One thing to consider about Miquella is his knowledge of Golden Order Fundamentalism. The two most important spells in Golden Order Fundamentalism are Law of Causality and Law of Regression. The latter is especially interesting in regards to Miquella (bonus points for how you get it). If you take Law of Causality to a philosophical extreme, what you have is a world of determinism. It's possible Miquella did just that, and decided that if free will doesn't exist anyways, people might as well be controlled by a god who loves them. It's appropriate that Miquella and Ranni look so much alike, given that Miquella represents comfort and security at the cost of freedom, and Ranni wishes to bring freedom which also brings with it fear, loneliness, and uncertainty.
And that's why miquela is the villain of the story, our player character is free and unrestrained, although there's a path to follow the point is that your not supposed to follow it, your supposed to go out there, explore and do your thing... When someone or something gets in our way we kill it and we ALWAYS get and do what we want, whether that means burning the world down, becoming an elden lord or bringing about a new age with a new god or just fighting in the coliseums without purpose... We the tarnished are untamed and wild fighting beasts and dragons to take their power or for the challenge of it or even for the fun of it No matter what we do, or what we choose miquela will always be the worst thing that can possibly happen to our character, he wants to take away our most important ability which is freedom, he stands in complete opposition to what we stand for and so just like we do with everything else that stands in our way we take him down
I'm kind of amazed how many times I've seen some variation in these comments (and elsewhere) of "but he's innocent/ignorant/naive/has good intentions" and it's like...yeah. That's the point. That's _why_ he's a monster. That's the point of that _Twilight Zone_ episode cited in this video: when you take a person with a child's maturity level and give them overwhelming power, they can't help _but_ be a monster because they're incapable of perceiving the world through any lens but their own. They can't really understand that their wants and desires, _even when well-intentioned,_ aren't what others really want or need. (This is, of course, entirely a separate issue from the question of what abandoning things like St. Trina, his love, on the path to godhood would do to his personality as a god, because Miquella is not a one-note character.)
No lie every time I think I want to replay this game. I get about halfway through lim grave before I realize that I can't stomach the end of the d l c again for this very reason😂
@georgehouliaras7239 slander! He’s the ultimate therapist offering unconditional positive regard. The others have simply gained new perspective and are able shift their priorities.
"Righteous Tarnished, Miquella the kind makes my blood run cold. I'm loath to admit it, but even at this very instant I wish to run away very far indeed." These lines go so hard, gave me shivers when I first heard the monster one in the trailer and then when Ansbach said it for real. Especially because it's at the perfect moment. The spell is broken, and that is Ansbachs reaction.
I always was of the opinion that Miquella would be a noble villain from what I learned in the base game. He was just too good to be true. And with the mind control, it suddenly made sense that he was so well regarded. You can only call someone "the kind" or similar things so many times before it starts getting suspicious. But only in Shadow of the Erdtree did I truly understand his character. Beforehand I thought, he was just a man stuck in a childs body, capable of achieving great feats with his genius. But the more I looked at how he acts and is described in the DLC, the more I felt it was his mind that was immature as well. He's certainly a child genius for what he can accomplish, but he doesn't have the wisdom to use that or his tremendous power in the right way. He seems to have such a low attention span when it comes to his many projects and seems to abandon them completely once he's bored. His sense of morals is so underdeveloped that he can't see the injustice in his ideas. It reminds me of how in the real world, children can do some of the worst things we can imagine. Children have the capacity for great cruelty. (just look at Jon Venables and what he and his associate did to another kid) But because they are just children and are not strong enough to do what they please, we can comfortably just consider them as harmless and adorable most of the time. They just require some good natured guidance to grow up healthy and develop a good moral code. Miquella is still such a child, who could've grown up to be better, but will never do so.
miquella’s goal of softening the world is flawed with his underlying desire to do that at any means necessary, even trying to discard his linage just like his mother
Not familiar with that Twilight Zone episode but the impression I got is that it's similar to an old episode of the Justice League cartoon. I once considered that the Goldmask ending removed free will but I no longer think that's the case. I think it just makes it so that the Elden Ring can no longer be tampered with, creating a magical barrier that keeps any others from manipulating it.
Indeed. I thought of the Goldmask ending as one that rendered Order pure and immutable. That is to say, it creates an absolute Law, a definition of what is and is not, of right and wrong, which is not subject to change or alteration by the whims of any person or God in the future. It does not destroy free will, but rather what the universal judgment of those free actions is. Those That Live In Death, for example, would be forever outside or forever within that Order, damned monsters to be destroyed or people who happened to look a little boney, and that decision could never be revisited. Heresies will always be heresies, blasphemies always blasphemies, and no amendment of that Order can ever happen. Which is great if you get it right the first time (nobody can ever screw it up because they get a bee up their butt about, say, wanting to murder all the Hornsent in reaction to the evils the Hornsent did to their home and people) and horrible if you get it wrong. Whether you like that ending or Ranni's better pretty much depends on whether you have more trust in the Tarnished (and presumably Goldmask) to get the Order right, or in the people as a whole to muddle through slowly improving their lot.
I’m surprised you didn’t bring up some of the JP descriptions in the Remembrance of a God and Lord where it states how Miquella ‘innocently’ pleaded with Radahn to become his consort. I think someone brought up how in that description the word used in JP was ‘junshin’ which could be translated as ‘pure/innocent/unspoilt, etc’, which would show that there is a bit of a childlike innocence in Miquella’s actions. He is after all, cursed to be eternally young. Would this also mean that he is young in both body AND mind? If so, then wouldn’t that mean that all his actions were that of a child’s who doesn’t realize the impact of what his Age would do? I’m not arguing that Miquella’s actions weren’t horrible, and that his Age of Compassion would ironically be a cruel one, but I don’t think Miquella is someone like Griffith from Berserk, or that ALL his actions were sinister in intent. He DID create Unalloyed Needles, made armor for his sister, sucked out the Scarlet Rot from Freyja, and created the Haligtree as a refuge for the Albinaurics. Imo, he seems like someone who has a child-like mindset of what he wants the world to be, especially since it’s a world mired by sin and one where he couldn’t save his sister from the Scarlet Rot, which is why he decides to do what he does to make the world right again in his child-like eyes. Plus, you also mentioned in another video with Miquella’s Great Rune about how Miquella wants to make a world beyond the causality inflicted by the Elden Ring/Marika’s karma or fate, which is why we don’t see him grab the Elden Ring to make himself a God. It makes Miquella a lot more complex of a character rather than a straight-up villain. His actions were still absolutely wrong, but it goes far beyond just being raised as a sociopath
I think it's easy for people who have never seen the true face of humanity, who have never really truly suffered in life to think of Miquella as evil. When you are one of the few who have the immense luxury and protection of first world societies, you don't get to understand or put significance on the true suffering that goes on constantly, all the time, everywhere. You get to prioritise the luxury of being able to act however you want without much consequence, and value the freedom to do anything you want over other people not having to suffer needlessly. Miquella saw the true suffering of the world, and chose not to prioritise the comfort of the few deemed worthy of protection and goodness by the previous Orders and those under them at the cost of true peace and the end of needless pain everywhere. Humans are terrible. Miquella knew that. He chose to take away everyone's choice to hate and fight each other, and to hate and fight against him, so that the world wouldn't suffer under it's own evil nature any longer. Is that wrong? I'm not sure, but I don't think it's as clear cut as "Miquella is evil and bad". I think that view is out of touch and, ironically - given we're talking about Miquella, naive. EDIT: I also replied to someone else's comment but I think it's important for people to read: "Yeah idk people who call him monstrous and choose to ignore the earnest goodness he also displays kinda show they have some form of bias going on surrounding the character for one reason or another. Comes off anti-queer imo a lot of the time, given how queer coded he is as a character. Calling him "Miqlestor" even though Radahn agreed to their vow and Mohg was trying to become Elden Lord in his own right, like a lot of the other non-Empyrean demigods. That's my perception and experience with the hate against him, at least." I guess ultimately I'm saying it's weird how people give so many other characters who also do terrible things so much slack and try to explain their nuance, but when it comes to Miq people don't afford him that same respect for some reason. Like disingenuously comparing Miquella to a character who is an outright evil sociopathic child with no redeeming qualities, such as in this video.
That sounds nice, but…eh, that kinda ignores the giant elephants of Mogh and Radahn, because Miquella’s actions as far as those two are concerned are that of a sociopath who doesn’t care about people’s lives and only sees others as tools/toys, no matter what your personal explanation for ‘The Vow That Sure Does Exist’ Mystery Box(TM) is.
@@Not_2_Deep You didn't elaborate on what you mean at all, so I can't really respond. EDIT: I'll try to respond but correct me if I misinterpreted what you were getting at. Mohg was a rival Elden Lord wannabe playing the game of thrones. He died playing the game of thrones. Not sure how Miquella is bad for conducting a political war against people who'd do the same against him. And Radahn was not mind controlled, because there would be no vow to be made if he was being mind controlled. He'd just do what Miquella said, no vow required. Also even if these weren't the case, sacrificing powerful proponents of Orders that beget yet more suffering, or mind controlling them to not beget more suffering, I just don't see as wholly evil. Not sure why people want Miquella to be entirely evil/refuse to speak on him with nuance for playing the game of thrones like everybody else is doing, except he shows he has sincere aspirations to create a good world - not just wanting to become powerful for it's own sake like a lot of the other players except for maybe Ranni. I think it's naive again to think Miquella shouldn't be capable of fighting a war against what he perceives as proponents of evil. Were the Allies bad people for killing the Nazis? I don't think you'd argue that. Sometimes achieving peace and doing what is right means you need to fight for it. Not sure why Miquella is crucified for that but everyone else gets a pass.
Ok, you lost me with the whole Miquella haters are "anti queer" bit. I guess if your only tool is a hammer then everything looks like a nail to you. The reason why people are so hard on Miquella isn't because they are "anti queer", it's because he's clearly a manipulator as we are told by actual NPCs like Ansbach. People like Ansbach, so they believe Ansbach. Simple as.
@@Patrick-bn5rp I'm not saying anyone that doesn't agree with his philosophies are simply anti-queer. I'm saying he receives a disproportionate about of hate and dismissal as entirely evil partly because he is queer coded, unlike his non-queer coded counterparts who receive a lot more sympathy and are given a lot of nuanced elaboration to their motives. Which I explained in what I said but you seem to want to willfully dismiss for whatever reasons you have. I think you should maybe take your own advice about the hammer and the nail.
Oh, hi. I mostly didn’t elaborate on what I was saying because I didn’t think there would be an actual discussion, but if you want to… I need to first say that I’m coming from the position of someone who doesn’t like Miquella’s writing in the DLC, because I can’t see how it’s supposed to lead to a morally complicated, ambiguous and an interesting character, which is rather obviously what FromSoft wanted to write, and that my problems literally just come down to the Radahn Plottwist and Ansbach’s dialogue about Miquella charming Mogh and ‘using him to enter the realm of shadows’, and that I also agree that there was no mind control with Radahn. That’s why I said ‘no matter what interpretation you have’, because if there’s no mind control then that means that the Battle of Aeonia was something that Miquella, Malenia and Radahn planned, and now all I’m seeing is three kids born to the top of their society throwing hundreds if not thousands of lives of their soldiers and any civilians unlucky enough to be there into the meatgrinder…for a larping session. Because, idk, Radahn and Malenia couldn’t just have a duel, I guess (that’s of course IF the vow was honourable death, and not something else, but I can’t see what else it could have been and FromSoft decided to not write anything else about it, so 🤷). You can probably see issues I’m having with this plot point (it becomes funnier when you realise that the soldiers themselves probably weren’t told about why the battle was happening, because Freyja, per her dialogue, only learned that ‘A Vow Exists’ from Miquella while he was curing her (I also have problems with that, but this comment will be a text-wall even without that), and in the base game we have the Catacombs in Radahn’s arena, where the ghosts of Redmanes and Cleanrots continue to fight after dying). The Mogh bit comes from the Lord of Blood’s Exaultation Talisman, which says that the blood offerings are for Miquella’s cocoon. Because Mogh is obsessed with it. And the DLC says that Mogh was charmed so that Miquella could use him to enter the Shadow Realm (however that’s supposed to work), and then Ansbach tried attacking him and also got charmed. I don’t know about you, but to me it looks like Miquella’s major actions in achieving his goals just end up spreading more misery to everyone else, either deliberately or as after effects (I also think that that line fundamentally undermines Mogh as a character and the entirety of the Haligtree (Miquella’s greatest work, an entire secret legacy dungeon at the end game, not mentioned ones in the entire DLC, that almost sounds like a joke). I hope you can get what I’m trying to say, because I don’t know how to write my thoughts on this down without them becoming ramblings. I agree that what you described is probably what From wanted the character to be, I would massively prefer Miquella being like that, but I can’t see that working with the story as-is and think that the writing team really dropped the ball here for some reason.
id rather have rad boss fight where gank boss fight is, then have miquella lose his mind and in the boss room- there is just a portal (the gate) and that gate sends you to the godwyn corpse, first you fight a fetus falling out of it, (death blight- destined death boss) it has tree spirit moves mixed with eldengod and rykard moves, leaving puddles that cause blight. after phase one miquella falls into despair and madness, splitting the bosses fishy fin in two, obtaining Chaos magic 2.. having to manage all 3 statuses (chaos, blight, destined death, AND THE MIND WIPE GRAB ATTACK)
Miquella is known to act selflessly though. There's pretty clear evidence of him attempting to help both Malenia and Godwyn with their cosmic woes. There's also evidence to suggest that he believes his actions are for the benefit of others and that he believes he is making right on certain grand moral issues. I don't think this conflicts with the ideas in the video. Moreso, just something to consider alongside them.
This. He's a much better character if he's being this dangerous on ignorance/naivete. The only item in the game that aludes to some malice on his part is the Betwitching Branch, and as usual, the English translation is not 100% accurate.
miquella tried to act selflessly. i think his curse of nascence is really the seed of his evil unfortunately. he's a tragic character, that tries his best to do good, to make the world a better place, but fails due to his naivete. he rids himself of love because his love was a liability if it was true that trina lured mohg to the haligree to abscond with the cocoon. trina tells you as much that she wants to stop miquella. but miquella doesn't want godhood for power, he knows it's a prison, he sees it as a sacrifice for the greater good. but his love is what made him good
We don't fight Miquella. Miquella is long dead, he never re-emerged from the cocoon. There exists a Nascent Butterfly, but not a single moth. Miquella's journey is like the Ship of Thesius. if you discard everything that makes something, then what is left is not truly the original. Miquella didn't discard every thing that made him who he was because they were remnants of Marika like we are led to believe, he discarded everything BUT the part of himself that was Marika.
Were those selfless acts? Miquella's plans for Godwyn failed. He then abandoned Godwyn to his fate and left the Mountaintops sunless (go check it out for yourself sometime, the sun is not visible in Mountaintops). What was Miquella's goal here? Why did he need a method for bringing someone back to life? Where have we seen that elsewhere? Miquella wasn't trying to help Godwyn. He found a good corpse to experiment on. His experiment failed. So he moved on with his plans with the Mohg and the Shadow Lands and becoming a god, something we know he did as a last resort via St. Trina. Miquella was helping himself here. Malenia meanwhile was a tool for Miquella, literally his loyal blade. He needed her in his efforts to kill Radahn in order to bring them under his control. When she failed to kill him, he abandoned her in the Caelid wastes. Leaving Finlay to drag her body back to the Haligtree on foot. He made the needle in order to prevent her from becoming some sort of bug lady. It's unlikely that he was mind controlling her. But I imagine, based on Romina's history, that he saw Malenia fully accepting the rot as a threat to his ability to continue using her. "There's also evidence to suggest that he believes his actions are for the benefit of others" Yes, the problem is that he's a literal permanent child and has a child's self centered concept of morality. That's why Ansbach calls him dangerous. He strikes a godly, innocent figure while talking about peace and love. But it's in his discrete meaning of those things that his evil shines through. He's one of the most evil characters Miyazaki has come up with. The wild thing is that people still buy into his manipulative behavior. Very successful character. Very worrying response from a lot of people though.
The more I think about elden ring the more confused I am, honestly. My original understanding is it is needed for how order works in the lands between. But miquella breaks his and abandons it to become a god. Was it to gain its power like how we do with basic runes and all that? Don't get me started on how you can just make them either. The elden beast is supposed to be the true form of the thing but people can just make new ones and insert them inside to rewrite reality? So did Marika kill who ever had it before, broke it and absorbed it and then went on a conquest to create new pieces for it? New runes have to be created through sacrifice I beleive. Idk, I'm stoned.
It worries me deeply that so many people think that Miquella was a good guy. Miquella uses the tactics of an abuser. The fact that so many people don't recognize this make me worry about what might happen if they find themselves in a relationship with an abuser in real life. Probably one of the best characters Miyazaki has ever come up with. But... maybe a little too effective, given some people's response to him.
@@rainbowkrampus He'll take away your mind and unleash the ultimate demigod of valiant warfare on you, for your own good. People don't seem to realize that the God/Lord duality represents the Ideology/Praxis aspect of a philosophy. Miquella/Radahn is, in essence, naive universal compassion as enforced by overwhelming violence.
I think, it's a good thing (on a meta level) that people are arguing about this. Fromsoft intentially shrouded some things such as the question of Radahn being mind controlled in mystery, even though the answer becomes clear, when you think about why he had to be killed by Malenia. It was probably to soften the blow, to make Miquella just that little more appealing. And it ends up making him a very effective display of a soft spoken manipulator. He just frames the whole Radahn dilemma as if he was on his side all the way. I can see your point about how people who believe this might fall prey to it. But see it like this, fiction can always lead to some lessons learned without harm. And maybe that will happen during the discussion about this topic.
@@Sinhsseax I've seen people saying that "Radahn agreed to the vow" when there's no evidence of that. On the contrary, I think the cutscene at the end of the game showing Miquella making the promise tremulously into the empty void can be best interpreted as Miquella making all decisions unilaterally, without consulting anyone. Radahn isn't sitting off-screen nodding in agreement. Miquella just expects everyone to go along with it because he thinks he's so right nobody can disagree. And of course he's enabled by Malenia, who is literally blinded by her rot and agrees unquestioningly with everything he says.
@@rclaws3230 And on the other hand given Radahn's character it could be that he did agree. Since what Miquella actually says there is that if he upholds his part. Now what did Jerren want for him? A proper death. It could also be considered that Radahn wanted to experience a proper death too. A warrior's death. So it could be that Miquella's part was giving him a proper death to revive him later in the land of shadow, but that failed because Malenia wasn't strong enough. What gave him the death was the Tarnished, and now he is resurrected, and assuming what Freya said is also what Radahn could want, that being war, Radahn joined Miquella to experience the war he wants. After all he already got his proper death. Part of the vow could have been to have him resurrected after, so that he can do what Godfrey did for Marika, and wage war against those who go against Miquella.
@@p.istvan8744 That's not really a proper death then is it? Is it a warrior's death when you know you've got a do over? Is Radahn a coward? I don't think this interpretation stands up to scrutiny. You have to ignore genre tropes and all of the things we are told about Radahn from his most loyal followers in order to arrive at it. Radahn rejected Miquella. He did so knowing that godhood would be damaging to Miquella, just as St.Trina did, just as Miquella did. It was bad for Marika and her children and the Lands Between. But Miquella was so wrapped up in his childish infatuation that he abandoned good sense and family bonds in order to get what he wanted. This is why I said I worry about people. So many people seem ready to make excuses for him and ignore the outcomes and the word of the people who understand the world and their relationships best.
The best ending is goldmask ending Then miquellas Dusk Ranni(can be really great if spread of undeath will be stopped by discarding ELDEN RING however we cannot be fully sure, and dark moon is also outer god so it can be even worse than fracture) Fracture Frenzy Poop devourer
Self proclaimed Christian players will call miquella evil but choice is false it is the mistake of eve and Adam that lead to suffering. Heaven is supposed to be place without the flaws brought on by the original sin, including the choice to do evil. Why does everyone villainize eves choice, but then also villainize a character in media trying to do exactly what they want to happen in their own writings. Miquellas charm does not make you a mindless zombie. It made Leda a better person for a short while, by removing her choice to do evil.
I'm just wondering why you all accept Miquella to be an unredeemable monster when all the problems and blame lay on Marika, who had done way worse atrocities than him? If she were a better mother and god, Miquella wouldn't want to become a god and do questionable things to create a better world. If Marika didn't shatter the Elden Ring, Miquella would never have the Great Rune to charm others.
Marika was a product of a cruel world, and wanted to make the Golden Order to prevent death and "generally" help the people living within the order has long has you were human and don't have horns, she still wanted her people to have free will and not be slaves. Miquella just wants slaves lol and his solution is merely a bandaid. He will not actually solve any of the Land's Between problems between its peoples, and when his Age is over, it will just descend back to violence. His Age of Compassion will be without love I am not saying Marika isn't a War Criminal or a bad person, but Miquella is just like Marika. He will throw you away once you are no longer useful.
A character like that would be pretty interesting and have a very unique sort of horror to them… If, you know, we got one like that instead of an amorphous blob of plot contrivances and last minute retcons, but oh well. The styling of the video itself is pretty cool though (I presume it’s supposed to look and sound like a Twilight Zone episode, having never seen the actual show lol).
No wonder radahn had so many defenses at his castle, not to defend against the giant fucking dogs and birds, but to defend against a femboy who can just whisper in your ear and you become a sub.
@rclaws3230 No, because her intention and ultimate goal was never to achieve eternal peace or „do good“. She is a racist warmonger, a literal supervillain. Miquella wanted an age of eternal peace and compassion by forcing people to be peaceful and compassionate. Marika wanted an age of eternal life and eradicated all she deemed unholy like Misbegotten, Omen, Hornsent and Albinaurics. And those are exactly the groups of people that Miquella chose to accept. The two are totally different.
@@Marikus_Eternal Uh, no, her intention was to make an Age of Compassion where the oppressed rise up and take their place in the world, where no more harm could be done to her or her people, by removing death so no one would ever be lost to her again. I'm sure Miquella intends to pursue utter peace and equity by making his physical avatar the literal ultimate demigod of valiant warfare. He will let the whole world know of his peaceful ways... BY FORCE.
@@Marikus_Eternal Also recall that Miquella seeks the annihilation of Those Who Live In Death, there's nothing that says his intention for Godwyn was good, and if Radahn is any indication the intent was to use him as an instrument of war. So yeah, the whole thing with Miquella is a parable about cycles of violence and how the sins of the parent become the sins of the child and revenge perpetuates forever. Interpreting Marika as a supervillain is a very shallow analysis of her character. Everything she did, she did to set things right for her people, so that none would ever suffer again. Everyone she oppressed, oppressed her and her people first, or were attempts to usurp her godhood (the albinaurics were made with the intent to bring a new god into being, the Night Lord). What do you think Miquella would do if someone attempted to usurp his godhood? Oh right, he'd sicc Radahn on them.
One thing to consider about Miquella is his knowledge of Golden Order Fundamentalism. The two most important spells in Golden Order Fundamentalism are Law of Causality and Law of Regression. The latter is especially interesting in regards to Miquella (bonus points for how you get it). If you take Law of Causality to a philosophical extreme, what you have is a world of determinism. It's possible Miquella did just that, and decided that if free will doesn't exist anyways, people might as well be controlled by a god who loves them.
It's appropriate that Miquella and Ranni look so much alike, given that Miquella represents comfort and security at the cost of freedom, and Ranni wishes to bring freedom which also brings with it fear, loneliness, and uncertainty.
I don't think the walking corpses feel free
@@ComradeOgilvy369 ranni doesn't kill everyone to free them what are you talking about ?
And that's why miquela is the villain of the story, our player character is free and unrestrained, although there's a path to follow the point is that your not supposed to follow it, your supposed to go out there, explore and do your thing... When someone or something gets in our way we kill it and we ALWAYS get and do what we want, whether that means burning the world down, becoming an elden lord or bringing about a new age with a new god or just fighting in the coliseums without purpose... We the tarnished are untamed and wild fighting beasts and dragons to take their power or for the challenge of it or even for the fun of it
No matter what we do, or what we choose miquela will always be the worst thing that can possibly happen to our character, he wants to take away our most important ability which is freedom, he stands in complete opposition to what we stand for and so just like we do with everything else that stands in our way we take him down
@@dragonslayer3552those who live in death are brought about as a consequence of Godwyn's incomplete death, which Ranni was responsible for
I'm kind of amazed how many times I've seen some variation in these comments (and elsewhere) of "but he's innocent/ignorant/naive/has good intentions" and it's like...yeah. That's the point. That's _why_ he's a monster. That's the point of that _Twilight Zone_ episode cited in this video: when you take a person with a child's maturity level and give them overwhelming power, they can't help _but_ be a monster because they're incapable of perceiving the world through any lens but their own. They can't really understand that their wants and desires, _even when well-intentioned,_ aren't what others really want or need. (This is, of course, entirely a separate issue from the question of what abandoning things like St. Trina, his love, on the path to godhood would do to his personality as a god, because Miquella is not a one-note character.)
The fact you can side with the dung eater but not miquella annoys me to no end
No lie every time I think I want to replay this game. I get about halfway through lim grave before I realize that I can't stomach the end of the d l c again for this very reason😂
What I like is that everyone sees Miquella differently and explains his actions in very different ways
He's also the most fearsome because he's behind the hardest bosses in elden ring.
"Miquella the Kind...is a monster. Pure and radiant, he wields love to shrive clean the hearts of men. There is nothing more terrifying."
@georgehouliaras7239 slander! He’s the ultimate therapist offering unconditional positive regard. The others have simply gained new perspective and are able shift their priorities.
"Righteous Tarnished, Miquella the kind makes my blood run cold. I'm loath to admit it, but even at this very instant I wish to run away very far indeed."
These lines go so hard, gave me shivers when I first heard the monster one in the trailer and then when Ansbach said it for real.
Especially because it's at the perfect moment. The spell is broken, and that is Ansbachs reaction.
That line gave me chills when I heard it the first time
Says the man serving Mogh lol
Im not sure Ansbach is a very reliable source. He was litteraly serving a guy that wanted to bath the world in blood 😅
I always was of the opinion that Miquella would be a noble villain from what I learned in the base game. He was just too good to be true. And with the mind control, it suddenly made sense that he was so well regarded.
You can only call someone "the kind" or similar things so many times before it starts getting suspicious.
But only in Shadow of the Erdtree did I truly understand his character. Beforehand I thought, he was just a man stuck in a childs body, capable of achieving great feats with his genius.
But the more I looked at how he acts and is described in the DLC, the more I felt it was his mind that was immature as well. He's certainly a child genius for what he can accomplish, but he doesn't have the wisdom to use that or his tremendous power in the right way.
He seems to have such a low attention span when it comes to his many projects and seems to abandon them completely once he's bored. His sense of morals is so underdeveloped that he can't see the injustice in his ideas.
It reminds me of how in the real world, children can do some of the worst things we can imagine.
Children have the capacity for great cruelty. (just look at Jon Venables and what he and his associate did to another kid)
But because they are just children and are not strong enough to do what they please, we can comfortably just consider them as harmless and adorable most of the time.
They just require some good natured guidance to grow up healthy and develop a good moral code.
Miquella is still such a child, who could've grown up to be better, but will never do so.
So to summarize:
Kids are cruel, Jack!
And Miquella is VERY in touch with his inner child!
(Sorry! 🤣)
@@greencat3800 I really need to play Revengeance apparently.
Miquella is a very well written antagonist
His world view is very simple yet extreme
miquella’s goal of softening the world is flawed with his underlying desire to do that at any means necessary, even trying to discard his linage just like his mother
Not familiar with that Twilight Zone episode but the impression I got is that it's similar to an old episode of the Justice League cartoon.
I once considered that the Goldmask ending removed free will but I no longer think that's the case. I think it just makes it so that the Elden Ring can no longer be tampered with, creating a magical barrier that keeps any others from manipulating it.
My two cents is that it also seeks to downgrade whatever godhood entails
Indeed. I thought of the Goldmask ending as one that rendered Order pure and immutable. That is to say, it creates an absolute Law, a definition of what is and is not, of right and wrong, which is not subject to change or alteration by the whims of any person or God in the future. It does not destroy free will, but rather what the universal judgment of those free actions is. Those That Live In Death, for example, would be forever outside or forever within that Order, damned monsters to be destroyed or people who happened to look a little boney, and that decision could never be revisited. Heresies will always be heresies, blasphemies always blasphemies, and no amendment of that Order can ever happen. Which is great if you get it right the first time (nobody can ever screw it up because they get a bee up their butt about, say, wanting to murder all the Hornsent in reaction to the evils the Hornsent did to their home and people) and horrible if you get it wrong. Whether you like that ending or Ranni's better pretty much depends on whether you have more trust in the Tarnished (and presumably Goldmask) to get the Order right, or in the people as a whole to muddle through slowly improving their lot.
I’m surprised you didn’t bring up some of the JP descriptions in the Remembrance of a God and Lord where it states how Miquella ‘innocently’ pleaded with Radahn to become his consort.
I think someone brought up how in that description the word used in JP was ‘junshin’ which could be translated as ‘pure/innocent/unspoilt, etc’, which would show that there is a bit of a childlike innocence in Miquella’s actions. He is after all, cursed to be eternally young.
Would this also mean that he is young in both body AND mind? If so, then wouldn’t that mean that all his actions were that of a child’s who doesn’t realize the impact of what his Age would do?
I’m not arguing that Miquella’s actions weren’t horrible, and that his Age of Compassion would ironically be a cruel one, but I don’t think Miquella is someone like Griffith from Berserk, or that ALL his actions were sinister in intent. He DID create Unalloyed Needles, made armor for his sister, sucked out the Scarlet Rot from Freyja, and created the Haligtree as a refuge for the Albinaurics.
Imo, he seems like someone who has a child-like mindset of what he wants the world to be, especially since it’s a world mired by sin and one where he couldn’t save his sister from the Scarlet Rot, which is why he decides to do what he does to make the world right again in his child-like eyes.
Plus, you also mentioned in another video with Miquella’s Great Rune about how Miquella wants to make a world beyond the causality inflicted by the Elden Ring/Marika’s karma or fate, which is why we don’t see him grab the Elden Ring to make himself a God.
It makes Miquella a lot more complex of a character rather than a straight-up villain. His actions were still absolutely wrong, but it goes far beyond just being raised as a sociopath
Well put.
I think it's easy for people who have never seen the true face of humanity, who have never really truly suffered in life to think of Miquella as evil. When you are one of the few who have the immense luxury and protection of first world societies, you don't get to understand or put significance on the true suffering that goes on constantly, all the time, everywhere. You get to prioritise the luxury of being able to act however you want without much consequence, and value the freedom to do anything you want over other people not having to suffer needlessly. Miquella saw the true suffering of the world, and chose not to prioritise the comfort of the few deemed worthy of protection and goodness by the previous Orders and those under them at the cost of true peace and the end of needless pain everywhere. Humans are terrible. Miquella knew that. He chose to take away everyone's choice to hate and fight each other, and to hate and fight against him, so that the world wouldn't suffer under it's own evil nature any longer. Is that wrong? I'm not sure, but I don't think it's as clear cut as "Miquella is evil and bad". I think that view is out of touch and, ironically - given we're talking about Miquella, naive.
EDIT: I also replied to someone else's comment but I think it's important for people to read:
"Yeah idk people who call him monstrous and choose to ignore the earnest goodness he also displays kinda show they have some form of bias going on surrounding the character for one reason or another. Comes off anti-queer imo a lot of the time, given how queer coded he is as a character. Calling him "Miqlestor" even though Radahn agreed to their vow and Mohg was trying to become Elden Lord in his own right, like a lot of the other non-Empyrean demigods. That's my perception and experience with the hate against him, at least."
I guess ultimately I'm saying it's weird how people give so many other characters who also do terrible things so much slack and try to explain their nuance, but when it comes to Miq people don't afford him that same respect for some reason. Like disingenuously comparing Miquella to a character who is an outright evil sociopathic child with no redeeming qualities, such as in this video.
That sounds nice, but…eh, that kinda ignores the giant elephants of Mogh and Radahn, because Miquella’s actions as far as those two are concerned are that of a sociopath who doesn’t care about people’s lives and only sees others as tools/toys, no matter what your personal explanation for ‘The Vow That Sure Does Exist’ Mystery Box(TM) is.
@@Not_2_Deep You didn't elaborate on what you mean at all, so I can't really respond.
EDIT: I'll try to respond but correct me if I misinterpreted what you were getting at. Mohg was a rival Elden Lord wannabe playing the game of thrones. He died playing the game of thrones. Not sure how Miquella is bad for conducting a political war against people who'd do the same against him. And Radahn was not mind controlled, because there would be no vow to be made if he was being mind controlled. He'd just do what Miquella said, no vow required. Also even if these weren't the case, sacrificing powerful proponents of Orders that beget yet more suffering, or mind controlling them to not beget more suffering, I just don't see as wholly evil.
Not sure why people want Miquella to be entirely evil/refuse to speak on him with nuance for playing the game of thrones like everybody else is doing, except he shows he has sincere aspirations to create a good world - not just wanting to become powerful for it's own sake like a lot of the other players except for maybe Ranni. I think it's naive again to think Miquella shouldn't be capable of fighting a war against what he perceives as proponents of evil. Were the Allies bad people for killing the Nazis? I don't think you'd argue that. Sometimes achieving peace and doing what is right means you need to fight for it. Not sure why Miquella is crucified for that but everyone else gets a pass.
Ok, you lost me with the whole Miquella haters are "anti queer" bit. I guess if your only tool is a hammer then everything looks like a nail to you. The reason why people are so hard on Miquella isn't because they are "anti queer", it's because he's clearly a manipulator as we are told by actual NPCs like Ansbach. People like Ansbach, so they believe Ansbach. Simple as.
@@Patrick-bn5rp I'm not saying anyone that doesn't agree with his philosophies are simply anti-queer. I'm saying he receives a disproportionate about of hate and dismissal as entirely evil partly because he is queer coded, unlike his non-queer coded counterparts who receive a lot more sympathy and are given a lot of nuanced elaboration to their motives. Which I explained in what I said but you seem to want to willfully dismiss for whatever reasons you have. I think you should maybe take your own advice about the hammer and the nail.
Oh, hi.
I mostly didn’t elaborate on what I was saying because I didn’t think there would be an actual discussion, but if you want to…
I need to first say that I’m coming from the position of someone who doesn’t like Miquella’s writing in the DLC, because I can’t see how it’s supposed to lead to a morally complicated, ambiguous and an interesting character, which is rather obviously what FromSoft wanted to write, and that my problems literally just come down to the Radahn Plottwist and Ansbach’s dialogue about Miquella charming Mogh and ‘using him to enter the realm of shadows’, and that I also agree that there was no mind control with Radahn.
That’s why I said ‘no matter what interpretation you have’, because if there’s no mind control then that means that the Battle of Aeonia was something that Miquella, Malenia and Radahn planned, and now all I’m seeing is three kids born to the top of their society throwing hundreds if not thousands of lives of their soldiers and any civilians unlucky enough to be there into the meatgrinder…for a larping session. Because, idk, Radahn and Malenia couldn’t just have a duel, I guess (that’s of course IF the vow was honourable death, and not something else, but I can’t see what else it could have been and FromSoft decided to not write anything else about it, so 🤷). You can probably see issues I’m having with this plot point (it becomes funnier when you realise that the soldiers themselves probably weren’t told about why the battle was happening, because Freyja, per her dialogue, only learned that ‘A Vow Exists’ from Miquella while he was curing her (I also have problems with that, but this comment will be a text-wall even without that), and in the base game we have the Catacombs in Radahn’s arena, where the ghosts of Redmanes and Cleanrots continue to fight after dying).
The Mogh bit comes from the Lord of Blood’s Exaultation Talisman, which says that the blood offerings are for Miquella’s cocoon. Because Mogh is obsessed with it. And the DLC says that Mogh was charmed so that Miquella could use him to enter the Shadow Realm (however that’s supposed to work), and then Ansbach tried attacking him and also got charmed. I don’t know about you, but to me it looks like Miquella’s major actions in achieving his goals just end up spreading more misery to everyone else, either deliberately or as after effects (I also think that that line fundamentally undermines Mogh as a character and the entirety of the Haligtree (Miquella’s greatest work, an entire secret legacy dungeon at the end game, not mentioned ones in the entire DLC, that almost sounds like a joke).
I hope you can get what I’m trying to say, because I don’t know how to write my thoughts on this down without them becoming ramblings.
I agree that what you described is probably what From wanted the character to be, I would massively prefer Miquella being like that, but I can’t see that working with the story as-is and think that the writing team really dropped the ball here for some reason.
id rather have rad boss fight where gank boss fight is, then have miquella lose his mind and in the boss room- there is just a portal (the gate)
and that gate sends you to the godwyn corpse, first you fight a fetus falling out of it, (death blight- destined death boss)
it has tree spirit moves mixed with eldengod and rykard moves, leaving puddles that cause blight.
after phase one miquella falls into despair and madness, splitting the bosses fishy fin in two, obtaining Chaos magic 2.. having to manage all 3 statuses (chaos, blight, destined death, AND THE MIND WIPE GRAB ATTACK)
Miquella is known to act selflessly though. There's pretty clear evidence of him attempting to help both Malenia and Godwyn with their cosmic woes. There's also evidence to suggest that he believes his actions are for the benefit of others and that he believes he is making right on certain grand moral issues. I don't think this conflicts with the ideas in the video. Moreso, just something to consider alongside them.
This. He's a much better character if he's being this dangerous on ignorance/naivete. The only item in the game that aludes to some malice on his part is the Betwitching Branch, and as usual, the English translation is not 100% accurate.
miquella tried to act selflessly. i think his curse of nascence is really the seed of his evil unfortunately. he's a tragic character, that tries his best to do good, to make the world a better place, but fails due to his naivete. he rids himself of love because his love was a liability if it was true that trina lured mohg to the haligree to abscond with the cocoon. trina tells you as much that she wants to stop miquella. but miquella doesn't want godhood for power, he knows it's a prison, he sees it as a sacrifice for the greater good. but his love is what made him good
We don't fight Miquella. Miquella is long dead, he never re-emerged from the cocoon. There exists a Nascent Butterfly, but not a single moth.
Miquella's journey is like the Ship of Thesius. if you discard everything that makes something, then what is left is not truly the original. Miquella didn't discard every thing that made him who he was because they were remnants of Marika like we are led to believe, he discarded everything BUT the part of himself that was Marika.
Miquella has shitty follow through tho, he is eternally nascent.
Were those selfless acts?
Miquella's plans for Godwyn failed. He then abandoned Godwyn to his fate and left the Mountaintops sunless (go check it out for yourself sometime, the sun is not visible in Mountaintops). What was Miquella's goal here? Why did he need a method for bringing someone back to life? Where have we seen that elsewhere?
Miquella wasn't trying to help Godwyn. He found a good corpse to experiment on. His experiment failed. So he moved on with his plans with the Mohg and the Shadow Lands and becoming a god, something we know he did as a last resort via St. Trina.
Miquella was helping himself here.
Malenia meanwhile was a tool for Miquella, literally his loyal blade. He needed her in his efforts to kill Radahn in order to bring them under his control. When she failed to kill him, he abandoned her in the Caelid wastes. Leaving Finlay to drag her body back to the Haligtree on foot. He made the needle in order to prevent her from becoming some sort of bug lady. It's unlikely that he was mind controlling her. But I imagine, based on Romina's history, that he saw Malenia fully accepting the rot as a threat to his ability to continue using her.
"There's also evidence to suggest that he believes his actions are for the benefit of others"
Yes, the problem is that he's a literal permanent child and has a child's self centered concept of morality. That's why Ansbach calls him dangerous. He strikes a godly, innocent figure while talking about peace and love. But it's in his discrete meaning of those things that his evil shines through.
He's one of the most evil characters Miyazaki has come up with. The wild thing is that people still buy into his manipulative behavior. Very successful character. Very worrying response from a lot of people though.
The more I think about elden ring the more confused I am, honestly. My original understanding is it is needed for how order works in the lands between. But miquella breaks his and abandons it to become a god. Was it to gain its power like how we do with basic runes and all that? Don't get me started on how you can just make them either. The elden beast is supposed to be the true form of the thing but people can just make new ones and insert them inside to rewrite reality? So did Marika kill who ever had it before, broke it and absorbed it and then went on a conquest to create new pieces for it? New runes have to be created through sacrifice I beleive. Idk, I'm stoned.
miquella might be in the twilight zone, but radahn is certainly the one behind the scary door
Futurama reference..... nice !
Radahn did put himself there
Fantastic artistic touch on this one man
It worries me deeply that so many people think that Miquella was a good guy.
Miquella uses the tactics of an abuser. The fact that so many people don't recognize this make me worry about what might happen if they find themselves in a relationship with an abuser in real life.
Probably one of the best characters Miyazaki has ever come up with. But... maybe a little too effective, given some people's response to him.
@@rainbowkrampus He'll take away your mind and unleash the ultimate demigod of valiant warfare on you, for your own good.
People don't seem to realize that the God/Lord duality represents the Ideology/Praxis aspect of a philosophy.
Miquella/Radahn is, in essence, naive universal compassion as enforced by overwhelming violence.
I think, it's a good thing (on a meta level) that people are arguing about this. Fromsoft intentially shrouded some things such as the question of Radahn being mind controlled in mystery, even though the answer becomes clear, when you think about why he had to be killed by Malenia.
It was probably to soften the blow, to make Miquella just that little more appealing.
And it ends up making him a very effective display of a soft spoken manipulator.
He just frames the whole Radahn dilemma as if he was on his side all the way.
I can see your point about how people who believe this might fall prey to it. But see it like this, fiction can always lead to some lessons learned without harm. And maybe that will happen during the discussion about this topic.
@@Sinhsseax I've seen people saying that "Radahn agreed to the vow" when there's no evidence of that. On the contrary, I think the cutscene at the end of the game showing Miquella making the promise tremulously into the empty void can be best interpreted as Miquella making all decisions unilaterally, without consulting anyone. Radahn isn't sitting off-screen nodding in agreement. Miquella just expects everyone to go along with it because he thinks he's so right nobody can disagree. And of course he's enabled by Malenia, who is literally blinded by her rot and agrees unquestioningly with everything he says.
@@rclaws3230 And on the other hand given Radahn's character it could be that he did agree. Since what Miquella actually says there is that if he upholds his part. Now what did Jerren want for him? A proper death. It could also be considered that Radahn wanted to experience a proper death too. A warrior's death.
So it could be that Miquella's part was giving him a proper death to revive him later in the land of shadow, but that failed because Malenia wasn't strong enough. What gave him the death was the Tarnished, and now he is resurrected, and assuming what Freya said is also what Radahn could want, that being war, Radahn joined Miquella to experience the war he wants.
After all he already got his proper death. Part of the vow could have been to have him resurrected after, so that he can do what Godfrey did for Marika, and wage war against those who go against Miquella.
@@p.istvan8744 That's not really a proper death then is it? Is it a warrior's death when you know you've got a do over? Is Radahn a coward?
I don't think this interpretation stands up to scrutiny. You have to ignore genre tropes and all of the things we are told about Radahn from his most loyal followers in order to arrive at it.
Radahn rejected Miquella. He did so knowing that godhood would be damaging to Miquella, just as St.Trina did, just as Miquella did. It was bad for Marika and her children and the Lands Between. But Miquella was so wrapped up in his childish infatuation that he abandoned good sense and family bonds in order to get what he wanted.
This is why I said I worry about people. So many people seem ready to make excuses for him and ignore the outcomes and the word of the people who understand the world and their relationships best.
Pierre and radiant, he is a monster.
theorists who believe kind miquella is good have a few loose screws
comparable to the flame of frenzy in my eyes
Miquella really really reminds me of Killgrave in the Jessica Jones show.
The best ending is goldmask ending
Then miquellas
Dusk
Ranni(can be really great if spread of undeath will be stopped by discarding ELDEN RING however we cannot be fully sure, and dark moon is also outer god so it can be even worse than fracture)
Fracture
Frenzy
Poop devourer
Did you notice that the weird entrance Towers of stormveil somehow resemble the gate of divinity?
Fun comparison
Self proclaimed Christian players will call miquella evil but choice is false it is the mistake of eve and Adam that lead to suffering. Heaven is supposed to be place without the flaws brought on by the original sin, including the choice to do evil. Why does everyone villainize eves choice, but then also villainize a character in media trying to do exactly what they want to happen in their own writings. Miquellas charm does not make you a mindless zombie. It made Leda a better person for a short while, by removing her choice to do evil.
All I can say is thank you man
I'm just wondering why you all accept Miquella to be an unredeemable monster when all the problems and blame lay on Marika, who had done way worse atrocities than him? If she were a better mother and god, Miquella wouldn't want to become a god and do questionable things to create a better world. If Marika didn't shatter the Elden Ring, Miquella would never have the Great Rune to charm others.
Marika was a product of a cruel world, and wanted to make the Golden Order to prevent death and "generally" help the people living within the order has long has you were human and don't have horns, she still wanted her people to have free will and not be slaves.
Miquella just wants slaves lol and his solution is merely a bandaid. He will not actually solve any of the Land's Between problems between its peoples, and when his Age is over, it will just descend back to violence. His Age of Compassion will be without love
I am not saying Marika isn't a War Criminal or a bad person, but Miquella is just like Marika. He will throw you away once you are no longer useful.
CURSE YOU MIQUELLA🤬
I HEREBY VOW, YOU WILL RUE THIS DAY🤺
BEHOLD, A TRUE TARNISHED WARRIOR AND I, MIMIC TEAR🔊
YOUR FEARS MADE FLESH🥩
You're a Mimic Tear? D;
A character like that would be pretty interesting and have a very unique sort of horror to them…
If, you know, we got one like that instead of an amorphous blob of plot contrivances and last minute retcons, but oh well.
The styling of the video itself is pretty cool though (I presume it’s supposed to look and sound like a Twilight Zone episode, having never seen the actual show lol).
No wonder radahn had so many defenses at his castle, not to defend against the giant fucking dogs and birds, but to defend against a femboy who can just whisper in your ear and you become a sub.
Make sure to like and sub!
Miquella does not accept everything. From the beginning he was against Those Who Live in Death.
Because they're suffering unto eternity and he wants them to be free of that.
Utter nonsense .
In my opinion, Miquella was right. You actually need to force people to be good.
By that logic Marika is right too.
@rclaws3230 No, because her intention and ultimate goal was never to achieve eternal peace or „do good“. She is a racist warmonger, a literal supervillain.
Miquella wanted an age of eternal peace and compassion by forcing people to be peaceful and compassionate.
Marika wanted an age of eternal life and eradicated all she deemed unholy like Misbegotten, Omen, Hornsent and Albinaurics. And those are exactly the groups of people that Miquella chose to accept. The two are totally different.
@@Marikus_Eternal Uh, no, her intention was to make an Age of Compassion where the oppressed rise up and take their place in the world, where no more harm could be done to her or her people, by removing death so no one would ever be lost to her again.
I'm sure Miquella intends to pursue utter peace and equity by making his physical avatar the literal ultimate demigod of valiant warfare.
He will let the whole world know of his peaceful ways... BY FORCE.
@@Marikus_Eternal Also recall that Miquella seeks the annihilation of Those Who Live In Death, there's nothing that says his intention for Godwyn was good, and if Radahn is any indication the intent was to use him as an instrument of war.
So yeah, the whole thing with Miquella is a parable about cycles of violence and how the sins of the parent become the sins of the child and revenge perpetuates forever.
Interpreting Marika as a supervillain is a very shallow analysis of her character. Everything she did, she did to set things right for her people, so that none would ever suffer again. Everyone she oppressed, oppressed her and her people first, or were attempts to usurp her godhood (the albinaurics were made with the intent to bring a new god into being, the Night Lord). What do you think Miquella would do if someone attempted to usurp his godhood? Oh right, he'd sicc Radahn on them.
Said every authoritarian autocrat ever.
It's not for nothing that Miquella is forever a child.