"The Greater Will does not care what form Order takes" it's a being of pure Order and Order itself is not inherently good. Especially when it's stated that it'll embrace any goal the hero has as long as the end result is Order
As I've said before to people who think Order=Good, fascism is very much a manifestation of Order and the Final Solution was a very Orderly process. Order is simply a form of restriction on the endless potential of Chaos to a manageable level and that is all the Greater Will cares about. Whether the Elden Lord is like Jesus or like Hitler doesn't matter so long as they keep things running the way the GW wants them to.
Exactly why certain great runes can still be recovered despite being affected by other outer gods like Mohg’s and Malenia’s, neither of those outer gods oppose order they just have their own brand of it
@@ravendelacour1917 I would argue that fascism is the opposite of order. While fascist often claim to be the law and order guys, there are no laws restricting the people in power. If the grandson of an oligarch wants your business, he get's your business. If Putin wants you dead, you are killed. There are no laws restricting the people in power. As such, authoritarian states are, ironically, chaotic in nature.
Pretty much, it's a primordial eldric being that simple desires a structure for the world it governs. What form that structure actually takes it matters not. As long as there is some form of structure. Some form or order. You could stretch that even to the principle of Chaos as well. After all despite, being in direct opposition to Order, being able to describe something as chaotic or volatile is to describe its own Structural behavior. It's own Order within Chaos. The only one who actively tries to avoid falling under its demand of any structure, any Order, is Ranni, whose solution is to cut out this being that governs the universal nature of Order itself. An Order without the supreme deity of Order and its various influence. Herself included. Whether you think that can work? Eh, the player will never know.
Thanks to the DLC, we know why Marika was so harsh on the omen. It was _personal_ . Every time she sees a horned omen, she gets flashbacks of her people getting stuffed in jars. One has to wonder whether Marika mellowed her position on the omen or someone else persuaded her to just jail them under Leyndell, because Marika's actions in the Shadowlands definitely point to her choosing genocide over tolerance
Godfrey, he was the chief of the Crucible Knights and a Crucible believer before is wedding to Queen Marika. She would have end every Omen if possible, but Godfrey made her change her mind about it. So she banished them In the sewer.
@@Sandwich-5-sand And the one uncursed one, she merked herself. I think her intentions were that she knew her favorite son, an empyrean, would likely be the one to ascend after her. She knows what St Trina knows, that godhood is a prison. She would rather have ended Godwyn than allow him to suffer that fate, plus it opened the path for Ranni to succeed.
It's fun cuz now the Dlc is out and we've learned that the fingers were wrong from the start, and were making it up. The golden order did not ostricize the crucible, marika did, maybe not even out of loathing, but traumatic fear. The golden order itself having taken many of it's qualities from Marika's nature, which is also displayed in the great runes. Radahn's fight with Malenia was partly to prevent Miquella's ambitions of controlling everyone. And Mohg beat the allegations. Trully wile story.
Honestly with how St Trina called godhood under the Greater Will a prison and knowing how Empyreans seem to split in two personalities, I'm thinking part of being a god is making an oath to the Greater Will that this will be the new Order and the laws that it will abide by, and if you as it's ruler try to break those oaths, it will split you and divide the characteristics that will uphold that order into a new being if you yourself aren't willing to uphold it and that itself is why Marika shattered the Elden Ring
Are we sure that the Greater Will hadn't been in contact with the two fingers at some point? If I remember right the description only says the Greater Will stopped communicating with Metyr specifically, it never mentions the Fingers themselves.
41:20 it’s worth noting that the thorns here bear the rune of Radagon, many straight golden lines crossing each other. It’s the same we see behind him at his statues and his talismans. It’s not the Erdtree or Marika that stop us, it’s Radagon. He and Marika are one person yes, but on a few occasions it’s shone that he can act against her, most notably during the shattering of the Elden Ring. In Marika’s Hammer description it says that she used it to shatter the Elden Ring and Radagon tried to repair the damage. We even see them in the opening cutscene striking the Ring in turns.
@Lee-km7qq Marika is a numen while Radagon is a fire gaint descendants. when Marika sent off Godfrey on endless conquest, The Greater Will brought in Radagon as his replacement and it merged both Marika and Radagon into one
@@s0meRand0m129 Where is it written that Radagon is a descendant of Fire Giants? It's said he resented his red hair, yes, but it seems clearer to me that the resentment is because fire giants have red hair and fire is the primary "blasphemy" and antagonist to the Erdtree. Radagon is an embodiment of Marika's Golden Order - so it makes a lot of sense he doesn't like that his hair isn't gold, unlike Marika's. It's not stated or even hinted at anywhere that Radagon came from the Greater Will or was "merged", so please don't speak like that's a fact. It's a nice theory, though it's challenged by what the game itself presents in its text. Other demi-gods are shown to have multiple aspects that can be split into multiple "people", so why would Radagon/Marika's separation be any different? She also shattered the Elden Ring - trying to break the very "Order" she hosted, to remove Death from the equation; giving a good reason for Radagon to have split from her - as he is often shown to embody to idea of true order, and tries to repair the Ring, to repair Order.
@@s0meRand0m129 Well if you're not willing to have a discussion and are afraid of questions, that's all the more reason you shouldn't post things like they're fact.
I personally find it funnier to believe that the Two Fingers were actually following the commandments given to it by Greater Will however thousands of years ago. But it turns out that the order for Tarnished to become Elden Lord is out of date so...
I don't think that. After all, she's the one who says "Yeah, no one is controlling now. Go and Burn the Erdtree". Or maybe she's just a bored old lady and wants to laugh before die -XD
Enia is definitely not a true believer haha, she suggests you should burn the Erdtree. Out of all the true Finger Maidens you meet, she entertains heresy more than any of them. The Two Fingers are most likely working to the best of its information, the deception is that it doesn't really have any special information, it's just a good propagandist. The thorns blocking the tree completely blindsiding it reveals that.
It's her job to "interpret" their messages, not translate them. I think it's just that she can't ascertain *tone* from their gesticulations. The fingers could be frantically and desperately clinging to their edict. Basically super anxious and paranoid trying to convince *themselves* that they still know what's going on and what the Greater Will wants but with the tone of the words lost there is only her interpretation which she, up until it's time to burn the tree, seems to deliver as jubilation and confidence. When the Erdtree spurns you though she is given concrete confirmation that what the fingers decreed was, in part at least, not true. Her only purpose was this line of communication as a medium through which the mortals could receive the proclamations of the Greater Will . During the heyday of the Golden Order the interpretations of the finger maidens would have oft fell in line with what was actually going on around them as the Golden Order cut a bloody path of victory across the lands. She seems both knowledgeable about, and familiar with waiting for millennia for the fingers to commune with the Greater Will. It's gone though, by choice or by necessity. Been gone for a *long* time after Marika's betrayal and the war following said betrayal. She either accepts this or is unconcerned as she's willing to divulge information on something that the Golden Order would ostensibly *not* want you to know.
I think the two fingers are the ones making shit up and they actually can’t even contact the greater will which is why when their servant (us), makes a decision that goes entirely against the order they are currently incarnated into which is the golden order, they are utterly dumbfounded.
What I like about Elden Ring is that it’s variations of its normal endings. Your comment about Goldmask wanting to mend the golden order with new ideas are literally represented by the mending runes you can find
meanwhile, death-prince rebinds death into the order, fell curse blows up heaven and fracture is you taping the elden ring back together and going "hope it works like new!" then you have ranni, who wants to go fight the outer gods in space, and the frenzied flame, who's looking for the biggest bag of marshmallows the store has.
@@Yal_Rathol Ranni don't go on space to fight outer gods, but to keep the Elden Ring and the possibility to see the Order away from the Lands Between. Order still exist, but people can't see or touch it, as she says in Japanese. Franzied flame wants marshmellow and vine with Shabriri and Hyetta, fiesta and ANNIHILATION🍷🔥
@@themaniae4803 ranni says the same in the english. she says she's going on a "thousand year voyage" in the ending and that she would have "souls, fate and gods at a far remove" in her final dialogue in ranni's rise at the grace by her chair. she also explicitly still has the fingerslayer blade and the elden ring in her ending. her plan is to fly off and pick a fight with the outer gods to get them to go away. she doesn't want ANY of them interfering with the world, she'd rather they all act like the moons and just hang out, minding their own damn business. in that, she's rather like miquella, though with a very different plan to get the outer gods to leave.
@@Yal_Rathol She has the Elden Ring, but i think she used the Fingerslayer to just kill her own Fingers, as we can see and because she said that she wants to be free from their will. She never talks about kill GW, outer gods, gods or other divine creatures. Even because... she's a bit egoistic. I don't see very "Save the world from evil divine beings" the one who, in the wish of Freedom, caused so much chaos and destruction and not caring of victims like Godwyn or even the assassins. Her dialogue at Ranni's rise: "I thought I'd talk a bit more. About my law My law is not gold. It is the law of the stars and the moon, and the cold night. …I want to keep it away from this land. Even if life and soul are with the law, it would be better if they were far away. It would be better if you could not see, feel, believe, touch...all of it. So I will abandon this land along with the law. But will you still follow me? My one and only king." And her ending: "I swear to all life and all souls, from now on, the century of stars, the principles of the moon, the journey of a thousand years, all of them, in the cold night, think far away, of fear, confusion, loneliness, and the road to darkness. Come, let us go together... my eternal king." I don't see nothing that talks about slay the GW and Outer Gods, even if it could be possible. If you have some sources, please share. P.s: Looking at her dialogues i found this: "This is a gift to thank you for your excellent work. ...You may think it's a strange item, but I'm sure you'll like it, since you're a weirdo." I Love Miyazaki -XD
One thing I like is that the Tarnished are referred to as "the dead who yet live" are blessed, while "those who live in death" are persecuted. So similar, yet so different.
As a "villain" the greater will fascinates me. it doesn't even come off as malicious, the Golden Order being pretty seperate from the Greater Will in terms of the actions they take, and I think both Marika and the Greater Will had a mutual if unspoken understanding that order can no longer exist in the world they made, with the Golden Order having too much power and nothing to do with it
Even more easy is the classic human way. "We do the things we wants and then say God was ok with that." In this case, a God everyone can see, Marika, and a God no one can see, GW.
the greater will seems to swap out gods fairly frequently. we know of 5 candidates for godhood, 3 of whom can achieve that. "the dragon god", placidusax's god, was likely the first one. marika and the gloam-eyed queen fought for godhood after both being raised to empyeran status, and the existence of the godskin hunt implies there were many gods before marika. then ranni, miquella and malenia were all chosen as empyerans to replace marika, and ranni can become a god in her ending by claiming the ring. ultimately, the greater will seems like it's a fan of changing the order around, reshuffling the pieces every few centruries to try and get either a better or just a new result. but marika plucked death from the order. she cannot die. she stopped the greater will from easily removing her via sword-point diplomacy, and then she smashed it's main method of contacting the world. yeah, i'd be mad too if the CEO the board fired smashed all the windows on their way out.
@@Yal_Rathol Finally someone who talks about the dragon god not as a Yog-Sothot ancient Greater Will 0.5. Yeah, the world probably had a loot of Gods and Elden Lord before Marika. Then she comes and says "Nope, i'm Eternal. And my Elden Lord is the First." Ps: Maybe, just maybe, we'll see the Gloam Eyed Queen in the Dlc, or at least know more about her. Pleeease Miyazaki cvcvc About the last part yes, probably she wanted to protect herself, mostly, and her children, at the same time having her Shadow, Maliketh, as the only one in the existence who could slain a Demigod for good. And, if the Crucible-Rune of Death=Erdtree is correct, make the world a perfect stagnant paint. The way to conctact the world you mean the Elden Ring? Because, in that case, is more probably a little moment of madness/i'm falling so the world will fall with me.
@Lee-km7qq Nice theory, but more times Marika is called the Goddess. Vessel of the Elden Ring means she owns it, as we can see it shines inside her broke body, and they are connected, because when she shatters it, we see her own body shattering too. Even because Marika is not the first Goddess of the world and not even the last one, as we can see with Ranni. Radagon, in a certain way, is a God, because he's Marika, but in the ranks of Golden Order he was """just""" the Elden Lord. (But also he has his own Scarseal amuleth, things donated to those with a mission from the Gods, so who knows, maybe he was turning into something more.) For what we know, Elden Beast turned in the Elden Ring at the start of the entire story and remained asleep until Marika shattered the Elden Ring and the Elden Beast first use Radagon's body to fight us and then reveal herself to fight us again. All the mess Marika's did was for her own, probably a bit crazy, will.
youtube mary and jesus in the quran and mohmmad in the bible and the Torah and the scientific miracles of the quran and mohmmad in hindu scripture … according the bible that you have
(Matthew 4:1) Jesus was tempted (James 1:13) God doesn't get tempted (John 1:29) Jesus was seen (1 John 4:12) No man has ever seen God (Acts 2:22) Jesus was and is a man, sent by God (Numbers 23:19, Hosea11:9) God is not a man (Hebrews 5:8-9) Jesus had to grow and learn (Isaiah 40:28) God doesn't ever need to learn (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) Jesus dies (1 Timothy 1:17) God doesn't die (Hebrews 5:7) Jesus needed salvation (Luke 1:37) God doesn't need salvation (John 4:6) Jesus grew weary (Isaiah 40:28) God Doesn't grow weary (Mark 4:38) Jesus slept (Psalm 121:2-4) God doesn't sleep (John 5:19) Jesus isn't all powerful (Isaiah 45:5-7) God is all powerful (Mark 13:32) Jesus isn't all knowing (Isaiah 46:9) God is all knowing ...................
The theory is that Marika found out the Greater Will was planning to replace her anyways, the same way the God consorted by Placidusax was replaced by Marika or a previous God. Marika, the most important pillar in the Lands Between, was expendable. My headcanon is basically: If I will go down because of my god's whim, I will take that god down with me.
Apparently it wasn't just Placidusax who was a past bearer. The Gloam-Eyed Queen apparently also had the blessing of the Greater Will prior to Marika, evidenced by being an empyrean.
@@SpaceManFive we don't know if it was before Marika, the Gloam Eyed Queen was only said that they were in conflict, and that she posessed Destined Death before Maliketh. If the theory of Melina being the Gloam Eyed Queen is ever confirmed, that would mean Marika took Destined from possibly her own daughter, an Empyrean like Ranni, Miquella and Malenia
@@Mikael_Ore Is it stated she "possessed" Destined Death or merely "wielded" Destined Death? Marika would have been an Empyrean before she became a god. Given the upcoming DLC I think it's far more likely, if we learn anything further about our mysterious companion Melina, is that she was specifically created/birthed by Marika to be the kindling maiden for Mesmer to burn a Great Tree and establish a new Order of some kind. It would explain why she seems to know her purpose, violently and hatefully opposes the yellow flame of frenzy which seeks to burn away *everything* instead of allowing the new to flourish, knows of and possesses (despite being ethereal not material) the means to summon Torrent whom Ranni *also* knows and views as an indicator of one's potential worthiness and at this point seems to be heavily implied to have been in the care and service of Miquella at some point in the past. I do think the dusky purple eye we see at the end of Melina's scene in the frenzied flame ending seems compelling at first glance but this story seems far less concerned with insidious forceful manipulation of one's mind and memories ala brainwashing away memories or planting false memories or characters randomly having amnesia, than it does with mistakes and hubris causing unforeseen consequences. We don't really see a character's memories being severely affected and altered until Hewg's mental state starts to deteriorate in the liminal space which he toils as a primordial flame begins to consume the metaphysical round table hold but it's implied he's been there toiling away mindlessly for a very, very, very long time with his mental state mostly being held together by his fear of Marika and his dedication to that with which he was charged. Edit: yellow flame of frenzy, not chaos. The flame of chaos is deeply red and related to the fire giants.
@@kylegonewildI thought that chaos and frenzy were both linked to the flame of frenzy, and that the one linked to the fire giants was the flame of ruin.
@@Mikael_Ore Thank you. It's been a while, I forgot some of the specific lore details, or missed others. I'm still VERY interested to see if anything in the upcoming DLC will reveal more about this!
So Ranni's goal is interesting in how the translation somewhat distorts it, but what it seems to be is that her age of stars is an age with no earthly god, and an uncaring and distant elder god who is left no vessel for it's will on earth. That's why you and Ranni leave, so that there is no influence of the outer god in the mortal realm, simply the distant visage of the moon
Ranni says that she's creating a new order, so there is still a set of god-defined rules governing the universe that still have immense influence over the lands. It's just that Ranni is seeking to prevent normal people from having any opportunity to know anything about it for certain.
@Gervaj79not really. The correct translation from her doesn’t matter. She says she will take her order and abandon a world left destroyed and vulnerable to all other outer gods, like the formless mother, the flame of frenzy or the god of rot. Not to mention that Ranni is not guaranteed to be a better ruler than Marika. She doesn’t love the protagonist, just loves that we have done all the heavy lifting by ourselves for her. But she’s just as capable of being ruthless to achieve her goals, just as with the plot to kill Godwyn. In contrast to that, the rune of perfect order says that: The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men. By choosing this ending, you can usher a new age of stability that does not depend on said fickle gods.
I think one thing that people forget is that the Golden Order was founded on the principle that Marika is the one true god, not the Greater Will. In fact, GO fanatics like D and Corhyn never even mention the GW.
The Greater Will is the Judge, the Golden Order is it's gavel and it left when the court decided to riot and everyone was out of order. That seems to be the clearest example and why Ratagon becomes its sword at the end. Now if they only had a God of War to clean up this mess....
@@stephenjenkins7971I think Radahn would've been a great leader if he hadn't held back against Malenia, though that trait could bite him on the ass later on if it hadn't nipped his bud then and there, also funny how elden ring's god of war (Radahn) pulls punches in an almost juxtaposed manner to his post in the pantheon, neat detail, have a good day!
I hate to say it but you seemed to have missed out on some lore for the Greater Will as its influence has been in the Lands Between well before the Golden Order and has been around since the age of dragons. It has had many trees that have existed with the Cricible being the one before the Erdtree it isnt against it. We also dont actually know if ot wanted the Omen or Demihumans killed of if that was purly Marika own biases
Crucible and Erdtree are the same, just a little change of colors and functions (Maybe we see the actual scene in the DLC trailer when Marika do something with that gian red-erdtree door thing) If you mean the Great Tree, that's like Morgott that have 2 names and 3 titles. Damn you Martin. But for the rest, yes, Greater Will have her influence since Dragon age and, very very probably looking at her character, Marika did all the shit we saw during Golden Order age.
well, more like the erdtree was planted in the crucible and consumed it. and no, i think they're referring to the elden beast arena, which shows dozens of erdtrees far away. it's unclear what that actually means though.
@@Yal_Rathol Maybe a way to say there are other erdtrees over the universe? Or... just Miyazaki doing one of his famous reference to himself, like Bloodborne. About Crucible, maybe, just maybe, we can see the scene of changing during Dlc Trailer, but everytime a description talks about it, is called Primordial Erdtree or something similar, never Consumed, Corrupted or other. Even because, in japanese Erdtree, 黄金樹, means literally just Golden Tree. It's high probably during age of Duskborn or Age of Blessed curse, when the tree is dark/silver, it will have a new name again, but is still the same tree. Maybe the crucible was more... dirty and with life exploding from it. We'll see in 11 days i hope cvcvc
There was a theory that was Radagon, who placed the impenetrable thorns in the entrance of the Erdtree. And the Evidence Is his symbol. And his character analysis.
Its pretty clear to me that it was radagon, since both marika and the greater will seem to have decided that the golden order had to be replaced by something else, but radagon is the most zealous believer in the golden order specifically, which is why he turned on marika and mend the elden ring exactly as it was. It would make sense that he would try to remain as elden lord and for marika to remain as god so that the golden order can persist even in its regressive state
@@MonoFlax On the one hand, yes, he certainly didn't want to be displaced from his position. Good or bad, being Elden Lord and almost a god is not something everyone would give up. On the other hand, in truth his whole character shows him to be the furthest thing from a zealot, although he nevertheless remains faithful to the Golden Order. Think about it: He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war and in doing so integrated int magic into the Order. He himself, as his amulet says, studied everything possible and, from the Japanese description of his greatsword of the Golden Order, was linked to the law of fundamentalism in its original key, scientific scholars who, not surprisingly, used Intelligence and Faith in their spells. The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight, but if you looks carefully, the darkness that fills him is the same from which the Elden Beast takes shape. In fact in the original language, the Bossfight name is "Radagon, Golden Order", not "Of the Golden Order." And the Beast is the embodiment of the Golden Order. In that case, the Beast is using his body as a shield and a puppet before turning him into a sword and fight itself. Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells? About Marika and GW, if they was both ok to destroy the ER; why punish her and not let her finish the job? More probably she is gone crazy for her dead son and decided to crush the world because she could. Power corrupts, i'm right?
@@themaniae4803 Just gonna give some of my own opinions on some of yours, because I think pretty differently about a few things in the game: The Golden Order makes our real world image of "zealotry" not fully apply. Radagon is a Golden Order Fundamentalist, but the Golden Order is fundamentally based on being an umbrella religion. It was created by Marika to be as utilitarian to her purposes as possible, her removing the Rune of Death and declaring blind faith alone is not enough is what founded it. That's why you get weird contradictions in TGO like Crucible Knights serving under it, it's hypocrisy done because the Crucible Knights were better allies than enemies. So, Radagon _is_ a zealot, just a very well informed and educated zealot, as opposed to an uneducated zealot like Corhyn who denies the cynical nature of his religion. Taking the utilitarian path of marrying Rennala is actually peak Golden Order practice. I don't think it's suspicious that Radagon doesn't use INT magic. He also doesn't use the advanced weapon techniques he presumably knows as a champion of the arena, because he only has a hammer. In the same way, he doesn't use sorceries because he doesn't have a staff. Using his miracles is plenty because they're designed to exploit his INT and FAI at the same time. Elden Beast is not the embodiment of The Golden Order, Elden Beast is a vassal of The Greater Will, that's an important distinction. The Golden Order is just one iteration of Greater Will worship. IMO this mostly discredits the idea The Greater Will wanted the Elden Ring replaced, because Elden Beast tries to kill you regardless of your motivations for coming. The Two Fingers _thinks_ The Greater Will needs the Ring fixed, but the Two Fingers is oblivious on a lot of stuff. Personally, I believe The Greater Will simply wants to reproduce/grow _(the erdtrees in the beast's boss fights hinting at erdtrees spread across other planets)_ and having the native population worship it is just to aid that. But once Marika broke the ring and wounded the beast, it just wants to be shut off so nothing else can hurt it anymore, it doesn't need to let anyone in to risk even more. Radagon obeys, because he truly believes The Greater Will is the source of everything good in the world. It's definitely not because he _wants_ to maintain his current condition, he and Marika are in a state of constant torture within an inch of their lives as divine punishment, it's in spite of that his faith holds firm. While Marika's reasons for The Shattering are deliberately the most mysterious part of the game, I can say it's more likely than not that it wasn't grief, and in actual fact *she probably orchestrated her own son's assassination.* -Getting a piece of Maliketh's Black Blade must have been very difficult, but could be easily explained if it was an inside job. -The Black Knives are all Numen women much like Marika, very clearly intended to hint Marika may have known them. -Black Knives are hiding out all over the place laying low after the crime, and one is right outside Marika's bedroom. Either she is there to kill Marika, _(without backup??)_ OR she had reason to believe this might be safe harbour for her, much like how other Black Knives tried to reach Miquella's famous haven for the shunned. Marika being a coconspirator is the only way the second explanation makes sense. -While Ranni claims full responsibility for the plot, _she had no reason to kill Godwyn specifically_ and doesn't offer one, she could've killed any demigod. The best motive for Godwyn's death is probably that he was allied with the dragons. Him being dead before the Shattering is why the dragons aren't a unified threat, mostly scattered to the winds. Marika's speech at the battleground seem to indicate she wanted her children to fight over the Elden Ring's pieces after shattering it. Whatever her reason for The Shattering itself, Godwyn's death is why it ended up a protracted civil war rather than it being over in a few days.
@@themaniae4803 "He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war" political marriage to neuter potential or active rivals is evidence *in favor* of being zealous in his fundamentalism. It's following this marriage that the greatest sorceress in the history of the lands is left a heartbroken shell of a woman that is ousted from authority by those she once rose to lead through competence and strength. He was *way* too ready and willing to cast such trivial shit as "love" and "marriage" aside to return to service to the Golden Order. "Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells?" I'll assume the she was a typo in this line and just point out he's not using only Faith based incantations. The fundamentalist incantations *require* intelligence to use. He's using both faith and intelligence to defend the Erdtree. "The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight" is just literally missing stuff explicitly stated in the game. He is on multiple occasions deemed a champion, if not *the greatest* champion of the Golden Order. Radagon is an aspect of Marika though, the part still devoted to the Greater Will. The part that desperately attempts to mend the ring and keep intruders away.
There is always ONE thing in your videos that stops me from loving it all the way. In this video, it's how you describe the incorporation of Caria into the Golden Order. The Golden Order didn't bring peace by being flexible, they just couldn't overrun their enemy. That's it. They tried and failed twice. They HAD TO try something else. It wasn't magnanimity that kept a third war from happening, it was the loss of resources. That's it. The Golden Order wanted to expand and in a way, they won.
They did what was a very common tactic to ease hostilities between competing powers. Political marriage. Radagon dropped Rennala like a sack of potatoes when the order came down to return, even taking her token of affection and devotion, the sword, and bastardizing it into a symbol of Marika and the Golden Order instead of a Carian tradition that, if you follow Ranni's path, is a symbol similarly bequeathed upon you as her new consort and confidant in the Moonlight Greatsword.
His description fits better with the Dragon Cult that formed after Godwyn defeated & befriended Fortissax. It was determined that worship of the ancient dragons did not violate the golden order. So I think the core argument still holds, though to a lesser extent. The Ancient Dragons where also once part of the ruling order well before Marika came along, they had just fallen out of favour by then.
@@kylegonewildthis golden order d-riding has to stop. Radagon doesn’t like Marika or even the golden order. He himself is in a struggle with it. The sword is an example of radagons inability to be whole. He is never his own person he’s either a cuckoo bird for the academy or a tool of the golden order. If radagon truly disregarded Caria there would have been no reason to leave the gift that would ultimately spell about the end of his order., the Amber egg and his seal upon the gate. Remember it was the carian family which led to the shattering of the elden ring by infecting the Erdtree with an ancient curse.
@@zora508 20 knights with blue rocks in their swords countered a, quote, "golden host". "host" being an old word that basically means "massive number of soldiers", possibly related to the word "hoard". damn, those mages CAN FIGHT!
The lore of the crucible knights and their place in the erdtree order (before the golden order) is evidence that at one point the omen were accepted by the greater will and/or marika.
the fact that the Greater Will empowers Dung Eater to try turn everyone into an omen also reinforces that it doesn't care about how the Omen are treated
@@platypipope328 they might be mixing up the erdtree and the greater will. because the erdtree absolutely feeds on corpses. the greater will probably just IS and doesn't feed on anything.
@@platypipope328 The Greater Will sent the Elden Beast to the lands between. The Elden Beast, the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree (L and R being Romanized as the same in Japanese) are all linked together. Erdtree burial, Miquella watering the Haligtree with his blood, and newest DLC trailer (though not confirmed) suggests that the Erdtree is sustained by blood and death and quite possibly souls.
we should also note that it's entirely possible that the golden order _never intended to absorb the sorcerors._ it is possible that radagon, after his attempts to crush them failed, decided to play the long-con on rennalla and bring her down through more subtle means. something else to note is that the greater will seems to be an entity of three things: order, light and shadow. keep in mind, spells to cast darkness are given to confessors directly from their local two fingers to assassinate tarnished. the greater will also sends "baleful shadows" after ranni during her quest, and can "shadow-bind" beasts and beastmen to it's champions. but at the same time, nearly every fundamentalist spell is a brilliant golden light, and do everything from shielding to healing to forming a cutting blade. the greater will may be order, but it operates through light and shadow, carrot and stick.
From what little we learned from the SotE story trailer, Rennala wouldn't have been the first time Marika/Radagon achieved some greater goal through "seduction and betrayal". I suppose we will learn more very soon.
Something to consider: The Golden Order is *not* the Order of the Greater Will. As you implied in your video and several comments have already said- the Greater Will is literally the pure essence of Order. It doesn't care what shape that order takes, as long as it's consistent and is obeyed. The Golden Order was built by Radagon, after the forced marriage between himself and Marika (I still cant tell if they were two entities fused, or if they were always one being). Marika defied the greater Will after she plucked the rune of death from the Elden Ring and hid it within Gurranc, thus thwarting Death. To repair this, Radagon created the Golden Order, which is the hyper rigid order that exists even until the time of the game. (Represented in the elden ring by the lattice pattern). The GW didnt care that the death rune was missing once the golden order was implemented because it was a new order. At least some ruleset was being followed. Edit: now that we know some things, we know that Marika created the Golden Order, but in her defiance of the Greater Will, it essentially gave the keys to a more obediant hound - Radagon.
Also the Elden Ring existed long before the time of Marika and the Golden Order, e.g. Placidusax used to be Elden Lord to a different god, presumably also sanctioned by the Greater Will. Likely the Crucible was also once "the Order", it is only despised now by those upholding the "new" Order.
It’s important to realize that there are quite a few translation issues. Nothing absolutely horrible, just some things that create misunderstandings. Such as the “abandonment” by the greater will. In the original text, apparently it was saying that the greater will gave up on the demigods only, not the world as a whole.
@@steel2572 In that case, I wasn’t referring to the differences, I was just pointing out something that was clearly said. And perhaps that’s true, but I don’t think we should just cast that aside, especially when the other point, about the first cutscene mistranslation still stands.
I get the impression that, with the 3 fingers wanting to return everything to zero, the implication is that life is struggle made manifest. So, perhaps within the Lands Between, it IS chaos and thus disparity that fuels its orderly counterpart, because it appears that thematically it IS struggle through which life comes to be. Because of this I feel that there is a paradox in giving agency to natural order. I think that may be the in-game reason why one person was allowed to represent the Greater Will without there being an exact definition as to what defines its values. Hence the ludonarrative significance of a game of this difficulty. It makes the payoff, and thus the ending the player resonates with all the more meaningful. I do agree that it could be read as a story about the fragility of power, because (especially in a story like this), no one person can say that the greater will acquiesces to their particular values, I also agree that the Greater Will doesn’t care what form order takes for this very reason. But this is also why I think a distinction must be made between the Greater Will and the Golden Order. Those who claim to serve its values vs. a manifestation of cosmic order that has no singular value. That’s why I think the actions of the Golden Order make them the villains of the game for trying to bend that disparity to their own ends, whereas, within the context of the game, the Greater Will seems, to me, to be an ambivalent force of natural order.🤔
That would be sick, I'd love to hear his insights on things like the themes of Earthbound, like loss of innocence or its portrayal of modern life in the USA
I still hold firm that the Greater Will is not an actual entity with "villainous" or even altruistic desires. The Greater Will is just the Concept of Order in the universe. Its the force in life which pushes things to divide and distinguish themselves from one another thereby ordering them. When the universe was undefined everything was all together at one point, A One Great. Then the big bang occurred, and elements and time were born giving way eventually to life and "Order" in the universe. THAT is the Greater Will. Life and the Universe's propensity to Order itself through divisions and distinctions. Life vs Death, Light vs Dark, Heat vs Cold. The Greater Will didnt "send" a Golden Star to the lands between its just happened because meteors fall and hit celestial objects ALL THE TIME. That meteor just happened to be carrying the materials to create and alter life. When people in The Lands Between are speaking on the Greater Will "doing" things to them like banishing them underground they are simply doing so because they live in a society Ruled by a religious group(Golden Order, Two Fingers, Marika) who says that whatever happens in ordained by the Greater Will. When in actuality it is this group and their power due to the Elden Ring who are shaping Order to their liking. The Greater Will is NOT sentient or a parasite or a "Villain" it is just Order. And the one who holds the Elden Ring can shape Order to their liking in The Lands Between.
The Greater Will no longer cares about the Lands between, the Two Fingers will never get an answer, because just the narrator says in the opening, the Shattering led to the Lands Between being abandoned by the Greater Will.
@@Nemo12417 there's reason to believe they actually called on astel by mistake, it could mean they used that instance as propaganda like, look what happens when you mess with the golden order
I like it how, the carians. Who were the only ones who were equally just as strong if not, even stronger than the golden order. Were pretty much the only other power in the lands between to have actually survived the test of time. Whereas so many other cultures were just straight up genocided, it shows just what it would have took to actually get the golden order to give up in the end... And even then, the golden order still won. With their leader being basically brainwashed by ragdon undoing all of caria over the ages...
"Those who live in Death fall outside the principles of the Golden Order" He's only talking about those that live in death. His entire quest line is about hunting down ghosts and undead. He doesn't think that EVERYONE that falls outside the principles of the Golden Order and must be exterminated, only those that live in death, or the undead. He's a zombie hunter. His black and white view is ascribed only to zombies, and he chooses the Golden Order's teachings as his justification, not that he views anyone outside the Golden Order's teachings as vermin that must be purged. I honestly just think that your view of Dee was too subjective, and he's a poor example for you point.
Not a case, Miquella was part of the Fundamentalism, and Miquella wanted to help Godwyn and cure his condition or give him a true death. During Shattering, probably his ideas changed into a fanatic hate for Those who live in death.
It's not unreasonable to assume that D also believes in the rest of the Order. He is a devout follower after all. It's just his mission to kill those who live in death. It would seem strange to me if he disagreed on any other discrimination, since he has nothing suggesting that. But since he has nothing pointing to the opposite I guess we can't be 100 % sure of that either, although it's still far more likely. Maybe he sees those who live in death as a priority, since they are supposed to be dead. And doesn't think others who fall outside the order need to be hunted, since they aren't already supposed to be dead. It's also questionable if Darian and Devin believe in the same things.
Abandonment implies consciousness? Wrong, if it's nature is counterintuitive to the shattered elden ring, then abandonment can simply be due to this shattering, which leads to chaos, the antithesis of order. It is not possible to have order and chaos coexisting. To simplify further, think about oil and water, if you pour more oil, does the water have free will when it is pushed aside? Yet if you believe your god, in this example called water, has power, would you not say it "abandoned" your world, rather than saying it was simply pushed aside?
The way the Golden Order's actions are conflated with the Greater Will's just seems wrong, since the Elden Ring have existed way before the Golden Order. If the GW wanted to some "orderly" empire, it could have done it through the Ancient Dragons. We know that Placidusax was an Elden Lord of his time. Farum Azula has an Elden Ring depiction in it's main building. An Order Existed before the Golden Order, there were other vessel's and other candidates to inherit the ER. The GW doesn't "hates" the omen or misbigotten, it probably cares about them as much as it cares about the average human, so not that much. The treatment of Crucible related beings in the current age is explained by the Crucible talismans. (In short they simply represent the old times and people resent that.) The game pretty much states the the Crucible turned into the Erdtree and the Crucible incantations are Erdtree incantations just to back this claim up. So I don't think the GW had an issue with the Crucible. It is probably responsible for it's creation, through sendeing the Golden Star and the Elden Beast According to the Three Fingers the GW is responsible for the existence of life. And we see what happens when we destroy the ER, all life is gone, melted away into chaos.
I agree, persecution of crucible beings is purely a Golden order thing. They represent an age that was (probably) filled with a lot misfortunate and slaughter as Marika established the Golden Order by forming the Erdtree from the Primordial crucible. Beings from that time are snuffed out as they are a reminder that Marika's established rule isn't as harmonious as it would like to believe it is. The resentment evolved to bigotry, and so they are deemed impure. Greater will has no bias against beings for arbitrary physical appearances. Fair to say that's purely dictated by the ruling body in whatever age is taking place. As long as there's order, the Elden ring's vessel can rule however they want. If the Greater will was absolutely against the crucible, then the dungeater ending wouldn't be possible. All future generations are to be born as omen in that ending, and yet we are still made Elden Lord.
Advice for your Ranni video, investigate the discrepancies in the translation. In Japanese several of her lines can be viewed as holding different meaning. Also, three fingers could merely be a form taken to mock the greater will and not its natural form. The frenzy also must be seen as hijacking people's suffering for its own ends, much like the golden order does with the Omen.
Actually I still don't get how it's different, every interpretation I have seen of the japanese text I already got from in game dialouge. So this always confuses me. A more literal translation isn't necessarily correct and a more cryptic telling isn't necessarily different from the original text.
Awesome analysis. Summarizes a lot of what I believe are solid interpretations. One thing I’ve interpreted differently overtime is the relationship between the greater will and the golden order. I could easily see how one could view them as directly related, the idea that the golden order is the soul vision of the greater will, and any other type of rulership is heresy, and completely conflicting with what the greater will wants. The more I think about it, and I think many others could agree, it would appear that the golden order is a product of MARIKA’S age, rather than being strictly tied to the greater will itself. I agree with speculation that the greater will does not care who is in charge- be it the golden order, or the ruling powers that may arise in the three mending rune endings. It seems the greater will’s express desire is an entity that can uphold the power of the Elden Ring and the “concept of order” it entails. the Elden lord is a prime facet of that. Elden Lord’s are closely tied to the Elden Ring, and therefore the greater will-the Golden order is simply the main ruling body at the time of the game. A faith and set of principles established when marika began her reign. Consider as well in the age of the dragons- which is stated to have happened in a time BEFORE the Erdtree, placidusax was an Elden lord. The Erdtree of course is wholly tied to the golden order, we know it isn’t just a symbol but a conduit for life (the underlying reason for this power being, ofcourse, the Elden ring) The blessings it bestows are made so on account of the Elden rings power, but That being the case, there couldn’t have been an Elden Lord in the age of dragons if the Golden Order and greater will were indeed eternally bound, seeing as the Erdtree wasn’t around during Placidusax’s time. The age of dragons too had the Elden ring at the forefront of its culture (and by extension the greater will) seeing as there was a former dragon god serving as its vessel and placidusax as Elden Lord. Dragons had no association with the golden order or erdtree and yet The Greater will still granted them the Elden Ring. With what we know about the crucible, we can conclude that the bigotry the Golden order displays also isn’t exclusively tied to the Greater will. Consider how in dungeaters ending, even though any future offspring are cursed to be omen, the tarnished is still crowned Elden Lord if they choose this ending. So long as there is order. Misbegotten and Omen have simply been deemed antithetical to golden order principals and so are persecuted- not because the greater will wants it, it’s just a biproduct of Marika establishing her reign. my guess for why this is being because Marika had to vanquish whatever civilization existed during the time of the crucible so she could found the Erdtree upon it as the shining representation of everything the golden order embodies. Beings who are born with aspects of the crucible, like horns and wings, are persecuted seeing as they stand as a reminder for the bloodshed that came prior to the Erdtree’s establishment- and what probably began as a means of eliminating reminders of a not so righteous past, ultimately just evolved into racism. Omen are a reminder of the crucible, the crucible conflicts with Erdtree / Golden Order teaching, and must be snuffed out, according to the established rule and modern day perception in lands between. Regardless, despite the golden orders bigotry, there was some semblance of coherent rule for a time. There was ORDER. The Elden ring’s main use case is fulfilled, The Greater will is satisfied. Only when Marika shattered the Elden Ring did the greater will turn their backs on the lands between. Removing the rune of death from the Elden Ring was questionable enough, but the shattering war was definitely the Greater Will’s last straw. Be it the golden order, or someone aligned with some other group, the Elden Ring must be repaired, to reestablish order in the land. To be honest, whether the greater will is an actual “being” still has some debate too it. Again while we’re given concrete facts in the lore, a lot of it is still up for interpretation. That’s the fun of it. What a fine game. To anyone who see's this I do have some questions as well. It's all speculative, but there are some things I'm having a hard time finding a conclusion to in the lore. 1. The greater will requires a god to act as a vessel for the Elden ring, how come in any of the mending rune endings you simply become Elden Lord? If the Elden Lord is a consort to the current reigning god, and we slay radagon (therefore Marika aswell) who becomes the new god? Maybe one of the Empyreans, though the ones who are alive are probably not willing. Technically you're still acting as servant for the greater will, but I guess since we slayed the literal manifestation of the Elden ring (Elden Beast) maybe the current rules don't apply. 2. Are the outer gods on the same level as the greater will? Do they want the Greater Will destroyed, or will they establish a new age under it? I'm under the impression some outer gods would be able to usurp the entirety of the greater will (as seen with Ranni's ending, and frenzied flame) while some may simply establish a new ruling body, with the greater will still in ultimate power-- provided there is order. I could see this if there were ever an age of rot, or if the Mohgwyn dynasty took off. Ranni and Frenzied flame are different seeing as Ranni Wanted to overthrow the greater will, and Frenzied flame is a complete antithesis and views disorder as order. There's no reason to say you couldn't have a "Rot age" or "age of blood" provided the Elden Ring is used for what it was intended and things don't fall absolutely out of balance as we saw with the golden order.
The DLC proofed a lot of the speculation correct. For example, the Greater Will has for the whole rule of Marika never communicated with anyone in the Lands Between. The one who gave the orders was the Mother of fingers, which also did not communicated with the Greater Will. So the Fingers made it all up or more correctly followed the last very ancient commands.
It’s interesting that the finger slayer blade seems to be almost foreshadowing of Radogan’s fate as a sword, “born of a corpse” with a spinal column coming from the hilt and blending into the blade.
One major problem with this analysis, is that it overly conflates the Greater Will and the Golden Order, and thus draws a lot of false conclusions. This breakdown exposes a lot of problems with the Golden Order and attributes them to the Greater Will too, when it shouldn't. Take the Omen and Those Who Live in Death. The player can create an order via Mending Runes which incorporates the unwanted beings of the Golden Order into the Elden Ring's new order. And we do it with the explicit blessing of the Greater Will and Marika, who extended us grace to pursue such a goal. If the Greater Will truly wanted the Golden Order specifically then why would it bless certain Tarnished who generate wildly different Mending Runes, some of which oppose the principles of the Golden Order as mentioned above? The Greater Will does has nothing to do with the rules or actions of the Golden Order (with the possible exception of demanding the conquest of other faiths). It wants an order, any order, and will eventually create the potential for a new order to arise via the Empyreans, for its own inscrutable reasons. Once upon a time the ancient dragons were the champions of the Greater Will, then they were eventually replaced. The Golden Order is its own philosophy/religion and political entity. And its truest champion is not Marika but Radagon, her other half. That is a whole other can of worms, but Marika's actions leading up to the Shattering, as best we can determine them, are anti-Golden Order but not necessarily anti-Greater Will. Meanwhile Radagon's thorns, and we know they're his because they bear his trellis rune, are explicitly working to defend the Golden Order against those guided by the Greater Will.
@Lee-km7qq Marika is not dead, she's sealed but remains the "vision's vessel" as Enia puts it. If she were dead then Radagon would also be dead and we know he isn't. And in some of the "in Marika's own words" dialogue you can get from Melina, Marika has the explicit power to strip Grace from Godrefy and his warriors, which she then says she will give back to them after they have waged war and died in faraway lands.
19:10 : my initial interpretation to what was just said, doesn’t really imply that it *can’t* strip Merika of her godhood, only that it hasn’t. At least from the information the player has at this point, why would they conclude that it wasn’t the greater will’s choice to merely imprison her, while still intending to use her for a purpose? (though, of course, I suppose the title video says it has abandoned the place, ... but, setting that aside.) Like, it (or at least the fingers) talks about becoming her consort, not about becoming her replacement. The finger speaker seems to speak of her with reverence, as one to be honored, despite the crime she committed and the punishment she endures.
Just want to say the existence of the three fingers doesn't imply they were cut off 5 fingers. There are multiple 2 fingers through the game and not one of them or the 3 fingers show signs of division. Frenzy is separate not separated
eh.. I think Brett is more referencing a metaphorical split. Like, before the Individualisation of the Fingers, there used to be the Concept of the 5 fingers (represented by the Era of the Erdtree that associated itself with Beasts - as the Elden Beast covers the Elden Ring with 5 fingers in Radagon’s super attack - and how the cinquedea weapon says that the 5 fingers of beast men were the symbol of the original order and intelligence granted to them). There are multiple 2 fingers… but that doesn’t mean that the three fingers weren’t *THEMATICALLY* split from the two fingers. I believe hyetta, that there was a point where there used to be a 5 fingers organisation - similar to the 2 fingers org we have today - but something happened (we’ll probably learn what Marika did to cause the metaphysical split in the DLC) and now there is the existence of 2 and 3 fingers, separately. The five fingers will have represented life blended into a crucible. Following the split, the one-ness of life was sit into two ideals of nature: Order and Chaos, each represented by 2 and 3 fingers, respectively
Like with the other video, Either you have a really wrong reading of the lore or you are purposefully dismissing the text and dialogue that directly contradicts what you want the story in Elden Ring to be rather than what it is. The Greater Will is directly stated to have created life and souls in the setting (by shattering the One Great), The GW and a former version of the Elden Ring was worshipped by the Dragons and their Beastmen worshippers long before Marika and her followers came around. The Greater Will seems to be more tied to Life even more so than Order since while the Elden Ring and the Elden Beast are said to be the concept of order, the Crucible and the Erdtree in it's previous state, state that it was filled with rampant amount of life energy which caused animal like growths on people (like the Omen and Misbegotten). Also it seems that it's more likely that Marika alone was behind the genocides and wars, since according to the items related to the Omen, Misbegotten and crucible state that they used to be worshipped/viewed as holy until Marika created the Golden Order by taking the rune of death (which was originally part of the Elden Ring) and sealing it. The Greater Will is also not worshipped by most the followers of the Golden Order, in fact Corrhyn treats the Two Finger prayerbook as something heretical. There are other issues but I'll just point out these ones.
The greater will does not care about the golden order so long as order exists. Marika was punished for disrupting that order. On the crucible? During that age there was an order of its own, and even during the times of the ancient dragons the elden ring existed and was entrusted to them. You can see the form the elden ring took during their time in Maliketh’s arena on the wall. The greater will truly has no ill intent whatsoever it just wants the world to have some sort of system in place. Whatever that system is. The golden order’s intolerance and violence has nothing to do with the greater will at all. That is the realm of men.
29:51 they attack everyone they see on sight, they supposedly slaughtered the village you find D next to Then again, the whole issue with ER is that everything is hostile at all times, so you can’t tell if that’s the intention or not.
Tbh, the intention is very clear. Clearly, those who live in death defy the concept of the Golden Order. As such, they are mindless beasts who “live in death”. As is with most Fromsoft games, there was an earth shattering event(s) that caused every aspect of the world to go hollow. This was the case for Dark Souls, and this is the case for Elden Ring. They attack the village, and attack anyone else, because they embody the concept of death. Literally. They literally are a result of death being physically spread across the roots of the great tree, in hopes of a cosmological and ideological goal of enveloping the entire land in death. That is what death, even in our real life, would represent if it was separated from life. Just as how common nobles will attack you becuase they embody the soul that which lacks grace and ambition. That’s why the more “intelligible” beings are typically ones that have ambition/reason/grace/motive. Those bereft of it will become mindless zombies.
Hey man, in the future, you could make a video analyzing the recurring themes in all the games, such as the obsession with maintaining power and avoiding the end at all costs, as seen in Sekiro, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. There are many other recurring and very interesting themes.
Have to admit I kind of fell out of Elden Ring sometime after beating Radahn just because I got kind of lost to be honest hahah, but your last two videos have definitely inspired me to go back
To the question of what Marika discovered about the Golden Order that caused her rebellion--I don't think she necessarily found anything. My version of the story would be that she knowingly committed all of these evil acts for a promise of something greater, like there would be some reward, destiny, light at the end of the tunnel that would justify it all. But when she explored the mysteries of the Golden Order she found nothing. Nothing satisfying, at least. It's not that the thing had some evil, terrible, secret agenda, it was just not the perfection she hoped and believed that it was. She felt lied to and destroyed it out of spite, or as a way to prevent future atrocities.
Doesn't Goldmask's questline proves that the Greater Will is not evil? What we learn in his questline is that the bad things in the Lands Between did not stemmed from the Greater Will itself, but from Marika and the religious zealots that support everything she does.
What if the GW doesn’t actually necessarily have a will of its own or at least not like how we’d think. What if it’s more akin to the primeval current? Just a massive source of cosmic power and Marika figured out a way to tap into that power and manipulate it and harness it in a way that allowed her to establish her own order but she can’t completely control it and shit starts going back and she realizes that she messed up and is just trying to undo what she did. She made the two fingers and they are actually convening with her and not the GW which is why the thorns block the path. Those are Radagon thorns. He’s in partial control and Marika realizes she’s slowly becoming him or he’s slowly gaining more control which is why she impales herself through the womb and locks herself in the erdtree and only releases herself (and Radagon) when someone finally burns the erdtree to get in and comes to become Elden Lord. She knew the thorns were there but had no control over them which is why she never told the two fingers that. She knew you’d set the erdtree on fire using your maiden or yourself possibly so there was no reason to tell the fingers. The GW is just a source of power for her that she gave a name to and made an object of worship to give herself a basis for having power and being the controller of the Elden Ring and being Queen. Much like how many religions and cultures throughout history have used their gods to control the populace or give themselves a basis to rule over others.
One important thing to notice is that empires are kind or diplomatic only to those who fight back. The mages of Raya Lucaria or the dragons are only accepted after they reached an stalemate with the Golden Order. The misbegotten, the albunarics, the merchants and all the other opressed factions of the land betweens couldn't or decided not to fight back and that's why the empire crushed them. I believe that this is a reflection of real life too, the bully is going to bully unless you stop them.
Love how at 30:00 he’s all “oh boo hoo, the undead aren’t hurting anyone” meanwhile the undead literally attacks the living on sight. Same with the omens, literal hulking brutes that could easily victimize a human and subjugate them if they had inclination to. It’s obviously supposed to be metaphorical but the metaphor it’s making is ridiculous
I like to see the Greater Will as a Lovecraftian being. It isn’t a noble or all powerful god. Just an alien being outside of our true understanding that imposes its will on everything it sees as below it
The Fingers look like fingers but people are way too literal when they think they are actual fingers. From a Lovecraftian perspective they are something we do not understand so can only describe them in terms we know.
If I recall correctly, the DLC implies that, during the main game, that the Two Fingers were actually taking their orders from a being called Metyr, the Mother of Fingers, who is called a daughter of the Greater Will.
Yup it also heavily impiles that Metyt lost contact with the Greater Will a long time ago and has basically gone rouge in trying to get its attention again. Marika also definitely had a hand in what happened to the Omen and other fractions and wasn't some helpless victim being controlled by a higher power
@@4wheal Either way, the DLC has basically thrown into question whether the Greater Will was ever directing the Golden Order at all, and if it was, to what extent.
dubious interpretations throughout but enjoyable still. Just for example, "abandonment of the greater will" does not at all necessarily mean that it's an entity that made a decision. It can be that this is just a descriptive utterance by a subjective narrator, where that is what the narrator FEELS. Or it can be divine abandonment in the biblical sense, where the interpretation is not that god has left, but that you're no longer able to see him due to your own corruption and/or disinterest. Etc.
The breaking point is seen in Michelangelo's Sistine chapel As the creator god extends his hand Two fingers outstretch to Adam Three fingers point back to the creator Signifying to go back to the creator Wipe the world and start over
Did bro honestly try and say that undead monsters who attack on sight and aflict others with death blight are not hurting anyone? Golden Order is fucked, but the deathblight dead are for real a giant problem.
I feel you may have actually uncovered Marika's motivations for shattering the Elden Ring. When she glimpsed the truth of the Golden Order she turned against the Greater Will for whatever reason. We know this because we can deduce she assisted Ranni in her quest to purge herself of the Two Finger's control. From there she went on to free the rest of the world from its influence; by shattering the Elden Ring, she destroyed the order of the Lands Between itself, repelling the Greater Will. She shattered it specifically because she knew the Greater Will would be forced to abandon the world without order or an envoy to spread it.
I would like to think that by the time Marika decided to shatter the ring she was very likely stricken with guilt over everything that was enacted under her reign. The persecution of omen, the fire giants, then the death of Godwyn. All in the service of a force/being far greater than her understanding-- the greater will. The wiki says that Godwyn's death was what finally drove her to shatter the Elden ring, though I see no reason why she couldn't have been partially responsible for his death too. A necessary evil in order to oppose the greater will and establish disorder, even if it did cause her immense guilt. All for the sake of removing them from power.
She was probably slowly planning to get rid of greater will somehow, but Godwyns death wasn't expected, she had enough in the moment, and due to grief shatered it in that moment.
> ranni in her quest to purge herself of the two finger's control I have a theory that when Ranni says "I will not be controlled by that THING" she doesn't mean the two fingers, she means the Elden Beast. She's an Empyrean, a candidate for godhood. We know that in a way, the Elden Beast DOES control Marika. It's housed within her, literally, as the Elden Ring. When we fight her, and Radagon takes over, his body is animated/held together by the Elden Ring - you can literally see it inside him. When he is defeated, the beast is unleashed, and instead of controlling him from within, turns him into an actual sword. My theory is that Ranni understood this loss of agency of her mothers, and THATS what repulses her.
@@ColonelCosmologyBut Marika supported the persecution of the Omen, the slavery of the misbigoten, and the genocide of the giants. Marika is to blame for all of that, not the Greater Will.
I have a theory way back that Marika is just a representative of a true God which is the Greater Will. And when the GW arrived in The Lands Between it found out that it is already inhabited by other Gods such as the Frenzied Flame or whatever god The Crucible has. That is why it ended up warring with Marika at its helm and Godfrey as commander of its host: to drive off or eliminate other Gods in TLB. Also, what if the Gloam Eyed Queen ascended to godhood but not for the GW but for another God? Maybe something like a Death God or God of Disorder?
I always interpretted the Fingers going silent not as not them realizing the Will had abandoned them, but as the point where it basically gives up. They made one last gamble, but never considered that Marika could become so powerful as to turn the Erdtree and Elden Beast against them. The Greater Will is too inflexible in its thinking and teachings to be able to handle a rogue god of its own making and basically gives up, never once considering the system itself is the problem. Which is basically what lead to the entire last portion of the game: we literally burn down the entire system the Greater Will put in place, smash through Marika's final protectors, amd rip the Elden Ring from her body to establish a new Order.
Exepct that everything we see of the Greater Will actually shows it being very flexible as it has been apart of mutiple orders that have wanted different things. Allowed the rise of mutiple different races like the dragons, Crucible knights, Omens before Marika time. Even the gane endings shows this as it will accept mutiple different healing runes to restore the Eldin Ring like making the deathless part of it or even the Dungeaters rune whitch would create more Omen and other crused lifeforms.
@@4wheal if one goes for a modern judeo Christian style view, the golden will may not even be directly involved, works in mysterious way. So is the evil of golden order being the result of golden will, or people who ascribed things to the golden will it never asked for.
@@brendenhawley2225Or is it the will of Marika, the god who created and rules the Golden Order? The Golden Order dose not worship the Greater Will they acknowledge its existence but they only worship Marika as the one ture god.
Note that when the Tarnished defeats the Elden Beast, we get nothing directly from it, but instead we get items pertaining to both Marika and Radagon: Marika's Hammer and Sacred Relic Sword. Yet, when the Elden Beast is defeated, both the Elden Beast and Radagon are the ones who are destroyed, leaving behind the broken body of Marika.
In addition to Order, I'd say the Greater Will also represent Change/Evolution. It wants new Orders every now and then, it doesn't settle to just one precise thing. It splitted the One Great, created life and souls, granted intelligence to the beasts (evolution). That paints it in direct contrast with Chaos/Frenzy which wants precisely the One Great back with no more separations.
It's not trying to create anything. It's simply a representation of reality itself, and the many forms that it takes. It's not a villain any more than our own reality is.
Before i start to talk, i just want to say something. Elden Ring is a very BIG game with even a bigger worldbuilding, with hours of talking about every single faction, character, even just the damn style of buildings or dresses. Also, it have some little mistakes of translation, sometimes simple, not even mistakes but just "We can't say it in english" and sometimes very big ones, like Ranni's ending dialogue. On this comment i'm gonna talk using the direct translaction from the japanese wiki, something you can find too using the english wiki. For any question, doubt or objection, please be gentle, civil and discuss this in a, ahah, ordered way. Let's start with one of the main discussion of all english fandom: Erdtree vs Crucible, because a lot of mess starts here. What we know about the crucible is that was the main source of life of the world, that countains life energy and it was a mixture, a crucible, of all kind of life, that tends all to Draconic form as we can see with Omens and Crucible spells, that shows Wings, Horns, Tails and Fire-Breathe. We can also see few form of creature fused or with something different, like snake-snails or runebears with draconic eyes. Now, the Elden Ring parasited the Crucible and turned it into the Erdtree? Nope, because as we can see, the Elden Ring is ancient like the old dragon Order, in japanese called with a kanji that means Very old, Paleolithic, as we fight Placidusax, the former Elden Lord of his age. Now, someone can think that is another Elden Ring because is a little different, but first: Why no one talks about 2 Elden Rings? And second, we saw the Elden Ring can change, we change it during endings. Knowing this, as we can see inside Crucible incantations, they are inside the group of spells called ERDTREE incantations, and some spells like Erdtree Heal and Erdtree bless have the same sigil of the Crucible. (If you look for Crucible Sigil, you can see how Crucible is an alive and vigorous tree with the Elden Ring inside it, while the Erdtree is a more Ordered form, also with the Elden Ring inside it.) Also, everytime someone talks about the Crucible, it is described with a red shade, while the Erdtree is pure gold, so yes, something is happened. This is never said, but one of the main idea is this happened when she removed the Rune of Death (A red rune), removing the concept of Death and making the Tree Immortal but static. (More time is said that Erdtree better moment is gone.) But this is not a possession or a corruption, just a change of rules and the born of a new order, the Golden Order. (Not a case, Marika used Crucible knights during her fights, then she decided that Horns and Crucible are bad, so go away.) Is also probably that Omens and Misbegotten are an Explosion of that reprimed life energy, a bug in the sistem where death is not contemplated, just perfect order. And as any good ruler, Marika called them monsters and enslaved or exiled them, something that is quite her own mistake. Now, the Fundamentalism. We have two kind of Fundamentalism, the Golden Mask, Radagon and Miquella kind and D kind. We know Fundamentalism is born to, as ""Marika"" says, find the truth in the Golden Order, using both Faith and Int. Not a case, their spells uses both Int and Faith, or even just Int but remaining Incantations. This don't looks a lot Fanatic and Golden Mask himself says that people like D are just Fanatics watching for evil. But how the Fundamentalism corrupted itself so much? We know Miquella was part of it with his father, Radagon, and Miquella wanted to cure Godwyn from the influence of Death Roots. Probably the Fundamentalism degenerated from his will during the Shattering, making their own achievement eliminate Those-Who-Live-In-Death and creating people like D. And, talking about Radagon, i say the same things i said in the other video: Look at his story. A man who learned everything, who make peace with Liurnia using diplomacy and a marriage, not just exterminating everything, someone who, probably, founded the original Fundamentalism. Because yes, Melina says "In Marika words", but we know Radagon is Marika after all. Marika herself said something more radical, like "Or with the Golden Order or out of it." (Also, if you look closely, Radagon is filled with the same dark-golden energy that, when we beat him, turns into the Elden Beast. High probably that was not fully Radagon, just a body used as a shield and a puppet. Poor boy.) Maybe you noticed i talked only about Marika, Radagon, Crucible and Fundamentalism, not the Greater Will yet. Well, let me ask you something. Where is said that Greater Will ever wanted all the things the Golden Order did? Canonically, we know she did just three things. Sent the Elden Beast on the World, being mad with the Nox (Also original Japanese says that they fled, scared for her rage, but that was not an exile.) And punish Marika before abandon the world and everyone. I could say a lot of things to prove this, but let's take just the Rune of Death. RoD was part of the Elden Ring, right? GW sent the Elden Ring on the World, all complete and good working, then Marika removed the RoD. Why someone would sent something perfectly working and then order to break it? If he GW wanted a world without Death, why make it part of the Elden Ring? Now, if we think a little less in a Cosmic Horror way and more a Martin and Miyazaki way, well... how many times we saw in our own History people calling God as at their side while they was doing the most terrible things? Also, except for Enya, the Fingers and some "illuminated" characters like Gideon and Hyetta, the only one who talks about Greater Will is the guy at Volcano Manor. Too bad his quest was cutted off. Also, there is a point a lot of people missed about the Greater Will. During Hyetta's quest, as we find the Three Fingers, she'll tell us a terrible truth. English is good, but Japanese is even more clear about it: "...Everything was separated from the one, greater one. It was separated, born, and had a heart. But it was a mistake of the great will. Pain, despair, and curses. Every sin and suffering. They were all born from mistakes. That's why they must be returned. Burn and melt everything with the yellow fire of chaos. And make everything into one, greater one..." Now, we know the Three Fingers and all Frenzied Flame followers wants to destroy life and everything, because life is sofference, pain, despair and curse. So, saying the Greater Will made a mistake Separating the one, greater one and made it born and a heart, well... it's quite a way to say GW created Life and Souls. (Even because, if the Elden Ring is the base of Erdtree, is also the base of Crucible, the source of life, so it works.) Maybe not in a christian way and more as a demiurge, even if we see a lot of christianity in Elden Ring. (Marika is literally in cross pose with a Spear of Longinus. Also, that one, great one, most probably is not a "sort of divine being before time and life" but... the nothing. After all, Frenzied Flame is close to Chaos, and Chaos in Greek Mitology was the Nothing before Something.) Now someone could say it's not possible that Elden Ring and GW are connected to life and not just big cosmic parasites, but let me ask you this. If the Elden Ring is just a parasite, why Ranni takes it away with her and not just destroy it? (She never talks about kill the GW, she used that weapon only for her own Fingers. In the Japanese dialogue, she takes away the Elden Ring so no one can watch it, touch it, believe in it, still a Order but that none can see.) Or, why if the Franzied Flame takes control of it, Everything burns? A last thing before close this little novel. When the descritpion of the Elden Beast talks about the Order, it's not mean absolute Order, but about the Elden Ring, because if the Elden Ring decided what is good and what is wrong and how even the Life and Death works, who possess it decide what is the Rule, what is the Order. It's like stay in the Matrix and have the liberty to change the code, something really insane. So i guess in this case the real Cosmic Horror is not a divine being in the space, but the fact that your life, your death, even your souls is decided by someone who, like Marika, can go crazy and just decide to smash everyting. (Ps: Marika against GW and helping Ranni to kill Godwyn is a nice theory, but tell me, remembering the videos about Freya and Baldur [Not a case because Godwyn is a Baldur figure] how could a Mother, even an as*hole like Marika, kill the one who was probably her favourite son? She don't even killed Morgott and Mohg, two Omens, and she kills the only good one in her eyes? The relationship between her and the Assassins is they are both Numen, and probaly close to her like maidens.)
This is a great post. I agree with pretty much everything you said. I also appreciate you referencing the Japanese to get this point across. So many think the GW is this alive and thinking thing when it is just the force of nature which allows Order to exist in the universe. Like you said, the one who controls the Elden Ring shapes what Order looks like, not the Greater Will.
@@ATC43 I think she's... not alive as we can understand, but surely she thinks or at least have some emotion, like rage against the Nox for their trying or done killing of their Two Fingers. After all, her own name is Greater Will, i presume she have a sort of Will. Once i saw a comment that says if she is the Will to exist, Yelough (My headcanon name for the God of Frenzied Flame) is the Anti-Will to exist, and i like that idea.
Several of the refutations in your thesis here are refuting claims nobody made in the video. My favorite though is this: "When the descritpion of the Elden Beast talks about the Order, it's not mean absolute Order, but about the Elden Ring, because if the Elden Ring decided what is good and what is wrong and how even the Life and Death works, who possess it decide what is the Rule, what is the Order." First, he says the Greater Will potentially represents a metaphysical concept of absolute order in the world of Elden Ring not the Ring itself. Second, the runes that make up the Elden Ring *do* decide how life and death works and the possession of these runes, and indeed the Elden Ring, prescribes the order upon the world. The mending rune you choose, if you do choose to mend the Elden Ring, has a direct impact on the physical reality of the Lands Between. Marika removing the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring caused a physical change in how death operated in the Lands Between. Destined Death is the *older* name for the Rune of Death which is seemingly a direct parallel to the concept of death in our real world, aka total cessation of existence and experience as a unique organism. The body is rendered a lifeless husk of matter to be reclaimed by nature and the immaterial "soul" ceases to be. "Now, if we think a little less in a Cosmic Horror way and more a Martin and Miyazaki way" This line also seems WILD to me considering Miyazaki weaves cosmic horror into a lot of his work including *an entire game* based on it in Bloodborne, and Martin's most popular series contains multiple elements of cosmic horror. My problem with people who think pointing strictly to the Japanese writing somehow demolishes any other discussion on the matter is that nobody who actually worked on the game as far as I'm aware has come out to state that the English localization is woefully wrong about anything and indeed multiple interpretations for the same thing in the story is almost certainly *the whole fucking point* of it. Edit: Hell just looking at the Elden Stars description, you can't reasonably tell me that they somehow mistranslated "It is said that long ago," as if Japanese and English don't share a common concept of "someone somewhere said this once upon a time" and just that line, ignoring the final line about "which would later *become* the Elden Ring," indicates the answer regarding the nature of the Elden Beast and its relationship to the Elden Ring is *not* set in stone.
@@kylegonewild you’re not wrong on those points but it was overall a valuable comment. Brett misses a fair few broad strokes here. There is a cosmic horror element, but the outer gods relation to the Greater Will is closer to a Kami world spirit in many cases than otherworldly interlopers- which are Nox and other star beasts. The Great Will isn’t an outer is a point he’s trying to stress
the DLC throws a lot of what we know about the greater will in the garbage Spoilers for the DLC: you fight Metyr, mother of fingers from which all two fingers come, and she is the only one capable of communion with the greater will, all of her progeny isn't including the one at the roundtable hold and the one Ranni kills. Metyr like the elden beast came from stars. So outside of the Elden Beast she is the only one capable of understanding what the greater will wants
I feel like this doesn't change much. Since Metyr is also not communicating with the Greater Will, she is just winging it. So like, there is just a middle man now
I'm just starting the video, but given it's quite chunky I'll just add to this comment as I go. The greater will did not abandon the lands between, if it had then there would be no tarnished, two fingers etc. The greater will abandoned the demigods, who were the prime candidates for both lordship and godhood.
Game theory: What horrified Merika about the Elden Ring was the communism. She decided to sit down and study the Golden Order and the Elden Ring, and look into what the Greater Will was actually after. Then freaked out and started seeing red when she started seeing the property rights ending up under the control of the State. And so, Merika did what Merika does and smashed it.
I appreciate the level of thematic analysis, and I agree with some of the videos conclusions, but there's some mistakes and uncharitable assumptions within the analysis itself. Chiefly, the Golden Order is NOT the design of the Greater Will. We know this because the Elden Ring has existed well before the Golden Order, since prehistory at the latest, and potentially is the source of all life on the planet. Hyetta's dialogue strongly implies that life as it exists was the Greater Will's doing. The Crucible itself is the primordial form of the Erdtree. And Placidusax was Elden Lord long before Marika showed up. The Greater Will does not care about what form Order takes, only that there's Order. This is evident by there being multiple Orders under the Elden Ring in the history of the Lands Between, and the fact that we can repair the Elden Ring into multiple forms contrary to the original Golden Order. Many of the beings ousted from the Golden Order's grace, such as the Misbegotten and Omen, were accepted under the Elden Ring's rule in the past, so their oppression definitionally can't be because of the Greater Will. Claiming that the Golden Order is the desire of the Greater Will is like claiming Catholicism is the will of the Abrahamic God. Their beliefs and tenets may be based around what they believe it wants, but that does not mean that they are correct in that assumption, nor are those beliefs divorced from human interference. Goldmask's ending directly addresses this, claiming that the problem with the Golden Order is the fickleness of gods no better than men. Who then, is responsible for the Golden Order? I have a feeling that the DLC may shed more light on this, but as of the base game, it's a combination of Marika and the Two Fingers. Marika is directly responsible for much of the genocide and change within the Lands Between, and we know that she is in control of the Order by the fact that she altered the Elden Ring itself by removing the Rune of Death. This was not at the behest of the Greater Will; if it was, then why would the Greater Will send its vassal to the Lands Between containing such a rune if it was contrary to its aims? Marika's Golden Order has a history of ousting those that helped it achieve it's goals. The beastmen, Omen, Godfrey, all pawns in her game. As for why Marika shattered the Ring, it is unclear, but my guess is as much in grief over the Night of the Black Knives (I don't buy that she was involved) and disillusionment with her own Order. As for the Two Fingers, they claim to know the designs of the Greater Will, but we actually don't know how true that is. As stated in the video, communication with the Greater Will can take decades if not centuries, and we do not know how often such communication has taken place in the past. Perhaps their interpretations are wrong, and the tyranny associated with the Golden Order and the Greater Will by proxy is their doing. We don't know how long the Two Fingers have been around. But we do know that the Elden Ring has been around since the beginning, or at least since the time of dragons, and so the Golden Order is definitively not in whole the Greater Will's doing.
The greater will is a force that seeks order and progression of life to greater and better things. Normally life and death are needed for evolution and progress. Marika disrupts progress by removing death. The greater will supports us with grace even if we choose the flame of frenzy ending against the will of Torrent and Melina. Even if we destroy everything that ever existed in the lands between, it is a new start that gets the world passed the deadlock created by Marika. Also, the greater will is not sinister but at war with other outer gods and factions. The Nox, the giants, Liurnians, and astrologers were all at war with the greater will. Life isnt fair in the world of the lands between because it never was. Things have to die to be food for higher beings up the chain. Also, Radagon is the main reason why the tarnished has to get involved. Marika is Radagon's prisoner and has locked the door with his trellised vines. Morgott is not helping because he is loyal to the golden order like radagon. The greater will needs you to remove the vines by any means necessary. The greater will is willing to sacrifice the erd tree itself because it is a relic of the golden order and is being used as an obstruction to keep us from reordering the world for the next cycle. The point is, don't confuse the golden order for the greater will.
Dude, this was an excellent video. I've been listening/watching Elden Ring lore videos for years now, but I never saw the contradicting statements between the beginning narration and the two fingers about the Greater Will's abandonment. I always just figured that since the Greater Will was somewhere far away within the cosmos that it just took a really long time for the "signal" to reach between the Two Fingers and the Greater Will. But after this video, I'm definitely convinced the Greater Will is definitely not influencing the Lands Between anymore. Either because it did abandon or, like Brett said, maybe the chaotic nature of the Shattering did force it out. Really interesting video Brett!
I vote for Ranni as the next character study. If you decide to do so, you should check out the more accurate translation of her orriginal Japanese dialogue done by a number of lore hunters. The English localization team for the game didn't quite portray her statements accurately and getting a better translation can clear up some of her motives better.
Goldmask wants self-sufficient and self-sustained Elden Ring, not tamperable by either Greater Will, Gods, Demigods, Mortals. Ranni wants to create a new order without Elden Ring, without any ties to aforementioned enteries, preventing them to "touch, feel or even know" about the new Order. Both have a noble goal, all things considered. And both were done dirty by the English Localisation.
33:00 I wouldn't call this a "redeeming quality" of the Golden Order. I think they would've gladly subjugated all of Liurnia, but simply couldn't, and so used diplomacy to manipulate them rather than raw power. Consider what happened: Radagon married Rennala, gave her a rune, sired children with her, and then broke her by leaving. Every single one of those actions, both individually and altogether, weakened Liurnia's hierarchy and making space within it for the Order - like the roots of a tree slowly growing through concrete. Along with everything else the Order does to other faiths, cultures, and demographics, the whole story reads like the spread of institutionalized Christianity to me. They'll gladly destroy and subjugate peoples and ideologies they see as lesser while manipulating the particularly stubborn ones to suit their needs.
The fact the omens are held in the sewer, just under the city of gold is a great representation of “what’s hidden under the surface” dig a bit deeper and find true horrors
The whole 'consort' part being needed alongside their 'god' is sounding less like a simple marriage and more like a ritual of sorts. Especially since it's possible to have children by/with yourself somehow, and same sex consorts are seemingly not off the table 🤔 The DLC only adds to these thoughts
"The Greater Will does not care what form Order takes" it's a being of pure Order and Order itself is not inherently good. Especially when it's stated that it'll embrace any goal the hero has as long as the end result is Order
As I've said before to people who think Order=Good, fascism is very much a manifestation of Order and the Final Solution was a very Orderly process. Order is simply a form of restriction on the endless potential of Chaos to a manageable level and that is all the Greater Will cares about. Whether the Elden Lord is like Jesus or like Hitler doesn't matter so long as they keep things running the way the GW wants them to.
Makes sense that the golden orders number one enemy is the frenzied flame(chaos) the opposite of the golden order literaly
Exactly why certain great runes can still be recovered despite being affected by other outer gods like Mohg’s and Malenia’s, neither of those outer gods oppose order they just have their own brand of it
@@ravendelacour1917 I would argue that fascism is the opposite of order. While fascist often claim to be the law and order guys, there are no laws restricting the people in power. If the grandson of an oligarch wants your business, he get's your business. If Putin wants you dead, you are killed. There are no laws restricting the people in power. As such, authoritarian states are, ironically, chaotic in nature.
Pretty much, it's a primordial eldric being that simple desires a structure for the world it governs. What form that structure actually takes it matters not. As long as there is some form of structure. Some form or order.
You could stretch that even to the principle of Chaos as well. After all despite, being in direct opposition to Order, being able to describe something as chaotic or volatile is to describe its own Structural behavior. It's own Order within Chaos.
The only one who actively tries to avoid falling under its demand of any structure, any Order, is Ranni, whose solution is to cut out this being that governs the universal nature of Order itself. An Order without the supreme deity of Order and its various influence. Herself included.
Whether you think that can work? Eh, the player will never know.
Thanks to the DLC, we know why Marika was so harsh on the omen. It was _personal_ . Every time she sees a horned omen, she gets flashbacks of her people getting stuffed in jars. One has to wonder whether Marika mellowed her position on the omen or someone else persuaded her to just jail them under Leyndell, because Marika's actions in the Shadowlands definitely point to her choosing genocide over tolerance
That she’d do it to her own kids even. 🙂 mother of the year award, everybody
@@KellyBurke-ty3hxall of her kids except one got cursed, probably because of her sins. Just being a good mother. Hand her that award already
Godfrey, he was the chief of the Crucible Knights and a Crucible believer before is wedding to Queen Marika. She would have end every Omen if possible, but Godfrey made her change her mind about it. So she banished them In the sewer.
@@Sandwich-5-sand And the one uncursed one, she merked herself. I think her intentions were that she knew her favorite son, an empyrean, would likely be the one to ascend after her. She knows what St Trina knows, that godhood is a prison. She would rather have ended Godwyn than allow him to suffer that fate, plus it opened the path for Ranni to succeed.
yeah no better than men
acting like a judge but putting the personal grudge
It's fun cuz now the Dlc is out and we've learned that the fingers were wrong from the start, and were making it up. The golden order did not ostricize the crucible, marika did, maybe not even out of loathing, but traumatic fear. The golden order itself having taken many of it's qualities from Marika's nature, which is also displayed in the great runes. Radahn's fight with Malenia was partly to prevent Miquella's ambitions of controlling everyone. And Mohg beat the allegations. Trully wile story.
Mohg didn’t beat the allegations at all…
@christiancividino455 well he beat one of them. But there are many more. Lol
Marika made the older golden order? She is the God it’s faith. Maybe you meant to say greater wills.
Honestly with how St Trina called godhood under the Greater Will a prison and knowing how Empyreans seem to split in two personalities, I'm thinking part of being a god is making an oath to the Greater Will that this will be the new Order and the laws that it will abide by, and if you as it's ruler try to break those oaths, it will split you and divide the characteristics that will uphold that order into a new being if you yourself aren't willing to uphold it and that itself is why Marika shattered the Elden Ring
Are we sure that the Greater Will hadn't been in contact with the two fingers at some point? If I remember right the description only says the Greater Will stopped communicating with Metyr specifically, it never mentions the Fingers themselves.
If only Goldmask had more to say. We would know alot more.
...
Agreed
"T"
Yes
Why not
He said plenty, you just don't speak finger wagging.
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41:20 it’s worth noting that the thorns here bear the rune of Radagon, many straight golden lines crossing each other. It’s the same we see behind him at his statues and his talismans. It’s not the Erdtree or Marika that stop us, it’s Radagon.
He and Marika are one person yes, but on a few occasions it’s shone that he can act against her, most notably during the shattering of the Elden Ring. In Marika’s Hammer description it says that she used it to shatter the Elden Ring and Radagon tried to repair the damage. We even see them in the opening cutscene striking the Ring in turns.
@Lee-km7qq Marika is a numen while Radagon is a fire gaint descendants. when Marika sent off Godfrey on endless conquest, The Greater Will brought in Radagon as his replacement and it merged both Marika and Radagon into one
@@s0meRand0m129 Where is it written that Radagon is a descendant of Fire Giants? It's said he resented his red hair, yes, but it seems clearer to me that the resentment is because fire giants have red hair and fire is the primary "blasphemy" and antagonist to the Erdtree. Radagon is an embodiment of Marika's Golden Order - so it makes a lot of sense he doesn't like that his hair isn't gold, unlike Marika's.
It's not stated or even hinted at anywhere that Radagon came from the Greater Will or was "merged", so please don't speak like that's a fact. It's a nice theory, though it's challenged by what the game itself presents in its text. Other demi-gods are shown to have multiple aspects that can be split into multiple "people", so why would Radagon/Marika's separation be any different? She also shattered the Elden Ring - trying to break the very "Order" she hosted, to remove Death from the equation; giving a good reason for Radagon to have split from her - as he is often shown to embody to idea of true order, and tries to repair the Ring, to repair Order.
@@TanksyTube I'm not gonna read all that
@@s0meRand0m129 Well if you're not willing to have a discussion and are afraid of questions, that's all the more reason you shouldn't post things like they're fact.
@@TanksyTube im here for the hate
I'm fairly certain that the Two Fingers are just mumbling, and Enia is making all that shit up, because she's a true believer
I personally find it funnier to believe that the Two Fingers were actually following the commandments given to it by Greater Will however thousands of years ago. But it turns out that the order for Tarnished to become Elden Lord is out of date so...
I don't think that. After all, she's the one who says "Yeah, no one is controlling now. Go and Burn the Erdtree". Or maybe she's just a bored old lady and wants to laugh before die -XD
Enia is definitely not a true believer haha, she suggests you should burn the Erdtree. Out of all the true Finger Maidens you meet, she entertains heresy more than any of them.
The Two Fingers are most likely working to the best of its information, the deception is that it doesn't really have any special information, it's just a good propagandist. The thorns blocking the tree completely blindsiding it reveals that.
It's her job to "interpret" their messages, not translate them. I think it's just that she can't ascertain *tone* from their gesticulations. The fingers could be frantically and desperately clinging to their edict. Basically super anxious and paranoid trying to convince *themselves* that they still know what's going on and what the Greater Will wants but with the tone of the words lost there is only her interpretation which she, up until it's time to burn the tree, seems to deliver as jubilation and confidence. When the Erdtree spurns you though she is given concrete confirmation that what the fingers decreed was, in part at least, not true. Her only purpose was this line of communication as a medium through which the mortals could receive the proclamations of the Greater Will . During the heyday of the Golden Order the interpretations of the finger maidens would have oft fell in line with what was actually going on around them as the Golden Order cut a bloody path of victory across the lands. She seems both knowledgeable about, and familiar with waiting for millennia for the fingers to commune with the Greater Will. It's gone though, by choice or by necessity. Been gone for a *long* time after Marika's betrayal and the war following said betrayal. She either accepts this or is unconcerned as she's willing to divulge information on something that the Golden Order would ostensibly *not* want you to know.
I think the two fingers are the ones making shit up and they actually can’t even contact the greater will which is why when their servant (us), makes a decision that goes entirely against the order they are currently incarnated into which is the golden order, they are utterly dumbfounded.
What I like about Elden Ring is that it’s variations of its normal endings. Your comment about Goldmask wanting to mend the golden order with new ideas are literally represented by the mending runes you can find
And his own rune makes sure that Gods will not change the Order again for their human needs.
meanwhile, death-prince rebinds death into the order, fell curse blows up heaven and fracture is you taping the elden ring back together and going "hope it works like new!"
then you have ranni, who wants to go fight the outer gods in space, and the frenzied flame, who's looking for the biggest bag of marshmallows the store has.
@@Yal_Rathol Ranni don't go on space to fight outer gods, but to keep the Elden Ring and the possibility to see the Order away from the Lands Between. Order still exist, but people can't see or touch it, as she says in Japanese. Franzied flame wants marshmellow and vine with Shabriri and Hyetta, fiesta and ANNIHILATION🍷🔥
@@themaniae4803 ranni says the same in the english. she says she's going on a "thousand year voyage" in the ending and that she would have "souls, fate and gods at a far remove" in her final dialogue in ranni's rise at the grace by her chair.
she also explicitly still has the fingerslayer blade and the elden ring in her ending.
her plan is to fly off and pick a fight with the outer gods to get them to go away. she doesn't want ANY of them interfering with the world, she'd rather they all act like the moons and just hang out, minding their own damn business.
in that, she's rather like miquella, though with a very different plan to get the outer gods to leave.
@@Yal_Rathol She has the Elden Ring, but i think she used the Fingerslayer to just kill her own Fingers, as we can see and because she said that she wants to be free from their will. She never talks about kill GW, outer gods, gods or other divine creatures. Even because... she's a bit egoistic. I don't see very "Save the world from evil divine beings" the one who, in the wish of Freedom, caused so much chaos and destruction and not caring of victims like Godwyn or even the assassins.
Her dialogue at Ranni's rise:
"I thought I'd talk a bit more.
About my law
My law is not gold.
It is the law of the stars and the moon, and the cold night.
…I want to keep it away from this land.
Even if life and soul are with the law, it would be better if they were far away.
It would be better if you could not see, feel, believe, touch...all of it.
So I will abandon this land along with the law.
But will you still follow me?
My one and only king."
And her ending:
"I swear to all life and all souls, from now on, the century of stars, the principles of the moon, the journey of a thousand years, all of them, in the cold night, think far away, of fear, confusion, loneliness, and the road to darkness.
Come, let us go together... my eternal king."
I don't see nothing that talks about slay the GW and Outer Gods, even if it could be possible. If you have some sources, please share.
P.s: Looking at her dialogues i found this:
"This is a gift to thank you for your excellent work.
...You may think it's a strange item, but I'm sure you'll like it, since you're a weirdo."
I Love Miyazaki -XD
One thing I like is that the Tarnished are referred to as "the dead who yet live" are blessed, while "those who live in death" are persecuted. So similar, yet so different.
Faith and intelligence get you golden order fundamentalism, while Intelligence and faith get you ghostflame and deathroot.
@@Charnel_Heart Fascinating, I didn't know that
One is brought back and guided by grace, while other us contacted by worst thing that enemies of order did, which started a long lasting ruin
@@Charnel_Heartwhat exactly do you mean by this if you don't mind me asking?
@@Greencheez-y just coyly referring to the original comment and how things so similar can be regarded so differently.
The Greater Will doesn’t care what Order exists, so long as there is AN Order.
As a "villain" the greater will fascinates me. it doesn't even come off as malicious, the Golden Order being pretty seperate from the Greater Will in terms of the actions they take, and I think both Marika and the Greater Will had a mutual if unspoken understanding that order can no longer exist in the world they made, with the Golden Order having too much power and nothing to do with it
Even more easy is the classic human way. "We do the things we wants and then say God was ok with that." In this case, a God everyone can see, Marika, and a God no one can see, GW.
the greater will seems to swap out gods fairly frequently. we know of 5 candidates for godhood, 3 of whom can achieve that.
"the dragon god", placidusax's god, was likely the first one.
marika and the gloam-eyed queen fought for godhood after both being raised to empyeran status, and the existence of the godskin hunt implies there were many gods before marika.
then ranni, miquella and malenia were all chosen as empyerans to replace marika, and ranni can become a god in her ending by claiming the ring.
ultimately, the greater will seems like it's a fan of changing the order around, reshuffling the pieces every few centruries to try and get either a better or just a new result. but marika plucked death from the order. she cannot die. she stopped the greater will from easily removing her via sword-point diplomacy, and then she smashed it's main method of contacting the world. yeah, i'd be mad too if the CEO the board fired smashed all the windows on their way out.
@@Yal_Rathol Finally someone who talks about the dragon god not as a Yog-Sothot ancient Greater Will 0.5.
Yeah, the world probably had a loot of Gods and Elden Lord before Marika. Then she comes and says "Nope, i'm Eternal. And my Elden Lord is the First."
Ps: Maybe, just maybe, we'll see the Gloam Eyed Queen in the Dlc, or at least know more about her. Pleeease Miyazaki cvcvc
About the last part yes, probably she wanted to protect herself, mostly, and her children, at the same time having her Shadow, Maliketh, as the only one in the existence who could slain a Demigod for good. And, if the Crucible-Rune of Death=Erdtree is correct, make the world a perfect stagnant paint. The way to conctact the world you mean the Elden Ring? Because, in that case, is more probably a little moment of madness/i'm falling so the world will fall with me.
@Lee-km7qq Nice theory, but more times Marika is called the Goddess. Vessel of the Elden Ring means she owns it, as we can see it shines inside her broke body, and they are connected, because when she shatters it, we see her own body shattering too. Even because Marika is not the first Goddess of the world and not even the last one, as we can see with Ranni.
Radagon, in a certain way, is a God, because he's Marika, but in the ranks of Golden Order he was """just""" the Elden Lord. (But also he has his own Scarseal amuleth, things donated to those with a mission from the Gods, so who knows, maybe he was turning into something more.)
For what we know, Elden Beast turned in the Elden Ring at the start of the entire story and remained asleep until Marika shattered the Elden Ring and the Elden Beast first use Radagon's body to fight us and then reveal herself to fight us again. All the mess Marika's did was for her own, probably a bit crazy, will.
youtube mary and jesus in the quran and mohmmad in the bible and the Torah and the scientific miracles of the quran and mohmmad in hindu scripture
…
according the bible that you have
(Matthew 4:1) Jesus was tempted
(James 1:13) God doesn't get tempted
(John 1:29) Jesus was seen
(1 John 4:12) No man has ever seen God
(Acts 2:22) Jesus was and is a man, sent by God
(Numbers 23:19, Hosea11:9) God is not a man
(Hebrews 5:8-9) Jesus had to grow and learn
(Isaiah 40:28) God doesn't ever need to learn
(1 Corinthians 15:3-4) Jesus dies
(1 Timothy 1:17) God doesn't die
(Hebrews 5:7) Jesus needed salvation
(Luke 1:37) God doesn't need salvation
(John 4:6) Jesus grew weary
(Isaiah 40:28) God Doesn't grow weary
(Mark 4:38) Jesus slept
(Psalm 121:2-4) God doesn't sleep
(John 5:19) Jesus isn't all powerful
(Isaiah 45:5-7) God is all powerful
(Mark 13:32) Jesus isn't all knowing
(Isaiah 46:9) God is all knowing
...................
The theory is that Marika found out the Greater Will was planning to replace her anyways, the same way the God consorted by Placidusax was replaced by Marika or a previous God.
Marika, the most important pillar in the Lands Between, was expendable.
My headcanon is basically: If I will go down because of my god's whim, I will take that god down with me.
Apparently it wasn't just Placidusax who was a past bearer. The Gloam-Eyed Queen apparently also had the blessing of the Greater Will prior to Marika, evidenced by being an empyrean.
@@SpaceManFive we don't know if it was before Marika, the Gloam Eyed Queen was only said that they were in conflict, and that she posessed Destined Death before Maliketh.
If the theory of Melina being the Gloam Eyed Queen is ever confirmed, that would mean Marika took Destined from possibly her own daughter, an Empyrean like Ranni, Miquella and Malenia
@@Mikael_Ore Is it stated she "possessed" Destined Death or merely "wielded" Destined Death? Marika would have been an Empyrean before she became a god. Given the upcoming DLC I think it's far more likely, if we learn anything further about our mysterious companion Melina, is that she was specifically created/birthed by Marika to be the kindling maiden for Mesmer to burn a Great Tree and establish a new Order of some kind. It would explain why she seems to know her purpose, violently and hatefully opposes the yellow flame of frenzy which seeks to burn away *everything* instead of allowing the new to flourish, knows of and possesses (despite being ethereal not material) the means to summon Torrent whom Ranni *also* knows and views as an indicator of one's potential worthiness and at this point seems to be heavily implied to have been in the care and service of Miquella at some point in the past. I do think the dusky purple eye we see at the end of Melina's scene in the frenzied flame ending seems compelling at first glance but this story seems far less concerned with insidious forceful manipulation of one's mind and memories ala brainwashing away memories or planting false memories or characters randomly having amnesia, than it does with mistakes and hubris causing unforeseen consequences. We don't really see a character's memories being severely affected and altered until Hewg's mental state starts to deteriorate in the liminal space which he toils as a primordial flame begins to consume the metaphysical round table hold but it's implied he's been there toiling away mindlessly for a very, very, very long time with his mental state mostly being held together by his fear of Marika and his dedication to that with which he was charged.
Edit: yellow flame of frenzy, not chaos. The flame of chaos is deeply red and related to the fire giants.
@@kylegonewildI thought that chaos and frenzy were both linked to the flame of frenzy, and that the one linked to the fire giants was the flame of ruin.
@@Mikael_Ore Thank you. It's been a while, I forgot some of the specific lore details, or missed others. I'm still VERY interested to see if anything in the upcoming DLC will reveal more about this!
So Ranni's goal is interesting in how the translation somewhat distorts it, but what it seems to be is that her age of stars is an age with no earthly god, and an uncaring and distant elder god who is left no vessel for it's will on earth. That's why you and Ranni leave, so that there is no influence of the outer god in the mortal realm, simply the distant visage of the moon
Ranni says that she's creating a new order, so there is still a set of god-defined rules governing the universe that still have immense influence over the lands. It's just that Ranni is seeking to prevent normal people from having any opportunity to know anything about it for certain.
@Gervaj79not really. The correct translation from her doesn’t matter. She says she will take her order and abandon a world left destroyed and vulnerable to all other outer gods, like the formless mother, the flame of frenzy or the god of rot.
Not to mention that Ranni is not guaranteed to be a better ruler than Marika. She doesn’t love the protagonist, just loves that we have done all the heavy lifting by ourselves for her. But she’s just as capable of being ruthless to achieve her goals, just as with the plot to kill Godwyn.
In contrast to that, the rune of perfect order says that: The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men.
By choosing this ending, you can usher a new age of stability that does not depend on said fickle gods.
@Gervaj79 You still do have a God on your side. The GW and Marika still exist, but Marika can't fuck with the Elden Ring anymore
@Gervaj79 Since the Elden Ring was restored, she too would also be restored from her fractured state.
@Gervaj79 she is said to be inmortal so a solid maybe.
I think one thing that people forget is that the Golden Order was founded on the principle that Marika is the one true god, not the Greater Will. In fact, GO fanatics like D and Corhyn never even mention the GW.
The Greater Will is the Judge, the Golden Order is it's gavel and it left when the court decided to riot and everyone was out of order. That seems to be the clearest example and why Ratagon becomes its sword at the end. Now if they only had a God of War to clean up this mess....
A God of War will destroy everything and then consider it a job well done. At least until a Tarnished butchers them 😅
I would fix it, boi
That was Radahn.
@@stephenjenkins7971I think Radahn would've been a great leader if he hadn't held back against Malenia, though that trait could bite him on the ass later on if it hadn't nipped his bud then and there, also funny how elden ring's god of war (Radahn) pulls punches in an almost juxtaposed manner to his post in the pantheon, neat detail, have a good day!
Like you fixed greece?
I hate to say it but you seemed to have missed out on some lore for the Greater Will as its influence has been in the Lands Between well before the Golden Order and has been around since the age of dragons.
It has had many trees that have existed with the Cricible being the one before the Erdtree it isnt against it. We also dont actually know if ot wanted the Omen or Demihumans killed of if that was purly Marika own biases
Crucible and Erdtree are the same, just a little change of colors and functions (Maybe we see the actual scene in the DLC trailer when Marika do something with that gian red-erdtree door thing) If you mean the Great Tree, that's like Morgott that have 2 names and 3 titles. Damn you Martin.
But for the rest, yes, Greater Will have her influence since Dragon age and, very very probably looking at her character, Marika did all the shit we saw during Golden Order age.
well, more like the erdtree was planted in the crucible and consumed it.
and no, i think they're referring to the elden beast arena, which shows dozens of erdtrees far away. it's unclear what that actually means though.
@@Yal_Rathol Maybe a way to say there are other erdtrees over the universe? Or... just Miyazaki doing one of his famous reference to himself, like Bloodborne. About Crucible, maybe, just maybe, we can see the scene of changing during Dlc Trailer, but everytime a description talks about it, is called Primordial Erdtree or something similar, never Consumed, Corrupted or other. Even because, in japanese Erdtree, 黄金樹, means literally just Golden Tree. It's high probably during age of Duskborn or Age of Blessed curse, when the tree is dark/silver, it will have a new name again, but is still the same tree. Maybe the crucible was more... dirty and with life exploding from it. We'll see in 11 days i hope cvcvc
There was a theory that was Radagon, who placed the impenetrable thorns in the entrance of the Erdtree.
And the Evidence Is his symbol.
And his character analysis.
He's not a fanatic, but at the same time he didn't wanted some Tarnished to take his place, even in his actual... puppet condition. Poor boy.
Its pretty clear to me that it was radagon, since both marika and the greater will seem to have decided that the golden order had to be replaced by something else, but radagon is the most zealous believer in the golden order specifically, which is why he turned on marika and mend the elden ring exactly as it was. It would make sense that he would try to remain as elden lord and for marika to remain as god so that the golden order can persist even in its regressive state
@@MonoFlax On the one hand, yes, he certainly didn't want to be displaced from his position. Good or bad, being Elden Lord and almost a god is not something everyone would give up.
On the other hand, in truth his whole character shows him to be the furthest thing from a zealot, although he nevertheless remains faithful to the Golden Order.
Think about it: He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war and in doing so integrated int magic into the Order. He himself, as his amulet says, studied everything possible and, from the Japanese description of his greatsword of the Golden Order, was linked to the law of fundamentalism in its original key, scientific scholars who, not surprisingly, used Intelligence and Faith in their spells.
The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight, but if you looks carefully, the darkness that fills him is the same from which the Elden Beast takes shape. In fact in the original language, the Bossfight name is "Radagon, Golden Order", not "Of the Golden Order." And the Beast is the embodiment of the Golden Order. In that case, the Beast is using his body as a shield and a puppet before turning him into a sword and fight itself.
Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells?
About Marika and GW, if they was both ok to destroy the ER; why punish her and not let her finish the job? More probably she is gone crazy for her dead son and decided to crush the world because she could. Power corrupts, i'm right?
@@themaniae4803 Just gonna give some of my own opinions on some of yours, because I think pretty differently about a few things in the game:
The Golden Order makes our real world image of "zealotry" not fully apply. Radagon is a Golden Order Fundamentalist, but the Golden Order is fundamentally based on being an umbrella religion. It was created by Marika to be as utilitarian to her purposes as possible, her removing the Rune of Death and declaring blind faith alone is not enough is what founded it.
That's why you get weird contradictions in TGO like Crucible Knights serving under it, it's hypocrisy done because the Crucible Knights were better allies than enemies. So, Radagon _is_ a zealot, just a very well informed and educated zealot, as opposed to an uneducated zealot like Corhyn who denies the cynical nature of his religion. Taking the utilitarian path of marrying Rennala is actually peak Golden Order practice.
I don't think it's suspicious that Radagon doesn't use INT magic. He also doesn't use the advanced weapon techniques he presumably knows as a champion of the arena, because he only has a hammer. In the same way, he doesn't use sorceries because he doesn't have a staff. Using his miracles is plenty because they're designed to exploit his INT and FAI at the same time.
Elden Beast is not the embodiment of The Golden Order, Elden Beast is a vassal of The Greater Will, that's an important distinction. The Golden Order is just one iteration of Greater Will worship. IMO this mostly discredits the idea The Greater Will wanted the Elden Ring replaced, because Elden Beast tries to kill you regardless of your motivations for coming. The Two Fingers _thinks_ The Greater Will needs the Ring fixed, but the Two Fingers is oblivious on a lot of stuff.
Personally, I believe The Greater Will simply wants to reproduce/grow _(the erdtrees in the beast's boss fights hinting at erdtrees spread across other planets)_ and having the native population worship it is just to aid that. But once Marika broke the ring and wounded the beast, it just wants to be shut off so nothing else can hurt it anymore, it doesn't need to let anyone in to risk even more. Radagon obeys, because he truly believes The Greater Will is the source of everything good in the world. It's definitely not because he _wants_ to maintain his current condition, he and Marika are in a state of constant torture within an inch of their lives as divine punishment, it's in spite of that his faith holds firm.
While Marika's reasons for The Shattering are deliberately the most mysterious part of the game, I can say it's more likely than not that it wasn't grief, and in actual fact *she probably orchestrated her own son's assassination.*
-Getting a piece of Maliketh's Black Blade must have been very difficult, but could be easily explained if it was an inside job.
-The Black Knives are all Numen women much like Marika, very clearly intended to hint Marika may have known them.
-Black Knives are hiding out all over the place laying low after the crime, and one is right outside Marika's bedroom. Either she is there to kill Marika, _(without backup??)_ OR she had reason to believe this might be safe harbour for her, much like how other Black Knives tried to reach Miquella's famous haven for the shunned. Marika being a coconspirator is the only way the second explanation makes sense.
-While Ranni claims full responsibility for the plot, _she had no reason to kill Godwyn specifically_ and doesn't offer one, she could've killed any demigod. The best motive for Godwyn's death is probably that he was allied with the dragons. Him being dead before the Shattering is why the dragons aren't a unified threat, mostly scattered to the winds. Marika's speech at the battleground seem to indicate she wanted her children to fight over the Elden Ring's pieces after shattering it. Whatever her reason for The Shattering itself, Godwyn's death is why it ended up a protracted civil war rather than it being over in a few days.
@@themaniae4803 "He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war" political marriage to neuter potential or active rivals is evidence *in favor* of being zealous in his fundamentalism. It's following this marriage that the greatest sorceress in the history of the lands is left a heartbroken shell of a woman that is ousted from authority by those she once rose to lead through competence and strength. He was *way* too ready and willing to cast such trivial shit as "love" and "marriage" aside to return to service to the Golden Order. "Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells?" I'll assume the she was a typo in this line and just point out he's not using only Faith based incantations. The fundamentalist incantations *require* intelligence to use. He's using both faith and intelligence to defend the Erdtree.
"The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight" is just literally missing stuff explicitly stated in the game. He is on multiple occasions deemed a champion, if not *the greatest* champion of the Golden Order. Radagon is an aspect of Marika though, the part still devoted to the Greater Will. The part that desperately attempts to mend the ring and keep intruders away.
There is always ONE thing in your videos that stops me from loving it all the way.
In this video, it's how you describe the incorporation of Caria into the Golden Order. The Golden Order didn't bring peace by being flexible, they just couldn't overrun their enemy. That's it. They tried and failed twice. They HAD TO try something else.
It wasn't magnanimity that kept a third war from happening, it was the loss of resources. That's it. The Golden Order wanted to expand and in a way, they won.
"Damn, those mages sure can fight. We need to try something else"
They did what was a very common tactic to ease hostilities between competing powers. Political marriage. Radagon dropped Rennala like a sack of potatoes when the order came down to return, even taking her token of affection and devotion, the sword, and bastardizing it into a symbol of Marika and the Golden Order instead of a Carian tradition that, if you follow Ranni's path, is a symbol similarly bequeathed upon you as her new consort and confidant in the Moonlight Greatsword.
His description fits better with the Dragon Cult that formed after Godwyn defeated & befriended Fortissax. It was determined that worship of the ancient dragons did not violate the golden order. So I think the core argument still holds, though to a lesser extent. The Ancient Dragons where also once part of the ruling order well before Marika came along, they had just fallen out of favour by then.
@@kylegonewildthis golden order d-riding has to stop. Radagon doesn’t like Marika or even the golden order. He himself is in a struggle with it. The sword is an example of radagons inability to be whole. He is never his own person he’s either a cuckoo bird for the academy or a tool of the golden order. If radagon truly disregarded Caria there would have been no reason to leave the gift that would ultimately spell about the end of his order., the Amber egg and his seal upon the gate. Remember it was the carian family which led to the shattering of the elden ring by infecting the Erdtree with an ancient curse.
@@zora508 20 knights with blue rocks in their swords countered a, quote, "golden host". "host" being an old word that basically means "massive number of soldiers", possibly related to the word "hoard".
damn, those mages CAN FIGHT!
The lore of the crucible knights and their place in the erdtree order (before the golden order) is evidence that at one point the omen were accepted by the greater will and/or marika.
the fact that the Greater Will empowers Dung Eater to try turn everyone into an omen also reinforces that it doesn't care about how the Omen are treated
@platypipope328 i dont think the greater will really cares at all so long as it is feed souls and bodies.
@@vasylpark2149 the greater will doesn't feed on souls, what?
@@platypipope328 they might be mixing up the erdtree and the greater will.
because the erdtree absolutely feeds on corpses. the greater will probably just IS and doesn't feed on anything.
@@platypipope328 The Greater Will sent the Elden Beast to the lands between. The Elden Beast, the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree (L and R being Romanized as the same in Japanese) are all linked together. Erdtree burial, Miquella watering the Haligtree with his blood, and newest DLC trailer (though not confirmed) suggests that the Erdtree is sustained by blood and death and quite possibly souls.
This channel is way too underrated. That last 10 minutes was particularly astounding analysis
This comment is an envoy of the algorithm :)
indeed
Yes, indeed.
we should also note that it's entirely possible that the golden order _never intended to absorb the sorcerors._
it is possible that radagon, after his attempts to crush them failed, decided to play the long-con on rennalla and bring her down through more subtle means.
something else to note is that the greater will seems to be an entity of three things: order, light and shadow.
keep in mind, spells to cast darkness are given to confessors directly from their local two fingers to assassinate tarnished. the greater will also sends "baleful shadows" after ranni during her quest, and can "shadow-bind" beasts and beastmen to it's champions. but at the same time, nearly every fundamentalist spell is a brilliant golden light, and do everything from shielding to healing to forming a cutting blade.
the greater will may be order, but it operates through light and shadow, carrot and stick.
From what little we learned from the SotE story trailer, Rennala wouldn't have been the first time Marika/Radagon achieved some greater goal through "seduction and betrayal". I suppose we will learn more very soon.
@@Ascarion1234 something like 30 hours for me to get the DLC.
i expect few answers and more questions.
All light creates shadow
@@Yal_Rathol SO... what do you think now?
@@darkunor6687 about what specifically?
Something to consider: The Golden Order is *not* the Order of the Greater Will. As you implied in your video and several comments have already said- the Greater Will is literally the pure essence of Order. It doesn't care what shape that order takes, as long as it's consistent and is obeyed.
The Golden Order was built by Radagon, after the forced marriage between himself and Marika (I still cant tell if they were two entities fused, or if they were always one being).
Marika defied the greater Will after she plucked the rune of death from the Elden Ring and hid it within Gurranc, thus thwarting Death. To repair this, Radagon created the Golden Order, which is the hyper rigid order that exists even until the time of the game. (Represented in the elden ring by the lattice pattern). The GW didnt care that the death rune was missing once the golden order was implemented because it was a new order. At least some ruleset was being followed.
Edit: now that we know some things, we know that Marika created the Golden Order, but in her defiance of the Greater Will, it essentially gave the keys to a more obediant hound - Radagon.
Radagon was probably a warrior forced to fuse with Marika since he indeed used to have a past and also has autonomy to an extent.
Also the Elden Ring existed long before the time of Marika and the Golden Order, e.g. Placidusax used to be Elden Lord to a different god, presumably also sanctioned by the Greater Will. Likely the Crucible was also once "the Order", it is only despised now by those upholding the "new" Order.
It’s important to realize that there are quite a few translation issues. Nothing absolutely horrible, just some things that create misunderstandings. Such as the “abandonment” by the greater will. In the original text, apparently it was saying that the greater will gave up on the demigods only, not the world as a whole.
It’s even said in the translation by the finger reader that the greater will has not abandoned the lands between.
@@Wolf_Dominic Pretty sure it says the same thing in english. Its covered in this video. The two fingers are not a reliable source
@@steel2572 In that case, I wasn’t referring to the differences, I was just pointing out something that was clearly said. And perhaps that’s true, but I don’t think we should just cast that aside, especially when the other point, about the first cutscene mistranslation still stands.
This vid did not age well with the DLC.
I get the impression that, with the 3 fingers wanting to return everything to zero, the implication is that life is struggle made manifest. So, perhaps within the Lands Between, it IS chaos and thus disparity that fuels its orderly counterpart, because it appears that thematically it IS struggle through which life comes to be. Because of this I feel that there is a paradox in giving agency to natural order. I think that may be the in-game reason why one person was allowed to represent the Greater Will without there being an exact definition as to what defines its values. Hence the ludonarrative significance of a game of this difficulty. It makes the payoff, and thus the ending the player resonates with all the more meaningful. I do agree that it could be read as a story about the fragility of power, because (especially in a story like this), no one person can say that the greater will acquiesces to their particular values, I also agree that the Greater Will doesn’t care what form order takes for this very reason. But this is also why I think a distinction must be made between the Greater Will and the Golden Order. Those who claim to serve its values vs. a manifestation of cosmic order that has no singular value. That’s why I think the actions of the Golden Order make them the villains of the game for trying to bend that disparity to their own ends, whereas, within the context of the game, the Greater Will seems, to me, to be an ambivalent force of natural order.🤔
Hell yeah! 😊
Love listening to your thoughts. One day I might request you to cover the Mother series but that's.... A bit huge
Bigger than Eden Ring?
That would be sick, I'd love to hear his insights on things like the themes of Earthbound, like loss of innocence or its portrayal of modern life in the USA
I still hold firm that the Greater Will is not an actual entity with "villainous" or even altruistic desires. The Greater Will is just the Concept of Order in the universe. Its the force in life which pushes things to divide and distinguish themselves from one another thereby ordering them. When the universe was undefined everything was all together at one point, A One Great. Then the big bang occurred, and elements and time were born giving way eventually to life and "Order" in the universe. THAT is the Greater Will. Life and the Universe's propensity to Order itself through divisions and distinctions. Life vs Death, Light vs Dark, Heat vs Cold.
The Greater Will didnt "send" a Golden Star to the lands between its just happened because meteors fall and hit celestial objects ALL THE TIME. That meteor just happened to be carrying the materials to create and alter life.
When people in The Lands Between are speaking on the Greater Will "doing" things to them like banishing them underground they are simply doing so because they live in a society Ruled by a religious group(Golden Order, Two Fingers, Marika) who says that whatever happens in ordained by the Greater Will. When in actuality it is this group and their power due to the Elden Ring who are shaping Order to their liking. The Greater Will is NOT sentient or a parasite or a "Villain" it is just Order. And the one who holds the Elden Ring can shape Order to their liking in The Lands Between.
I dunno, there's pretty solid evidence that the Ancient Dynasty used to be above ground. Marika does not have the power to sink it.
If that is so, how are the Two Fingers able to communicate with the Greater Will? And what of the Elden Beast?
Hell yeah, well said
The Greater Will no longer cares about the Lands between, the Two Fingers will never get an answer, because just the narrator says in the opening, the Shattering led to the Lands Between being abandoned by the Greater Will.
@@Nemo12417 there's reason to believe they actually called on astel by mistake, it could mean they used that instance as propaganda like, look what happens when you mess with the golden order
I like it how, the carians. Who were the only ones who were equally just as strong if not, even stronger than the golden order.
Were pretty much the only other power in the lands between to have actually survived the test of time. Whereas so many other cultures were just straight up genocided, it shows just what it would have took to actually get the golden order to give up in the end...
And even then, the golden order still won. With their leader being basically brainwashed by ragdon undoing all of caria over the ages...
"Those who live in Death fall outside the principles of the Golden Order" He's only talking about those that live in death. His entire quest line is about hunting down ghosts and undead. He doesn't think that EVERYONE that falls outside the principles of the Golden Order and must be exterminated, only those that live in death, or the undead. He's a zombie hunter. His black and white view is ascribed only to zombies, and he chooses the Golden Order's teachings as his justification, not that he views anyone outside the Golden Order's teachings as vermin that must be purged.
I honestly just think that your view of Dee was too subjective, and he's a poor example for you point.
Not a case, Miquella was part of the Fundamentalism, and Miquella wanted to help Godwyn and cure his condition or give him a true death. During Shattering, probably his ideas changed into a fanatic hate for Those who live in death.
It's not unreasonable to assume that D also believes in the rest of the Order. He is a devout follower after all. It's just his mission to kill those who live in death. It would seem strange to me if he disagreed on any other discrimination, since he has nothing suggesting that. But since he has nothing pointing to the opposite I guess we can't be 100 % sure of that either, although it's still far more likely.
Maybe he sees those who live in death as a priority, since they are supposed to be dead. And doesn't think others who fall outside the order need to be hunted, since they aren't already supposed to be dead.
It's also questionable if Darian and Devin believe in the same things.
Abandonment implies consciousness?
Wrong, if it's nature is counterintuitive to the shattered elden ring, then abandonment can simply be due to this shattering, which leads to chaos, the antithesis of order. It is not possible to have order and chaos coexisting.
To simplify further, think about oil and water, if you pour more oil, does the water have free will when it is pushed aside?
Yet if you believe your god, in this example called water, has power, would you not say it "abandoned" your world, rather than saying it was simply pushed aside?
The way the Golden Order's actions are conflated with the Greater Will's just seems wrong, since the Elden Ring have existed way before the Golden Order. If the GW wanted to some "orderly" empire, it could have done it through the Ancient Dragons.
We know that Placidusax was an Elden Lord of his time.
Farum Azula has an Elden Ring depiction in it's main building.
An Order Existed before the Golden Order, there were other vessel's and other candidates to inherit the ER.
The GW doesn't "hates" the omen or misbigotten, it probably cares about them as much as it cares about the average human, so not that much. The treatment of Crucible related beings in the current age is explained by the Crucible talismans. (In short they simply represent the old times and people resent that.)
The game pretty much states the the Crucible turned into the Erdtree and the Crucible incantations are Erdtree incantations just to back this claim up.
So I don't think the GW had an issue with the Crucible. It is probably responsible for it's creation, through sendeing the Golden Star and the Elden Beast
According to the Three Fingers the GW is responsible for the existence of life. And we see what happens when we destroy the ER, all life is gone, melted away into chaos.
I agree, persecution of crucible beings is purely a Golden order thing. They represent an age that was (probably) filled with a lot misfortunate and slaughter as Marika established the Golden Order by forming the Erdtree from the Primordial crucible. Beings from that time are snuffed out as they are a reminder that Marika's established rule isn't as harmonious as it would like to believe it is. The resentment evolved to bigotry, and so they are deemed impure.
Greater will has no bias against beings for arbitrary physical appearances. Fair to say that's purely dictated by the ruling body in whatever age is taking place. As long as there's order, the Elden ring's vessel can rule however they want. If the Greater will was absolutely against the crucible, then the dungeater ending wouldn't be possible. All future generations are to be born as omen in that ending, and yet we are still made Elden Lord.
Advice for your Ranni video, investigate the discrepancies in the translation. In Japanese several of her lines can be viewed as holding different meaning.
Also, three fingers could merely be a form taken to mock the greater will and not its natural form. The frenzy also must be seen as hijacking people's suffering for its own ends, much like the golden order does with the Omen.
Actually I still don't get how it's different, every interpretation I have seen of the japanese text I already got from in game dialouge. So this always confuses me.
A more literal translation isn't necessarily correct and a more cryptic telling isn't necessarily different from the original text.
@@Romapolitan I had different results, it seems to clarify her intentions more clearly than the English dialogue would initially seem to
I’m so happy you’re covering my favorite game! Your takes and insights are excellent
Kinda funny to know that the fingers are just winging it.
Awesome analysis. Summarizes a lot of what I believe are solid interpretations. One thing I’ve interpreted differently overtime is the relationship between the greater will and the golden order. I could easily see how one could view them as directly related, the idea that the golden order is the soul vision of the greater will, and any other type of rulership is heresy, and completely conflicting with what the greater will wants.
The more I think about it, and I think many others could agree, it would appear that the golden order is a product of MARIKA’S age, rather than being strictly tied to the greater will itself. I agree with speculation that the greater will does not care who is in charge- be it the golden order, or the ruling powers that may arise in the three mending rune endings. It seems the greater will’s express desire is an entity that can uphold the power of the Elden Ring and the “concept of order” it entails. the Elden lord is a prime facet of that. Elden Lord’s are closely tied to the Elden Ring, and therefore the greater will-the Golden order is simply the main ruling body at the time of the game. A faith and set of principles established when marika began her reign.
Consider as well in the age of the dragons- which is stated to have happened in a time BEFORE the Erdtree, placidusax was an Elden lord. The Erdtree of course is wholly tied to the golden order, we know it isn’t just a symbol but a conduit for life (the underlying reason for this power being, ofcourse, the Elden ring) The blessings it bestows are made so on account of the Elden rings power, but That being the case, there couldn’t have been an Elden Lord in the age of dragons if the Golden Order and greater will were indeed eternally bound, seeing as the Erdtree wasn’t around during Placidusax’s time. The age of dragons too had the Elden ring at the forefront of its culture (and by extension the greater will) seeing as there was a former dragon god serving as its vessel and placidusax as Elden Lord. Dragons had no association with the golden order or erdtree and yet The Greater will still granted them the Elden Ring.
With what we know about the crucible, we can conclude that the bigotry the Golden order displays also isn’t exclusively tied to the Greater will. Consider how in dungeaters ending, even though any future offspring are cursed to be omen, the tarnished is still crowned Elden Lord if they choose this ending. So long as there is order. Misbegotten and Omen have simply been deemed antithetical to golden order principals and so are persecuted- not because the greater will wants it, it’s just a biproduct of Marika establishing her reign. my guess for why this is being because Marika had to vanquish whatever civilization existed during the time of the crucible so she could found the Erdtree upon it as the shining representation of everything the golden order embodies. Beings who are born with aspects of the crucible, like horns and wings, are persecuted seeing as they stand as a reminder for the bloodshed that came prior to the Erdtree’s establishment- and what probably began as a means of eliminating reminders of a not so righteous past, ultimately just evolved into racism. Omen are a reminder of the crucible, the crucible conflicts with Erdtree / Golden Order teaching, and must be snuffed out, according to the established rule and modern day perception in lands between.
Regardless, despite the golden orders bigotry, there was some semblance of coherent rule for a time. There was ORDER. The Elden ring’s main use case is fulfilled, The Greater will is satisfied. Only when Marika shattered the Elden Ring did the greater will turn their backs on the lands between. Removing the rune of death from the Elden Ring was questionable enough, but the shattering war was definitely the Greater Will’s last straw. Be it the golden order, or someone aligned with some other group, the Elden Ring must be repaired, to reestablish order in the land. To be honest, whether the greater will is an actual “being” still has some debate too it. Again while we’re given concrete facts in the lore, a lot of it is still up for interpretation. That’s the fun of it. What a fine game.
To anyone who see's this I do have some questions as well. It's all speculative, but there are some things I'm having a hard time finding a conclusion to in the lore.
1. The greater will requires a god to act as a vessel for the Elden ring, how come in any of the mending rune endings you simply become Elden Lord? If the Elden Lord is a consort to the current reigning god, and we slay radagon (therefore Marika aswell) who becomes the new god? Maybe one of the Empyreans, though the ones who are alive are probably not willing. Technically you're still acting as servant for the greater will, but I guess since we slayed the literal manifestation of the Elden ring (Elden Beast) maybe the current rules don't apply.
2. Are the outer gods on the same level as the greater will? Do they want the Greater Will destroyed, or will they establish a new age under it? I'm under the impression some outer gods would be able to usurp the entirety of the greater will (as seen with Ranni's ending, and frenzied flame) while some may simply establish a new ruling body, with the greater will still in ultimate power-- provided there is order. I could see this if there were ever an age of rot, or if the Mohgwyn dynasty took off. Ranni and Frenzied flame are different seeing as Ranni Wanted to overthrow the greater will, and Frenzied flame is a complete antithesis and views disorder as order. There's no reason to say you couldn't have a "Rot age" or "age of blood" provided the Elden Ring is used for what it was intended and things don't fall absolutely out of balance as we saw with the golden order.
The DLC proofed a lot of the speculation correct. For example, the Greater Will has for the whole rule of Marika never communicated with anyone in the Lands Between. The one who gave the orders was the Mother of fingers, which also did not communicated with the Greater Will. So the Fingers made it all up or more correctly followed the last very ancient commands.
“Their existence isn’t hurting anyone”
Literally undead monsters that attack you on sight
It’s interesting that the finger slayer blade seems to be almost foreshadowing of Radogan’s fate as a sword, “born of a corpse” with a spinal column coming from the hilt and blending into the blade.
One major problem with this analysis, is that it overly conflates the Greater Will and the Golden Order, and thus draws a lot of false conclusions. This breakdown exposes a lot of problems with the Golden Order and attributes them to the Greater Will too, when it shouldn't.
Take the Omen and Those Who Live in Death. The player can create an order via Mending Runes which incorporates the unwanted beings of the Golden Order into the Elden Ring's new order. And we do it with the explicit blessing of the Greater Will and Marika, who extended us grace to pursue such a goal. If the Greater Will truly wanted the Golden Order specifically then why would it bless certain Tarnished who generate wildly different Mending Runes, some of which oppose the principles of the Golden Order as mentioned above?
The Greater Will does has nothing to do with the rules or actions of the Golden Order (with the possible exception of demanding the conquest of other faiths). It wants an order, any order, and will eventually create the potential for a new order to arise via the Empyreans, for its own inscrutable reasons. Once upon a time the ancient dragons were the champions of the Greater Will, then they were eventually replaced.
The Golden Order is its own philosophy/religion and political entity. And its truest champion is not Marika but Radagon, her other half. That is a whole other can of worms, but Marika's actions leading up to the Shattering, as best we can determine them, are anti-Golden Order but not necessarily anti-Greater Will. Meanwhile Radagon's thorns, and we know they're his because they bear his trellis rune, are explicitly working to defend the Golden Order against those guided by the Greater Will.
@Lee-km7qq Marika is not dead, she's sealed but remains the "vision's vessel" as Enia puts it. If she were dead then Radagon would also be dead and we know he isn't. And in some of the "in Marika's own words" dialogue you can get from Melina, Marika has the explicit power to strip Grace from Godrefy and his warriors, which she then says she will give back to them after they have waged war and died in faraway lands.
19:10 : my initial interpretation to what was just said, doesn’t really imply that it *can’t* strip Merika of her godhood, only that it hasn’t. At least from the information the player has at this point, why would they conclude that it wasn’t the greater will’s choice to merely imprison her, while still intending to use her for a purpose? (though, of course, I suppose the title video says it has abandoned the place, ... but, setting that aside.)
Like, it (or at least the fingers) talks about becoming her consort, not about becoming her replacement.
The finger speaker seems to speak of her with reverence, as one to be honored, despite the crime she committed and the punishment she endures.
Just want to say the existence of the three fingers doesn't imply they were cut off 5 fingers. There are multiple 2 fingers through the game and not one of them or the 3 fingers show signs of division.
Frenzy is separate not separated
eh.. I think Brett is more referencing a metaphorical split. Like, before the Individualisation of the Fingers, there used to be the Concept of the 5 fingers (represented by the Era of the Erdtree that associated itself with Beasts - as the Elden Beast covers the Elden Ring with 5 fingers in Radagon’s super attack - and how the cinquedea weapon says that the 5 fingers of beast men were the symbol of the original order and intelligence granted to them).
There are multiple 2 fingers… but that doesn’t mean that the three fingers weren’t *THEMATICALLY* split from the two fingers. I believe hyetta, that there was a point where there used to be a 5 fingers organisation - similar to the 2 fingers org we have today - but something happened (we’ll probably learn what Marika did to cause the metaphysical split in the DLC) and now there is the existence of 2 and 3 fingers, separately. The five fingers will have represented life blended into a crucible. Following the split, the one-ness of life was sit into two ideals of nature: Order and Chaos, each represented by 2 and 3 fingers, respectively
Like with the other video, Either you have a really wrong reading of the lore or you are purposefully dismissing the text and dialogue that directly contradicts what you want the story in Elden Ring to be rather than what it is. The Greater Will is directly stated to have created life and souls in the setting (by shattering the One Great), The GW and a former version of the Elden Ring was worshipped by the Dragons and their Beastmen worshippers long before Marika and her followers came around.
The Greater Will seems to be more tied to Life even more so than Order since while the Elden Ring and the Elden Beast are said to be the concept of order, the Crucible and the Erdtree in it's previous state, state that it was filled with rampant amount of life energy which caused animal like growths on people (like the Omen and Misbegotten).
Also it seems that it's more likely that Marika alone was behind the genocides and wars, since according to the items related to the Omen, Misbegotten and crucible state that they used to be worshipped/viewed as holy until Marika created the Golden Order by taking the rune of death (which was originally part of the Elden Ring) and sealing it.
The Greater Will is also not worshipped by most the followers of the Golden Order, in fact Corrhyn treats the Two Finger prayerbook as something heretical.
There are other issues but I'll just point out these ones.
Fatbrett you should analyze Xenoblade 3 Moebius.
The greater will does not care about the golden order so long as order exists. Marika was punished for disrupting that order.
On the crucible? During that age there was an order of its own, and even during the times of the ancient dragons the elden ring existed and was entrusted to them. You can see the form the elden ring took during their time in Maliketh’s arena on the wall.
The greater will truly has no ill intent whatsoever it just wants the world to have some sort of system in place. Whatever that system is. The golden order’s intolerance and violence has nothing to do with the greater will at all. That is the realm of men.
29:51 they attack everyone they see on sight, they supposedly slaughtered the village you find D next to
Then again, the whole issue with ER is that everything is hostile at all times, so you can’t tell if that’s the intention or not.
Tbh, the intention is very clear. Clearly, those who live in death defy the concept of the Golden Order. As such, they are mindless beasts who “live in death”.
As is with most Fromsoft games, there was an earth shattering event(s) that caused every aspect of the world to go hollow. This was the case for Dark Souls, and this is the case for Elden Ring.
They attack the village, and attack anyone else, because they embody the concept of death. Literally. They literally are a result of death being physically spread across the roots of the great tree, in hopes of a cosmological and ideological goal of enveloping the entire land in death. That is what death, even in our real life, would represent if it was separated from life. Just as how common nobles will attack you becuase they embody the soul that which lacks grace and ambition. That’s why the more “intelligible” beings are typically ones that have ambition/reason/grace/motive. Those bereft of it will become mindless zombies.
Hey man, in the future, you could make a video analyzing the recurring themes in all the games, such as the obsession with maintaining power and avoiding the end at all costs, as seen in Sekiro, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. There are many other recurring and very interesting themes.
With the dlc out we can say for sure that the two fingers were rouge and simply makign shit up😂 nice prediction
You should've waited until the DLC released as some important info around the fingers was revealed by it, like major major stuff.
Have to admit I kind of fell out of Elden Ring sometime after beating Radahn just because I got kind of lost to be honest hahah, but your last two videos have definitely inspired me to go back
To the question of what Marika discovered about the Golden Order that caused her rebellion--I don't think she necessarily found anything. My version of the story would be that she knowingly committed all of these evil acts for a promise of something greater, like there would be some reward, destiny, light at the end of the tunnel that would justify it all. But when she explored the mysteries of the Golden Order she found nothing. Nothing satisfying, at least. It's not that the thing had some evil, terrible, secret agenda, it was just not the perfection she hoped and believed that it was. She felt lied to and destroyed it out of spite, or as a way to prevent future atrocities.
5:19 This line is so bizarre that I spent a full 2 minute rewinding the video 10-30 seconds back to be sure I heard this correctly.
Doesn't Goldmask's questline proves that the Greater Will is not evil?
What we learn in his questline is that the bad things in the Lands Between did not stemmed from the Greater Will itself, but from Marika and the religious zealots that support everything she does.
What if the GW doesn’t actually necessarily have a will of its own or at least not like how we’d think. What if it’s more akin to the primeval current? Just a massive source of cosmic power and Marika figured out a way to tap into that power and manipulate it and harness it in a way that allowed her to establish her own order but she can’t completely control it and shit starts going back and she realizes that she messed up and is just trying to undo what she did. She made the two fingers and they are actually convening with her and not the GW which is why the thorns block the path. Those are Radagon thorns. He’s in partial control and Marika realizes she’s slowly becoming him or he’s slowly gaining more control which is why she impales herself through the womb and locks herself in the erdtree and only releases herself (and Radagon) when someone finally burns the erdtree to get in and comes to become Elden Lord. She knew the thorns were there but had no control over them which is why she never told the two fingers that. She knew you’d set the erdtree on fire using your maiden or yourself possibly so there was no reason to tell the fingers. The GW is just a source of power for her that she gave a name to and made an object of worship to give herself a basis for having power and being the controller of the Elden Ring and being Queen. Much like how many religions and cultures throughout history have used their gods to control the populace or give themselves a basis to rule over others.
One important thing to notice is that empires are kind or diplomatic only to those who fight back. The mages of Raya Lucaria or the dragons are only accepted after they reached an stalemate with the Golden Order. The misbegotten, the albunarics, the merchants and all the other opressed factions of the land betweens couldn't or decided not to fight back and that's why the empire crushed them. I believe that this is a reflection of real life too, the bully is going to bully unless you stop them.
Oooooo this is gonna be good
Love how at 30:00 he’s all “oh boo hoo, the undead aren’t hurting anyone” meanwhile the undead literally attacks the living on sight. Same with the omens, literal hulking brutes that could easily victimize a human and subjugate them if they had inclination to. It’s obviously supposed to be metaphorical but the metaphor it’s making is ridiculous
I like to see the Greater Will as a Lovecraftian being. It isn’t a noble or all powerful god. Just an alien being outside of our true understanding that imposes its will on everything it sees as below it
The Fingers look like fingers but people are way too literal when they think they are actual fingers. From a Lovecraftian perspective they are something we do not understand so can only describe them in terms we know.
If I recall correctly, the DLC implies that, during the main game, that the Two Fingers were actually taking their orders from a being called Metyr, the Mother of Fingers, who is called a daughter of the Greater Will.
Yup it also heavily impiles that Metyt lost contact with the Greater Will a long time ago and has basically gone rouge in trying to get its attention again.
Marika also definitely had a hand in what happened to the Omen and other fractions and wasn't some helpless victim being controlled by a higher power
@@4wheal Either way, the DLC has basically thrown into question whether the Greater Will was ever directing the Golden Order at all, and if it was, to what extent.
dubious interpretations throughout but enjoyable still.
Just for example, "abandonment of the greater will" does not at all necessarily mean that it's an entity that made a decision.
It can be that this is just a descriptive utterance by a subjective narrator, where that is what the narrator FEELS.
Or it can be divine abandonment in the biblical sense, where the interpretation is not that god has left, but that you're no longer able to see him due to your own corruption and/or disinterest.
Etc.
"The greater will is not some benevolent god of justice, peace, and diplomacy."
No, but Miquella is.
The breaking point is seen in Michelangelo's Sistine chapel
As the creator god extends his hand
Two fingers outstretch to Adam
Three fingers point back to the creator
Signifying to go back to the creator
Wipe the world and start over
50:32 Sir! that is a dog with a pope hat
Did bro honestly try and say that undead monsters who attack on sight and aflict others with death blight are not hurting anyone?
Golden Order is fucked, but the deathblight dead are for real a giant problem.
I feel you may have actually uncovered Marika's motivations for shattering the Elden Ring. When she glimpsed the truth of the Golden Order she turned against the Greater Will for whatever reason. We know this because we can deduce she assisted Ranni in her quest to purge herself of the Two Finger's control. From there she went on to free the rest of the world from its influence; by shattering the Elden Ring, she destroyed the order of the Lands Between itself, repelling the Greater Will. She shattered it specifically because she knew the Greater Will would be forced to abandon the world without order or an envoy to spread it.
I would like to think that by the time Marika decided to shatter the ring she was very likely stricken with guilt over everything that was enacted under her reign. The persecution of omen, the fire giants, then the death of Godwyn. All in the service of a force/being far greater than her understanding-- the greater will. The wiki says that Godwyn's death was what finally drove her to shatter the Elden ring, though I see no reason why she couldn't have been partially responsible for his death too. A necessary evil in order to oppose the greater will and establish disorder, even if it did cause her immense guilt. All for the sake of removing them from power.
She was probably slowly planning to get rid of greater will somehow, but Godwyns death wasn't expected, she had enough in the moment, and due to grief shatered it in that moment.
> ranni in her quest to purge herself of the two finger's control
I have a theory that when Ranni says "I will not be controlled by that THING" she doesn't mean the two fingers, she means the Elden Beast. She's an Empyrean, a candidate for godhood. We know that in a way, the Elden Beast DOES control Marika. It's housed within her, literally, as the Elden Ring. When we fight her, and Radagon takes over, his body is animated/held together by the Elden Ring - you can literally see it inside him. When he is defeated, the beast is unleashed, and instead of controlling him from within, turns him into an actual sword.
My theory is that Ranni understood this loss of agency of her mothers, and THATS what repulses her.
@@ColonelCosmologyBut Marika supported the persecution of the Omen, the slavery of the misbigoten, and the genocide of the giants.
Marika is to blame for all of that, not the Greater Will.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the golden order vs the greater will but it’s still a well thought out video
This aged like milk
I have a theory way back that Marika is just a representative of a true God which is the Greater Will. And when the GW arrived in The Lands Between it found out that it is already inhabited by other Gods such as the Frenzied Flame or whatever god The Crucible has. That is why it ended up warring with Marika at its helm and Godfrey as commander of its host: to drive off or eliminate other Gods in TLB. Also, what if the Gloam Eyed Queen ascended to godhood but not for the GW but for another God? Maybe something like a Death God or God of Disorder?
I always interpretted the Fingers going silent not as not them realizing the Will had abandoned them, but as the point where it basically gives up. They made one last gamble, but never considered that Marika could become so powerful as to turn the Erdtree and Elden Beast against them. The Greater Will is too inflexible in its thinking and teachings to be able to handle a rogue god of its own making and basically gives up, never once considering the system itself is the problem. Which is basically what lead to the entire last portion of the game: we literally burn down the entire system the Greater Will put in place, smash through Marika's final protectors, amd rip the Elden Ring from her body to establish a new Order.
Exepct that everything we see of the Greater Will actually shows it being very flexible as it has been apart of mutiple orders that have wanted different things.
Allowed the rise of mutiple different races like the dragons, Crucible knights, Omens before Marika time.
Even the gane endings shows this as it will accept mutiple different healing runes to restore the Eldin Ring like making the deathless part of it or even the Dungeaters rune whitch would create more Omen and other crused lifeforms.
@@4wheal if one goes for a modern judeo Christian style view, the golden will may not even be directly involved, works in mysterious way.
So is the evil of golden order being the result of golden will, or people who ascribed things to the golden will it never asked for.
@@brendenhawley2225Or is it the will of Marika, the god who created and rules the Golden Order?
The Golden Order dose not worship the Greater Will they acknowledge its existence but they only worship Marika as the one ture god.
Note that when the Tarnished defeats the Elden Beast, we get nothing directly from it, but instead we get items pertaining to both Marika and Radagon: Marika's Hammer and Sacred Relic Sword.
Yet, when the Elden Beast is defeated, both the Elden Beast and Radagon are the ones who are destroyed, leaving behind the broken body of Marika.
This title would also work for a deep dive into Dennis Reynolds.
New lore about the Two Fingers really adds a lot to the fuckery of Marika and the Greater Will.
In addition to Order, I'd say the Greater Will also represent Change/Evolution.
It wants new Orders every now and then, it doesn't settle to just one precise thing.
It splitted the One Great, created life and souls, granted intelligence to the beasts (evolution).
That paints it in direct contrast with Chaos/Frenzy which wants precisely the One Great back with no more separations.
It's not trying to create anything. It's simply a representation of reality itself, and the many forms that it takes. It's not a villain any more than our own reality is.
50:34 Brett, that’s a dog
oMg TaKE mY Le EpIc UpDoOt FoR cRiNgE "mEmE"
24:57 I think that actually is a pretty fitting Judeo-Christian view of divinity.
Before i start to talk, i just want to say something. Elden Ring is a very BIG game with even a bigger worldbuilding, with hours of talking about every single faction, character, even just the damn style of buildings or dresses. Also, it have some little mistakes of translation, sometimes simple, not even mistakes but just "We can't say it in english" and sometimes very big ones, like Ranni's ending dialogue. On this comment i'm gonna talk using the direct translaction from the japanese wiki, something you can find too using the english wiki. For any question, doubt or objection, please be gentle, civil and discuss this in a, ahah, ordered way.
Let's start with one of the main discussion of all english fandom: Erdtree vs Crucible, because a lot of mess starts here.
What we know about the crucible is that was the main source of life of the world, that countains life energy and it was a mixture, a crucible, of all kind of life, that tends all to Draconic form as we can see with Omens and Crucible spells, that shows Wings, Horns, Tails and Fire-Breathe. We can also see few form of creature fused or with something different, like snake-snails or runebears with draconic eyes.
Now, the Elden Ring parasited the Crucible and turned it into the Erdtree? Nope, because as we can see, the Elden Ring is ancient like the old dragon Order, in japanese called with a kanji that means Very old, Paleolithic, as we fight Placidusax, the former Elden Lord of his age. Now, someone can think that is another Elden Ring because is a little different, but first: Why no one talks about 2 Elden Rings? And second, we saw the Elden Ring can change, we change it during endings. Knowing this, as we can see inside Crucible incantations, they are inside the group of spells called ERDTREE incantations, and some spells like Erdtree Heal and Erdtree bless have the same sigil of the Crucible.
(If you look for Crucible Sigil, you can see how Crucible is an alive and vigorous tree with the Elden Ring inside it, while the Erdtree is a more Ordered form, also with the Elden Ring inside it.)
Also, everytime someone talks about the Crucible, it is described with a red shade, while the Erdtree is pure gold, so yes, something is happened. This is never said, but one of the main idea is this happened when she removed the Rune of Death (A red rune), removing the concept of Death and making the Tree Immortal but static. (More time is said that Erdtree better moment is gone.) But this is not a possession or a corruption, just a change of rules and the born of a new order, the Golden Order. (Not a case, Marika used Crucible knights during her fights, then she decided that Horns and Crucible are bad, so go away.)
Is also probably that Omens and Misbegotten are an Explosion of that reprimed life energy, a bug in the sistem where death is not contemplated, just perfect order. And as any good ruler, Marika called them monsters and enslaved or exiled them, something that is quite her own mistake.
Now, the Fundamentalism.
We have two kind of Fundamentalism, the Golden Mask, Radagon and Miquella kind and D kind.
We know Fundamentalism is born to, as ""Marika"" says, find the truth in the Golden Order, using both Faith and Int. Not a case, their spells uses both Int and Faith, or even just Int but remaining Incantations. This don't looks a lot Fanatic and Golden Mask himself says that people like D are just Fanatics watching for evil.
But how the Fundamentalism corrupted itself so much? We know Miquella was part of it with his father, Radagon, and Miquella wanted to cure Godwyn from the influence of Death Roots. Probably the Fundamentalism degenerated from his will during the Shattering, making their own achievement eliminate Those-Who-Live-In-Death and creating people like D.
And, talking about Radagon, i say the same things i said in the other video: Look at his story. A man who learned everything, who make peace with Liurnia using diplomacy and a marriage, not just exterminating everything, someone who, probably, founded the original Fundamentalism. Because yes, Melina says "In Marika words", but we know Radagon is Marika after all. Marika herself said something more radical, like "Or with the Golden Order or out of it." (Also, if you look closely, Radagon is filled with the same dark-golden energy that, when we beat him, turns into the Elden Beast. High probably that was not fully Radagon, just a body used as a shield and a puppet. Poor boy.)
Maybe you noticed i talked only about Marika, Radagon, Crucible and Fundamentalism, not the Greater Will yet. Well, let me ask you something.
Where is said that Greater Will ever wanted all the things the Golden Order did? Canonically, we know she did just three things. Sent the Elden Beast on the World, being mad with the Nox (Also original Japanese says that they fled, scared for her rage, but that was not an exile.) And punish Marika before abandon the world and everyone.
I could say a lot of things to prove this, but let's take just the Rune of Death. RoD was part of the Elden Ring, right? GW sent the Elden Ring on the World, all complete and good working, then Marika removed the RoD. Why someone would sent something perfectly working and then order to break it? If he GW wanted a world without Death, why make it part of the Elden Ring?
Now, if we think a little less in a Cosmic Horror way and more a Martin and Miyazaki way, well... how many times we saw in our own History people calling God as at their side while they was doing the most terrible things?
Also, except for Enya, the Fingers and some "illuminated" characters like Gideon and Hyetta, the only one who talks about Greater Will is the guy at Volcano Manor. Too bad his quest was cutted off.
Also, there is a point a lot of people missed about the Greater Will. During Hyetta's quest, as we find the Three Fingers, she'll tell us a terrible truth. English is good, but Japanese is even more clear about it:
"...Everything was separated from the one, greater one. It was separated, born, and had a heart. But it was a mistake of the great will. Pain, despair, and curses. Every sin and suffering. They were all born from mistakes. That's why they must be returned. Burn and melt everything with the yellow fire of chaos. And make everything into one, greater one..."
Now, we know the Three Fingers and all Frenzied Flame followers wants to destroy life and everything, because life is sofference, pain, despair and curse. So, saying the Greater Will made a mistake Separating the one, greater one and made it born and a heart, well... it's quite a way to say GW created Life and Souls. (Even because, if the Elden Ring is the base of Erdtree, is also the base of Crucible, the source of life, so it works.) Maybe not in a christian way and more as a demiurge, even if we see a lot of christianity in Elden Ring. (Marika is literally in cross pose with a Spear of Longinus. Also, that one, great one, most probably is not a "sort of divine being before time and life" but... the nothing. After all, Frenzied Flame is close to Chaos, and Chaos in Greek Mitology was the Nothing before Something.)
Now someone could say it's not possible that Elden Ring and GW are connected to life and not just big cosmic parasites, but let me ask you this. If the Elden Ring is just a parasite, why Ranni takes it away with her and not just destroy it? (She never talks about kill the GW, she used that weapon only for her own Fingers. In the Japanese dialogue, she takes away the Elden Ring so no one can watch it, touch it, believe in it, still a Order but that none can see.) Or, why if the Franzied Flame takes control of it, Everything burns?
A last thing before close this little novel. When the descritpion of the Elden Beast talks about the Order, it's not mean absolute Order, but about the Elden Ring, because if the Elden Ring decided what is good and what is wrong and how even the Life and Death works, who possess it decide what is the Rule, what is the Order. It's like stay in the Matrix and have the liberty to change the code, something really insane.
So i guess in this case the real Cosmic Horror is not a divine being in the space, but the fact that your life, your death, even your souls is decided by someone who, like Marika, can go crazy and just decide to smash everyting.
(Ps: Marika against GW and helping Ranni to kill Godwyn is a nice theory, but tell me, remembering the videos about Freya and Baldur [Not a case because Godwyn is a Baldur figure] how could a Mother, even an as*hole like Marika, kill the one who was probably her favourite son? She don't even killed Morgott and Mohg, two Omens, and she kills the only good one in her eyes? The relationship between her and the Assassins is they are both Numen, and probaly close to her like maidens.)
This is a great post. I agree with pretty much everything you said. I also appreciate you referencing the Japanese to get this point across. So many think the GW is this alive and thinking thing when it is just the force of nature which allows Order to exist in the universe. Like you said, the one who controls the Elden Ring shapes what Order looks like, not the Greater Will.
@@ATC43 I think she's... not alive as we can understand, but surely she thinks or at least have some emotion, like rage against the Nox for their trying or done killing of their Two Fingers. After all, her own name is Greater Will, i presume she have a sort of Will. Once i saw a comment that says if she is the Will to exist, Yelough (My headcanon name for the God of Frenzied Flame) is the Anti-Will to exist, and i like that idea.
This was brilliant t
Several of the refutations in your thesis here are refuting claims nobody made in the video. My favorite though is this: "When the descritpion of the Elden Beast talks about the Order, it's not mean absolute Order, but about the Elden Ring, because if the Elden Ring decided what is good and what is wrong and how even the Life and Death works, who possess it decide what is the Rule, what is the Order." First, he says the Greater Will potentially represents a metaphysical concept of absolute order in the world of Elden Ring not the Ring itself. Second, the runes that make up the Elden Ring *do* decide how life and death works and the possession of these runes, and indeed the Elden Ring, prescribes the order upon the world. The mending rune you choose, if you do choose to mend the Elden Ring, has a direct impact on the physical reality of the Lands Between. Marika removing the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring caused a physical change in how death operated in the Lands Between. Destined Death is the *older* name for the Rune of Death which is seemingly a direct parallel to the concept of death in our real world, aka total cessation of existence and experience as a unique organism. The body is rendered a lifeless husk of matter to be reclaimed by nature and the immaterial "soul" ceases to be.
"Now, if we think a little less in a Cosmic Horror way and more a Martin and Miyazaki way" This line also seems WILD to me considering Miyazaki weaves cosmic horror into a lot of his work including *an entire game* based on it in Bloodborne, and Martin's most popular series contains multiple elements of cosmic horror. My problem with people who think pointing strictly to the Japanese writing somehow demolishes any other discussion on the matter is that nobody who actually worked on the game as far as I'm aware has come out to state that the English localization is woefully wrong about anything and indeed multiple interpretations for the same thing in the story is almost certainly *the whole fucking point* of it.
Edit: Hell just looking at the Elden Stars description, you can't reasonably tell me that they somehow mistranslated "It is said that long ago," as if Japanese and English don't share a common concept of "someone somewhere said this once upon a time" and just that line, ignoring the final line about "which would later *become* the Elden Ring," indicates the answer regarding the nature of the Elden Beast and its relationship to the Elden Ring is *not* set in stone.
@@kylegonewild you’re not wrong on those points but it was overall a valuable comment. Brett misses a fair few broad strokes here. There is a cosmic horror element, but the outer gods relation to the Greater Will is closer to a Kami world spirit in many cases than otherworldly interlopers- which are Nox and other star beasts. The Great Will isn’t an outer is a point he’s trying to stress
Lol just played shadow of the erdtree tree and there is a big revelation about the two fingers and the greater will
Love your videos!
I knew right away The Greater Will was the bad guy, because I read the title of the video. Nothing gets pass me.
SPOILER ALERT!! The Greater Will and the Primeval Current are the same thing
Also, with the meaning of hands. The word 'man' is roughly translated as 'hand' or ' made by hand'
Manufacture, manuscript, manicure.
Ahhh yes perfect timing for my lunch break
I feel like the only reason the golden order made peace with the sorcerers is their embarrassing attempts to conquer them lol
Thanks for covering Elden Ring, your video rocks!!
the DLC throws a lot of what we know about the greater will in the garbage
Spoilers for the DLC:
you fight Metyr, mother of fingers from which all two fingers come, and she is the only one capable of communion with the greater will, all of her progeny isn't including the one at the roundtable hold and the one Ranni kills. Metyr like the elden beast came from stars. So outside of the Elden Beast she is the only one capable of understanding what the greater will wants
I feel like this doesn't change much. Since Metyr is also not communicating with the Greater Will, she is just winging it. So like, there is just a middle man now
I'm just starting the video, but given it's quite chunky I'll just add to this comment as I go.
The greater will did not abandon the lands between, if it had then there would be no tarnished, two fingers etc. The greater will abandoned the demigods, who were the prime candidates for both lordship and godhood.
Game theory:
What horrified Merika about the Elden Ring was the communism.
She decided to sit down and study the Golden Order and the Elden Ring, and look into what the Greater Will was actually after. Then freaked out and started seeing red when she started seeing the property rights ending up under the control of the State. And so, Merika did what Merika does and smashed it.
I appreciate the level of thematic analysis, and I agree with some of the videos conclusions, but there's some mistakes and uncharitable assumptions within the analysis itself.
Chiefly, the Golden Order is NOT the design of the Greater Will.
We know this because the Elden Ring has existed well before the Golden Order, since prehistory at the latest, and potentially is the source of all life on the planet. Hyetta's dialogue strongly implies that life as it exists was the Greater Will's doing. The Crucible itself is the primordial form of the Erdtree. And Placidusax was Elden Lord long before Marika showed up. The Greater Will does not care about what form Order takes, only that there's Order. This is evident by there being multiple Orders under the Elden Ring in the history of the Lands Between, and the fact that we can repair the Elden Ring into multiple forms contrary to the original Golden Order. Many of the beings ousted from the Golden Order's grace, such as the Misbegotten and Omen, were accepted under the Elden Ring's rule in the past, so their oppression definitionally can't be because of the Greater Will.
Claiming that the Golden Order is the desire of the Greater Will is like claiming Catholicism is the will of the Abrahamic God. Their beliefs and tenets may be based around what they believe it wants, but that does not mean that they are correct in that assumption, nor are those beliefs divorced from human interference. Goldmask's ending directly addresses this, claiming that the problem with the Golden Order is the fickleness of gods no better than men.
Who then, is responsible for the Golden Order? I have a feeling that the DLC may shed more light on this, but as of the base game, it's a combination of Marika and the Two Fingers. Marika is directly responsible for much of the genocide and change within the Lands Between, and we know that she is in control of the Order by the fact that she altered the Elden Ring itself by removing the Rune of Death. This was not at the behest of the Greater Will; if it was, then why would the Greater Will send its vassal to the Lands Between containing such a rune if it was contrary to its aims? Marika's Golden Order has a history of ousting those that helped it achieve it's goals. The beastmen, Omen, Godfrey, all pawns in her game. As for why Marika shattered the Ring, it is unclear, but my guess is as much in grief over the Night of the Black Knives (I don't buy that she was involved) and disillusionment with her own Order.
As for the Two Fingers, they claim to know the designs of the Greater Will, but we actually don't know how true that is. As stated in the video, communication with the Greater Will can take decades if not centuries, and we do not know how often such communication has taken place in the past. Perhaps their interpretations are wrong, and the tyranny associated with the Golden Order and the Greater Will by proxy is their doing. We don't know how long the Two Fingers have been around. But we do know that the Elden Ring has been around since the beginning, or at least since the time of dragons, and so the Golden Order is definitively not in whole the Greater Will's doing.
A “moon” is a month, not a day, so thousands or tens of thousands of moons would be at a minimum several hundred years and potentially thousand.
The greater will is a force that seeks order and progression of life to greater and better things. Normally life and death are needed for evolution and progress. Marika disrupts progress by removing death. The greater will supports us with grace even if we choose the flame of frenzy ending against the will of Torrent and Melina. Even if we destroy everything that ever existed in the lands between, it is a new start that gets the world passed the deadlock created by Marika.
Also, the greater will is not sinister but at war with other outer gods and factions. The Nox, the giants, Liurnians, and astrologers were all at war with the greater will. Life isnt fair in the world of the lands between because it never was. Things have to die to be food for higher beings up the chain. Also, Radagon is the main reason why the tarnished has to get involved. Marika is Radagon's prisoner and has locked the door with his trellised vines. Morgott is not helping because he is loyal to the golden order like radagon. The greater will needs you to remove the vines by any means necessary. The greater will is willing to sacrifice the erd tree itself because it is a relic of the golden order and is being used as an obstruction to keep us from reordering the world for the next cycle. The point is, don't confuse the golden order for the greater will.
The intro could mean the Greater Will abandoned the demigods, not the realm itself.
Dude, this was an excellent video. I've been listening/watching Elden Ring lore videos for years now, but I never saw the contradicting statements between the beginning narration and the two fingers about the Greater Will's abandonment. I always just figured that since the Greater Will was somewhere far away within the cosmos that it just took a really long time for the "signal" to reach between the Two Fingers and the Greater Will. But after this video, I'm definitely convinced the Greater Will is definitely not influencing the Lands Between anymore. Either because it did abandon or, like Brett said, maybe the chaotic nature of the Shattering did force it out. Really interesting video Brett!
This is going to look very different in a couple of weeks.
I vote for Ranni as the next character study. If you decide to do so, you should check out the more accurate translation of her orriginal Japanese dialogue done by a number of lore hunters. The English localization team for the game didn't quite portray her statements accurately and getting a better translation can clear up some of her motives better.
Goldmask wants self-sufficient and self-sustained Elden Ring, not tamperable by either Greater Will, Gods, Demigods, Mortals.
Ranni wants to create a new order without Elden Ring, without any ties to aforementioned enteries, preventing them to "touch, feel or even know" about the new Order.
Both have a noble goal, all things considered. And both were done dirty by the English Localisation.
Saving for later
33:00 I wouldn't call this a "redeeming quality" of the Golden Order. I think they would've gladly subjugated all of Liurnia, but simply couldn't, and so used diplomacy to manipulate them rather than raw power. Consider what happened: Radagon married Rennala, gave her a rune, sired children with her, and then broke her by leaving. Every single one of those actions, both individually and altogether, weakened Liurnia's hierarchy and making space within it for the Order - like the roots of a tree slowly growing through concrete.
Along with everything else the Order does to other faiths, cultures, and demographics, the whole story reads like the spread of institutionalized Christianity to me. They'll gladly destroy and subjugate peoples and ideologies they see as lesser while manipulating the particularly stubborn ones to suit their needs.
The fact the omens are held in the sewer, just under the city of gold is a great representation of “what’s hidden under the surface” dig a bit deeper and find true horrors
The whole 'consort' part being needed alongside their 'god' is sounding less like a simple marriage and more like a ritual of sorts. Especially since it's possible to have children by/with yourself somehow, and same sex consorts are seemingly not off the table 🤔
The DLC only adds to these thoughts