewhere as "The Red Queen"
True, I think the helmet in 1.00. Not sure how I feel about that.
@@thomaslamptonbickham2939 If you feel like you’re a douchebag you’re right
So Marika, the Gloam-Eyed Queen of the Godskin Apostles who she raised to be the death of the gods was convinced she could use her dominion of Destined Death to cheat her own and become Eternal. As she began to realize her actions would leave her to Eternal suffering she began to lose blind faith in her own Order and a new alter-ego formed as Radagon who seeked perfection. And as her unwanted children were born with curses and deformities, as her Order continued to show faults, she was pushed to the brink and set a plan in motion to undo everything as to be free from the prison of Eternity she jailed herself into. As the the Night of the Black Knives and The Shattering took place, Melina also sprung forth.
My schizo theory about Maliketh is that he is literally Marika’s Shadow and figuratively defeated the GEQ as he was made manifest, taking the rune of death from her god slaying blade and sealed into his own. His only memory is of Marika, which is why he appears so confounded when she later betrays his only purpose. Edit: I’m thinking along the same lines as when Darth Vader killed Anakin circa Order 66.
the talk about "seduction", maybe that's the greater will seducing marika with the promise of eternity and order, cause i dont believe she reached that conclusion by herself and set her goals without external influences
Spot on man. This has been where Im at now too when trying to interpret Marika’s motivations.
@@Rockngames1 Totally. I imagine there was a whole chain of seduction and betrayals all the way down, from whatever The Greater Will is, to the people that would become her subjects under this new order.
"Solemn duty weighs upon the one beholden; not unlike a gnawing curse from which there is no deliverance"
in support of Marika being GEQ, her statues in the dlc are posed like the rune of death (like in the church of benediction). this contrasts the rune of life pose her statues take in the lands between
I love this theory! Also I think it’s weird that no one brings up that you find Marika’s “seal” which is literally an eye, in the Siofra River.
Amazing video yo
The being on the briar greatshield and its description, the mention of solitary ascetics from a foreign land, the vague reasoning of the guilty, Marika's crucifiction at her own churches and the description of numen.These are some of the reasons pre-dlc, I figured Marika is the gloam eyed queen.
After the dlc, finding out she can meld with others, the shed snake skin near the o mother gesture, the shadow of Messmer's serpent coiling around Marika, and the mutual hatred the hornsent have towards snakes, Marika and her children. Are more reasons I still think she is the gloam eyed queen, that started the golden lineage with Godfrey. Possably by grafting a golden lion to Horah Loux.
Idk how to explain this, but at dusk and dawn, you can see the sun casting what looks like grace on the water. I've always took the fleeting beauty of it only lasting for a moment, as something similar to the descriptions of the erdtree's perfection being a fleeting thing, like life itself. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the golden glow on the water might also be considered a gloam, which would be like saying the golden eyed queen, but a gold that fades and comes back in the morning.
Maybe you could put my foolish ambitions to rest, that the golden order wasn't created until after Radagon's union with Renalla? I'm currently under the impression Marika's origional order up untill the golden order, was called the erdtree faithful? with some uprising in volcano manor keeping a priest or something in a jail, but it makes me think there could have been something else entirely at volcano manor before an uprising, with erdtree faithful having something to do with it. It's just very strange that you get the golden order seal where you'd expect the erdtree seal to be, with erdtree seal in prison town, and golden order seal at minor erdtree church? I take it as the golden order could have usurped the erdtree faithful
Listen to me, please.
Learn about "crown sprouting," grafting and cloning in trees, "root suckers" and pyrophilic reproductive cycles.
Tldr- if we treat the Tree as Marika’s reproductive organ, she can create children with pollination from others, she can pollinate others like the Carian queen, and she can clone herself by replanting a branch.
The GEQ can be a similar situation to D- 2 bodies and 2 minds, 1 soul. Radagon can be a clone, a tree version of a mimic tear. Melina can be an unpolinated seed- gentically identical child. Ranni can easily be a case of Pollination by Marika- Radagon is her male reproductive organ, after all.
@@tonylawson2222 YES. I agree 100% that the tree symbolism means more than just the imagery, good thoughts!
I think the gloam eyed queen was marika before she betrayed the hornsent.
She was the jar saint serpent queen and bride of hoarah loux in the age of the crucible.
She betrayed the hornsent to the two fingers and the greater will, divesting herself of flame, serpent and integrity in the form of messmer and melina in the process.
It could be that she was meant to be fed to a great serpent/god devouring serpent at the gate of divinity but killed it instead and ascended to godhood herself by creating a great rune.
The same serpent (a serpent never dies) later seduced rykard.
I'm rambling idk
To me that makes a lot of sense...
After she slayed the snake Marika toke the essence of the GloamEyedQueen and then blended that at the Gate with herself.
Have you noticed that "outside" the gate of divinity its dark like purple and "inside" bright like golden and between those the flesh.It seems to me almost as the colours of an Eclipse where Sun and moon unite and since Marika is a Shaman that might be the moment she unites the GEQ with herself to get divine and then lock her in the eye of Melina.
And then to get truely rid of the GEQ Marika has to get rid of both of her Qualities: The Spiritual which is sealed in LEFT eye and the physical sealed in Messmers RIGHT eye. They were both there at the time Marika wanted herself to be not anymore one with the GEQ.
Letting you know that I’ve seen the leaked final boss and it’s godefroy he was the most important character all along
No it's not it's prime Gwyn Lord of Sunlight
It being a reused boss wasn’t too far off tbh
Bold choice to start the video by asking the internet not to ruin something for you
Since the dawn of Souls lore Miyazaki has actively gone out of his way to make the lore as hard to understand as possible, Elden Ring is his Magnum Opus in confusing/mocking us
Did you know he has plans to make a game more abstract than ER?
He is on a mission to find the most abstract and deep ways to troll the players
@@guardianvalor962 I wonder if by abstract he means a game with less real world analogs than in Elden Ring. While ER does have some crazy metaphysical concepts you need to figure out there's plenty of not abstract references to the real world in the game to build its narrative. The lore in ER is extremely vague and whatnot but there's parts of it that are not really that abstract. Look at Tarnished Archaeologist if you want some examples lol
Now we now that Messmer and Melina are the eldest brother and sister of the family
Crunchy: "...but that's a story for another time"
Me *checking if I was accidentally watching Tarnished Archeologist*
She is Messers sister THE ONE EYES’s they both have and ability to have fire control. + the butterflies
They also have the power of flame coming from opposite eyes
melina is messmers little sister. the kindling of messmer and smouldering butterfly prove this
"please dont spoil"
@@noticeme694 its been out like 2 weeks, deal with it
this is getting more and more apocryphaic.
This has some amazing points! I do think you're really missing the mark on Malenia however. Saying that she whipped out the rot just because she couldn't stand to lose to gigachad Radahn and she was just butthurt or something hugely undermines who she is imo. She has never known defeat, sure. She definitely takes pride in that. (And I agree that Millicent represents her pride which she was forced to shed in that battle) But above her pride is her loyalty to miquella and her belief in him. She unleashed the rot because Radahn /had/ to lose that fight for miquella's goals to happen. There's the eclipse of castle Sol for one, and now the fact that he's required for the dlc, which we know is basically miquella's whole story now. Malenia def wasn't fighting him for funsies.
Miquella's driving motivation (or one of them) is to cure his sister. She trained with the blind swordsman. We know for a Fact that Malenia likely despises the rot. She wouldn't have let herself succumb to it over hurt pride. That's just not who she is.
And while that's a lot deeper into her than you may have wanted to go in your Melina video, all too often I see this fandom fall into this really weird, mildly misogynistic, and most importantly boring read that it's the gigachad Radahn vs the soy rotcucked Malenia. It totally misses our on her character and how tight she is
Plus like, Radahn is cool enough as is without needing to shit on Malenia. Brother fought space and won. Let them both be cool
Let them both be cool, but not flawed. Good idea. This had some amazing points! Unfortunately, now we are trying to get into Malenia’s head (impossible) and how would we know the reason she nuked Caelid? We would not! No offense to you but I don’t think that while she was self-desctructing she was thinking of Miquella. She wishes she could introduce herself to Radahn as many times as she does to the Tarnished, but she basically hit a brick wall until she used a status effect to erode that wall. Also. Radahn doesn’t have feet anymore. This entire reply was a ruse just to get to this point. Why are the cripples some of the coolest fights in Elden Ring? (Albinaurics on wolfback are Not Cool.)
Marika is a Snake has major Solaire is a Sandworm energy
Out of all the theories regarding Melina's identity, this one makes the most sense.
The Tarnished player character being Godwyn is one I'd like to see you do a video on next... It explains the reason why they're the only Tarnished that is seemingly immortal among other things (such as two of the game's endings, a certain boss' dialogue etc)
Correct me if there's in-game evidence that contradicts this, but I believe the reason our Tarnished can come back from death where others can't is because we are the only ones actively receiving the guidance of grace. Rogier confirms that he could once see it but no longer can, and I kind of extrapolated from that the other Tarnished we meet are in the same boat as him.
As an aside, I've also always assumed that this is what the Tabel of Lost Grace's purpose is. It's literally a well for the grace bestowed onto Tarnished, and when that grace is removed it is returned to the well (i.e. why there is more grace gathered above the table than anywhere else in the game). This is really interesting because it implies that grace might be an expendable resource that needs to be recycled, rather than just "created" infinitely by Marika for new and upcoming Tarnished, and could explain why the guidance of grace is taken away from Tarnished who could once see it. Statistically speaking, the more Tarnished who can see grace, the higher the chance that one will become Elden Lord and follow whatever Marika's plan is, so why take it away from them at all?
@@jackhague3828 That was my initial impression as well, but apparently the Volcano Manor Tarnished and Hoarah Loux can also see it. Yet none of them seem to be able to immediately vanish upon death only to respawn after some time like the player character can.
@@W_W-f8ydon't forget Gideon. He he can see the guidance of grace too right? (I honestly forgot if he's just lazy or not when it comes to gathering runes. Or he physically can't cause he doesn't have grace to guide him)
i don't know about the "being Godwyn" thing. but Zayf the scholar just did a video, where he presents evidence that the player could be a demigod from one of the walking mausoleums. (we can here there bells, stomps, etc. in the intro cinematic when we awake.) wich would also explain our immortality.
@@petespeedsxp4967 yeah there is another version of that theory out there according to which that demigod is none other than Godwyn (or his disembodied soul?). That's why the Tarnished is shown waking up inside an area that heavily resembles the room Radagon can later be found in instead of a walking mausoleum
So much to think about. I think you've nailed a lot of valid points! What if the God of the lands between is always the same matter, just broken down and reused, like soil when growing a crop or tree? There's so much of the lore that can be contextualized in terms of crop plant genetics, where the demigods get rid of traits by selectively removing them when they regenerate through different acts. At the same time, I would also suggest Marika is also the erdtree. By the time the game starts, it's been burned at least once (see the ashes all over Leyndell), but not destroyed, just like most of the evidence of Marika. Also, Marika has two full arms while hanging from the remains of the rune arc in the erdtree, but when she becomes Radagon, he's missing significantly more of his body, like he's burning away. And finally, if his name is an anagram of "a dragon" then could her name be read as "kimara" or chimera? Since she's capable of being a mix of many things?
Calling Radagon a tool... What does he weild? A hammer.
You know what they say when your only tool is a hammer? Everything looks like a nail.
It's Marika's Hammer tho.
My takeaway from this is that elden ring does not have more than one character 😂 it's Marika all the way down
We now know who is in love with Radahn lol
If Radahn's lover, [REDACTED] turns out be a sorcerer I swear I'm going to lose it.
Maliketh is actually Godefroy
...the "strawberry-blond" hair is one of the most bonkers obvious things I've never put together. Of COURSE there's some sort of Radagon/Marika stuff going on with that. Of COURSE!
yes brooooo finally!! I definitely fuck with the idea that marika was the GEQ. Been doing a lot of research and that was one of the theories I had. Thanks for putting this out there!
We need a post DLC follow up
yeah the dlc kinda killed this video for the most part
I love the just casual bomb drop at 14:00 "Mesmer is Michela" I think it's spot on this is such a a fascinating theory and I love it all!
Is anybody not somebody else? Maybe the Frenzied Flame already won, and chaos has already taken the world… it’s just forgotten, in the chaos of it all 😂
Indeed. The true eclipse is the frenzy flame and gold mask conjoined, the formless mother has merged with frenzy, you can see bloodflame emanating from the character.
This is an old write-up now, with some recent updates from the DLC.
Marika is the Gloam/Dusk-Eyed Queen.
- There's a red and black spike of death impaling Marika and keeping her in place when we find her at the end. Only Maliketh wields this power, and only he could even defeat a God like Marika. But he's so loyal to her, why would he?
- Maliketh "defeated" the Gloam/Dusk-Eyed Queen. We know Shadowbound hounds have to attack their former master if The Fingers feel like the Empyrean is acting against them. We play through this reality with Ranni's quest, and both she and Iji know Blaidd will go mad as she enacts her vision. How do they know this happens? They saw/heard of it happening to Maliketh and Marika already.
- 7 seemingly Grace-tinged faces adorn the aprons of the Godskin Nobles. There are 7 Walking Masoleums in the game. A ghostly NPC mentions in a prayer to Queen Marika that a local one contains "your unwanted child..." within. The corpses we find within are seemingly skinned.
- Only Marika would be able to guide Ranni to the location of the Rune of Death and how to use it for it to be stolen in the first place to forge the Black Knives. Remember, "Marika... is this what it is to sin?" "Why gull me..." Marika, after all, had only one use for Maliketh in the end, after the other work was done... a vessel to seal away Destined Death. And even then, she betrayed him.
- The Beast Eye is a purple, scratched up eye. It's Marika's eye from being defeated and imprisoned by her Shadowbound. No other Queen or Empyrean is "defeated" but not slain, as the text implies there except Marika. And who but her purpose-made hound could even stop her, a God? The one entity empowered enough by the Ring/Fingers to be able to do so should the need arise.
- Dominula Village is much like the Hinterlands and the Shaman Village. We find a skinning ritual and a Godskin Apostle there in Dominula. We learn that the "festival" is old and tacitly accepted by the Golden Order. The aesthetic of these villages is much the same, and they're intimately tied to Marika herself.
- Gideon gives us a boon in the form of a secret rite known only to him, Black Flame Protection. He is alleged to have peered into the will of Queen Marika and shuddered at the end that should not be.
- The Scadutree is of a dual nature. So is Queen Marika. When Gold arose, so too was Shadow born. Gold and Shadow exist as necessary contrasts to each other, yet in a God, in Marika, this duality exists in coalesce, or it did once.
- No other characters are named as Queen or Empyrean that aren't already accounted for/ruled out to be the GEQ, and by that I mean Melina, she was given purpose by her mother at the foot of the Erdtree and that means she is a daughter of Marika, not old enough to be the GEQ but possesses traits of both Marika and Radagon. Eye color and hair color are passed down traits we see in game. Well, sure enough, Melina shows us a purple/gloamy eye in one ending. Inherited trait from her mother, the Queen in Black. Marika's eyes are never shown to us to judge their color.
- Duskborn ending sees Godwyn rise to ascendancy and sees Death restored, with him as the Prince of Death itself. These titles aren't meaningless. Duskborn? The "Prince" of Death? Well, who would the Queen be? If Godwyn is Duskborn, and if he is a Prince, his mother would, of course, be associated with "Dusk" and be a Queen. And we know his mother is Queen Marika.
- Godwyn is referred to as the "Prince of Gold" in an item description. If a Prince of Death could have been a Prince of Gold, why couldn't his mother hold this potential as well, even necessarily so? We see from the Death Knights that Gold and Death can somehow synergize even still... Gold and Shadow, born at the same time, same as it ever was.
- Fia is hooded with a black cloak and comes from some other land. She also helps create Godwyn's Duskborn ending and is Death-aligned. We see Marika wearing black hooded garb in a statue where she also is holding the twins Miquella and Malenia. Her tattered clothing as we find her at the end is also black. She is also associated with the Nox/Numen race and the Black Knife Assassins that come from there as well.
- Statues of Marika in her crucified pose all show her with a flowing black cloth that wraps behind her in almost the exact same shape as the Godslayer Greatsword, which was the weapon or ritual sword of the GEQ/DEQ. You have to pivot the camera a bit to get a good view, but the shape is very similar. Coiled and then open, with one flap slightly longer than the other, same tip design on the Godslayer Greatsword. It's possible that she was propped up by the Hornsent culture and then part of the betrayal was killing other Gods in their pantheon, but what's maybe more possible is as Centered Tarnished pointed out, that Marika culled some other of her "unwanted" children after learning the truth of the broken Fingers and flawed foundations of her Order.
- Hewg prays to Queen Marika about his given task to craft a Godslaying weapon. Very interesting and specific task. Marika wants a God slain. He mentions "the sheer terror of Her..." regarding Marika. Godskins certainly take an interest in killing a God. Who was their leader? A "defeated" Queen who was once an Empyrean. Marika.
- Raging Wolf Vargram is a would-be Shadow. Wolf imagery is on his armor. He wields the Godslayer Greatsword. The weapon art is "The Queen's Black Flame", of course. A statue of Marika exists in Farum Azula, depicting her with three wolves.
- Marika learned the secrets of the Golden Order and realized her children would "amount only to sacrifices" as she instructed them. She knew the Erdtree was a soul parasite, and by sealing Death away, she weakened the Erdtree over time. She also had Godwyn buried at the roots of it, knowing that he would grow and overtake them, choking the Erdtree further. As he was, Godwyn was an "unwanted" child since he embodied the Golden Order, and she was a prisoner to it. He would end up much like Miquella would, a caged divinity of some kind. She was likely opposed to the Erdtree and Greater Will/Fingers for a long time, weaving plots in secret until the Shattering. She realized, only too late, that ultimate power has a way of becoming a curse when the truth of the nature of it all is finally revealed.
Just as Marika shined so brightly with her Golden Order, another aspect of her was as deep as the abyss and as dark as any shadow.
Banger comment my friend.
bro i just found this same comment on a different video
@@jackkendall6420 Thanks, king.
@Deflamed_Sphere Yeah, I've been putting it out.
@@cwill14 I was surprised and it was kinda funny, because i was searching related videos about it and saw your comment then changed video again only to see the same comment at the start
I like your theory. This made me think of Hyetta divining the words of the 3 fingers. Specifically, she mentions from the "Great One" came fractures and births and souls.
What if fractures referred to Gods, such as Marika? What if empyreans are only possible when a god fractures, like you pointed out as "off shoots" in the video?
I believe Malenia didn't let the scarlet aeonia bloom out of pettiness for losing to Radahn but that she sacrificed herself and gave in to the outer god of rot to give Miquella's new order a fighting chance.
If Radahn becomes Elden Lord he would uphold the status quo of the golden order, damning all that Miquella tries to accomplish.
I do agree, that Beating Radahn was important for Miquella’s motives. But I think it’s deeper than that. It could be, like you said, that Radahn threatens the seat of Elden Lord… but I think his necessary death is MUCH more related to the stars. Miquella likely wanted Malenia to kill Radahn, and resume the movement of the stars.
What do we know about Stars in Elden Ring? Well, the basics of it are that they control the fate of the demigods (Amber starlight). Stars are also particularly important because it is a Star that birthed the very, and titular, Elden Ring (Elden Stars incantation). Obviously, I won’t know for sure right now what Miquella needed Radahns death for, but it’s surely related to Miquella’s goals and fate. It’s much deeper than Miquella feeling threatened by Radahn’s possible lordship. Radahn’s death was SO important for Miquella’s goals that Malenia felt it NECESSARY to abandon her sense of self and honour for the benefit of the greater picture.
she rotted because they came to a standstill, dex charm description tells us the curved swordsman trained melina,
the dancer charm implies hes the one to stop the rot god in the past.
most likely he taught her
how to suppress the rot,
blue cloth cowl description says as water turns fowl, stagnation to decay,
gideon always says the fight came to a standstill, its pretty clear the game is telling us she needed to keep moving or her flowing water would go fowl, which is the name of her attack, water fowl dance. nor water flow anymore
Theory: Torrent is Marika.
@shaynecarter-murray3127 it would be wild but make a lot of sense if it turned out that Marika was Marika all along
We learned that you need to divest your physical being and whole aspects of yourself to reach godhood in the DLC. Melina and millicent may be such divested fragments.
After Messmer
My theory is The Gloam Eyed Queen was sealed inside of Melina by Marika
Just like the Abysal Serpent within Messmer
It's crazy watching this after what we learn in the DLC. About St Trina being an offshoot of Miquella. Same as Marika and Radago. Miquella divested many parts of themselves. Not hard to believe Marika did too
Nah, she’s Messmer’s younger sister
@@chancefreely which could just add Messmer to the list of divested pieces of Marika.
Besides, there's a lot of ground to cover when it comes to the implications of having children with a divested piece of yourself.
@@Cephal0god I love theory crafting, but I gotta be honest. There’s little to no chance of that actually being the case. Aside from the fact that Marika and Miquella explicitly only have one other half, those “divested” bits you’re talking about were individual aspects of Miquella. It wasn’t like he was spawning a different Miquella at each of the crosses. Each part of himself he divested was each symbolically representative of something. In fact, there’s another demigod that divested themselves of something as well: Ranni. She divested herself of life itself, yet there aren’t two Ranni’s running around. With your logic, it could apply to literally all of her children, which is just incompatible with the lore of the game. Each demigod had completely different motivations. To say they’re all the same person, or even a few of them are the same person, is ridiculous. This whole video is ridiculous really. The GEQ was an enemy and rival empyrean to Marika from what we know in the lore. They couldn’t possibly be the same person, much less somehow her daughter/enemy/herself.
@@chancefreely I agree that they aren't all divested parts of Marika, but I just wanted to say that Ranni didn't exactly divest herself of her body in the same way Miquella did. She used a Black Knife to literally kill her body lol. We don't know how Miquella did it, but I doubt it was like that.
Melina is also Radagon, Morgott, Mohg, The Nameless King, Aldritch Saints of the deep and so on. Melina is Myazaki
@@ghandgem6589 is she also Bed of Chaos?
The floor is Melina
I still think Melina is Miquella. Marika became a sword for the Elden Beast.
This is my exact theory to a t!!!! Of course I love hearing new perspectives I never wouldve considered even when it goes against mine but...
I gotta admit, it feels nice to get your own theory validated by a sick Loretuber 😅💖🔥
Thanks for what you do!
Just wanted to clarify that you've fleshed it out a lot more than my lil theory about offshoots tho 😅 you gave me so much to think about 💖 you even got my gears turnin on a few other things too. Great vid
Again: Blah blah blah, MARIKA IS EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING WE KNOW THIS GUYS! COME ON!
One criticism I have is that the world seems to be painted in a way so that Marika and GEQ are likely at odds with each other. Given that Marika is the one who removed destined death from the elden ring, and was against it. There aren't many hints suggesting it was Marika who fought Maliketh, I think Melina is almost certainly a direct daughter of Marika, which is boring but most likely.
Cutscenes with Melina have been data mined as "Daughter of Marika" and she refers to her mother as being within the erd tree, I take this as literal. One of the biggest connections with GEQ (other than frenzy flame ending) is the fact she was Empyrean. The only known Empyreans other than GEQ are children of Marika/Radagon. It is not required to be a child of Marika but it seems her offspring and close relatives are ideal candidates for being such. I also heavily subscribe to the butterfly theory, the smoldering being reference to Melina.
My headcannon after this is that Maliketh in the process of sealing destined death and killing Melina(GEQ) caused her physical body to be destroyed, the sealing of destined death during this process however made her soul immortal, returning to the erd tree where she was reborn. This process was so visceral it partially destroyed her soul, eliminating most of the memories Melina had. This isn't far from how Ranni experienced destined death, the exception being she had a vessel for her soul to inhabit after physical death.
We know Marika's children were all very powerful and rulers, and had a faction they resided over. The GEQ's followers are lost (godskin), all over the map. This fits with Melina's story as being a former image of herself.
I don't think Melina's body was done in by Malekith, my theory of events is like this:
- Melina was born after Messmer, and became the GEQ.
- Marika seals the Rune of Death.
- Messmer due to the abyssal serpent, burns Melina, maybe cuz in his eyes Melina's acts as the GEQ were a sin against their mother.
- Marika is horrorized by Messmer actions and puts the eye seal on him.
- Marika still unsure about Messmer, decides to kill two birds with one stone: send him to kill the Hornsent and seal Enir Illis so nobody can reach godhood, while sealing Messmer in the Realm of Shadows.
- Then the base game story takes place, she marries Godfrey and such.
- After realizing the GW link to the two fingers has been severed due to the death of Godwyn, she knows the guidance she has been receiving is a lie, shatters the ER and places her hopes on Melina, whose spirit was dormant in the Erdtree since that's where all spirits go (could be Marika gave Torrent to her after Miquella left to make his Haligtree).
- Melina doesn't remember much about her either due to Messmer's killing her or Marika trying to shield her from the painful memories, but sets on a journey with Torrent to find a Tarnished.
- Torrent having belonged to Miquella could have given him some insight into finding Tarnisheds with potential.
idk but I think it could have gone like this, wdyt?
I would say this: after Godwyn died Marika saw the flaw in her own order, her order could not give him a true death. So she understood that her own order had failed her own wants and desires.
When she "later" says to Radagon "lets be broken together" she will try to fix her own mistake and let Radagon deal with the broken elden ring. They are both working on fixing something that isnt working properly and from Marikas point of view death has to be incorporated into the elden ring once again because that is the what she perceives to be the problem.
I think the gloam eyed queen is aptly named, gloam eyed could simplemeans she sees death, she could had been the queen of death within the golden order before Marika, but before Marika had lost Godwyn she believed the world would be better without a proper death. So she asked Maliketh to take the rune of death from the gloam eyed queen so she could create her own golden order without death.
Now the gloam eyed queen has no power in the world anymore but she isnt dead, she is a spirit without a purpose. So queen marika wants death within the world again, she breaks herself and her golden order so her new found purpose can find line again.
We know melina doesnt know who she is, that she doesnt remember that fits perfectly with the gloam eyed queen, and her mother is that one that bring her back to life, and there is no life without a purpose to that life, which in other words means, a meaning to life.
The frenzied flame represents that life should have no meaning, everything should be reduced down into the same, and if everything is the same you can not have a purpose or a meaning because those things represents something better.
I think you're hitting the nail. I've been thinking the same thing since finnishing the DLC. The confirmation of Marika's closeness to the fingers, the Godskin's sigil being similar to Metyr and her wounded abdomen that shows an attempt at murder (probably with the fingerslayer blade from Nokron) , the apparent mesh of things Marika is if we are to believe that she is the Saint that the Hornsent were trying to create. And also a more clear understanding of how Empyreans work. And the point of convergence it's exaxctly what you show in your title, and the fact that empyreans change their titles: Miquella, the Unalloyed/Kind/etc, Marika, the Eternal/Marika, the Gloam Eyed Queen.
What if the empyreans are like Marika and Radagon, two halfs of one being. Marika found this out and separated these halves of her empyrean children. She then beheaded and entombed the unwanted half's in the walking mausoleums. This could be why Malenia seems half of herself to other npcs and Miquella can't age.
Ive always thought that the Shield of the Guilty a reference to Melina. The item description reads:
“Shield made to venerate a maiden whose eyes were crushed by Briars of Sin before being reborn in these lands.”
The shield depicts a maiden with her left eye being gouged by briars, the same eye Melina had blinded.
Food for thought
I believe in 1.00 it said it was a goddess who was reborn, but I’ll have to check that
13:37 just for some evidence that disputes this theory. Rannis eye remains sealed even after blaidd has been killed
That's true, but maybe killing the shadow merely gives the Empyrean the ability to use their sealed self again, not that it's forced upon them.
Marika is everyone
Good video. If Marika was the Gloam-Eyed Queen, then perhaps she herself was an offshoot like Millicent. Let's say the Gloam eyed queen was a snake. The snake goes against the greater will. Then Maliketh "kills" off the Gloam-Eyed Queen. But rather than actually die, she sheds an important aspect of herself. The aspect of death. Sealing that aspect in Maliketh. Being reborn in the new identity Marika. Marika is different than the Gloam-Eyed Queen, because she doesn't want to see any more deaths. Thus, creating the new golden order. It could also be that in the DLC trailer, we're actually seeing Marika pulling the threads of the elden ring from her old snake corpse.
The new Marika being the subservient half of The Gloam eyed queen, doing the greater will's bidding. While Melina is something of the free will version of the Gloam-eyed queen. Suppressed as death has been sealed. She probably wouldn't really have an identity of her own until a fragment of the the rune of death was used in the plot to kill Godwyn. With that fragment taken from Maliketh, enough of destined death was unsealed to allow Melina to project herself into the world in a limited capacity. And then, like you say, when Maliketh is defeated, destined death is entirely unsealed, allowing Melina to fully exist in the world, as an avatar of destined death.
i really like this idea
Millicent being the dignity Malennia abandoned makes so much effin sense. 🔥🔥🔥
I don’t believe Malenia released the rot because she was losing necessarily, as they’re depicted as both fighting to a stalemate. I thought it was apparent that she released her rot in an attempt to gain favour in the fight, but it wasn’t enough to destroy Radahn. Leaving both of them incapacitated. Thus a stalemate regardless. But I guess we don’t have enough evidence to really say for sure 🤷♀️
Millicent says explicitly that Malenia abandoned the dignity which allowed her to resist the call of the scarlet rot in order to meet Radahn’s measure
@@CrunchyVideos So do you think Malenia was aware that the rot would not actually kill radahn, and so she simply bloomed to remain "undefeated"?
@@pizzamozarella2608 I don’t know if she thought she could win exactly, but I do think if she hadn’t done it she would have lost
@@CrunchyVideos Truee she does say that, I keep looking back on the short scene we get of the Malenia and Radahn on the battlefield. And they seem to be at a resting point after already taking some swings at one another. I truly believe she was capable of holding her own against Radahn, she just wasn't able to get a win over on him because he was so powerful. So she released the rot and even that wasn't enough. But I really have a hard time believing she was close to losing, or that she necessarily would have suffered a bigger loss than Radahn would have. I honestly thought they were a match in strength, Malenia with her Rot, and Radahn with his gravity magic.
this shit slaps so hard post-DLC
I'm currently thinking that Melina and Messmer are both children (or offshoots) of the Gloam-Eyed Queen and Radagon, but the nice thing is this theory and the video's one don't necessarily disprove each other! I can see where you're coming from and it mostly made good sense to me. If an aspect of Marika was the snake-like GEQ, who then betrayed the Greater Will and the Two Fingers, then that also explains why snakes are considered to be traitors to the Erdtree; because Marika is their chosen one.
Great theory and video, the Malenia-Millicent parallel is spot-on.
snake part is a stretch? imho marika the GEQ gained her immortality by slaying (maybe having a child with?) the immortal snake god. hence god-slaying flame (what god did it slay?), godskins being snakelike, eiglay church skin, etc. but the serpent hunter spear suggests there literally was a gigantic monstrous immortal serpent god in history, before Rykard found one of its children and fed himself to it. And the serpent god, formless serpent assassins etc don't seem related to the Godskins.
I think that official trailer opens with a shot of Marika, the GEQ, immediately after killing the immortal serpent god and taking its divinity for herself, becoming a god, and the godskin nobles & apostles are wearing that god's skin.
I've been thinking about this for a long time, finally someone voiced it! Thank you.
I have another thought.
I see 2 things in Marika:
1 Marika is a person who knows the universe. According to Hegel, man is the highest form of matter that knows itself. The principles of dialectics are presented in the game and explain many events in the game. For example, "Unity and the struggle of opposites." in Simitic religions, Cognition/Naming is the main creative activity and divine purpose of man.
Elden Beast - Great Attractor / True reality - space in which stars were born (gold) Also similar to the simplest forms of life (looks like a cell, ciliates...) and the first forms of life (Dragons born from stones and rocks under the influence of hurricanes, storms and lightning)
The structure of gold in Elden Beast repeats the spine and fractal processes that are found in the nervous system, branching of trees, division of the hand into 5 fingers, etc. These fractals are like a divine pattern/template for everything in the universe.
Elden Ring - Marika's idea of the world order, the universe(Elden Beast). foundation. Dominant ideology.
Elden Ring - Man’s idea of the universe, his worldview, the result of a collision/reflaction of consciousness with Elden Beast.
Shattering - Crisis of worldview/civilization/religion/world views.
Shattering is Marika's way of reassembling her knowledge with the help of the tarnished-оnes.
tarnished and her other children are in some way “Marika’s thoughts.” Odin had 2 Raven spies - "Huginn" and "Muninn" = "thought" and "memory"
Combat is a kind of learning/cognition of a thing/understanding
2 Marika - heavily inspired by Hera (ox-eyed) . The cult of Hera is very ancient (before the Greek pantheon) and complicated, she was also an androgyne with a predominantly feminine principle. Androgynous deities in early cultures represent an ideal human being, not divided into sexes. A balanced being that combines/contains both principles. Also, “human” is a more general concept than "man" and "woman" - more specific, which are lower in the hierarchy of concepts.
In the Talmuds, Adam was the first ideal person without gender. And then God divided him into man and woman.
In many religions there is a “Golden Age”, a time when there was no evil and death, when the world was ideal,
then the Fall occurred, corruption of this order, and since then we have been living in an imperfect world.
The fact that so many people have commented on this video being like, "The DLC says bla bla" baffles me. The dude was making predictions. Its Souls lore, all of this stuff is built on less than a novella's worth of vague item discriptions. Chill.
I love this theory! It really helps solidify how Marika can be Radagon AND Melina.
A bit unrelated: but I don’t think Malenia cheated via being “dissatisfied” with her “undefeated” title. It’s pretty obvious that the “blade of Miquella” served their entire purpose to Miquella, her brother.
Malenia even threw away her godgiven duties as Empyrean, to become Miquella’s Blade. She cared not for glory, as glory is what came with her dedication to her Brother. She cared not for the Great Runes, because she’d have Godricks by now.
This was completely unrelated, I know. Sorry. But it’s just a tangential aspect of the vid I’d like to talk about, considering how much people misconstrued Malenia’s character. Yes, she abandoned her Pride - as Millicent is a representation of this. Not to win for personal glory, but more that she abandoned her honour for Miquella’s “promise”, for Miquella’s greater cause…. Whatever that means.
Radahn is a mandatory death for the DLC. So we’ll learn why exactly Miquella had Malenia march on caelid
Bro thank you for making this video. I've been theorizing the same thing recently just didn't have all the connections u made. There's symbolism and connection between so many characters and the fact that identity is confirmed to be convoluted suggests this theory's possibility
Any followup ? Marika confirmed to be a Shaman/human ... not a snake.
@@i3looi2 Marika is a numen, with shamans seemingly being just a tribe of numen women just like how the black knife assassins were all numen women close to marika. The numen are capable of taking on aspects of other flesh which is the reason they were used in the saint jars to bind flesh together as well as being the reason why grafting is possible for people of her blood like godrick/godefroy. It's not unheard of to think a numen could take on inhuman aspects as long as they properly graft it.
There's a random shed snake skin a short ways north of Bonny village. Snake theory still has legs.
@shirokun002 which is a plot hole. Why would the numen serve a carian princess and I also thought all the numen were dead when marika went back to the village
if killing maliketh is what opens melina'"shadow sealed" eye, then why doesn't ranni's eye open after we kill blaidd?
Does the spirit actually appear in the age of stars ending? I vaguely remember it being just the doll. That’s the only time we see her after killing Blaidd, if we actually bother killing him.
@@nottwo Yes
i mean, theres more than one symbolical meaning for snakes in the mythologies that elden ring draws off of so varied snake imagery would make sense. theres jörmungandr, an ourobouros like sea serpent in norse myth that brings the end of the world should it ever let go of biting its tail, nidhogg, another snake from norse myth that chews on the roots of the greattree, in christianity theres obvioulsy the serpent of eden, theres the caduceus and aesclepius, staffes with snakes (two for the caduceus one for the aesclepius) that often symbolize medicine, used in greek and roman myth aswell as alchemy and later commonly adopted by christian apothecaries, and that list can go much longer if you want to include asian serpentine dragons or various forms of sea serpents
oh my god you mentioning blaidd being ranni's divested primal part just made me realize that he is her shadow not just because he follows and protects her or is part of her, but also because he is an embodiment of her Jungian shadow
Blaidd is too nice of the guy to be something like that, I think.
Spoiler: Radika is Maragon
I think you nailed it. There are different kinds of serpents as well - Godwyn in the form of a sea serpent (like the Shinto deity Susanoo god of the sea and storms who was banished to the underworld and there became the god of serpents), Miranda of the Flower Crucible and the poison Formless Serpents and so on. Ranni Is the joining of her Dark Moon spirit and the form of Renna the Numen Black Moon, Lord of Night and the guide to the stars. The Demihuman Queens Gilika (note part of Marika's name), Maggie and Margot. I think all of the Id qualities - her shadow self, her base human self, her dark seductive side, her beastial side all were split off as if pruned from her and grew into different less strong versions vulnerable to whims of outer gods. Note that grafting terminology is important - scions, buds, etc. She was pruned to perfection but she could not escape the passing on of her shadow self to her offspring. Her cursed children were only cursed from the perspective of the GW - anything that inhibits the growth of gold is cursed. All endings are destined to fail - all mending runes would be needed to fully restore Marika but we can only choose one. I think that is the message - *all* parts of the cycle (ring) are critical. There is no good or bad, just necessary for better or worse.
An interesting detail about the blade of calling is that you find it in a hidden office in the tower leading to the snowfields. This implies it's a blade given to people of decent rank within the erdtree governmental hierarchy. It's similarities with the black knife implies that the black knife assassins didn't just come up out of the eternal cities with black knives in hand, but may perhaps have been members of the erdtree government and given these blades of calling, and then modified them with the rune of death to commit the night of the black knives assassinations.
Also, immediately after the tower with the hidden office you see the vulgar militiamen along with a blackblade gargoyle and the red-tinged gold grace (think: crucible) floating through the air which reasonably matches the colour of the spike through Marika's womb. All of this links to Malekith in some way. So if when Malekith defeated the gloam-eyed queen he did indeed defeat Marika herself it would shed light on why Malekith is lamenting.
I've had a long-running theory that the gloam-eyed queen was responsible for burning down the erdtree, so if Marika was the gloam-eyed queen then it gives a stronger link to Melina. But perhaps the order of events is not quite right. The first cardinal sin of the erdtree refers to kindling being lit, and I wonder if that kindling actually refers to these body doubles like Melina, which implies she was alive before the tree was burnt down.
it's a hidden jail. the door is barred and there's a guard posted. granted, it's a very nice al capone-like jail, but it's a jail.
@@mattb6616 I did another playthrough to have a look again and there are a few interesting details worth mentioning.
1. The door opens inwards but does not have a handle on the inside. Meaning it probably couldn't be opened from within.
2. The door has a bolt lock on the inside implying it could be locked from within. Could just be a reused asset.
3. The guy sitting outside the door has the Official's Attire body armour which is a part of the Bloodsoaked set. This item talks about the gruesome acts of magisterial officials.
4. The Blade of Calling item description talks specifically about the kindling maiden. This implies that this particular Blade of Calling we find here was Melina's. We know there were others because we see Pollyanna use one against O'Neil. By the way how the heck did Pollyanna get a Blade of Calling?
Following that thought, if we assume Gowry gave her the Blade of Calling we can follow that link to the Sage's Cave where you can find the Candletree shield. There's also a black knife assassin in this cave. There's a tenuous link here but it splits into a thousand paths because of the dozen other items in this cave. Need to dig further into the deal with the sages.
Seriously one of the best lore videos I've seen. Great stuff dude! Subbed.
I believe Melina picking up the ring scene "Beast Death Marika" (her game file name is daughter of Marika) while I believe beast is referring to Torrent. In the DLC while traversing The Abyss - Torrent will not come out as he is afraid, afraid of the frenzied flame. Descriptions found on items say the Frenzied flame kill spirits for good. On another note- Many items in the DLC help flesh out the picture surrounding these characters and set Melina as the burned/forgotten daughter of Marika/Radagon.
Ah so when one succumbs to the frenzied flame they are essentially soulless like Godwyn. But still alive in body.
@@thekaelixchamber In technical sense, it appears so or even hivemind? There are a few items which talk of what the flame is and how accepting it guarantees one a destined death. Godwyn is a peculiar case, we have yet to learn much of why only his soul died but his body did not, Is it still Godwyn at that point? We find his knights but it only speaks of guarding Godwyn's cadaver here and there.
@@KindredSunlight Yeah I'm sad they couldn't just give us enough of an explanation of how the world of The Lands Between works. Lots of aspects and attributes left unexplained such as spirit like peoples like Torrent and Melina, how does one bear children alone is it like divesting oneself of their aspects? Like Marika and Malenia? What about the outer gods? My copium is telling me that they left it like this to explain further in Elden Ring 2
I think the frenzy flame just possesses people. Its spreadable your eyes glow. We know Shabriri can possess people.
@@thecia9498 He seems to posses only dead people, as he mentions yuria's body was there for him to take as he would not be using it anymore. (died at the end of elenora quest.)
Of all the ER lore videos I watch, man these videos of yours are probably the most exciting to see on my feed
Nah Melina is a daughter to Marika and Radagon. This is confirmed as she’s represented by a butterfly. The butterflies we can find in game all represent the children of Marika and Radagon. Nascent butterfly represents Miquella, Aeonian butterfly represents Malenia, Smouldering butterfly represents Melina. And then in the dlc we’re introduced to Messmer and Black Pyreflies.
I like to believe that the children of Marika and Radagon come in twos. First came the twins Melina and Messmer, and then came Miquella and Malenia. The later share a contrasting theme, Miquella is cursed with eternal youth while Malenia is cursed with Scarlet Rot which caused her to rapidly decay, symbolizing old age and death. And then we have Melina and Messmer who both share the theme of fire. Messmer has his own flame, a flame which is notably different from any other pyromancy in the game, his fire is more red and more aggressive. He is able to share his fire with his followers, his fire knights who cast incantations of Messmer’s flame. Then when we kill Messmer, we obtain his flame as a physical item. Now Melina’s flame was black flame, and in contrast to Messmer’s flame which could burn away all physical things, Melina’s black flame could burn metaphysical things (being burned by black flame does hp damage because it’s burning your very soul) and just like Messmer, Melina was able to pass on her black flame power to her own ‘knights’ the Godskins. And so Messmer went on to use his flame to burn the enemies his mother pointed him at, where as Melina desired to burn the things that she could, she wanted to burn the Erdtree. Marika couldn’t risk Melina tearing down everything she had worked for, so she had Maliketh confront Melina and defeat her. Maliketh then took Melina’s black flame just as we take Messmer’s flame, and he converted it into destined death, giving Maliketh sole control over the only thing that can kill the soul, thus truly killing someone once and for all. (Note, Maliketh didn’t have destined death when he defeated Melina, which is why she’s still around, he killed her, but couldn’t get rid of her for good, nor did he need to once he took her power away.) So when we meet Melina, she doesn’t know who she is or what her purpose is, but in time, she ultimately arrives at the same conclusion once again, she wants to burn the Erdtree, even without her black flame, she’s still the same person. We can then see to her wishes and use her to burn the Erdtree OR we can spare her and burn the Erdtree with the flame of frenzy. And then in the flame of frenzy ending, we see Melina take on a new form, her original form, the form of The Gloam-Eyed Queen. Why has she reverted to this old form? Because we kill Maliketh and unleash destined death, thus returning Melina’s black flame power to her.
The idea of Melina and Messmer being twins is backed up further by their association with the serpents. Messmer’s association with the serpents is obvious, where as Melina’s connection relies on the theory of her being the Gloam-Eyed Queen, where she’d then be associated with the Godskins, and we know the Godskins are associated with serpents.
true man, the video creator should learn a thing or two from you haha
This is great stuff! Really appreciate your way of seeing Melina as the Gloam Eyed Queen. I agree about the twins of Marika and Radagon. I think Messmer and Melina were born of their separation. And Miquella and Malenia were born when they re-merged. I doubt that any of the demigods were actually born through normal sexual reproduction.
Excellent write up!!
What if Maliketh defeated Melina/the Gloam Eyed Queen, but let her be. Deafeated doesn't mean killed. It's possible she was burnt and bodiless because Messmer destroyed her. Marika already makes him do her dirty deeds with his subjugation of the shadowland, isn't it possible he requested he burn his sister so she could better control her as a spirit?
Things that don't really gel : why would Melina be "queen" of anything. Where would she have ruled? If she's an empyrean, as we know she was, where is her shadow bound beast, and more importantly, why wasn't Messmer? We know both Miquella and Malenia have no shadows (as far as we can tell) but were also both Empyreans despite the curse.
Perhaps it's because Melina inherited Grace, while Messmer didn't.
Perhaps the flames aren't the curse, but only the serpent inside of him. Making him uneligible, not only for grace, but also for empyrean status.
Now that I think about it, there's NOTHING to support this, but it's possible that Melina could have been the queen Marika puts in charge of all the shadowlands while she's off with Messmer in the Lands Between. There is a lot of death there. Maliketh and Messmer could have come for her together, Messmer burning her/returning her to Marika to control (and use later on).
@@Oveyz perhaps the idea of Melina being the ‘Queen’ comes from the idea that perhaps she planned to overthrow the Golden Order? So it was somewhat of a self proclaimed baseless title, and then in the lore, any time the “Gloam-Eyed Queen” comes up, she’s specifically mentioned by that name, intentionally distancing Melina from her past self.
I also like your idea of Maliketh simply defeating Melina. I only mentioned ‘killed’ just because we know Melina is a spirit, so I figured her current status is a result of physical death without the use of black flame or destined death.
And then regarding the whole Empyrean but seemingly absent of a shadow, well, we know of quite a few empyreans who are never revealed to have a shadow, so it’s a hard bit of lore to really understand clearly. Though, if Melina is truly a daughter of Marika and Radagon (which, let’s be real, that’s truly all but confirmed) then she IS an empyrean, and what little we do know of the Gloam-Eyed Queen also tells us that she was an empyrean.
@@tristanlambert658 I guess then for me the next thick bit of Lore is going to be Messmer. He's clearly Marika's golden child. While Godwyn was golden in name and deeds, there's few hints Marika care much for him, especially if you subscribe to the school of thought of Marika planning the entire coup and using Ranni and Rykard, and everyone along the way (Godfrey and the Tarnished, Maliketh, Godwyn as sacrifice, etc).
Messmer gets special healing vials, is trusted with safeguarding her village and collating a lot of knowledge (the stone tablets in her chamber are the same as in Messmer's storehouse). he's a mama's boy, etc.
I basically have a theory that Marika hides him in the Land of Shadow not just to hide him away out of shame if his/her secret comes out about his serpent, but also to protect him from any such backlash, AND her future plans.
Mogh and Radahn are both *optional* bosses. Miquella could be blue balled into inifinity and eradicated with the rise of a new lord if we decided to skip these bosses. The realm of shadow is borderline impossible to reach, especially for us who cannot truly die.
Messmer could literally not be in a SAFER place in the entire game. I'm wondering if Marika didn't stash him there to avoid embroiling him in her shenanigans when she began to plot the downfall of the Elden Beast. He's also a believer in her dogma, and not in the loop (literally nobody freaking is lol)
Meanwhile then what of Melina? I feel like it's possible she was used. She has no story the way Messmer has no story. It was suppressed, or what we have is from the GEQ. Then she becomes without clear sense of memory or self, just a given purpose.
It's possible that she isn't cursed, is an empyrean, and was given some freedom to fuck around/rule for Marika, and was taken out when she became an issue. While messmer was cursed with the serpent and stuck to Marika, doing her deeds and being rewarded with safety in an out of sight and mind cage.
But what's with the serpent? Near Bonny village there's a shed skin that's the same model as the great serpent corpse in that Gelmir church. Oddly specific.
And Messmer also has winged snakes, in his own flesh, which are told to keep the serpent at bay, and are his friends and companion. Meanwhile, the serpent feeds on the kindling at his core. It's called a kindling, not a flame. "A dark thing, eaten away at by a wicked serpent."
The serpent that eats at him, and the snakes that eat at the serpent, has fantastic 1:1 correlation with some depictions of Ouroboros : 64.media.tumblr.com/9d57e90153cf4d6e835244def9e5e192/5af979f4fb4dfc48-a7/s640x960/534c37a33bce5800c96ebb3b35a18e097cfe5c91.jpg
That ouroboros theme, keeping him in a perpetual state of balance, could represent that. While Melina is the end, the true death, Messmer could be a cycle. Things being fed on, to stay in balance, while Melina's erases and destroys, even gods.
Also the vague possibility that Melina was meant to be the kindling Maiden to Messmer's flame, burning down the erdtree, and so separating them was important. Making it a good reason to keep one giant alive, so that another flame can be used.
Gosh I'm sorry I'm just spitballing wildly.
This is actually a genius way to do lore, interpreting GRRM's history of Elden Ring thru 5k years of decay. i mean, look how people today are still interpreting greco-roman lore.
Interesting theory. I definitely think you’re onto something about Melina’s relation to Marika, but I’m not convinced of the GEQ as an alternate persona of Marika. There’s 3 points I’d make against the theory:
1. The language around her suggests she was more of a rival to Marika that Marika defeated than simply another name Marika used. If she and Marika are the same person, it’s in the same way that her and Radagon are - different bodies, different wills, same soul/essence/identity. The writing seems pretty clear to me that the GEQ was an early rival to Marika for the position of godhood who was an immediate threat, and who was rendered impotent by the sealing of Destined Death.
2. The Godskins are portrayed as an entirely separate culture and faction from the Leyndell society. There’s essentially zero overlap between them and Marika’s followers, suggesting they have nothing to do with Leyndell at any point.
3. Marika already has an alter ego in the form of Radagon. Adding a second on top of this feels...kinda dumb, in a way that her having an offshoot (that’s intimately related to Radagon anyways, in your theory) doesn’t.
I don’t think the GEQ is anyone we meet in-game…kinda. I think that Melina takes on the form of the GEQ, or similar to the GEQ, because she is the aspect of Marika which Marika discarded in sealing Destined Death. She’s Marika’s regrets in creating the Golden Order made manifest, taking the form of someone closely tied to that decision. The GEQ was a rival Empyrean in the running with Marika for the position of Elden Ring host god, who was defeated by Marika and then prevented from ever rising up again by the sealing of Destined Death.
1. I don’t think there’s anything which even implicitly puts Marika and the GEQ in the same context, except for Maliketh defeating the GEQ, which as I point out is odd in that Marika isn’t mentioned. I think you intuit, as I do, that there is some kind of Marika/GEQ duality going on, but I think this only has to mean the GEQ was a rival if you assume that Marika was initially pro-Golden Order; if she was bound by outside forces, then that rivalry could be embodied in the GEQ-Marika vs Radagon. This is why I think it’s important to look at Marika as *an* Eternal, ie someone closely connected with a culture that was opposed to the Greater Will.
2. True, but there are many things about Marika’s past that are deliberately veiled. People think she killed the Fell God, but it still lives in the Fire Giant. Fire is taboo, but the Erdtree Guardians seem to share a cultural lineage with the Flame Guardians. The Death Rites share a cultural lineage with the Erdtree. Her Erdtree came from the Crucible, but everything about the Crucible is verboten. She hid her own crucibly sons in the sewers. Her connection to the crucible being veiled is especially important because the Godskins are explicitly compared to the Crucible.
3. I agree, there is something unique and thus not as satisfying about this aspect. One way to patch that is maybe by just saying that the GEQ is just Marika, and Radagon is the one alter ego of the Marika-GEQ. Another point to bring up is Maliketh, who is also “part” of Marika. Another way to go is to say that Marika is special, and that actually she has all sorts of offshoots and pieces and alter egos; she’s the GEQ, Maliketh, Melina, Miquella, St. Trina, Malenia, Millicent, Ranni, Godwyn, etc. The metaphor of a tree with multiple branches, all deriving from a single trunk. If you’ve seen Attack on Titan there’s some parallels that I would draw.
Surprisingly, I disagree with almost everything in this video. Firstly, the idea of distancing Melina from the GEQ on the basis of gloam not being purple - I think it's clear based on all the Godskin's jewels that the color of the GEQ's eye is purple. Additionally, if we say that Melina has a sealed eye because their shadowed aspects are sealed away, where is Melina's shadow? Or, if Melina is Marika's shadow, why is it that neither Blaidd or Maliketh themselves have sealed eyes? Or Marika herself for that matter, though we never see her unbroken face as far as I know.
Secondly, there's this idea that Ranni represents freedom from the Greater Will and subjugation to God, but in light of the fact that we need to free the stars in order to have the fate they've dictated for her come true, I'm not sure that's the case. In a similar vein, this idea that Malenia choosing to cast off her sense of self and unleash the Scarlet Rot is the result of a weakness of character. It could easily be said that if she had chosen to prioritize her pride and sense of self, that's just as much of a flaw as the opposite. Is it really better that somebody choose death over change? In this way, if we say that Marika shattered the Elden Ring and set all of this in motion to avoid becoming Radagon and to die as herself, is that actually supposed to be a good thing?
I don’t think the jewel makes it obvious; “Gloam-Eyed” doesn’t have to refer to a color at all. She could just have an eye for gloam, ie a worldview aimed at dusk in some metaphorical sense. In any case, I do eventually agree with the idea that Melina is meant to connote the GEQ, even if I don’t think the evidence is strong that she *is* the GEQ. As for the sealed eyes, perhaps I wasn’t clear, but I think Melina is an offshoot of Marika, so her sealed eye corresponds to Marika’s shadow of Maliketh. Essentially, I think Marika would have looked a lot like Melina at some point.
The second question is a bit more complicated, and I probably could have spent more time on that. I think that Miyazaki rarely presents binary moral choices, so looking for the “good” alternative is a bit misleading in my view. The game deals with the idea of free will and duty in a nuanced and ambiguous way. I think it’s saying something about the idea that being a leader means making yourself beholden to those you lead, and a related but different idea that to achieve greatness means sacrificing your humanity. There’s more to it than that, but I wouldn’t say that either option you mentioned is clearly better or worse. I was being cheeky about Malenia, but I think there is both a negative association to her abandoning her dignity as well as a positive association of noble sacrifice, and I don’t think it’s meant to be clear cut.
Melina represents a piece of Marika that has been cut out and sealed away to become bodiless. This was done by removing the Rune of Death (Destined Death) from Marika and the Elden Ring she embodies. Marika cut out her destiny to die and become a death goddess, which resulted in her becoming Marika, Queen of the Golden Order (the Goddess of Life) instead.
Ranni shares the sealed eye and bodiless attributes as Melina with the claw of the deathbird tattooed over the eye of her spirit self. These similarities indicate a connection in methodology at least.
I believe it's safe to say that Marika and Ranni used a similar technique except Ranni only had 1 soul in her body, so her body just died instead of being taken over by another spirit/aspect. The connection between Ranni, Marika, and the Black Knife Assassins is too close not to be a coincidence. It'd make sense if Ranni learned how to become bodiless from the numen's knowledge of what Marika did with Melina.
I believe that Empyreans are essentially the spirits associated with a Rune capable of incorporating the Elden Ring. When these spirits exist within a body, they become fated to become a God by the stars. The Elden Ring is essentially a mishmash of powerful runes held together by the rune of an Empyrean who is then considered God. Outer Gods aren't external beings, they are the pull of fate (the stars) leading characters that have a potential to achieve deific status with their Runes. Miquella's Needle is "unfinished" and has to be used outside of time in order to work properly (fate/time/the stars/Outer Gods are all related). Radahn's study of gravity magic allowed him to pause the fate, which halted the ability of Empyreans to become Gods. Perhaps his use of gravity magic caused an acceleration of Malenia's fate to become the Goddess of Rot, and she bloomed.
At some point, (probably after defeating the Fire Giants, as an unintended consequence of her actions) Marika gained a new Empyrean spirit/aspect within her: Radagon. Radagon's rune is a latticework capable of binding the Elden Ring together tightly and represents Totality, so she couldn't just cut him out like she did with Melina. This explains the whole conversation "Thou art yet to become me. Thou art yet to become a God... Let us be shattered, both. Mine other self." Marika has no other way to stop Radagon from replacing her and becoming a God besides completely shattering the Elden Ring and her body.
Ranni did not wish to obey her fate as an Empyrean to become a Goddess as she views an individual's will (free will) as being more important than the Greater Will of the universe (fate itself).
Ranni's ending is essentially ending the idea of fate, and therefore of Empyreans and Gods, so that everyone can choose their own paths. instead of being lead by fate to become a different person as a God.
@@GeneralTaco155555a Again, I see this idea that Ranni's ending represents freedom and choice, but I don't see how that squares with the idea that she had you unbind the stars so that she could achieve the fate they decided for her. In her ending fate still exists, it's just taken to the stars so that people live in ignorance of what the nature of the world's Order is. And from this we can assume that people will once again return to scrying the stars to discern fate.
@@RevanX77 Radahn halted fate while Ranni was still an Empyrean. Her fate was still tied to the unmoved stars until Radahn is killed.
And nah, by not inheriting the Elden Ring, Ranni breaks the cycle of fate and the idea of Gods existing in the Lands Between. Free will is just the absence of direction by the Greater Will. Scrying would be useless because the Greater Will of the universe no longer dictates fate in the Lands Between.
You can infinitely say "well free will doesn't really exist if an omnipotent being knows all possible futures," but it's a moot point:
For all intents and purposes, it is free will.
@@GeneralTaco155555a She has Radahn killed explicitly so the fate dictated to her by the stars will happen. She's following her fate, not breaking away from it.
And I don't see why you think she doesn't inherit the Elden Ring. She says outright that she's implementing her own Order, just keeping it at a far remove.
Also you seem to keep conflating ignorance with free will, no that's obviously not the case. If the Order of the world is being decided "under the wisdom of the moon" (a moon that Ranni was warned to fear and evidently didn't), then it's all the same except that people are being kept in the dark.
Glad to see another lore hunter not assume that gloam = purple! The Erdleaf Flower, fwiw, is specifically called a “dusky yellow” so technically anything or anyone with yellow eyes could also have gloam eyes, like the serpents, those who have undergone Dragon Communion, or maybe even those inflicted with the Flame of Frenzy (though that last one may be a bit of a stretch).
I do like the idea of the Empyrean Shadows being their psychological shadows as well. And in the 1.00 version, the Beast Eye was explicitly called the “gouged out eye of Maliketh.” I also wonder if the motif of lost eyes could also be an allusion to plucking your eye out if it causes you to sin (Matthew 18:9).
There's also the whole Odin thing of losing an eye to gain a more metaphysical vision. The characters with missing eyes all seem to have extra insight on the world that others don't.
@@fastenedcarrot9570 Definitely! Especially since he hung himself on a cross to unlock the power of runes...
The eye bit about messmer's eye being sealed was correct
I don't think Malenia transformed because of win or lose sense. I think Malenia had to defeat Radahn because of the Miquella. We know that god's fate holding in stars. Radahn was also holding the stars. So Miquella had to abonden his fate. So Malenia wanted to take down Radahn because of Miquella. If Miquella can't complete his fate then how he can help Malenia?
SPOILERS FROM THE DLC DOWNBELOW!!!!!!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT ANY SPOILERSS🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
Maybe, curing demi-gods requires more power or even fate. Because Miquella also healed a Radahn warrior (Freya) effected from Scarlet Rot. But more over, Malenia didn't effected simply from Scarlet Rot. The Rot God associeted with herself. She is it's vassal like the Elden Beast with Golden Order. So Miquella has incredibly amount of healing powers but this power even don't enough for the get rid of from Outer God's influence. So, maybe that's why Miquella abonden his flesh. Because maybe ascending to Godhood means can defeat Rot itself. Not even just sealing away maybe? Being god means you are extra powerful of course.
The other interesting part is when Melina dies in the fight, she does a healing spell. And If I remember correctly, we can get this incantation in the DLC. Melina also uses incantations like Marika and has healing abilites like Miquella. So there is a highly chance she and Miquella are siblings. Also to the item description Marika tought this incantation who close to her. That incantation also an ancient one. So, Melina and Marika knows themselves maybe even face to face. They are close, so they are not in like Millicent and Malenia relationship. They know each other.
Shabriri mentions her-maybe not explicitly, not by name-he says something like "if you inherit the flame of frenzy, the girl can be spared".
this is because Shabriri pulled the same exact stunt against Vyke and it worked. Vyke came the closest to becoming Elden Lord and the steps to do so were the exact same, including burning his maiden at the forge. Shabriri appeared and convinced him to spare his maiden and also side with the three fingers. So, if it worked before who's to say it wouldn't work again?
Me: *staring blankly into space after all that*
Yeah so uhhhh Merika is Bock, got it
Looking forward to watching this! It looks like we’ve come to the same conclusion but I want to know how our evidence and thought processes differ!
Jesus, this must be the most unhinged theory I ever heard beside the mushroom theory
Im in the middle of the video AND YOU ARE ONTO SOMETHING MY GUY, I SEE YOU I SEE YOU
What if EVERYONE is Marika?
technically, they are
@@aurumarma5711 that's A merika?
@aurumarma5711 lol I said this on another post. Even we the tarnished are Marika 🤭