😂😂😂 Finally a ASOIAF Theorist has a look at Elden Ring. I been telling David Lightbringer or LmL about this for ages and so many of the stuff he talks about are in the game. Even his very specific two moon theory is in Elden Ring, Erdtree Network and like beings from outer space crashing down and hidden gods altering things. Marika even got Dany vibes as well. Least you bothered to look 😂😂😂
Same, have mentioned so many times to ER UA-camrs about the connections and they are always like "huh, cool" but just didn't get it! This is what I have been waiting for!
To be fair to those Elden Ring youtubers and other ASOIAF youtubers each of these properties feels like they take a long long time to get a grasp on what is actually going on. And even then much of it is just well backed speculation rather than proven fact in both cases. I have been involved with ASOIAF for like a decade now and Elden Ring took me months of watching videos and then like the last month plus of really trying to dig in hard before I felt I had enough understanding to actually make this video. Even now I feel like I have a lot to learn but the connections were too strong for me not to cover it. I am sure there are many more to be found and I will likely have to make more videos when I do.
David even said that it looks interesting, but with the time it takes him with asoiaf lore sometimes, he thinks the time it would take him to understand the stuff in miyuzaki's work in general would take him a bit, and halt production of the stuff he is doing now. I forgot the exact stream he said this, it was one with Tim, so I think it was an iron born or Euron video.
What I like about this theory is how believable it is. George R.R. Martin reuses plot points and entire story lines all the time, but with changes. Anyone familiar with his works before ASOIAF will understand and for those of you who don't, it's really cool to go and look at some of his older short stories and see just how many ideas then translated into ASOIAF. Honestly, most writers do this overtime. It's not necessarily a bad, or good thing. It could swing either way depending on how said writer goes about it.
I would be extremely unsurprised if Elden Ring's base lore turned out to have inherited a lot of pieces that were cut or modified from the books because he decided they were too high magic for the setting, but he felt they were still interesting and wanted to use them somewhere.
@@Eladelia I agree and wouldn't doubt that one bit, lol. If I do it for my stories, I imagine the majority of writers do the same lol. Where there's an idea that doesn't quite fit the universe you're currently working on, but is too, good to completely discard. Into the ideas archive it goes! 😂
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” P Picasso. GRRM is a master thief of history and mythology. Sounds like a critique but I’m a fan. Just glad we finally get the ending. 😂
Yeah that's how Dark Souls 1 through 3 is too. It's basically about a world that reaches its end then is remade into something new. Then Dark Souls 3 ends with the complete end.
You're definitely nailing it with all of these themes! One of the things I find most interesting is how Ranni, a moon maiden, was in fact the one to slay Godwyn, who is associated with an eclipsed sun, with shards from (and forgive the complex description) what is essentially a combination of Balerion('s black and red fire) the Black Blade of the Elric multiverse, the red comet, and/or Azor Ahai's/Bloodstone Emperor's red-hot sword, all of which is embodied in the Rune of Death, also known as Destined Death. In other words, it is the MOON which slew the sun using a weapon she forged from a black sword of red fire. This is the event which set everything into motion, much like the Long Night. Ranni's reasons for this was that the Rune of Death, which Marika had removed from the Elden Ring and sealed away in order to establish her Order of eternal life, is the only way to die a True Death, so Ranni took shards of the Rune and had them forged into Black Knives, then carried out a ritual where both she and Godwyn were stabbed at the same moment so that the effect of True Death was split between them- Ranni's body died while her soul survived to inhabit the blue doll modeled after her Snow Witch mentor (who I believe was part of a race called Moonfolk btw) and Godwyn's soul died while his body survived, empty and corrupted by Death. Somehow, he ends up growing to a gargantuan size, his head becomes like.. one of those shelf mushrooms you see on trees (a sign the tree is dying) with his face upside-down on it. But also.. the rest of his body becomes that of a mermaid..?? Merman?? But even more than Drowned God symbolism, he has ANOTHER body elsewhere that makes his head look very much like a kraken. Cthulhu themes ABOUND. But absolutely no one has any idea why he's a merman, and while I'm beginning to suspect it betrays Marika and her Numen kin as being similar to the Fisher Queens, I have no idea what that means 😭 But regardless, aside from the "sun killing moon" reversal and the fact that in this case, it wasn't dragons that resulted from the ritual, but Those Who Live In Death, people who had died long ago but are now brought back much like White Walkers/Drowned Men, but in a state of rather mindless confusion and purposelessness, as they are stated to need and currently lack a leader, which Godwyn, now Prince of Death, is unable to do in his current state. They are however, a lot more Other-coded than the White Walkers or Drowned Men, narratively, because over the course of the game you come to realize that they're unfairly demonized by the Golden Order, and were in fact always supposed to exist. But before I go off any further on a tangent, another thing I want to mention is that I believe the concepts of Shadows as they exist in parallel between Elden Ring and ASOIAF are about to get WAAAYYY deeper in the DLC, which is literally called Shadow of the Erdtree. It also takes place in a magically separate location called The Shadow Lands, where everything began, from Marika's ascent to godhood, to the birth of the Erdtree itself. And from the trailer, it is CRAWLING with connections to ASOIAF lore. There is even a place that is VERY MUCH Stygai-coded. I am particularly beside myself over the Lion of Night imagery that I've been theorizing had to have once been a thing for ages. Here it's not so much symbolized by a black lion man as it is lions with numerous horns, but their associations with the Omens, demons, cursed spirits, and Marika's "Maiden Made of Light" themes are very purposeful imho. Also also, the Royal Revenants and Wraith Callers will certainly interest you, as they are basically just the Undying Ones. They're what I believe is all that's left of the Moonfolk, since they can be found gathered on the Moonlight Plateau (the only place where you can see both moons in the sky) and all we really know about them is that they "died while cursed," and some of them even ride corpse horses. Their bruise-blue skin and four arms links them to Ranni's mentor, the Snow Crone, who her doll body was designed to look like, so it all pretty much cinches your "the Others and the Undying Ones are the same" theory! Oh man, and I'd be insane to not mention the elephant in the room that are the Godskin Apostles, a grotesque mix of the Boltons, Faceless Men, and Blackfyres. An Empyrean of the past known only as the Gloam-Eyed or Dusk-Eyed Queen, who served Destined Death before her defeat at the hands of Marika's Shadowbound Beast, took the skins of gods and turned them into swaddling cloths and eventually clothing for strange, human/serpentine beings known as Nobles and Apostles, ostensibly to give them the strength, powers, and perhaps immortality of the gods, so that they could grow up to kill all the gods with the God-Slaying Black Flame. YEAH... It gets crazier: the Gloam-Eyed Queen's sword depicts what looks like a moon cracking open and spewing out two long billows of smoke. The concept of Destined Death itself I feel comes from the Norse legend of the Norns who upon their emergence from the Well of Urd, tell all the gods that even they will eventually die. It's got a very "All Gods Must Die" ring to it when combined with the Godskins literally wearing clothing sewn from the skins and faces of gods, wielding Black Fire derived from the red and black flames of Destined Death. I'm praying the dlc gives us more about the Gloam-Eyed Queen, because as of now it's all very hard to untangle. My suspicion is that she was a sister of Marika, who as the Black Flame/Blackfyre thing suggests, may have been illegitimate, and as such sought to kill all the gods in some act of vengeance or jealousy. There's also lots (and I mean lotssss) of human-hybrid and even entirely artificial human experimentation going on through the history of the Lands Between, which the Godskin Nobles and Apostles seem to have some connection to.
I don't think Godwyn is associated with the eclipse, I think that's Miquella's thing. Miquella was attempting to use the Eclipse to help bring back Godwyn. Miquella is also strongly associated with twilight and night so the eclipse motiff probably is a better fit for him.
I recommend brushing up on some ol Japanese folk lore, especially the one about eternal life and well, the merman beast. To sum it up, anything to do with eternal life and/or transferring oneself will always lead to destruction. Godwyn the Merman.
Blackfyre could have also burned and destroyed the old ways? They are also a family of dragon riders just fate was with the targaryens iirc…. You know who is another character in the blackfyre rebellion? Brynden Rivers. Aka blood ravens
@@calebgraham3334 to follow up a bit on this, other ER lore channels discuss how "still water" like that in ponds and lakes tend to be the symbol of rot and death while the "moving water" like that in rivers is the symbol of life - constant flow With Godwyn transforming into a mermaid-like creature I believe it is assumed that his experience of death makes him turn into this mermaid twisted monster, rotting in stillness. I also wanted to check how the underground rivers connect to the "deep roots" area where there are those huge waterfalls and Godwyn's body or place of death, there might be something to draw from it as well. Wondering if it is "geographically" organized into something meaningful (as if the water from the above world is draining through the Erdtree and then the underground rivers carry that water somewhere deeper? - and perhaps the death of Godwyn is the point at which the flow of those waters (flow of life) is corrupted?
The one-eyed motif is from Norse mythology. It is a popular Odinic theme. Odin was the wisest and most all-seeing of the Gods. He sacrificed half of his physical sight in order to gain a greater awareness by opening that "third eye".
In Elden ring specifically, being blind allows you to see outer gods (or at least one specific outer god of blood). One character even has a horn (of which their growth represents the previous age of power the Erdtree replaced and are shunned in the current age) grow into his eye granting him the ability to commune with said outer god
So happy this popped up my reccs! This was a fantastic video and I have too much to say to even fit in one comment! I have been waiting for a ASOIAF fan to look at Elden Ring, on my own channel I have been trying to look at Elden Ring as a fan of ASOIAF to build my insights. Elden Ring, ASOIAF, and Thousand Worlds are all like different languages on the Rosetta Stone. The words may be different but they are all trying to say is the same thing. A big issue I have with Elden Ring fans/theorists as a GRRM fan is that they do not like hearing that GRRM had anything to do with Elden Ring. As someone who has been a fan of both Miyazaki and GRRM for over a decade each it feels so easy to see which parts of the game came from GRRM and what came from Miyazaki. Some characters in Elden Ring are so close to their ASOIAF counterparts: Rykard and Tanith = Stannis and Melisandre jump out the most to me. The most important one however is Miqeulla and Mohg are much like Bran and Bloodraven. The big thing is Mohg is the Lord of Blood, his horns are gouging out one of his eyes like Bloodraven's eye and the Weirwood roots, Mohg bathes Miquella in Blood to try to 'elevate him to Godhood' very reminiscent of Bran eating blood soup, Mohg also sprouts big black raven wings in his boss fight. Literally a Blood Raven. Miquella is known as the most "fearsome Empryean" and can bewitch people, much like Bran can take over people with his super warging abilities. He is "cursed with eternal youth" and items in the game (namely those to do with House Marias) lead me to believe his eternal youth is more akin to Sweetrobin and him being a sickly boy. Would love to chat with you sometime about all of this if you're interested. Shadow of the Erdtree, the upcoming expansion pack, feels like the closest thing to Winds of Winter and a Dream of Spring that we may ever get
I am conversant in both ASOIAF and Elden Ring lore but I have been waiting for the DLC before trying to reach any conclusions. FromSoft DLCs have a way of standing significant amounts of what you think is going on on its head. And it has been confirmed that the Elden Ring DLC has its basis in GRRM's lore, FromSoft made a conscious decision to save it until now. The Ranni/Night Queen parallel is probably incomplete because what we see of Ranni is actually a puppet she is possessing (having slain her Empyrean flesh to escape the influence of her Two Fingers but that is beyond the scope of this simple post). When we find Ranni's remains we can see she had red hair (reminding us that Marika is NOT Ranni's mother, Radagon was her father which puts her in the Marika family tree). The appearance of this puppet is actually that of the Snow Witch who was Ranni's mentor. So even the sealed eye may belong to the Snow Witch and not Ranni herself and the true parallel is Snow Witch/Night Queen. We do not know the fate of the Snow Witch but Elden Ring lore tells us that the Snow Witch taught Ranni to fear the dark moon and that seems important. The last thing I want to mention is that there is a serious translation issue between the Japanese and English versions of Ranni's Age of Stars speech that dramatically changes its meaning. You might want to look into that. I would highly recommend lokeysouls dot com as a resource for this. He is an excellent content creator.
Amazing stuff! Another thing that should be mentioned is Radagon’s red hair was a curse from the fire giants. This seems to be very significant in the grand scheme of the Elden ring story.
Finally! Someone who is an ASOIAF fan who is actually decoding the MANY similarities & themes shared between these worlds. I feel like most souls-tubers/ASOIAF theorists are very dismissive of George R.R. Martin’s involvement in his other projects (in this case, Elden Ring), so I am glad to see somebody like you who will actually willingly look at Elden Ring’s author/creators to provide context around the game’s story and lore…… and the possible directions of George’s ASOIAF moving forward. I feel as though there are some hints as to what exactly is the overall picture of ASOIAF before we even read TWOW Plus, for general ASOIAF content, you will gain a subscriber in me :)) (P.S. - UA-camr ‘Jack is a mimic’ recommended this channel to me!)
I’m so glad someone is actually doing an in-depth analysis between Asoiaf and ER. Even if Asoiaf doesn’t end up similar to Elden Ring, this is still good content.
Finally! Glad someone else is onto this haha. Not to self-promote, but we actually made our channel specifically because of all the connections we found between these two stories. We've got a couple videos uploaded and a few more on the way, but your perspective on the ASOIAF side of things has given us a ton to think about; the shadow theory stuff especially. If you ever want to reach out and discuss ideas over discord or something we'd be delighted. Keep up the great work!
My favorite comparison with these two worlds is with Radahn and Khal Drogo. They're essentially the same person. Both Giga-chads who love a good fight, but neither of them tyrants,. Both of them are champions of their people. They both love horses. Both ultimately died a pathetic death for a warrior, for their consorts personal gain. I noticed that parallel my first encounter with Radahn, and since then I've been fascinated by the similarities between characters because it goes deep.
Idk if you mentioned this already but in Elden Ring after getting to the end of a lot of the dungeons, you can see the roots of the Erdtree/s and attached to those roots are corpses…. I’ll have to go back and see if they’re all like that but I know at least a couple are. There’s gotta be some parallels there. Another interesting tidbit I’ve seen recently is that some people of the Lands Between are born from Erdtree or flowers instead of regular births from a mother. Millicent and her sisters are born from a scarlet flower and Melina I think came from the great Erdtree. Normal births in Elden Ring seem to actually be uncommon.
@@griffiththechad9483Vaatividya has also theorised that the Erdtrees also feed off blood of their "children" i.e. the humans that die and get buried at the roots of the Erdtree/minor Erdtrees
@@SpiritStoneWarrior94-yx3gsIt’s pretty explicit that the warrior jars are sent to collect bodies to feed to the minor erdtrees. The avatars smash the pots with their big hammers.
I think you should take a closer look at The Gloam Eyed Queen and the Godskin Nobles when it comes to Night's Queen & White Walker parallels. She controlled Death, has a bunch of black flame godkillers as children, they're pale and clad in the skin of slayed gods. She was also an Empyrean, potentially the counterpart to Marika. Was defeated by Marika and her shadow Maliketh at the start of the Age of the Golden Order. The Golden Order started when the Rune of Death was confined. Bound. Death bound by Tree Woman Marika.
Two things about Marika being crucified in the erdtree. Firstly she is stabbed through the womb, not the chest. Secondly there is a statue of Marika in her crucified pose in the capital city that, with the use of a magic spell, can be revealed to also be a statue of Radagon her consort. That's the big reveal that Marika and Radagon are one person (it's an alchemy reference, the red king and white queen). However, the interesting thing is that if you were to superimpose the two statues over one another, Marika is crucified on the body of Radagon standing in a T pose. That's kinda wild.
The statues are the other way around: as Miriel puts it, a statue of Radagon was commissioned in the capital, but its creation reveals his greatest secret: that he is Marika.
It's actually an issue with this theory, being that impalement from a tree is the source of power. Marika is an operating god way before she disappears into the tree, that only happens after the Shattering. So the impalement couldn't be the source of power surely. Unless these concepts are just rough connections.
Elden Ring heroes' graves and Catacombs explicit depict the roots getting nourishment from bodies for sure. the gold sap seem to be the grace getting recycled.
One possible explanation for the empyreans all having one eye, is that the influence of the outer gods manifests in the eyes. Tarnished Archaeologist mentions this in his "The Real Shabriri" episode. The role of an empyrean is to serve as a bridge between the world and an outer god. Having only one eye accomplishes this, the intact eye is influenced by an outer god and shows them the world of that god, while the empty socket shows them nothing leaving the individual to fill in the gaps with their own better judgment. Sight clouds judgement is a major theme in Elden Ring, its why Prophets cover their eyes and why Holy Books are written in braille.
It made me giddy to see you taking on some Elden Ring lore. You very quickly became my favorite ASOIF UA-camr despite the wealth of content creaters covering the lore. You have great insights and a real talent for reverse engineering stories and shining a light on some of the more mysterious elements. No piece of media has struck me like Elden Ring has. It sparks my imagination constantly and the other worldly nature of gods and demigods feels like such a breath of fresh air in a generation that seems to really value grit and realism over the fantastical. I'm so excited to hear your opinions and thoughts on Elden Ring. I hope that you still will play the game and make even more videos about its lore and world. I'd love to see your first thoughts on some of the amazing places and bosses. I really enjoy your content. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us all.
I always found it interesting that Blaidd, who is Ranni's shadow beast who is part of her very being, has one eye almost all the way closed. With his fur around it being quite distinct from his other wide open eye. As if his eyes match Ranni's in some way.
Your parallel to the mechanics of how The Others work in ASOIAF actually also fits pretty one to one with a literal game mechanic in Elden Ring. In the game you have the ability to summon the spirits of NPCs to aid you in combat, many of which are said to be of legendary figures (knights, etc.) whose bodies were "hewn in to the Erdtree." You summon them using what's called a Spirit Calling Bell that's actually given to you by Ranni towards the beginning of the game. Many of the small side dungeons you explore are specifically called Catacombs, and when you get to the end of one after defeating the boss you can literally see the corpses mixed into the roots of the Erdtree (which by extension let's you know the Erdtree's roots span petty much everywhere like the Weirwoods).
THE TREE AND THE MOON- Marika brings down rennala, queen of the full moon. But Marika(Radagon) was unable to defeat rennala on the battlefield, and instead the lands of the moon were brought into the lands of the tree through the marriage pact between Radagon and Rennala. In asoiaf, perhaps this has something to do with the great empire of the dawn encountering the singers in westeros?
@@Hanklerfishies add that rennala/elia was the first wife was left as well for another as well. Whats only weird to be that all 3 next gen empyreans seems to be the ER equivalent of the 3 heads of the dragon. Ranni, miquella, and malenia..their mothers have ties to the moon and seemingly by extension all are songs of ice and fire. (Marika arguably has ties to the nox or numen, loosely related to the moon and maybe ice)
I've always been intrigued by this thought that Jon has in ASoS. He's training with Iron Emmett in the yard and gets a knock to the head that brings up memories of when he was training with Robb in Winterfell, and how one time he pretended to be the Lord of Winterfell, to which Robb's reply was that he couldn't be. "You can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the HEART OF WINTERfell, Lord Eddard always said . . . but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods." Note that the capitalization is mine; I've always been triggered by the fact that this is the only place in the whole of ASoIaF that the term 'heart of winter' comes up outside Bran's coma chapter, even if combined with 'fell' (the felling of a tree is of course cutting it down). The fact that Jon here thinks of uprooting the heart tree, combined with the thoughts in this video of the trees representing an entity that upholds the very system that ensures that things always stay the same and someone like Jon can never be the Lord of anything, is a clear indication that Jon has a big part to play in destorying this system.
Hey, I'm not familiar with GoT lore but I've been pondering on the potential importance of stone to the world of Elden Ring. What are these stone kings? I ask because the area when entering the heart of the Erdtree is called "Stone Platform." I just find it odd that there would be a massive stone platform where a giant sacred tree has emerged from the earth. There are enemies called onyx & alabaster lords in the game as well, evidence of fallen meteors from space and a whole system of magic based upon glintstone. The ancient dragon's scales are made of stone as well. My ears perked up when I heard this video's narrator mention the 2 moons in the GoT lore, that dragons could have been born of one of the moons, etc.
@@ioncewasmikeythe stone kings are ancient stark graves in winterfell cyrpts before aegon the conqueror starks were called as kings of winter. when a stark dies they make a statue of him with a wolf and they bury their bones at statue and because they are called as kings of winter before their statues are called as stone kings. Winterfell is almost 10000 years old so there could be thousands of statues and about the stone dragons its believed azor ahai will revive dragons out of stones. You should check great empire of dawn they literally named emperors after stones likes onyx.
There are two endings in Elden Ring where you replace the Erdtree with something new (in the other four, it's replaced with an identical tree, with more minor changes). Ranni's ending, where you replace it with the Dark Moon (associated with ice), and the Flame of Frenzy ending, where you burn down the whole world with a corrupted yellow flre, "incinerat[ing] all that divides and distingushes". Ice vs fire. Could there be a parallel? Two paths forward, one better, one worse?
So, I’m not really familiar with ASOIAF lore, having only watched the TV series, but I am a big Elden Ring fan, so maybe that perspective will be of benefit here. You mentioned that there are two possible ways to burn the Erdtree. One is to sacrifice Melina, which you went into, but the other is to allow yourself to become a vessel for the Flame of Chaos (which is different from the Giants’ Flame - Elden Ring has like a dozen different varieties of magical fire), so that you can throw yourself into the Giants’ forge instead of using Melina’s body as kindling for the Giants’ Flame. The thing is, if you do so, you put yourself on the path to an ending where the Flame of Chaos consumes the entire world. The only way to prevent this is by using a specific item that is said to ward off the influence of the outer gods. I wonder if that may have some significance to the themes GRRM is trying to express in ASOIAF.
I know very little about Elden Ring, though I have heard of its parallels with ASOIAF. And I have been a big fan of LML’s theories for a long time. So I found this video very interesting. In addition to the chapter where Sam stabs the Other, I think that a conversation between Jon and Tormund adds on to what you are saying here. It is the chapter where Jon lets the Freefolk pass through the Wall. Tormund tells Jon that the Others are never far away. He says shadows never go away. They are always clinging to your heels. He also asks Jon how can you fight a mist? this seems to line up with some of the parallels you are laying out here.
The Butterflies of Naath, and the Butterflies representing Miquella and Malenia have similarities across stories. Apparently there's one large species of Butterfly on Naath that carries a horrific disease, which could line up with the Aeonian Butterflies in Elden Ring, that are related to the Scarlet Rot. The symptoms of the disease are consistent across universes too, affecting the flesh and ultimately being fatal. Additionally, the Naath Butterfly sickness mentions a fever symptom, which can make someone red in the face. A Scarlet Rot, one might say.
Here from Elden Ring! Been binging your stuff ever since this video and been fascinated by the narrative echoes in ASOIAF. Your videos on Bran, for example, strongly reminded me of Miquella of the Haligtree, just as your Greenseer content made me think of Marika the Eternal. The connections really are there, which makes sense given the collaboration. Thanks so much for your work; always looking forward to these videos 🙂
i find it exciting to think about the erasure of the names of the nights king and queen for their rebellion against the system. many people have likened er:sote mesmer to dark souls nameless king with the extent to which the ruling powers seem to have erased every reference to them to ensure they are forgotten. hopefully when the dlc comes we will learn a bit about what mesmer did to deserve this fate, (and maybe more about the gloam-eyed queen, and this will allow more speculation on other nameless figures. great video!
Elden Ring's lore is heavily influeced by Alchemy and Bottany, i recommend you read about the mushroom/fungi theory, and the parallels between the lore and Alchemy, Ziostorm has videos on it. They're pretty solid theories and many consider it canon.
Oh my - the idea of the Stark being the old ways policing force/enforcer maintaining the blood system is delicious. Has a lot of texture when a Stark has been eluded too as Night King - makes a lot of sense and seems like GRRM thing to do, especially when the Wall is their territory as well and a Stark must always be in the North for they are The Heart of Winter’s/ The Blood System chosen enforcer The old gods being a problem (not like good v evil) and like the whole right in your face and no one notices it just pure GRRM twist. It also makes sense if Jon is their pick too because they want a new authoritarian executioner our old gods and blood system enforcer for the north and he has a lot of pull or could to bring the errant peoples wayward from the blood system under heel
Yeah I am super interested in what a resurrected Jon will look like, especially being mentally half wolf if he is merged with Ghost gives him a lot of the vibes of these part wolf shadows in Elden Ring.
@@michaeltalksaboutstuff Completely just spitballing here but Jon Snow being Danny's Wolf Shadow would be interesting. Marika and Danny are quite similar, especially if you think of Danny currently as a young Marika. Its also said that Marika's own shadow Maliketh is her half Brother (could mirror Jon and Danny being related). Maliketh is also a beast man, an ancient race that built a lot of the ancient structures that fell to the lands between. Could relate to the the Starks and just Brandon building the initial ancient system.
@michaeltalksaboutstuff Do you that John is going to sacrifice himself to burn the tree? Because an interesting parallel. You didn't mention with Shireen and Melina Is that in the TV show Shireen is sacrificed against her will. But you chose to talk with Melina she tells you how she chooses to burn of her own free will. So that might be what George is going to do where he'll have Shireen die against her will. With the magic not being powerful enough until john strengths through self sacrifice.
great vid. one thing i would mention that i haven’t seen discussed is that melisandre and the shadow babies are more of a parallel to the deathbed companions. Deathbed companions take the vitality of a living warrior and lay with the dead, using the vitality of the living to impart unto them new life. Though the shadows do seem to be an aspect of Melisandre’s connection, the process is almost 1 to 1 with that of the deathbed companions. Fia does this to create a mending rune, which allows the player to user in a new age, Age of the Duskborn.
Melina also has ties to the Gloam Eyed Queen, an Empyran that was propped up by the Greater Will(the fore that runs the Lands Between). She was supposed to replace Marika, but she was defeated by Marika's shadow, a wolfman named Malikath(sp?).
Maliketh Also, the Gloam Eyed Queen doesn't even have to be a different person, she could just be Marika with Maliketh forced by the Greater Will to exact his duty as a shadow and reign her in. Only Shadow of the Erdtree can elucidate this plot point though...
There are fan theories that Melina has ties to the Gloam-eyed Queen, but it's not particularly strongly confirmed. We also don't really know that the GEQ was "propped up by the Greater Will" or "supposed to replace Marika" as the Greater Will doesn't show much indication of getting involved in the day-to-day of the world. Empyreans in general appear to be candidates to be the god of an incoming age, but that only necessitates that it's a possibility and not so much that it's an intention.
Honestly, I wasn't really on board with the idea of there being Others strapped to weirwoods to build the Wall like you show at 3:38 The idea of lots and lots of Others being trapped and bound in that way all across the land felt weird to me, since I thought there was no foreshaddowing or symboilic equivalent for such a reveal in the books. UNTIL I remembered the slaves (children, no less!) nailed to milemarkers across the land in slavers bay.
I disagree on some topics. The breaking of the moon did not start the age of the Trees but ended it. The breaking of the moon started the age of dragons and blood magic with the Bloodstone Emperor triggering the long night to venerate the stars (church of starry wisdom-age of stars reference?). The long night caused troubles to the original world trees, incapable of surviving in darkness as all the plant based life and the children living of it. To save the trees and themselves the children created the heart trees from the world trees, merging flesh and wood, blood and sap, animal and vegetal life. After that the first men arrived in westeros and fought the children until they absorbed them in their rituals. Nevertheless you're right. At some point Shereen will be burned. The wildlings would like to burn Jon's body, while the nightwatchmen would not. Bowen is still "a good man". In the meantime Shereen illness will worsen and maybe start spreading. So in the end Melisandre will set a pyre for Jon and shereen. Paying one life with the other death and mimicking Dany's birth of the dragon scene. That will also allow Jon to lose his dark hair and regrow whiter one sto symbolize both his dargon blood and his link with the old gods.
Also, another parallel between elder ring and Martin stories (extended to 1000 world series) are the fascination for crystals, like quartz, glintstone or...ice One of the apparent mysterys of ASOIAF is an answer to what the Others are. My theory is that they are disembodied consciousness, ghosts "written" in really cold ice crystals (heart of winter). We all know that consciousness in Planetos can be disembodied (skinchangers can migrate in other bodies and outlive themselves, greenseers can access the weirwood net, nightwalkers can enter dreams, fire priests can bring back life in deceased bodies). What if the Others are the same? We all know that their bodies are not real bodies but ice replicas. When Sam stabbed the WW, its body, its armor, melted in a pool of freezing water. No hair, no bones left. Only water. And we all know that when water freezes, it crystallizes. But why it's so important that water creates crystals? I hear you say. Well, because Martin has a long tail of novels and stories about crystals, mental powers and consciousness. >"The point, captain?” “The point-the point is the computers, Melantha. They had to be extraordinary. They are, believe me, they are. Crystal-matrix cores, lasergrid data retrieval, full sensory extension, and other-features.” “Are you trying to tell us that the Nightflyer is an Artificial Intelligence? Lommie Thorne suspected as much.” “She was wrong,” Royd said. “My ship is not an Artificial Intelligence, not as I understand it. But it is something close. Mother had a capacity for personality impress built in. She filled the central crystal with her own memories, desires, quirks, her loves and her-her hates. That was why she could trust the computer with my education, you see? She knew it would raise me as she herself would, had she the patience. She programmed it in certain other ways as well.” . >. I overestimated my own abilities, and underestimated her fear of exposure. She strikes out when she is threatened, and telepaths are always a threat. They sense her, you see. A malign, looming presence, they tell me, something cool and hostile and inhuman.” “Yes,” Karoly d’Branin said, “yes, that was what Thale said. An alien, he was certain of it.” “No doubt she feels alien to a telepath used to the familiar contours of organic minds. Hers is not a human brain, after all. What it is I cannot say-a complex of crystallized memories, a hellish network of interlocking programs, a meld of circuitry and spirit. Yes, I can understand why she might feel alien.” “You still haven’t explained how a computer program could explode a man’s skull,” Melantha said. “You wear the answer between your breasts, Melantha.” “My whisperjewel?” she said, puzzled. She felt it then, beneath her vacuum suit and her clothing; a touch of cold, a vague hint of eroticism that made her shiver. It was as if his mention had been enough to make the gem come alive. “I was not familiar with whisperjewels until you told me of yours,” Royd said, “but the principle is the same. Esper-etched, you said. Then you know that psionic power can be stored. The central core of my computer is resonant crystal, many times larger than your tiny jewel. I think Mother impressed it as she lay dying.” “Only an esper can etch a whisperjewel,” Melantha said. “You never asked the why of it, either of you,” Royd said. “You never asked why Mother hated people so. She was born gifted, you see. On Avalon she might have been a class one, tested and trained and honored, her talent nurtured and rewarded. I think she might have been very famous. She might have been stronger than a class one, but perhaps it is only after death that she acquired such power, linked as she is to the Nightflyer. “The point is moot. She was not born on Avalon. On Vess, her ability was seen as a curse, something alien and fearful. So they cured her of it. They used drugs and electroshock and hypnotraining that made her violently ill whenever she tried to use her talent. They used other, less savory methods as well. She never lost her power, of course, only the ability to use it effectively, to control it with her conscious mind. It remained part of her, suppressed, erratic, a source of shame and pain, surfacing violently in times of great emotional stress. And half a decade of institutional care almost drove her insane. No wonder she hated people.” “What was her talent? Telepathy?” “No. Oh, some rudimentary ability perhaps. I have read that all psi talents have several latent abilities in addition to their one developed strength. But Mother could not read minds. She had some empathy, although her cure had twisted it curiously, so that the emotions she felt literally sickened her. But her major strength, the talent they took five years to shatter and destroy, was teke.” Melantha Jhirl swore. “Of course she hated gravity! Telekinesis under weightlessness is-” “Yes,” Royd finished. “Keeping the Nightflyer under gravity tortures me, but it limits Mother.” . >-I have held the Nightflyer’s crystalline soul within my hands. It is deep red and multi-faceted, large as my head, and icy to the touch. In its scarlet depths, two small sparks of smoky light burn fiercely, and sometimes seem to whirl. I have crawled through the consoles, wound my way carefully past safeguards and cybernets, taking care to damage nothing, and I have laid rough hands on that great crystal, knowing it is where she lives. - Nightflyers . >The legends say he became ever more metallic as the voyage went on, and on Eris discovered the matrix crystal and expanded his intellectual abilities by orders of magnitude through the addition of the first crystal-matrix computer.” - the glass flower >Those are programming. It is possible to imprint the whole of a human mind upon a crystal matrix computer.” “And trap the soul in the crystal?” I said. “Do you believe in souls?” “Do you?” he asked. “I must. I am mistress of the game of mind. It would seem to be required of me.” - the glass flower . >"Erase me, you mean. The crystal is home to us both, child. Besides, I do not fear him. You miss the point. Kleronomas was crystal, the ghost organic meat, the outcome inevitable. My case is different. I am as crystalline as he is, and just as eternal.” - the glass flower
About fire shadowbabies and icy shadows, I think that are a reference to jungian themes. Disclaimer: this is complete tinfoil. But to me seems reasonable. Let me know your thoughts. We don't have many insights about Martin knowledge on real psychology and psychotherapy. Yes, he is an author capable of good PoV writing. Yes he probably knows a lot about Campbell and the hero's journey. However here i am to point my finger on some deep, queer similarities between ASOIAF magic systems/religions and Jung's theory of the psyche... and possibly the endgame of the series. Let's start with dreams. Deams and symbolic visions (greendreams, dragon dreams, prophetic dreams, glass candle dreams, etc) are a huge part of the ASOIAF magic system. But they are also a fundamental part of Jung studies. Jung noted that the unconscious has a timeless quality. It contains the past, still in living form and reaching far back beyond our conscious memory; it also shapes the future through its inscrutably purposive quality. Vaster than consciousness, which neatly separates events in some presumed causality, the unconscious is always pregnant with a yet to be conscious future - even if that future is at odds with our conscious desires. With his concept of synchronicity, he noted that events separated in space and time are yet related by meaning. And so manifested in dreams through symbols, which are hardly grasped by ego/consciousness. So we can now go and explore the Ego, the conscious realm. The interesting thing is that a domain of pure Ego/Consciousness is present in ASOIAF, and it is the realm of skinchanging (personal consciousness ) and the weirwood net (collective consciousness) . Skinchangers are migrating Egos that can posses other bodies as their own. The Old Gods on the other hand are the disembodied and preserved Ego of the Children (children who are also a reference to the Puer Aeternus, the archetypal immortal god child inside everyone). Than we have the Faceless Men, the men that can assume the PERSONA (a kind of mask, the face, designed to make a definite impression upon others, and on the others, to conceal their true nature) of anyone, his role, his looks, but inside are hollow, literally "No One". They aren't moving their egos, only wearing the look. Hidden beneath the awareness of the consciousness lies the unconscious. The contents of the unconscious are anything that has been forgotten and or repressed; anything not permitted to integrate into the conscious personality - and these can be positive as well as negative psychic components such as personal qualities, talents, dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, terrors, hatreds, psychic toxins. The darker aspects form ‘The Shadow", the lighter is the Mana. Shadows, in Jung, can be Personal Shadows and Collective Shadows. Personal Shadows resemble really close the shadowbabies created by the shadowbinders. They are psychological projections of the darkest, deepest desires of the person. Like the BLACK shadow of stannis who kills Renly. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself. Shadowbinding is a process that brings with it "the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality"-resulting in a merger with the shadow. According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps" But we also have a Collective Shadow. The Shadow of society, the shadow of human race. The Collective Shadow is humanity's dark side. It is the sum total of past and present atrocities, cruelties, tragedies, and horrors perpetrated by humankind and stored at a deep, unconscious level. To me, the Collective shadow of Men are... The Others . The WHITE Shadows. Or, if you want, the GREAT OTHER. They are in-human, alien, not of flesh and blood but of ice. Nevertheless they look human, they skinchange (not living things but dead bodies), they talk, laugh and fight. In essence, the collective shadow is the combined projection of the shadow of every human ever lived. And it has remained in darkness and growing deeper, darker and larger for a very long time. Imagine the collective shadow as an invisible but very real potent energy force made up by the antithesis of humanity. Imagine this, locked up, removed from westeros. Not in the underworld, not under the earth, but in the far North, removed, isolated, brooding by a barrier. Like a HUGE magical ice wall that divides physically and mentally (jon struggles to sense Ghost while the wall stands in the middle) a continent. The majority of the population are oblivious to its existence and potential danger, going about their daily lives with no awareness of what is on the other side and what is about to occur. Sooner or later, the pressure builds to such a level that it can no longer be contained, and the wall explodes - leaving everyone in complete shock, and catastrophic death and destruction in its wake. And when the collective shadow is huge enough, it casts a LONG NIGHT. Sensitive people can feel the collective shadow; are aware of its existence. This is why many people have had feelings, insights, dreams, that something big was coming this year. Jung himself viewed the World Wars as expressions/projections of the collective shadow and he was so intuitive that he dreamt of and sensed the war drawing near way before it was evident to others. Those attuned to Mother Nature, the environment and the animal kingdom, knew that we were reaching a tolerance point. And so are a lot of men in Planetos. And now we are arrinving to the last, but not least, part. The Manic aspect of the unconscious psyche. The most famous of Jung's concepts: the Archetypes. And yes i'm talking about the Faith of the seven. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger are 100% junghian archetypes. The role of the Faith was to stop the Ego driven Old Religion, to encourage the Men to discover their true selves. Sadly septons became politicians and the Faith lost its way. But what does it mean, why GRRM would ever structure is supernatural world like that? Well, we know that his preferred narratives are anti-war narratives. And for Jung, the psychological process to overcome the conflicts between the ego, the shadow, the mana, and the dreams is the process of acceptance and INTEGRATION.
About fire shadowbabies and icy shadows, I think that are a reference to jungian themes. Disclaimer: this is complete tinfoil. But to me seems reasonable. Let me know your thoughts. We don't have many insights about Martin knowledge on real psychology and psychotherapy. Yes, he is an author capable of good PoV writing. Yes he probably knows a lot about Campbell and the hero's journey. However here i am to point my finger on some deep, queer similarities between ASOIAF magic systems/religions and Jung's theory of the psyche... and possibly the endgame of the series. Let's start with dreams. Deams and symbolic visions (greendreams, dragon dreams, prophetic dreams, glass candle dreams, etc) are a huge part of the ASOIAF magic system. But they are also a fundamental part of Jung studies. Jung noted that the unconscious has a timeless quality. It contains the past, still in living form and reaching far back beyond our conscious memory; it also shapes the future through its inscrutably purposive quality. Vaster than consciousness, which neatly separates events in some presumed causality, the unconscious is always pregnant with a yet to be conscious future - even if that future is at odds with our conscious desires. With his concept of synchronicity, he noted that events separated in space and time are yet related by meaning. And so manifested in dreams through symbols, which are hardly grasped by ego/consciousness. So we can now go and explore the Ego, the conscious realm. The interesting thing is that a domain of pure Ego/Consciousness is present in ASOIAF, and it is the realm of skinchanging (personal consciousness ) and the weirwood net (collective consciousness) . Skinchangers are migrating Egos that can posses other bodies as their own. The Old Gods on the other hand are the disembodied and preserved Ego of the Children (children who are also a reference to the Puer Aeternus, the archetypal immortal god child inside everyone). Than we have the Faceless Men, the men that can assume the PERSONA (a kind of mask, the face, designed to make a definite impression upon others, and on the others, to conceal their true nature) of anyone, his role, his looks, but inside are hollow, literally "No One". They aren't moving their egos, only wearing the look. Hidden beneath the awareness of the consciousness lies the unconscious. The contents of the unconscious are anything that has been forgotten and or repressed; anything not permitted to integrate into the conscious personality - and these can be positive as well as negative psychic components such as personal qualities, talents, dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, terrors, hatreds, psychic toxins. The darker aspects form ‘The Shadow", the lighter is the Mana. Shadows, in Jung, can be Personal Shadows and Collective Shadows. Personal Shadows resemble really close the shadowbabies created by the shadowbinders. They are psychological projections of the darkest, deepest desires of the person. Like the BLACK shadow of stannis who kills Renly. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself. Shadowbinding is a process that brings with it "the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality"-resulting in a merger with the shadow. According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps" But we also have a Collective Shadow. The Shadow of society, the shadow of human race. The Collective Shadow is humanity's dark side. It is the sum total of past and present atrocities, cruelties, tragedies, and horrors perpetrated by humankind and stored at a deep, unconscious level. To me, the Collective shadow of Men are... The Others . The WHITE Shadows. Or, if you want, the GREAT OTHER. They are in-human, alien, not of flesh and blood but of ice. Nevertheless they look human, they skinchange (not living things but dead bodies), they talk, laugh and fight. In essence, the collective shadow is the combined projection of the shadow of every human ever lived. And it has remained in darkness and growing deeper, darker and larger for a very long time. Imagine the collective shadow as an invisible but very real potent energy force made up by the antithesis of humanity. Imagine this, locked up, removed from westeros. Not in the underworld, not under the earth, but in the far North, removed, isolated, brooding by a barrier. Like a HUGE magical ice wall that divides physically and mentally (jon struggles to sense Ghost while the wall stands in the middle) a continent. The majority of the population are oblivious to its existence and potential danger, going about their daily lives with no awareness of what is on the other side and what is about to occur. Sooner or later, the pressure builds to such a level that it can no longer be contained, and the wall explodes - leaving everyone in complete shock, and catastrophic death and destruction in its wake. And when the collective shadow is huge enough, it casts a LONG NIGHT. Sensitive people can feel the collective shadow; are aware of its existence. This is why many people have had feelings, insights, dreams, that something big was coming this year. Jung himself viewed the World Wars as expressions/projections of the collective shadow and he was so intuitive that he dreamt of and sensed the war drawing near way before it was evident to others. Those attuned to Mother Nature, the environment and the animal kingdom, knew that we were reaching a tolerance point. And so are a lot of men in Planetos. And now we are arrinving to the last, but not least, part. The Manic aspect of the unconscious psyche. The most famous of Jung's concepts: the Archetypes. And yes i'm talking about the Faith of the seven. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger are 100% junghian archetypes. The role of the Faith was to stop the Ego driven Old Religion, to encourage the Men to discover their true selves. Sadly septons became politicians and the Faith lost its way. But what does it mean, why GRRM would ever structure is supernatural world like that? Well, we know that his preferred narratives are anti-war narratives. And for Jung, the psychological process to overcome the conflicts between the ego, the shadow, the mana, and the dreams is the process of acceptance and INTEGRATION.
So about the Half-Wolf shadows... Look up Maliketh the Black Blade and Blaidd Half Wolf. When you slay Maliketh in Elden Ring, he does dissolve into a strange, writhing liquid. Blaidd's head remains after he dies, but we don't see what happens to his body.
Blaidd's head does not remain after he dies. The helmet taken from Blaidd's model is found on another body nearby after Blaidd is dead, not with the main portion of his armor.
@@Eladeliathe helmet you’re talking about is a mask someone made to impersonate Blaidd. It’s not Blaidd’s actual head and you can pick it up before he dies.
I'm thinking there could be a good parallel between Miquella and Bran. Miquella is cursed with the body of a child, Bran is also "cursed" by losing his legs. Miquella learned a lot about the Golden Order from Radagon, probably the closest thing to an embodiment of the Order itself. But apparently he then probably started disagreeing with the order and made his own version of the Erdtree, the Haligtree, for him and his sister. Imo this fits very well with Bran learning from Bloodraven and eventually going against the old ways
I'm really glad you've started touching on this. I've ranted about it in videos twice now, truly, that people refuse to notice their similarities. I think that Elden Ring is more akin to the long lost history of ASOIAF, rather than the future of A Dream of Spring. That doesn't mean that you calling upon similarities isn't correct - Elden Ring features gods and demigods with long lives, so characters are going to be playing similar roles as multiple characters in ASOIAF. I think Bran is ultimately more akin to Miquella, for example. Miquella is pictured even without legs at one point. Also the Albinaurics reminds me of Jojen... I personally do not trust Marika, and think her akin to Bloodraven, the Great Other, and also various golden maidens in the historical lore - with storm kings and giants and sea kings as her mates. Also, she took death out of the world - that's what the Others essentially are. She is the woman in the weirwood net. The difference here is that this ritual seems to be the norm except that Marika took death out of the world, and broke it. This is the long night. Ranni is a Stark who intends to change that, as every champion does in their own way to some extent. While Melina does play a similar role to Shireen, she also is similar to Arya in a way. She's also similar to The Amethyst Empress, but not nearly as much as The Gloam Eyed Queen. Overall, loved the video and hope to see more from you and others in the future! This was fun.
34:33 Mohg is another child of Marika who was born an Omen. He's missing an eye after allowing his cursed horns to grow, and now has a connection to the formless mother. He's 1 of 2 optional bosses in the base game that you need to defeat to access Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, the other being Radahn who holds back the stars(fate)
Another parallel I noticed: In Elden Ring, Hoarah Loux and the Tarnished (Barbarians) are Exiled into the badlands, after Hoarah Loux is stripped of his Kingship, where he and his people travel away in an event called "The Long March" (a very GRRM-esque name) which is pretty much the original plan GRRM had for Jon Snow being exiled beyond the wall with The Wildlings.
32:14 I think it's less likely to be fragments from a second MOON (the destruction of that would probably have obliterated Planetos with it's debris), but remnants of a SECOND TYPE OF TREE. InDeepGeek has a great video about blackstone in ASOIAF where he posits that the oily or inky black stone could be petrified Shade of the Evening Tree, which is essentially a mirror image of the Weirwoods that exist in Essos. We know from the books that Weirwoods will petrify and become stone; so if the Shade Trees, which are black with blue leaves instead of white with red leaves, were to undergo the same process, they'd likely have the same black, inky coloration and texture. They also have magical properties like Weirwoods, only they allow you to experience visions and prophecies whereas Weirwoods can store consciousness and allow one's spirit to project through time.
OHMYGOD face dropped upon learning Patches from demon souls is a fucking asoif easter egg, no way these two have lived in my memory for so long without such a connection
before you even said shireen my jaw was on the floor WOW Edit: hahaha and here i am pausing yet again to dance around my kitchen YOU DID IT! the oily black connection is genius.
If you want another parallel between Ranni/Melly Sanders & the Nights Queen, Ranni looked like Melly sanders before she slew her body and became a doll.
Perhaps Melisandre represents a sort of "Frenzied Flame" ending for ASoIaF, rather than a Ranni the witch paralel. In Elden ring, one potential ending has the tarnished take on the Frenzied flame and burn out the world tree to the roots, as Melisandre would do to winterfell. Oh, and I know you mentioned Melina as a Shireen paralel, but how about Melina as a Nissa Nissa Azor Ahai paralel? Our tarnished, the hero to inherit the world and create a new age has to sacrifice his woman and emerge with a 'flaming sword' so to speak, the flame of death to burn the erdtree's impenetrable thorns (impenetrable thorns with marika trapped inside : Unbreakable wall with Others trapped inside.). Amazing video. Cool to see that Elden Ring is like A Song of Ice and Fire if there were 10 demigods vying for the position of greenseer, each taking full advantage of the shadow, blood, fire, and old magic to create their own version of the world. And the 'best' endings of the game completely upturn the system somehow, just as Bran will do in a Dream of Spring.
About fire shadowbabies and icy shadows, I think that are a reference to jungian themes. Disclaimer: this is complete tinfoil. But to me seems reasonable. Let me know your thoughts. We don't have many insights about Martin knowledge on real psychology and psychotherapy. Yes, he is an author capable of good PoV writing. Yes he probably knows a lot about Campbell and the hero's journey. However here i am to point my finger on some deep, queer similarities between ASOIAF magic systems/religions and Jung's theory of the psyche... and possibly the endgame of the series. Let's start with dreams. Deams and symbolic visions (greendreams, dragon dreams, prophetic dreams, glass candle dreams, etc) are a huge part of the ASOIAF magic system. But they are also a fundamental part of Jung studies. Jung noted that the unconscious has a timeless quality. It contains the past, still in living form and reaching far back beyond our conscious memory; it also shapes the future through its inscrutably purposive quality. Vaster than consciousness, which neatly separates events in some presumed causality, the unconscious is always pregnant with a yet to be conscious future - even if that future is at odds with our conscious desires. With his concept of synchronicity, he noted that events separated in space and time are yet related by meaning. And so manifested in dreams through symbols, which are hardly grasped by ego/consciousness. So we can now go and explore the Ego, the conscious realm. The interesting thing is that a domain of pure Ego/Consciousness is present in ASOIAF, and it is the realm of skinchanging (personal consciousness ) and the weirwood net (collective consciousness) . Skinchangers are migrating Egos that can posses other bodies as their own. The Old Gods on the other hand are the disembodied and preserved Ego of the Children (children who are also a reference to the Puer Aeternus, the archetypal immortal god child inside everyone). Than we have the Faceless Men, the men that can assume the PERSONA (a kind of mask, the face, designed to make a definite impression upon others, and on the others, to conceal their true nature) of anyone, his role, his looks, but inside are hollow, literally "No One". They aren't moving their egos, only wearing the look. Hidden beneath the awareness of the consciousness lies the unconscious. The contents of the unconscious are anything that has been forgotten and or repressed; anything not permitted to integrate into the conscious personality - and these can be positive as well as negative psychic components such as personal qualities, talents, dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, terrors, hatreds, psychic toxins. The darker aspects form ‘The Shadow", the lighter is the Mana. Shadows, in Jung, can be Personal Shadows and Collective Shadows. Personal Shadows resemble really close the shadowbabies created by the shadowbinders. They are psychological projections of the darkest, deepest desires of the person. Like the BLACK shadow of stannis who kills Renly. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself. Shadowbinding is a process that brings with it "the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality"-resulting in a merger with the shadow. According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps" But we also have a Collective Shadow. The Shadow of society, the shadow of human race. The Collective Shadow is humanity's dark side. It is the sum total of past and present atrocities, cruelties, tragedies, and horrors perpetrated by humankind and stored at a deep, unconscious level. To me, the Collective shadow of Men are... The Others . The WHITE Shadows. Or, if you want, the GREAT OTHER. They are in-human, alien, not of flesh and blood but of ice. Nevertheless they look human, they skinchange (not living things but dead bodies), they talk, laugh and fight. In essence, the collective shadow is the combined projection of the shadow of every human ever lived. And it has remained in darkness and growing deeper, darker and larger for a very long time. Imagine the collective shadow as an invisible but very real potent energy force made up by the antithesis of humanity. Imagine this, locked up, removed from westeros. Not in the underworld, not under the earth, but in the far North, removed, isolated, brooding by a barrier. Like a HUGE magical ice wall that divides physically and mentally (jon struggles to sense Ghost while the wall stands in the middle) a continent. The majority of the population are oblivious to its existence and potential danger, going about their daily lives with no awareness of what is on the other side and what is about to occur. Sooner or later, the pressure builds to such a level that it can no longer be contained, and the wall explodes - leaving everyone in complete shock, and catastrophic death and destruction in its wake. And when the collective shadow is huge enough, it casts a LONG NIGHT. Sensitive people can feel the collective shadow; are aware of its existence. This is why many people have had feelings, insights, dreams, that something big was coming this year. Jung himself viewed the World Wars as expressions/projections of the collective shadow and he was so intuitive that he dreamt of and sensed the war drawing near way before it was evident to others. Those attuned to Mother Nature, the environment and the animal kingdom, knew that we were reaching a tolerance point. And so are a lot of men in Planetos. And now we are arrinving to the last, but not least, part. The Manic aspect of the unconscious psyche. The most famous of Jung's concepts: the Archetypes. And yes i'm talking about the Faith of the seven. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger are 100% junghian archetypes. The role of the Faith was to stop the Ego driven Old Religion, to encourage the Men to discover their true selves. Sadly septons became politicians and the Faith lost its way. But what does it mean, why GRRM would ever structure is supernatural world like that? Well, we know that his preferred narratives are anti-war narratives. And for Jung, the psychological process to overcome the conflicts between the ego, the shadow, the mana, and the dreams is the process of acceptance and INTEGRATION.
One of the most important pieces to understanding Elden Ring is understanding the Law of Causality and Regression: that all things are linked in a chain of relation and that we can look at each piece in the chain to understand why it is there. The reason why that is important is because three of our most pivotal characters are aware of this as well: Miqeulla, Radagon, and Marika. They know that if you want Y sometimes you have to create X, you want an effect so you create the cause. Miquella being eternally young is not JUST him being frail like Bran and Sweetrobin but it also parallels Bran being able time-travel. You gotta be a fan of the Time-traveling Bran theory and that Bran is the Three Eyed Crow for this to all work for you. Since you cannot know Miquella's age we must assume that he is much older than actually portrayed, both of his parents are the same person and have unknown origins and life spans, and his twin is also in a limbo where she eternally decays. So being older than most other characters he knows more than them, being eternally youthful he can deceive other characters, being able to bewitch others means he can manipulate people to do what he wants, and knowing Causality and Regression means he can set up a chain of events that will allow him to reach his goal. From the DLC webpage, we know that: It was to this land that Miquella departed. Divesting himself of his flesh, his strength, his lineage. Of all things Golden. The way that Miquella fed the Haligtree was with his own blood, and that this failed and the tree fell to rot, but it only looks like failure if you think the goal was to grow a nice big healthy tree. Instead we can see that Miquella was attempting to divest himself of his flesh and all things Golden so he could make it the Land of Shadow via his spirit. In Elden Ring, spirits get hewned into the Erdtree via the roots. In order to prevent your soul from being vacuumed up by the tree you need something to prevent that, you need Deathroot. When Godwyn was murdered and buried into the Greattree Roots it spread, preventing souls from being consumed by the Erdtree and creating Those Who Live in Death(who all happen to either be bandits, soldiers of the previous ruling power, or hexers who practice heretical magic) Looks like Deathroot might protect Miquella's soul as it travels to the Land of Shadow. With the death of Godwyn we get the events that lead to the Shattering, the war and the Shattering of the Elden Ring. This destabilization throws the world into chaos, many people die, the power structures that currently hold society crumble. You have Malenia, the undefeated Swordswoman who can't defeat Radahn, so she nukes Caelid with Rot, causing Radahn to go mad and regress into a dog like beast. Radahn is holding up the stars in stasis, and his death is necessary to access the DLC. Most think that Malenia failed to kill Radahn, but I don't think that was her mission, or at least not what Miquella wanted. Miquella was abducted by Mohg and brought beneath Caelid in what looks like a large tree stump. Beneath where Radahn and Malenia fought, the blood seeped through the earth and made a blood swamp. Perhaps this was the goal all along for Miquella: Murder Godwyn, get deathroot, destabilize the world, divest grace by feeding Haligtree, get abducted by Mohg and brought under Caelid, sister comes looking for him and causes a massive war, blood leaks into Mohgwyn, Radahn had 70 IQ shaved off the top so he can't let go of the stars. During all of this chaos, the Tarnished return, and it just so happens that the last Tarnished to return is chosen by Miquella's horse: Torrent. For someone reason, our player character is special and Torrent knows it. Are Tarnished has a pretty easy time in the Lands Between all things considered, we get to level up with Runes, ghost girl in a doll gives us a bell to summons spirits to help us, and the power structures that would have guided, indoctrinated, or hindered Tarnished mostly dont exist anymore. Everyone is mad and deathless and doesn't really pay attention to Torrent's Chosen Tarnished as he goes on a checklist of killing everything. Seems pretty convenient This chosen Tarnished is also the one who kills Radahn and unlocks the stars, perhaps this is what Miquella wanted. If Radahn was sane, or killed too soon, then the stars would unlock before Torrent's chosen might have even been around. If this is what Miquella is doing, then what could Bran be up to? Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.
Hey there, I've spent the last couple of days listening to everything you have online. I love your ideas and how you put them forth. I'm sorry that this is a little out of context for the video but when bran is first learning to fly, his vision is taken north of the wall to the heart of Winter which is where he has that moment of terror. In Danny's vision in the house of undying she sees the blue heart surrounded by the undying. I believe this blue heart represents the heart of Winter, the same heart of Winter which bran sees far north of the wall. I therefore think that whatever needs to be destroyed to free the others who are chained to these trees is the tree at the heart of Winter, not only the trees at the wall itself. The wall will have to come down in order for Danny on Drogon, to get to the heart of Winter and free the undying. Love your ideas man!
That was really Interesting, I had no idea about the scope of ASOIAF magic system, that stuff tends to get buried by the inter house conflicts in the show.
As a big elden ring fan, it's so cool to see a fresh perspective on the lore. The elden ring lore and story is so vague, that sometimes it feels like grasping for straws. But seeing all these parallels gives some of the more unhinged things some legitimacy. I'm excited to see more!
Great video. Elden Ring might hold the answer to some other issues I've always had as well. With Ranni, she also matches up really well with the Bloodstone Emperor, who also killed a sibling to shatter the reigning world order. Ranni's original body was destroyed, meaning there is a chance that the Bloodstone Emperor is the Great Other residing in the weirwoods. Also this connection could recast the original Long Night as something similar to the Shattering, a super magical War of the Five Kings that saw the whole world engulfed in a conflict nobody won and all sorts of supernatural entities. Another thing is the parallels between Rykard and Euron. I've never believed that Euron wanted anything to do with the Others and instead had his own plan for godhood. I'm thinking like Rykard he seeks to consume the power of the other 'gods' and become a new god himself, creating a dark age free from the Weirwoods but ruled by his own evil. It would set him up as a dark foil to Bran and the new order he seeks to create and match up with endings like the 'Frenzied Flame' ending or Blessing of Despair ending of Elden Ring.
Also the Night of Black Knives is very reminiscent of the assassination of Renly. Especially if you believe that Ranni is a stand in for Melisandre. The game describes the women attackers as phantoms, sneeking in a murdering Godwyn with "stolen" fragments of the Elden Ring, which were used by Ranni to forge knives that could kill a god.
Thank you for this Micheal I've been asking people for this for a long time and you are the only one who delivered!!! Of course everyone will now probably make a video on this but nah you did the work here not them
The Elden Ring itself is a star that fell to the earth. Aligns with LmL's theories about meteors. So is Glintstone, magic powered life crystals. As it is explained Golden Amber, the star of the Elden Ring, contains the remnants of ancient life. This likely refers to the Elden Beast. Glintstone contains residual life, and the power of the cosmos. What I'm getting at is that the 2 most powerful magic systems in Elden Ring uses life as a magical power source, just like ASOIAF. There is also just plain Blood Magic, crystalized blood used as Glintstone, and Fire magic that uses humans as kindling.
Freaky, it draws parallels to the real world state of currencies and electricity, the way that power shifts within our own world, and how having accurate and reliable communication is a power within itself.
One addition I think might be relevant. In the Elden Ring lore, everyone I can think of that has some interaction or association with Gods seem to have only one eye open (Mohg, Ranni, Morgott, and now Messmer). In my mind this is because they have one eye anchoring them to reality and one eye focussed on the metaphysical. You mentioned Bloodraven as someone who shares this property of only having one eye physically open. I think this is for the same reason. His physical eye anchors him to the real world, whilst his closed eye is more spiritually aligned. Who else has only one eye physically open? Euron Crow's Eye. I think he could be analogous to either Mohg or Messmer as this figure who is in communion with some metaphysical force that wants to corrupt the current order.
Have you looked into how Elden Ring’s history lines up with irl history? There’s a whole thing about cultures being built on top of previous cultures, taken directly from the last 5000 years of human civilization, Quelaag has a whole video on it Elden Ring History [and how it broke me] or something like that
Melina is also the sister and/or the daughter of Marika, giving her “kings blood” like Shireen. The Gloam-Eyed Queen was probably Marika’s sister as Empyrean status is seemingly familial, and after her defeat and rebirth Marika gave her the name Melina and set her on a path to find a new Elden Lord for Marika.
28:30 Technically... Burning Shireen did work in the show. They make a point of it to show that the weather got warmer and the snow was melting. But the burning itself is what made Stannis lose most of his army and therefore the battle. 32:28 Asshai is made up of Oily Black Stone, the 5 Forts are fused black stone, not the same.
Hi, about the "demigods missing one eye" theme section: One huge parallel which may be more coincidence than not, but there is a character named Mohg. He is a pretty powerful demigod. He has a horn growing through one eye. Basically his entire theme revolves around blood (and especially bloodflame, which is why I kinda sat up for a bit when you said "Fire and Blood"), and in phase 2 of his bossfight, he sprouts huge, black bird wings. Bloodraven.... blood.. raven... hmmm. Coincidence......
Mogh serves the formless mother another outer god entity. So to please his formless mother he kidnapps his brothersister for marriage. I’m trying to make the bloodraven connection but it might not be directly here
Have you read George’s short story a song for lya? About psychics that go to a planet where people grow plants from their head and join the plant hive mind when they die?
At the end of Elden Ring, in only 1 of the 6 endings has you assist an empyrean to start a new age. 1 ending is just basically repairing the old order, 3 endings are assisting other tarnished in creating a new rune to fuse with the elden ring to start a new age with a twist. The final ending is assisting an eldrich chaos god to destroy the world.
One of the weirdest things I've noticed in the Elden Ring community is a thread of disdain and occasionally hostility towards GRRM. Certainly I don't wish to generalize; not everyone in the community shares this opinion, but I often see people downplay or outright deny George's contributions even while trying to analyze it. It makes no sense to me, because even if you really just don't like GRRM's work, his ideas are still important for understanding Elden Ring. So if you want to learn as much as possible about the lore in Elden Ring, at some point you need to take a look at George's work and ideas.
Those are the fans that arent familiar with ASOIAF and want to reject it cause they dont understand it/dont know about it. They just played all the souls games and are familiar with From Softwares past titles, and arent interested in ASOIAF/GOT so they try to downplay GRRM's contribution to the story.
Great video, this inspired me to read ASOIAF! I love all things from soft and they're world building is a perfect match for for George RR Martin, you got my sub!!
I have something I would like to point out, dragons in Elden Ring lore are beings that in the past already had a lord and a god who ruled the world, in this case Placidusax and the god mentioned in his remembrance, now, we have countless evidence that points to that dragons also served the same outer god of the current era, the greater will, whether due to the fact that Placidusax is called elden lord, a title that seems linked only with the consorts of the gods of the greater will, with other outer gods apparently having the title of different lords such as lord of Frenzied flame, lord of blood for Mohg and the formless mother and lord of the night for the prophesied lord of the nox which is most likely what we became in the age of stars, Placidusax being an elden lord that would make him servant of greater will, and other evidence is the incredible amount of correlations that dragons have with gold and gold being a representation of the influence of the greater will (I wasn't going into details of all of them because there are many correlations with gold) interestingly the city capital of the ancient dragons was destroyed by a catastrophic event that was the fall of a meteor in their city, any similarity with Valyria and its fall is mere coincidence... interestingly this would make dragons still in some ways still in the age of influence of the current god (the greater will) just as the valiryan empire rose and fell during what would be the age setting that the chronicles world is still in?
There's another character in Elden Ring named Bernahl, who is a parallel to the player character and also attempts to burn the Erdtree. However, he didn't meet Melina, and he sacrifices his own maiden to no avail and never becomes Elden Lord. The sacrifice of Shireen could similarly be in vain. Also, Ranni's Dark Moon is the one that's viewable in the sky, one which produces no moonlight. It's the normal full moon that's obscured and only visible from the area Moonlight Altar which you need to do Ranni's questline to access, where moonlight does spill.
I like how a key component of this old magic stuff is dragon glass which is essentially fire ice, if this fire ice is what makes the blood magic and all that it would be perfect for its counter to be true flame. It's all coming together
I been thinking about doing a deep dive on Elden ring lore but been putting it off because I’ve never played the game and I thought it was just to extensive and confusing but thia just convinced me. I got into ASOIAF lore so can’t be too much harder based off listening to you.
The only way that Elden Ring lore is likely to be "harder" to get into is the fact that it's not very pushy about presenting it to you. When the ASOIAF novels want to tell you what happened at a particular castle, they're going to tell you by putting text on the page. When Elden Ring wants to tell you what happened at a castle, the information will probably be scattered among various item descriptions that you have to go out of your way to read, along with dialogue with NPCs that you have to go out of your way to talk to, plus some environmental storytelling (e.g. the picture of a specific demigod in a place of honor on the wall of someone's fortress signaling that the demigod in question was highly regarded by the people who lived there). So the actual lore isn't so hard, but finding the pieces is a bit of a quest.
Regarding your connection between the shadowbound beasts and Melisandre’s shadow babies, Blaidd the Halfwolf (the shadowbound beast of Ranni the Witch) calls himself a “part of her very being.” So shadowbound beasts do have a connection to their empyreans that you described the shadow babies had to their masters.
One parallel you missed that is way to clear now that I look into it: Dragon Glass = Glintstone. Both are two magical wonder materials with many uses and if your shattered dragon moon story is correct both fel from the sky. Glass candle = Glintstone staff, Obsidian sacrificial knife = primal glintstone blade, Obsidian weaponry is imbued with fire magic = To give magical abilities to weaponry fashion it from or adorn it with glintstone. To explain what Glintstone sorcery in elden ring is we compare it to what it isn't, Incantations. Incantations are cast with a magic seal, a symbol of faith but as you progress you find formless seal which means that the actual physical seal is a dumbos magic feather and the spell is actually mental. Sorceries on the other hand always need a staff with a crystal even if the stealth magic staff has an invisible or lost crystal it is still connected to a crystal. What are these crystals? Most are glintstones, crystals of starlight or star life energy. However we know that you can also make crystals out of other sources of life energy, red glintstone made of blood or amber from the life energy collected by the erdtree. So glintstone sorcery is magic cast with the help of a crystal containing life energy and glintstones themselves are a type of crystal that is good at containing life energy. Since magic is more overt in Elden ring it is hard to draw any lore connections for Elden ring from ASOIAF but the reverse is potentially possible. * Glintstone sorcery staffs uses life energy collected from stars to help a sorcerer to cast magic just like a Glass candle collects energy from either dragons or directly from the celestial red comet to enhance fire and divination magic. It is possible that just like glintstone staffs need rare high quality glintstones it might be that a glass candle needs rare high quality dragon glass. * Weaponry made by sorcerors are adorned with glintstones to hold the magic in them. It is possible that one part of the secret to valyrian steel is that dragon glass is mixed into the metal to keep the magic from leaving the metal. Or allowing metal to store the life energy or spirit of the valyrian steel. * Perhaps most importantly ancient sorcerors cut out their hearts with glintstone and then placed the stone in a puppet body that then begin to move by itself. This technique of storing your lifeforce in a glintstone to avoid death has facinating implications for the Others creation. Especially since Sorceress Selen reveals that she is a projection cast by a puppet body bound to a wall in a tomb. You free her by pulling out the glintstone holding her lifeforce, then you insert it into a different body. Maybe an other will either try or succed in freeing themself by removing the obsidian dagger holding their lifeforce and inserting it into someone else and taking over their body. Could be either a good sympathetic other like maybe the night queen or maybe the other(s) trying to kill all humans as vengeance. It could also be what separates a greenseer from an other, the greenseer is sustained and then absorbed by the weirwood but an other is sustained by the weirwood but also trapped inside their body since the dragonglass dagger traps the lifeforce within itself. Symbolically and literally traping the spirit in the body and preventing the weirwood from decomposing the body and releasing the spirit. Heck if we go with the theory of the others bodies being preserved by the obsidian then that gives us another parallel with elden ring. Others = Godwyn the prince of death and Wights = those who live in death. While Godwyn is preserved between life and death in another way than the others he is still a corpse that can't truelly die connected to and corrupting a tree based afterlife. Just like those who live in death sprang from a halfdead corpse that couldn't be absorbed by the erdtree the others could have sprung from interrupted sacrifices to the weirwoods. Since they were fed to the weirwoods but they could never truelly leave their bodies and be absorbed by the weirwood. * More speculative but just like how low quality glintstone is used for other uses like single use parlor trick magic maybe low quality dragon glass is a component to dragonstone. If the Valyrians mined obsidian like cracy then extra hard stone seems like a good use for all the surplus low quality material. Awesome video hope you read this Michael.
Now that I check it again Dragonstone soil has lots of obsidian/dragon glass. It could very well be that the entire original reason for building the Valyrian colony in westeros is to mine obsidian for the Valyrians fire magic.
I always thought of the whole returning to Erdtree after death as a natural cycle of life thing, but now that i think more about it, i like your interpretation of how it's sinister in both ASOIAF and ER. Please consider making more videos about ER in comparison with ASOIAF, there's a lot more interesting lore left. There's more celestial themes in Elden ring than just the moon. One of Ranni's brothers Radahn uses gravity magic. Once you kill him, you get a meteor shower cut scene and you also get story progression/access to new area. His gravity magic was holding the stars hostage and by killing him you free the stars and lets things change. Killing him is also required for Ranni's quests and the access to Mohg/upcoming DLC area. Although I've heard theorists say the stars in ER are creatures (some of them are bosses) so maybe that complicates things.
so so glad so see someone finally making this video, ive been leaving comments on elden ring youtubers for literally years now “read asoiaf please it will all make so much more sense” and telling asoiaf youtubers to play elden ring lol
I was just watching a video on how they are connecting mushrooms, or rather, fungus, to Computers, bcuz the fungus can compute the fastest routes for energy to travel, & can perform complex mathematics & geometry, etc. And can do many other complicated tasks, that would increase computing power & performance, as the species is highly intelligent. And they are attaching this actual fungus, or it's spider web-like, ("WEB- worldwide web...), fibers, (not mushrooms, into the processor's mechanisms. Incredible. Made me think, immediately, of the Wierwood Net. I'm sure u know what I mean, without explaining, as it's been discussed prior.
And they're hoping this will transition us to quantum computing. It's amazing to me, to blend organic materials with machines, very dystopian, lol, & cyborg-esque.
Great video as always, thanks Michael! If the Flame of Ruin proceeded the age of the Erdtree this also mirrors Tolkien where the Valar created the two Lamps which once destroyed by Melkor was replaced by the Years of the Trees of Valinor
Another interesting thing about the Erdtree is that not only is Marika inside of it but there’s a burial rite performed by society in Elden Ring where when you die, your body is placed next to roots of the erdtree in hopes that you’re reborn through the branches. It’s also implied that more hi-born individuals get placed closer and closer to the base of the erdtree, Godwyns corpse is placed directly beneath the erdtree as he is a direct descendant of Marika and the first demigod to die.
@@fakeaccountzsthat is not his body beneath the castle, his body is spreading death root in the erdtree, and sometimes this corruption shows up as his corrupted, decaying face.
It already did make sense if you knew your Celtic folklore. He's named after Bran the Blessed, whose buried head is supposed to magically sustain and control the British Isles.
When it comes to the One Eye gods, it seems there was a deity before the Erdtree and Marika that the Fire Giants host, it has one giant eye. There is also the "blood star" that you can see if you poke out your eyes. Mogh, the Lord of Blood's own horn poked his eye out, and now he is in contact with an Outer God called the Formless Mother who craves wounds and blood. This parallels another Blood God in Fromsoft's game Bloodborn called the Formless Odeon. So there seems to be a connection between godhood and one-eyed-ness / blindness. We really don't know much about the process of becoming a god and growing an Erdtree outside of it needs blood. Even then, with Miquellas holy blood, his Haligtree (Holy Tree) failed. We are in high anticipation of the DLC that has been promised to answer many questions regarding Marikas godhood, Erdtrees, the Crucible (the previous age), and the long forgotten history of the Lands of Shadow.
honestly glad i stumbled upon this video, but if you haven't yet i recommend looking into a possible connection to Miquella as he is trying to make his own competitor to the Erdtree. i would also recommend looking into Mohg "one of the demi gods in game and someone who steals Miquella from his sleep" and his connection to bloodflame, which might lead down a rabbit hole with the Omen curse, as well as the outer god he serves, The Formless Mother
About Stannis' sacrifice of Shirey not working: Look up Bernahl, in Elden Ring. He sacrificed his maiden before the player did and it didn't work. If he parallels Stannis, then it means that his maiden probably didn't have the right lineage/the right type of king's blood and, in the case of ER, a child of Marika, or descendent, is required. This would mean that there is a family out there in ASOIAF that does have the right blood and one of their young female members will be/have to be sacrificed. My bet is on one of the Starks, given that they are most connected to the Weirwoods. About Ranni being the Night Queen: She learned her ice magic from a blue skinned Ice Witch (she modeled the puppet her soul now resides in after that person). The Ice witch is probably the Night Queen parallel. About the Wall being build from bodies: ER's Volcano Manor is build from bodies. In some places where the building is destroyed, you can literally see the body parts in the 'stone'. The magic of Mt Gelmir is considered heretical/blasphemous, though, so not sure how well that fits into ASOIAF, beyond the current generation probably being repulsed by knowing the truth of the construction of the Wall.
34:38 if I remember correctly in Norse mythology Odin sacrifices one of his eyes to drink from a well of knowledge and gains divine wisdom and becomes even more perceptive than with two eyes maybe this could fit in with blood raven being that Odin's story is how nothing is too much to sacrifice for wisdom(also there's a world tree in Norse mythology) I'd love to see a complete theory from you one day 🤞🏻 Ps. Odin has two crows with names translate to thought and mind and they bring information to him
Agreed. If I had to guess what happened I think they basically told Martin they wanted the same magical skeleton and rules and such and promised that they would take it and turn it way up where he takes it and turns it down in ASOIAF. This means the properties would be different enough but running the same way. Main easy example is how the people strapped to trees and their magical descendants in ASOIAF seem to be just normal people where as in Elden Ring it is a literal god and demi-gods. I think a lot of the parallels fit this general idea, but would love to find out more about what Martin actually gave them.
@@michaeltalksaboutstuff I think that George gave them a world and history and Miyazaki made the shattering that destroyed peace and added his dark souls flavor
I’m honestly suprised no one noticed the ASOIAF Easter eggs and cross references. Stormviel being a baby of the storm lands, the bloodhound knights cape being yellow and having a dog like house Clegane, the incest and infighting of the demigods( aka royalty like the infighting of tarageyns and lanisters) , the grafted sword and so much more are all present in Elden ring. Even land of giants kinda mirrors the land beyond the wall. Hell even Iji mask looks like the chicks from that desert city in the thrones tv show
For real?! It was like one of the biggest games that dropped and it was written by GRRM. It even won a nebula - so of course it should be looked at if you want to look at ASOIAF
Boy oh boy you got about 100+ hours of a fantastical and beautiful world that GRRM had a hand in creating and an amazing story he also wrote the history for.
@@Henbot "written by GRRM" is a misleading statement. GRRM set the backstory. He didnt, for example, write dialogues or most of the characters you actually meet.
About the second moon in Elden Ring; the "lost black moon" of Nokstella (an underground city with its own night sky) is actually a lesser known third moon. Ranni's Dark Moon is actually distinct, as it is not destroyed, and has notable visual differences, but it *is* generally hidden from sight apart from in specific circumstances. It seems that at some point in the past, the Nox people underwent some kind of cataclysm, leading to the loss of their moon. In Elden Ring, there are certain peoples whose fate is written in the stars, and the moons are the guiding forces of those stars. So for the Nox to lose their moon implies also a loss of their fate. It's possible the downfall of the Nox was some kind of punishment by the Greater Will for the treachery of crafting the Fingerslayer Blade, a weapon capable of harming the Two Fingers and the Greater Will. Also some discrepancies I want to point out, not to diminish from the valid similarities you discussed: 1: The Demigod descendants of Marika in Elden Ring already had power before Marika was imprisoned and crucified for shattering the Elden Ring. 2: Of the Demigods, not all of them are necessarily descended from Marika by blood. All the Carian family (Rykard, Radahn, Ranni (who is an Empyrean)) are children of Renalla and Radagon, and only became Demigods after Radagon married Marika and fused with her. There's some contention as to whether Radagon was already fused with Marika when he sired the Carian children, or whether they fused later, so this may or may not be important (I fall on the "fused later" side). 3: Empyreans do not need to be descendants of Marika. All Empyrean means is that you have been chosen by the Two Fingers as a candidate to become the new God, vessel of the Elden Ring and representative of the Greater Will. Marika was herself once an Empyrean, and seems to have warred against other Empyreans such as the Gloam Eyed Queen in order to become a God. As far as we know, at this time there was no-one crucified in the Erdtree, though admittedly we don't know enough about the period before the Age of the Erdtree to say there wasn't for sure. However the only other prior Age we know of was the Age of the Ancient Dragons, and if Placidusax is anything to go by, their God was probably a dragon. It's possible there are some humans descended from dragons that could have become Empyreans by the bloodline connection you suggest, but we haven't heard of any, and besides that Marika is a Numen, who came from a land outside the Lands Between, and descended from denizens of another world entirely, so the chances she could be a descendant of a previous God bloodline is very low. 4: You say we "choose which Empyrean to team up with to remake the world", but this isn't really accurate. We only get the chance to team up with Ranni. Of the other two Empyreans, Malenia is dedicated to Miquella, and Miquella is currently absent. Other than the Age of Fracture, which just puts the world back how it was but still slightly damaged, there are three endings where you remake the world by adding Mending Runes to the Elden Ring, which are created not by Demigods or Empyreans, but by Tarnished. Then the last ending is the Frenzied Flame ending, which is brought about by an Outer God, not an Empyrean. 5: You don't explicitly state this, but being crucified within the Erdtree did not give Marika eternal life, she already had eternal life. It's important to understand that there was a great deal of time between Marika becoming God and the Shattering. It's unclear exactly how long because most of the main players we know about are immortal, but enough generations for Godrick to be "a distant relation, his blood sorely diluted".
I've been brow deep in obsession with Asoiaf and Elden Lore forever so to see this makes me quite happy. A lot Elden Rings fans don't give GRRM any credit in the story when it's got GRRM all over it in every aspect. I really love the comparison between Melina and Shireen. Especially because in GoT poor Shireen did not have a choice. But in Elden Ring, Melina herself makes the choice to be the kindling. Also, I want to say the idea of blood or human sacrifice being used for ascension to godhood(and trees) is also prevalent in Elden Ring. We see the same themes of stagnation and how fear or avoidance of death causes ripples of problems.
Your new analysis makes the gaggle of Gods more intelligible and coherent to me. I had considered the enchanted world presented in the books and the show as an element required by the genre G.R.R. Martin uses. But I am an atheist, so that thought easily comes to my mind. As presented in the show, R'hllor and Fire Magic seemed unrelated or weakly related to Tree and Blood Magic and the Old Gods, to the Seven, to the fact that deos abscondus et non est praesens. The Gods or any God never answers prayers in the books or the shows, a fact that drove some characters to despair. The Gods communicate cryptically and indirectly or not at all. At best, the Gods have intermediaries (agents) who have faith (an irrational belief) but understand little or nothing of what those Gods are trying to accomplish. (We serve without understanding. I don't know what the Gods want. I don't know their names. There is something greater than us.) Book Melisandre (and the Red preisthood in general) might be a partial exception to this rule. But I doubt Stannis will realize the Azor Ahai prophecy. He's neither a Targaryan (fire) nor a Stark (ice). His person does not prefigure a New Age. It instead reflects the age to be replaced, an age of violence and tyrany, Blood Magic and the living deaths of the sacrificed. He does not evoke a 'dream of spring.' He is cold and merciless. He maims his friend and murders his brother and daughter. His justice is inhuman. His commitment to duty is cold and absolute. Jon Snow, on the other hand, is a Stark, a Targaryan and neither (a bastard). He is all three because he rejected his Stark and Targaryan identities when he chose to remain Jon Snow. He made that his shield!, as Tyrion counseled. He became a hero and King because events compelled him to become each, to act justly and ethically under the circumstances he confronted. ("I never wanted it. I never asked for it.") He accepts exile from Westros (he committed a crime, regicide) but not from humanity. He went to live with the outcasts, of which he is one. He generates solidarity among enemies and strangers, doing so not by conqust and, pace Dany, tyrannide or maternalism (Mhysa), but by finding common ground, by reasoning with them, by consideringthem as equals. Dany aspired to take what was rightfully hers (she was entitled, she was a queen by birth) and wanted to free the world from tyrany (to be a messiah). She aspired to be a God-like creature -- omniscient (I know what's best) and nearly omnipotent (I have Dothraki, Unsullied and a Dragon). That expressed her madness. It was, she believed, her destiny, her title. Jon, a lord by birth and a bastard by choice, was everyone (no one is entitled by nature but to be a mere human being, mortal, limited) and no one but himself (which is all anyone can be). The symbolic meaning of a bastard expresses the universality of the human condition. Jon represented everyone and no one but himself, common and unique. Together, fighting the Night King and his army, destroying House Lannister, Jon and Dany and the wars they fought were the birth pangs of a New Age. Neither would rule during this New Age (neither conquest nor successesion establish rightful governance). That lack completed the breaking of the wheel. The New Age will begin as weakly democratic, as Tyrion requested. Samwell Tarlly prefigured the development of the New Age when he suggested giving the frachise to the commoners, which brought an ignorant but derisive laughter from the lords present at the Tyrion's presentation to Westrosi aristocracy. Bran's election mark it as an Age of Enlightenment when compareed to the Old Age. Absolutism entered its period of decay. I believe it is significant that the outcasts (dwarves, cripples, bastards, cowards) would be the leaders of this Age of Enlightenment. They are the symbolic representatives of the common people of the Age to Come. They are the "meek who will inherit the earth." Eventually, as your analysis suggests, Green Magic will replace, in part, Blood, Fire and Ice Magic. This replacement would complete the cycle that began when the Children of the Forest were forced to defend themselves against the First Men, which brought Ice, Fire and Blood Magic into the world. I wonder if magic will have any place at all when an Enlightened Age replaces an Age of Enlightenment? If history is cyclical, then it likely would. Thank you for your work!
Good observations! There's other parallels I could think of, like women using love to gather life force in order to awaken something (Melisandre with the shadows and Fia with Godwyn). And also in the game's ending, Marika's head is used for some reason (by the player or Ranni), and the new age starts. Maybe that'll happen too in the books, since there's a lot of beheadings in them.
man i had finished ASoIaF not too long before the release of ER. Was super excited to look for a hint or two snuck inside the game. Thought I had missed it all while trying into survive and didnt realize the metanarratives might be coinciding. wow, glad others were looking!
17:44 the corrupting event can't be the shattering as it happens much after the erdtree is established from the old "great tree" which existed in the prior ages ( before even the age when the dragons ruled the golden order and greater will had a dragon as it's empyrean god) The greater will corrupted the erdtree when it placed it's Elden Ring/Elden Beast inside the tree, or perhaps when Marika conquered the Altus Plateau upon exiting the shadowlands You should actually revisit Elden Ring lore after "shadow of the erdtree" drops in July since there's hints that the erdtree is an illusion obfuscating an entire invisible landmass called the shadowlands
yes this is roughly my concern: the shattering and subsequent captivity of Marika in the Erdtree occurs when the current age and order is on the decline.
😂😂😂 Finally a ASOIAF Theorist has a look at Elden Ring. I been telling David Lightbringer or LmL about this for ages and so many of the stuff he talks about are in the game. Even his very specific two moon theory is in Elden Ring, Erdtree Network and like beings from outer space crashing down and hidden gods altering things. Marika even got Dany vibes as well. Least you bothered to look 😂😂😂
LMAO no cause I've been telling him that too! That mfer is too stubborn to listen
Same, have mentioned so many times to ER UA-camrs about the connections and they are always like "huh, cool" but just didn't get it! This is what I have been waiting for!
To be fair to those Elden Ring youtubers and other ASOIAF youtubers each of these properties feels like they take a long long time to get a grasp on what is actually going on. And even then much of it is just well backed speculation rather than proven fact in both cases.
I have been involved with ASOIAF for like a decade now and Elden Ring took me months of watching videos and then like the last month plus of really trying to dig in hard before I felt I had enough understanding to actually make this video. Even now I feel like I have a lot to learn but the connections were too strong for me not to cover it. I am sure there are many more to be found and I will likely have to make more videos when I do.
David even said that it looks interesting, but with the time it takes him with asoiaf lore sometimes, he thinks the time it would take him to understand the stuff in miyuzaki's work in general would take him a bit, and halt production of the stuff he is doing now. I forgot the exact stream he said this, it was one with Tim, so I think it was an iron born or Euron video.
ive been bugging preston about this for almost 2 years and i dont think he really seems interested 😑
What I like about this theory is how believable it is.
George R.R. Martin reuses plot points and entire story lines all the time, but with changes. Anyone familiar with his works before ASOIAF will understand and for those of you who don't, it's really cool to go and look at some of his older short stories and see just how many ideas then translated into ASOIAF.
Honestly, most writers do this overtime. It's not necessarily a bad, or good thing. It could swing either way depending on how said writer goes about it.
I would be extremely unsurprised if Elden Ring's base lore turned out to have inherited a lot of pieces that were cut or modified from the books because he decided they were too high magic for the setting, but he felt they were still interesting and wanted to use them somewhere.
@@Eladelia I agree and wouldn't doubt that one bit, lol.
If I do it for my stories, I imagine the majority of writers do the same lol. Where there's an idea that doesn't quite fit the universe you're currently working on, but is too, good to completely discard.
Into the ideas archive it goes! 😂
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” P Picasso. GRRM is a master thief of history and mythology. Sounds like a critique but I’m a fan. Just glad we finally get the ending. 😂
only real Authors do this
Yeah that's how Dark Souls 1 through 3 is too.
It's basically about a world that reaches its end then is remade into something new.
Then Dark Souls 3 ends with the complete end.
Dude the Melina = Shireen bombshell is INSPIRED, for me its what ties the whole theory together!
You're definitely nailing it with all of these themes! One of the things I find most interesting is how Ranni, a moon maiden, was in fact the one to slay Godwyn, who is associated with an eclipsed sun, with shards from (and forgive the complex description) what is essentially a combination of Balerion('s black and red fire) the Black Blade of the Elric multiverse, the red comet, and/or Azor Ahai's/Bloodstone Emperor's red-hot sword, all of which is embodied in the Rune of Death, also known as Destined Death. In other words, it is the MOON which slew the sun using a weapon she forged from a black sword of red fire. This is the event which set everything into motion, much like the Long Night. Ranni's reasons for this was that the Rune of Death, which Marika had removed from the Elden Ring and sealed away in order to establish her Order of eternal life, is the only way to die a True Death, so Ranni took shards of the Rune and had them forged into Black Knives, then carried out a ritual where both she and Godwyn were stabbed at the same moment so that the effect of True Death was split between them- Ranni's body died while her soul survived to inhabit the blue doll modeled after her Snow Witch mentor (who I believe was part of a race called Moonfolk btw) and Godwyn's soul died while his body survived, empty and corrupted by Death. Somehow, he ends up growing to a gargantuan size, his head becomes like.. one of those shelf mushrooms you see on trees (a sign the tree is dying) with his face upside-down on it. But also.. the rest of his body becomes that of a mermaid..?? Merman?? But even more than Drowned God symbolism, he has ANOTHER body elsewhere that makes his head look very much like a kraken. Cthulhu themes ABOUND. But absolutely no one has any idea why he's a merman, and while I'm beginning to suspect it betrays Marika and her Numen kin as being similar to the Fisher Queens, I have no idea what that means 😭 But regardless, aside from the "sun killing moon" reversal and the fact that in this case, it wasn't dragons that resulted from the ritual, but Those Who Live In Death, people who had died long ago but are now brought back much like White Walkers/Drowned Men, but in a state of rather mindless confusion and purposelessness, as they are stated to need and currently lack a leader, which Godwyn, now Prince of Death, is unable to do in his current state. They are however, a lot more Other-coded than the White Walkers or Drowned Men, narratively, because over the course of the game you come to realize that they're unfairly demonized by the Golden Order, and were in fact always supposed to exist.
But before I go off any further on a tangent, another thing I want to mention is that I believe the concepts of Shadows as they exist in parallel between Elden Ring and ASOIAF are about to get WAAAYYY deeper in the DLC, which is literally called Shadow of the Erdtree. It also takes place in a magically separate location called The Shadow Lands, where everything began, from Marika's ascent to godhood, to the birth of the Erdtree itself. And from the trailer, it is CRAWLING with connections to ASOIAF lore. There is even a place that is VERY MUCH Stygai-coded. I am particularly beside myself over the Lion of Night imagery that I've been theorizing had to have once been a thing for ages. Here it's not so much symbolized by a black lion man as it is lions with numerous horns, but their associations with the Omens, demons, cursed spirits, and Marika's "Maiden Made of Light" themes are very purposeful imho.
Also also, the Royal Revenants and Wraith Callers will certainly interest you, as they are basically just the Undying Ones. They're what I believe is all that's left of the Moonfolk, since they can be found gathered on the Moonlight Plateau (the only place where you can see both moons in the sky) and all we really know about them is that they "died while cursed," and some of them even ride corpse horses. Their bruise-blue skin and four arms links them to Ranni's mentor, the Snow Crone, who her doll body was designed to look like, so it all pretty much cinches your "the Others and the Undying Ones are the same" theory!
Oh man, and I'd be insane to not mention the elephant in the room that are the Godskin Apostles, a grotesque mix of the Boltons, Faceless Men, and Blackfyres. An Empyrean of the past known only as the Gloam-Eyed or Dusk-Eyed Queen, who served Destined Death before her defeat at the hands of Marika's Shadowbound Beast, took the skins of gods and turned them into swaddling cloths and eventually clothing for strange, human/serpentine beings known as Nobles and Apostles, ostensibly to give them the strength, powers, and perhaps immortality of the gods, so that they could grow up to kill all the gods with the God-Slaying Black Flame. YEAH... It gets crazier: the Gloam-Eyed Queen's sword depicts what looks like a moon cracking open and spewing out two long billows of smoke. The concept of Destined Death itself I feel comes from the Norse legend of the Norns who upon their emergence from the Well of Urd, tell all the gods that even they will eventually die. It's got a very "All Gods Must Die" ring to it when combined with the Godskins literally wearing clothing sewn from the skins and faces of gods, wielding Black Fire derived from the red and black flames of Destined Death. I'm praying the dlc gives us more about the Gloam-Eyed Queen, because as of now it's all very hard to untangle. My suspicion is that she was a sister of Marika, who as the Black Flame/Blackfyre thing suggests, may have been illegitimate, and as such sought to kill all the gods in some act of vengeance or jealousy. There's also lots (and I mean lotssss) of human-hybrid and even entirely artificial human experimentation going on through the history of the Lands Between, which the Godskin Nobles and Apostles seem to have some connection to.
I don't think Godwyn is associated with the eclipse, I think that's Miquella's thing. Miquella was attempting to use the Eclipse to help bring back Godwyn. Miquella is also strongly associated with twilight and night so the eclipse motiff probably is a better fit for him.
@@Umezetegodwyn suits the sun far more than the eclipse but his death could be seen as an eclipse the disappearance of the sun
I recommend brushing up on some ol Japanese folk lore, especially the one about eternal life and well, the merman beast.
To sum it up, anything to do with eternal life and/or transferring oneself will always lead to destruction.
Godwyn the Merman.
Blackfyre could have also burned and destroyed the old ways? They are also a family of dragon riders just fate was with the targaryens iirc….
You know who is another character in the blackfyre rebellion? Brynden Rivers. Aka blood ravens
@@calebgraham3334 to follow up a bit on this, other ER lore channels discuss how "still water" like that in ponds and lakes tend to be the symbol of rot and death while the "moving water" like that in rivers is the symbol of life - constant flow
With Godwyn transforming into a mermaid-like creature I believe it is assumed that his experience of death makes him turn into this mermaid twisted monster, rotting in stillness.
I also wanted to check how the underground rivers connect to the "deep roots" area where there are those huge waterfalls and Godwyn's body or place of death, there might be something to draw from it as well. Wondering if it is "geographically" organized into something meaningful (as if the water from the above world is draining through the Erdtree and then the underground rivers carry that water somewhere deeper? - and perhaps the death of Godwyn is the point at which the flow of those waters (flow of life) is corrupted?
The one-eyed motif is from Norse mythology. It is a popular Odinic theme. Odin was the wisest and most all-seeing of the Gods. He sacrificed half of his physical sight in order to gain a greater awareness by opening that "third eye".
In Elden ring specifically, being blind allows you to see outer gods (or at least one specific outer god of blood). One character even has a horn (of which their growth represents the previous age of power the Erdtree replaced and are shunned in the current age) grow into his eye granting him the ability to commune with said outer god
Rereading the dialogue with all this in your head really does change so many interpretations
So happy this popped up my reccs! This was a fantastic video and I have too much to say to even fit in one comment! I have been waiting for a ASOIAF fan to look at Elden Ring, on my own channel I have been trying to look at Elden Ring as a fan of ASOIAF to build my insights. Elden Ring, ASOIAF, and Thousand Worlds are all like different languages on the Rosetta Stone. The words may be different but they are all trying to say is the same thing.
A big issue I have with Elden Ring fans/theorists as a GRRM fan is that they do not like hearing that GRRM had anything to do with Elden Ring. As someone who has been a fan of both Miyazaki and GRRM for over a decade each it feels so easy to see which parts of the game came from GRRM and what came from Miyazaki.
Some characters in Elden Ring are so close to their ASOIAF counterparts: Rykard and Tanith = Stannis and Melisandre jump out the most to me.
The most important one however is Miqeulla and Mohg are much like Bran and Bloodraven. The big thing is Mohg is the Lord of Blood, his horns are gouging out one of his eyes like Bloodraven's eye and the Weirwood roots, Mohg bathes Miquella in Blood to try to 'elevate him to Godhood' very reminiscent of Bran eating blood soup, Mohg also sprouts big black raven wings in his boss fight. Literally a Blood Raven.
Miquella is known as the most "fearsome Empryean" and can bewitch people, much like Bran can take over people with his super warging abilities. He is "cursed with eternal youth" and items in the game (namely those to do with House Marias) lead me to believe his eternal youth is more akin to Sweetrobin and him being a sickly boy.
Would love to chat with you sometime about all of this if you're interested. Shadow of the Erdtree, the upcoming expansion pack, feels like the closest thing to Winds of Winter and a Dream of Spring that we may ever get
Preceptor Jackimus Mimicus o7 good to see you sir!
I am conversant in both ASOIAF and Elden Ring lore but I have been waiting for the DLC before trying to reach any conclusions. FromSoft DLCs have a way of standing significant amounts of what you think is going on on its head. And it has been confirmed that the Elden Ring DLC has its basis in GRRM's lore, FromSoft made a conscious decision to save it until now.
The Ranni/Night Queen parallel is probably incomplete because what we see of Ranni is actually a puppet she is possessing (having slain her Empyrean flesh to escape the influence of her Two Fingers but that is beyond the scope of this simple post). When we find Ranni's remains we can see she had red hair (reminding us that Marika is NOT Ranni's mother, Radagon was her father which puts her in the Marika family tree).
The appearance of this puppet is actually that of the Snow Witch who was Ranni's mentor. So even the sealed eye may belong to the Snow Witch and not Ranni herself and the true parallel is Snow Witch/Night Queen. We do not know the fate of the Snow Witch but Elden Ring lore tells us that the Snow Witch taught Ranni to fear the dark moon and that seems important.
The last thing I want to mention is that there is a serious translation issue between the Japanese and English versions of Ranni's Age of Stars speech that dramatically changes its meaning. You might want to look into that. I would highly recommend lokeysouls dot com as a resource for this. He is an excellent content creator.
Amazing stuff! Another thing that should be mentioned is Radagon’s red hair was a curse from the fire giants. This seems to be very significant in the grand scheme of the Elden ring story.
Self loathing is probably not healthy for half of a God no more fickle then men
Finally! Someone who is an ASOIAF fan who is actually decoding the MANY similarities & themes shared between these worlds. I feel like most souls-tubers/ASOIAF theorists are very dismissive of George R.R. Martin’s involvement in his other projects (in this case, Elden Ring), so I am glad to see somebody like you who will actually willingly look at Elden Ring’s author/creators to provide context around the game’s story and lore…… and the possible directions of George’s ASOIAF moving forward. I feel as though there are some hints as to what exactly is the overall picture of ASOIAF before we even read TWOW
Plus, for general ASOIAF content, you will gain a subscriber in me :))
(P.S. - UA-camr ‘Jack is a mimic’ recommended this channel to me!)
I’m so glad someone is actually doing an in-depth analysis between Asoiaf and ER. Even if Asoiaf doesn’t end up similar to Elden Ring, this is still good content.
Finally! Glad someone else is onto this haha. Not to self-promote, but we actually made our channel specifically because of all the connections we found between these two stories. We've got a couple videos uploaded and a few more on the way, but your perspective on the ASOIAF side of things has given us a ton to think about; the shadow theory stuff especially. If you ever want to reach out and discuss ideas over discord or something we'd be delighted. Keep up the great work!
My favorite comparison with these two worlds is with Radahn and Khal Drogo. They're essentially the same person. Both Giga-chads who love a good fight, but neither of them tyrants,. Both of them are champions of their people. They both love horses. Both ultimately died a pathetic death for a warrior, for their consorts personal gain. I noticed that parallel my first encounter with Radahn, and since then I've been fascinated by the similarities between characters because it goes deep.
Idk if you mentioned this already but in Elden Ring after getting to the end of a lot of the dungeons, you can see the roots of the Erdtree/s and attached to those roots are corpses…. I’ll have to go back and see if they’re all like that but I know at least a couple are. There’s gotta be some parallels there.
Another interesting tidbit I’ve seen recently is that some people of the Lands Between are born from Erdtree or flowers instead of regular births from a mother. Millicent and her sisters are born from a scarlet flower and Melina I think came from the great Erdtree. Normal births in Elden Ring seem to actually be uncommon.
I'm preeeetty sure every catacomb dungeon is like that.
@@Umezete Because the catacombs were built around the Erdtree roots, and the Erdtree itself feeds off dead souls.
Also Godwyn spreading deathblight/unlife through the root systems of the trees 👌🏼 and Miquella going in to his Haligtree to "transform" in to a god
@@griffiththechad9483Vaatividya has also theorised that the Erdtrees also feed off blood of their "children" i.e. the humans that die and get buried at the roots of the Erdtree/minor Erdtrees
@@SpiritStoneWarrior94-yx3gsIt’s pretty explicit that the warrior jars are sent to collect bodies to feed to the minor erdtrees. The avatars smash the pots with their big hammers.
I think you should take a closer look at The Gloam Eyed Queen and the Godskin Nobles when it comes to Night's Queen & White Walker parallels.
She controlled Death, has a bunch of black flame godkillers as children, they're pale and clad in the skin of slayed gods. She was also an Empyrean, potentially the counterpart to Marika.
Was defeated by Marika and her shadow Maliketh at the start of the Age of the Golden Order. The Golden Order started when the Rune of Death was confined. Bound. Death bound by Tree Woman Marika.
Two things about Marika being crucified in the erdtree. Firstly she is stabbed through the womb, not the chest. Secondly there is a statue of Marika in her crucified pose in the capital city that, with the use of a magic spell, can be revealed to also be a statue of Radagon her consort. That's the big reveal that Marika and Radagon are one person (it's an alchemy reference, the red king and white queen). However, the interesting thing is that if you were to superimpose the two statues over one another, Marika is crucified on the body of Radagon standing in a T pose. That's kinda wild.
The statues are the other way around: as Miriel puts it, a statue of Radagon was commissioned in the capital, but its creation reveals his greatest secret: that he is Marika.
Perhaps she is being punished for… ahem… sowing her royal oats
Maybe she is being punished for sowing her royal oats.
This brings a new meaning to the golden order… Radagon being a controlling domestic abuser
It's actually an issue with this theory, being that impalement from a tree is the source of power. Marika is an operating god way before she disappears into the tree, that only happens after the Shattering. So the impalement couldn't be the source of power surely.
Unless these concepts are just rough connections.
Elden Ring heroes' graves and Catacombs explicit depict the roots getting nourishment from bodies for sure. the gold sap seem to be the grace getting recycled.
One possible explanation for the empyreans all having one eye, is that the influence of the outer gods manifests in the eyes. Tarnished Archaeologist mentions this in his "The Real Shabriri" episode. The role of an empyrean is to serve as a bridge between the world and an outer god. Having only one eye accomplishes this, the intact eye is influenced by an outer god and shows them the world of that god, while the empty socket shows them nothing leaving the individual to fill in the gaps with their own better judgment. Sight clouds judgement is a major theme in Elden Ring, its why Prophets cover their eyes and why Holy Books are written in braille.
"ONLY I, Miqulla and Malneia can claim the title" nicely done friend.
It made me giddy to see you taking on some Elden Ring lore. You very quickly became my favorite ASOIF UA-camr despite the wealth of content creaters covering the lore. You have great insights and a real talent for reverse engineering stories and shining a light on some of the more mysterious elements. No piece of media has struck me like Elden Ring has. It sparks my imagination constantly and the other worldly nature of gods and demigods feels like such a breath of fresh air in a generation that seems to really value grit and realism over the fantastical. I'm so excited to hear your opinions and thoughts on Elden Ring. I hope that you still will play the game and make even more videos about its lore and world. I'd love to see your first thoughts on some of the amazing places and bosses. I really enjoy your content. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us all.
I always found it interesting that Blaidd, who is Ranni's shadow beast who is part of her very being, has one eye almost all the way closed. With his fur around it being quite distinct from his other wide open eye. As if his eyes match Ranni's in some way.
Your parallel to the mechanics of how The Others work in ASOIAF actually also fits pretty one to one with a literal game mechanic in Elden Ring. In the game you have the ability to summon the spirits of NPCs to aid you in combat, many of which are said to be of legendary figures (knights, etc.) whose bodies were "hewn in to the Erdtree." You summon them using what's called a Spirit Calling Bell that's actually given to you by Ranni towards the beginning of the game.
Many of the small side dungeons you explore are specifically called Catacombs, and when you get to the end of one after defeating the boss you can literally see the corpses mixed into the roots of the Erdtree (which by extension let's you know the Erdtree's roots span petty much everywhere like the Weirwoods).
THE TREE AND THE MOON- Marika brings down rennala, queen of the full moon. But Marika(Radagon) was unable to defeat rennala on the battlefield, and instead the lands of the moon were brought into the lands of the tree through the marriage pact between Radagon and Rennala.
In asoiaf, perhaps this has something to do with the great empire of the dawn encountering the singers in westeros?
Yeah I have a lot more to look into as far as Elden Ring lore. That is certainly an interesting parallel that could possibly have some connections.
Wait wait.. could it be that the carians/rennala is a flipped dorne? Was never conquered by the crown but came around thru marriage.
@@jonathan0225 love this, thank you!
@@Hanklerfishies add that rennala/elia was the first wife was left as well for another as well.
Whats only weird to be that all 3 next gen empyreans seems to be the ER equivalent of the 3 heads of the dragon. Ranni, miquella, and malenia..their mothers have ties to the moon and seemingly by extension all are songs of ice and fire. (Marika arguably has ties to the nox or numen, loosely related to the moon and maybe ice)
I've always been intrigued by this thought that Jon has in ASoS. He's training with Iron Emmett in the yard and gets a knock to the head that brings up memories of when he was training with Robb in Winterfell, and how one time he pretended to be the Lord of Winterfell, to which Robb's reply was that he couldn't be.
"You can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the HEART OF WINTERfell, Lord Eddard always said . . . but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods."
Note that the capitalization is mine; I've always been triggered by the fact that this is the only place in the whole of ASoIaF that the term 'heart of winter' comes up outside Bran's coma chapter, even if combined with 'fell' (the felling of a tree is of course cutting it down). The fact that Jon here thinks of uprooting the heart tree, combined with the thoughts in this video of the trees representing an entity that upholds the very system that ensures that things always stay the same and someone like Jon can never be the Lord of anything, is a clear indication that Jon has a big part to play in destorying this system.
Hey, I'm not familiar with GoT lore but I've been pondering on the potential importance of stone to the world of Elden Ring. What are these stone kings? I ask because the area when entering the heart of the Erdtree is called "Stone Platform." I just find it odd that there would be a massive stone platform where a giant sacred tree has emerged from the earth. There are enemies called onyx & alabaster lords in the game as well, evidence of fallen meteors from space and a whole system of magic based upon glintstone. The ancient dragon's scales are made of stone as well. My ears perked up when I heard this video's narrator mention the 2 moons in the GoT lore, that dragons could have been born of one of the moons, etc.
@@ioncewasmikeythe stone kings are ancient stark graves in winterfell cyrpts before aegon the conqueror starks were called as kings of winter. when a stark dies they make a statue of him with a wolf and they bury their bones at statue and because they are called as kings of winter before their statues are called as stone kings. Winterfell is almost 10000 years old so there could be thousands of statues and about the stone dragons its believed azor ahai will revive dragons out of stones. You should check great empire of dawn they literally named emperors after stones likes onyx.
There are two endings in Elden Ring where you replace the Erdtree with something new (in the other four, it's replaced with an identical tree, with more minor changes). Ranni's ending, where you replace it with the Dark Moon (associated with ice), and the Flame of Frenzy ending, where you burn down the whole world with a corrupted yellow flre, "incinerat[ing] all that divides and distingushes". Ice vs fire. Could there be a parallel? Two paths forward, one better, one worse?
You could stretch this out into a ten part series. There are so many parallels.
So, I’m not really familiar with ASOIAF lore, having only watched the TV series, but I am a big Elden Ring fan, so maybe that perspective will be of benefit here. You mentioned that there are two possible ways to burn the Erdtree. One is to sacrifice Melina, which you went into, but the other is to allow yourself to become a vessel for the Flame of Chaos (which is different from the Giants’ Flame - Elden Ring has like a dozen different varieties of magical fire), so that you can throw yourself into the Giants’ forge instead of using Melina’s body as kindling for the Giants’ Flame. The thing is, if you do so, you put yourself on the path to an ending where the Flame of Chaos consumes the entire world. The only way to prevent this is by using a specific item that is said to ward off the influence of the outer gods. I wonder if that may have some significance to the themes GRRM is trying to express in ASOIAF.
I know very little about Elden Ring, though I have heard of its parallels with ASOIAF. And I have been a big fan of LML’s theories for a long time. So I found this video very interesting. In addition to the chapter where Sam stabs the Other, I think that a conversation between Jon and Tormund adds on to what you are saying here. It is the chapter where Jon lets the Freefolk pass through the Wall. Tormund tells Jon that the Others are never far away. He says shadows never go away. They are always clinging to your heels. He also asks Jon how can you fight a mist? this seems to line up with some of the parallels you are laying out here.
The Butterflies of Naath, and the Butterflies representing Miquella and Malenia have similarities across stories. Apparently there's one large species of Butterfly on Naath that carries a horrific disease, which could line up with the Aeonian Butterflies in Elden Ring, that are related to the Scarlet Rot. The symptoms of the disease are consistent across universes too, affecting the flesh and ultimately being fatal. Additionally, the Naath Butterfly sickness mentions a fever symptom, which can make someone red in the face. A Scarlet Rot, one might say.
Here from Elden Ring! Been binging your stuff ever since this video and been fascinated by the narrative echoes in ASOIAF. Your videos on Bran, for example, strongly reminded me of Miquella of the Haligtree, just as your Greenseer content made me think of Marika the Eternal. The connections really are there, which makes sense given the collaboration.
Thanks so much for your work; always looking forward to these videos 🙂
i find it exciting to think about the erasure of the names of the nights king and queen for their rebellion against the system.
many people have likened er:sote mesmer to dark souls nameless king with the extent to which the ruling powers seem to have erased every reference to them to ensure they are forgotten. hopefully when the dlc comes we will learn a bit about what mesmer did to deserve this fate, (and maybe more about the gloam-eyed queen, and this will allow more speculation on other nameless figures.
great video!
Elden Ring's lore is heavily influeced by Alchemy and Bottany, i recommend you read about the mushroom/fungi theory, and the parallels between the lore and Alchemy, Ziostorm has videos on it. They're pretty solid theories and many consider it canon.
Oh my - the idea of the Stark being the old ways policing force/enforcer maintaining the blood system is delicious. Has a lot of texture when a Stark has been eluded too as Night King - makes a lot of sense and seems like GRRM thing to do, especially when the Wall is their territory as well and a Stark must always be in the North for they are The Heart of Winter’s/ The Blood System chosen enforcer
The old gods being a problem (not like good v evil) and like the whole right in your face and no one notices it just pure GRRM twist. It also makes sense if Jon is their pick too because they want a new authoritarian executioner our old gods and blood system enforcer for the north and he has a lot of pull or could to bring the errant peoples wayward from the blood system under heel
Yeah I am super interested in what a resurrected Jon will look like, especially being mentally half wolf if he is merged with Ghost gives him a lot of the vibes of these part wolf shadows in Elden Ring.
@@michaeltalksaboutstuff Completely just spitballing here but Jon Snow being Danny's Wolf Shadow would be interesting. Marika and Danny are quite similar, especially if you think of Danny currently as a young Marika. Its also said that Marika's own shadow Maliketh is her half Brother (could mirror Jon and Danny being related). Maliketh is also a beast man, an ancient race that built a lot of the ancient structures that fell to the lands between. Could relate to the the Starks and just Brandon building the initial ancient system.
@michaeltalksaboutstuff
Do you that John is going to sacrifice himself to burn the tree? Because an interesting parallel. You didn't mention with Shireen and Melina Is that in the TV show Shireen is sacrificed against her will. But you chose to talk with Melina she tells you how she chooses to burn of her own free will. So that might be what George is going to do where he'll have Shireen die against her will. With the magic not being powerful enough until john strengths through self sacrifice.
*to, not "too" and Winters, not "winter's" as you should never use an apostrophe to pluralize.
great vid. one thing i would mention that i haven’t seen discussed is that melisandre and the shadow babies are more of a parallel to the deathbed companions.
Deathbed companions take the vitality of a living warrior and lay with the dead, using the vitality of the living to impart unto them new life. Though the shadows do seem to be an aspect of Melisandre’s connection, the process is almost 1 to 1 with that of the deathbed companions.
Fia does this to create a mending rune, which allows the player to user in a new age, Age of the Duskborn.
Melina also has ties to the Gloam Eyed Queen, an Empyran that was propped up by the Greater Will(the fore that runs the Lands Between). She was supposed to replace Marika, but she was defeated by Marika's shadow, a wolfman named Malikath(sp?).
Maliketh
Also, the Gloam Eyed Queen doesn't even have to be a different person, she could just be Marika with Maliketh forced by the Greater Will to exact his duty as a shadow and reign her in. Only Shadow of the Erdtree can elucidate this plot point though...
There are fan theories that Melina has ties to the Gloam-eyed Queen, but it's not particularly strongly confirmed. We also don't really know that the GEQ was "propped up by the Greater Will" or "supposed to replace Marika" as the Greater Will doesn't show much indication of getting involved in the day-to-day of the world. Empyreans in general appear to be candidates to be the god of an incoming age, but that only necessitates that it's a possibility and not so much that it's an intention.
Tarnished Archeologist is such a good channel, an amazing source lol 😂
Honestly, I wasn't really on board with the idea of there being Others strapped to weirwoods to build the Wall like you show at 3:38
The idea of lots and lots of Others being trapped and bound in that way all across the land felt weird to me, since I thought there was no foreshaddowing or symboilic equivalent for such a reveal in the books. UNTIL I remembered the slaves (children, no less!) nailed to milemarkers across the land in slavers bay.
I disagree on some topics. The breaking of the moon did not start the age of the Trees but ended it. The breaking of the moon started the age of dragons and blood magic with the Bloodstone Emperor triggering the long night to venerate the stars (church of starry wisdom-age of stars reference?). The long night caused troubles to the original world trees, incapable of surviving in darkness as all the plant based life and the children living of it. To save the trees and themselves the children created the heart trees from the world trees, merging flesh and wood, blood and sap, animal and vegetal life.
After that the first men arrived in westeros and fought the children until they absorbed them in their rituals.
Nevertheless you're right. At some point Shereen will be burned. The wildlings would like to burn Jon's body, while the nightwatchmen would not. Bowen is still "a good man". In the meantime Shereen illness will worsen and maybe start spreading. So in the end Melisandre will set a pyre for Jon and shereen. Paying one life with the other death and mimicking Dany's birth of the dragon scene. That will also allow Jon to lose his dark hair and regrow whiter one sto symbolize both his dargon blood and his link with the old gods.
Also, another parallel between elder ring and Martin stories (extended to 1000 world series) are the fascination for crystals, like quartz, glintstone or...ice
One of the apparent mysterys of ASOIAF is an answer to what the Others are.
My theory is that they are disembodied consciousness, ghosts "written" in really cold ice crystals (heart of winter).
We all know that consciousness in Planetos can be disembodied (skinchangers can migrate in other bodies and outlive themselves, greenseers can access the weirwood net, nightwalkers can enter dreams, fire priests can bring back life in deceased bodies). What if the Others are the same?
We all know that their bodies are not real bodies but ice replicas. When Sam stabbed the WW, its body, its armor, melted in a pool of freezing water. No hair, no bones left. Only water. And we all know that when water freezes, it crystallizes.
But why it's so important that water creates crystals? I hear you say. Well, because Martin has a long tail of novels and stories about crystals, mental powers and consciousness.
>"The point, captain?”
“The point-the point is the computers, Melantha. They had to be extraordinary. They are, believe me, they are. Crystal-matrix cores, lasergrid data retrieval, full sensory extension, and other-features.”
“Are you trying to tell us that the Nightflyer is an Artificial Intelligence? Lommie Thorne suspected as much.”
“She was wrong,” Royd said. “My ship is not an Artificial Intelligence, not as I understand it. But it is something close. Mother had a capacity for personality impress built in. She filled the central crystal with her own memories, desires, quirks, her loves and her-her hates. That was why she could trust the computer with my education, you see? She knew it would raise me as she herself would, had she the patience. She programmed it in certain other ways as well.”
.
>. I overestimated my own abilities, and underestimated her fear of exposure. She strikes out when she is threatened, and telepaths are always a threat. They sense her, you see. A malign, looming presence, they tell me, something cool and hostile and inhuman.”
“Yes,” Karoly d’Branin said, “yes, that was what Thale said. An alien, he was certain of it.”
“No doubt she feels alien to a telepath used to the familiar contours of organic minds. Hers is not a human brain, after all. What it is I cannot say-a complex of crystallized memories, a hellish network of interlocking programs, a meld of circuitry and spirit. Yes, I can understand why she might feel alien.”
“You still haven’t explained how a computer program could explode a man’s skull,” Melantha said.
“You wear the answer between your breasts, Melantha.”
“My whisperjewel?” she said, puzzled. She felt it then, beneath her vacuum suit and her clothing; a touch of cold, a vague hint of eroticism that made her shiver. It was as if his mention had been enough to make the gem come alive.
“I was not familiar with whisperjewels until you told me of yours,” Royd said, “but the principle is the same. Esper-etched, you said. Then you know that psionic power can be stored. The central core of my computer is resonant crystal, many times larger than your tiny jewel. I think Mother impressed it as she lay dying.”
“Only an esper can etch a whisperjewel,” Melantha said.
“You never asked the why of it, either of you,” Royd said. “You never asked why Mother hated people so. She was born gifted, you see. On Avalon she might have been a class one, tested and trained and honored, her talent nurtured and rewarded. I think she might have been very famous. She might have been stronger than a class one, but perhaps it is only after death that she acquired such power, linked as she is to the Nightflyer.
“The point is moot. She was not born on Avalon. On Vess, her ability was seen as a curse, something alien and fearful. So they cured her of it. They used drugs and electroshock and hypnotraining that made her violently ill whenever she tried to use her talent. They used other, less savory methods as well. She never lost her power, of course, only the ability to use it effectively, to control it with her conscious mind. It remained part of her, suppressed, erratic, a source of shame and pain, surfacing violently in times of great emotional stress. And half a decade of institutional care almost drove her insane. No wonder she hated people.”
“What was her talent? Telepathy?”
“No. Oh, some rudimentary ability perhaps. I have read that all psi talents have several latent abilities in addition to their one developed strength. But Mother could not read minds. She had some empathy, although her cure had twisted it curiously, so that the emotions she felt literally sickened her. But her major strength, the talent they took five years to shatter and destroy, was teke.”
Melantha Jhirl swore. “Of course she hated gravity! Telekinesis under weightlessness is-”
“Yes,” Royd finished. “Keeping the Nightflyer under gravity tortures me, but it limits Mother.”
.
>-I have held the Nightflyer’s crystalline soul within my hands.
It is deep red and multi-faceted, large as my head, and icy to the touch. In its scarlet depths, two small sparks of smoky light burn fiercely, and sometimes seem to whirl.
I have crawled through the consoles, wound my way carefully past safeguards and cybernets, taking care to damage nothing, and I have laid rough hands on that great crystal, knowing it is where she lives. - Nightflyers
.
>The legends say he became ever more metallic as the voyage went on, and on Eris discovered the matrix crystal and expanded his intellectual abilities by orders of magnitude through the addition of the first crystal-matrix computer.” - the glass flower
>Those are programming. It is possible to imprint the whole of a human mind upon a crystal matrix computer.”
“And trap the soul in the crystal?” I said. “Do you believe in souls?”
“Do you?” he asked.
“I must. I am mistress of the game of mind. It would seem to be required of me.” - the glass flower
.
>"Erase me, you mean. The crystal is home to us both, child. Besides, I do not fear him. You miss the point. Kleronomas was crystal, the ghost organic meat, the outcome inevitable. My case is different. I am as crystalline as he is, and just as eternal.” - the glass flower
About fire shadowbabies and icy shadows, I think that are a reference to jungian themes.
Disclaimer: this is complete tinfoil. But to me seems reasonable. Let me know your thoughts.
We don't have many insights about Martin knowledge on real psychology and psychotherapy. Yes, he is an author capable of good PoV writing. Yes he probably knows a lot about Campbell and the hero's journey. However here i am to point my finger on some deep, queer similarities between ASOIAF magic systems/religions and Jung's theory of the psyche... and possibly the endgame of the series.
Let's start with dreams. Deams and symbolic visions (greendreams, dragon dreams, prophetic dreams, glass candle dreams, etc) are a huge part of the ASOIAF magic system. But they are also a fundamental part of Jung studies.
Jung noted that the unconscious has a timeless quality. It contains the past, still in living form and reaching far back beyond our conscious memory; it also shapes the future through its inscrutably purposive quality. Vaster than consciousness, which neatly separates events in some presumed causality, the unconscious is always pregnant with a yet to be conscious future - even if that future is at odds with our conscious desires. With his concept of synchronicity, he noted that events separated in space and time are yet related by meaning. And so manifested in dreams through symbols, which are hardly grasped by ego/consciousness.
So we can now go and explore the Ego, the conscious realm. The interesting thing is that a domain of pure Ego/Consciousness is present in ASOIAF, and it is the realm of skinchanging (personal consciousness ) and the weirwood net (collective consciousness) . Skinchangers are migrating Egos that can posses other bodies as their own. The Old Gods on the other hand are the disembodied and preserved Ego of the Children (children who are also a reference to the Puer Aeternus, the archetypal immortal god child inside everyone).
Than we have the Faceless Men, the men that can assume the PERSONA (a kind of mask, the face, designed to make a definite impression upon others, and on the others, to conceal their true nature) of anyone, his role, his looks, but inside are hollow, literally "No One". They aren't moving their egos, only wearing the look.
Hidden beneath the awareness of the consciousness lies the unconscious. The contents of the unconscious are anything that has been forgotten and or repressed; anything not permitted to integrate into the conscious personality - and these can be positive as well as negative psychic components such as personal qualities, talents, dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, terrors, hatreds, psychic toxins. The darker aspects form ‘The Shadow", the lighter is the Mana.
Shadows, in Jung, can be Personal Shadows and Collective Shadows.
Personal Shadows resemble really close the shadowbabies created by the shadowbinders. They are psychological projections of the darkest, deepest desires of the person. Like the BLACK shadow of stannis who kills Renly. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself. Shadowbinding is a process that brings with it "the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality"-resulting in a merger with the shadow.
According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps"
But we also have a Collective Shadow. The Shadow of society, the shadow of human race. The Collective Shadow is humanity's dark side. It is the sum total of past and present atrocities, cruelties, tragedies, and horrors perpetrated by humankind and stored at a deep, unconscious level. To me, the Collective shadow of Men are... The Others . The WHITE Shadows. Or, if you want, the GREAT OTHER.
They are in-human, alien, not of flesh and blood but of ice. Nevertheless they look human, they skinchange (not living things but dead bodies), they talk, laugh and fight.
In essence, the collective shadow is the combined projection of the shadow of every human ever lived. And it has remained in darkness and growing deeper, darker and larger for a very long time. Imagine the collective shadow as an invisible but very real potent energy force made up by the antithesis of humanity. Imagine this, locked up, removed from westeros. Not in the underworld, not under the earth, but in the far North, removed, isolated, brooding by a barrier. Like a HUGE magical ice wall that divides physically and mentally (jon struggles to sense Ghost while the wall stands in the middle) a continent.
The majority of the population are oblivious to its existence and potential danger, going about their daily lives with no awareness of what is on the other side and what is about to occur. Sooner or later, the pressure builds to such a level that it can no longer be contained, and the wall explodes - leaving everyone in complete shock, and catastrophic death and destruction in its wake. And when the collective shadow is huge enough, it casts a LONG NIGHT.
Sensitive people can feel the collective shadow; are aware of its existence. This is why many people have had feelings, insights, dreams, that something big was coming this year. Jung himself viewed the World Wars as expressions/projections of the collective shadow and he was so intuitive that he dreamt of and sensed the war drawing near way before it was evident to others. Those attuned to Mother Nature, the environment and the animal kingdom, knew that we were reaching a tolerance point. And so are a lot of men in Planetos.
And now we are arrinving to the last, but not least, part. The Manic aspect of the unconscious psyche. The most famous of Jung's concepts: the Archetypes. And yes i'm talking about the Faith of the seven. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger are 100% junghian archetypes. The role of the Faith was to stop the Ego driven Old Religion, to encourage the Men to discover their true selves. Sadly septons became politicians and the Faith lost its way.
But what does it mean, why GRRM would ever structure is supernatural world like that? Well, we know that his preferred narratives are anti-war narratives. And for Jung, the psychological process to overcome the conflicts between the ego, the shadow, the mana, and the dreams is the process of acceptance and INTEGRATION.
About fire shadowbabies and icy shadows, I think that are a reference to jungian themes.
Disclaimer: this is complete tinfoil. But to me seems reasonable. Let me know your thoughts.
We don't have many insights about Martin knowledge on real psychology and psychotherapy. Yes, he is an author capable of good PoV writing. Yes he probably knows a lot about Campbell and the hero's journey. However here i am to point my finger on some deep, queer similarities between ASOIAF magic systems/religions and Jung's theory of the psyche... and possibly the endgame of the series.
Let's start with dreams. Deams and symbolic visions (greendreams, dragon dreams, prophetic dreams, glass candle dreams, etc) are a huge part of the ASOIAF magic system. But they are also a fundamental part of Jung studies.
Jung noted that the unconscious has a timeless quality. It contains the past, still in living form and reaching far back beyond our conscious memory; it also shapes the future through its inscrutably purposive quality. Vaster than consciousness, which neatly separates events in some presumed causality, the unconscious is always pregnant with a yet to be conscious future - even if that future is at odds with our conscious desires. With his concept of synchronicity, he noted that events separated in space and time are yet related by meaning. And so manifested in dreams through symbols, which are hardly grasped by ego/consciousness.
So we can now go and explore the Ego, the conscious realm. The interesting thing is that a domain of pure Ego/Consciousness is present in ASOIAF, and it is the realm of skinchanging (personal consciousness ) and the weirwood net (collective consciousness) . Skinchangers are migrating Egos that can posses other bodies as their own. The Old Gods on the other hand are the disembodied and preserved Ego of the Children (children who are also a reference to the Puer Aeternus, the archetypal immortal god child inside everyone).
Than we have the Faceless Men, the men that can assume the PERSONA (a kind of mask, the face, designed to make a definite impression upon others, and on the others, to conceal their true nature) of anyone, his role, his looks, but inside are hollow, literally "No One". They aren't moving their egos, only wearing the look.
Hidden beneath the awareness of the consciousness lies the unconscious. The contents of the unconscious are anything that has been forgotten and or repressed; anything not permitted to integrate into the conscious personality - and these can be positive as well as negative psychic components such as personal qualities, talents, dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, terrors, hatreds, psychic toxins. The darker aspects form ‘The Shadow", the lighter is the Mana.
Shadows, in Jung, can be Personal Shadows and Collective Shadows.
Personal Shadows resemble really close the shadowbabies created by the shadowbinders. They are psychological projections of the darkest, deepest desires of the person. Like the BLACK shadow of stannis who kills Renly. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself. Shadowbinding is a process that brings with it "the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality"-resulting in a merger with the shadow.
According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps"
But we also have a Collective Shadow. The Shadow of society, the shadow of human race. The Collective Shadow is humanity's dark side. It is the sum total of past and present atrocities, cruelties, tragedies, and horrors perpetrated by humankind and stored at a deep, unconscious level. To me, the Collective shadow of Men are... The Others . The WHITE Shadows. Or, if you want, the GREAT OTHER.
They are in-human, alien, not of flesh and blood but of ice. Nevertheless they look human, they skinchange (not living things but dead bodies), they talk, laugh and fight.
In essence, the collective shadow is the combined projection of the shadow of every human ever lived. And it has remained in darkness and growing deeper, darker and larger for a very long time. Imagine the collective shadow as an invisible but very real potent energy force made up by the antithesis of humanity. Imagine this, locked up, removed from westeros. Not in the underworld, not under the earth, but in the far North, removed, isolated, brooding by a barrier. Like a HUGE magical ice wall that divides physically and mentally (jon struggles to sense Ghost while the wall stands in the middle) a continent.
The majority of the population are oblivious to its existence and potential danger, going about their daily lives with no awareness of what is on the other side and what is about to occur. Sooner or later, the pressure builds to such a level that it can no longer be contained, and the wall explodes - leaving everyone in complete shock, and catastrophic death and destruction in its wake. And when the collective shadow is huge enough, it casts a LONG NIGHT.
Sensitive people can feel the collective shadow; are aware of its existence. This is why many people have had feelings, insights, dreams, that something big was coming this year. Jung himself viewed the World Wars as expressions/projections of the collective shadow and he was so intuitive that he dreamt of and sensed the war drawing near way before it was evident to others. Those attuned to Mother Nature, the environment and the animal kingdom, knew that we were reaching a tolerance point. And so are a lot of men in Planetos.
And now we are arrinving to the last, but not least, part. The Manic aspect of the unconscious psyche. The most famous of Jung's concepts: the Archetypes. And yes i'm talking about the Faith of the seven. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger are 100% junghian archetypes. The role of the Faith was to stop the Ego driven Old Religion, to encourage the Men to discover their true selves. Sadly septons became politicians and the Faith lost its way.
But what does it mean, why GRRM would ever structure is supernatural world like that? Well, we know that his preferred narratives are anti-war narratives. And for Jung, the psychological process to overcome the conflicts between the ego, the shadow, the mana, and the dreams is the process of acceptance and INTEGRATION.
My mind is soooo blown!!! The Melina connection is wow! Thank you for taking the time to actually try connecting the lore!
So about the Half-Wolf shadows...
Look up Maliketh the Black Blade and Blaidd Half Wolf. When you slay Maliketh in Elden Ring, he does dissolve into a strange, writhing liquid. Blaidd's head remains after he dies, but we don't see what happens to his body.
Blaidd's head does not remain after he dies. The helmet taken from Blaidd's model is found on another body nearby after Blaidd is dead, not with the main portion of his armor.
@@Eladeliathe helmet you’re talking about is a mask someone made to impersonate Blaidd. It’s not Blaidd’s actual head and you can pick it up before he dies.
The starks and their doggos = empyreans and their shadows?
I'd love to see this revisited with some of the newly revealed lore from the Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree.
Also, a follow up. Is there a patreon where I can support you or a discord where there's a communal hangout spot?
I'm thinking there could be a good parallel between Miquella and Bran. Miquella is cursed with the body of a child, Bran is also "cursed" by losing his legs. Miquella learned a lot about the Golden Order from Radagon, probably the closest thing to an embodiment of the Order itself. But apparently he then probably started disagreeing with the order and made his own version of the Erdtree, the Haligtree, for him and his sister. Imo this fits very well with Bran learning from Bloodraven and eventually going against the old ways
I'm really glad you've started touching on this. I've ranted about it in videos twice now, truly, that people refuse to notice their similarities.
I think that Elden Ring is more akin to the long lost history of ASOIAF, rather than the future of A Dream of Spring. That doesn't mean that you calling upon similarities isn't correct - Elden Ring features gods and demigods with long lives, so characters are going to be playing similar roles as multiple characters in ASOIAF.
I think Bran is ultimately more akin to Miquella, for example. Miquella is pictured even without legs at one point. Also the Albinaurics reminds me of Jojen... I personally do not trust Marika, and think her akin to Bloodraven, the Great Other, and also various golden maidens in the historical lore - with storm kings and giants and sea kings as her mates. Also, she took death out of the world - that's what the Others essentially are. She is the woman in the weirwood net. The difference here is that this ritual seems to be the norm except that Marika took death out of the world, and broke it.
This is the long night. Ranni is a Stark who intends to change that, as every champion does in their own way to some extent.
While Melina does play a similar role to Shireen, she also is similar to Arya in a way. She's also similar to The Amethyst Empress, but not nearly as much as The Gloam Eyed Queen.
Overall, loved the video and hope to see more from you and others in the future! This was fun.
34:33 Mohg is another child of Marika who was born an Omen. He's missing an eye after allowing his cursed horns to grow, and now has a connection to the formless mother. He's 1 of 2 optional bosses in the base game that you need to defeat to access Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, the other being Radahn who holds back the stars(fate)
Another parallel I noticed:
In Elden Ring, Hoarah Loux and the Tarnished (Barbarians) are Exiled into the badlands, after Hoarah Loux is stripped of his Kingship, where he and his people travel away in an event called "The Long March" (a very GRRM-esque name)
which is pretty much the original plan GRRM had for Jon Snow being exiled beyond the wall with The Wildlings.
32:14 I think it's less likely to be fragments from a second MOON (the destruction of that would probably have obliterated Planetos with it's debris), but remnants of a SECOND TYPE OF TREE. InDeepGeek has a great video about blackstone in ASOIAF where he posits that the oily or inky black stone could be petrified Shade of the Evening Tree, which is essentially a mirror image of the Weirwoods that exist in Essos. We know from the books that Weirwoods will petrify and become stone; so if the Shade Trees, which are black with blue leaves instead of white with red leaves, were to undergo the same process, they'd likely have the same black, inky coloration and texture. They also have magical properties like Weirwoods, only they allow you to experience visions and prophecies whereas Weirwoods can store consciousness and allow one's spirit to project through time.
OHMYGOD face dropped upon learning Patches from demon souls is a fucking asoif easter egg, no way these two have lived in my memory for so long without such a connection
Weirwood trees, Erd Trees, seems to me all Martin writes about is WEIRD TREES.
before you even said shireen my jaw was on the floor WOW
Edit: hahaha and here i am pausing yet again to dance around my kitchen YOU DID IT! the oily black connection is genius.
If you want another parallel between Ranni/Melly Sanders & the Nights Queen, Ranni looked like Melly sanders before she slew her body and became a doll.
Melly Sanders is a redhead?
Heresy is not native to this world. It is but a contrivance, all things can be conjoined.
Perhaps Melisandre represents a sort of "Frenzied Flame" ending for ASoIaF, rather than a Ranni the witch paralel.
In Elden ring, one potential ending has the tarnished take on the Frenzied flame and burn out the world tree to the roots, as Melisandre would do to winterfell.
Oh, and I know you mentioned Melina as a Shireen paralel, but how about Melina as a Nissa Nissa Azor Ahai paralel? Our tarnished, the hero to inherit the world and create a new age has to sacrifice his woman and emerge with a 'flaming sword' so to speak, the flame of death to burn the erdtree's impenetrable thorns (impenetrable thorns with marika trapped inside : Unbreakable wall with Others trapped inside.).
Amazing video. Cool to see that Elden Ring is like A Song of Ice and Fire if there were 10 demigods vying for the position of greenseer, each taking full advantage of the shadow, blood, fire, and old magic to create their own version of the world. And the 'best' endings of the game completely upturn the system somehow, just as Bran will do in a Dream of Spring.
About fire shadowbabies and icy shadows, I think that are a reference to jungian themes.
Disclaimer: this is complete tinfoil. But to me seems reasonable. Let me know your thoughts.
We don't have many insights about Martin knowledge on real psychology and psychotherapy. Yes, he is an author capable of good PoV writing. Yes he probably knows a lot about Campbell and the hero's journey. However here i am to point my finger on some deep, queer similarities between ASOIAF magic systems/religions and Jung's theory of the psyche... and possibly the endgame of the series.
Let's start with dreams. Deams and symbolic visions (greendreams, dragon dreams, prophetic dreams, glass candle dreams, etc) are a huge part of the ASOIAF magic system. But they are also a fundamental part of Jung studies.
Jung noted that the unconscious has a timeless quality. It contains the past, still in living form and reaching far back beyond our conscious memory; it also shapes the future through its inscrutably purposive quality. Vaster than consciousness, which neatly separates events in some presumed causality, the unconscious is always pregnant with a yet to be conscious future - even if that future is at odds with our conscious desires. With his concept of synchronicity, he noted that events separated in space and time are yet related by meaning. And so manifested in dreams through symbols, which are hardly grasped by ego/consciousness.
So we can now go and explore the Ego, the conscious realm. The interesting thing is that a domain of pure Ego/Consciousness is present in ASOIAF, and it is the realm of skinchanging (personal consciousness ) and the weirwood net (collective consciousness) . Skinchangers are migrating Egos that can posses other bodies as their own. The Old Gods on the other hand are the disembodied and preserved Ego of the Children (children who are also a reference to the Puer Aeternus, the archetypal immortal god child inside everyone).
Than we have the Faceless Men, the men that can assume the PERSONA (a kind of mask, the face, designed to make a definite impression upon others, and on the others, to conceal their true nature) of anyone, his role, his looks, but inside are hollow, literally "No One". They aren't moving their egos, only wearing the look.
Hidden beneath the awareness of the consciousness lies the unconscious. The contents of the unconscious are anything that has been forgotten and or repressed; anything not permitted to integrate into the conscious personality - and these can be positive as well as negative psychic components such as personal qualities, talents, dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, terrors, hatreds, psychic toxins. The darker aspects form ‘The Shadow", the lighter is the Mana.
Shadows, in Jung, can be Personal Shadows and Collective Shadows.
Personal Shadows resemble really close the shadowbabies created by the shadowbinders. They are psychological projections of the darkest, deepest desires of the person. Like the BLACK shadow of stannis who kills Renly. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself. Shadowbinding is a process that brings with it "the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality"-resulting in a merger with the shadow.
According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps"
But we also have a Collective Shadow. The Shadow of society, the shadow of human race. The Collective Shadow is humanity's dark side. It is the sum total of past and present atrocities, cruelties, tragedies, and horrors perpetrated by humankind and stored at a deep, unconscious level. To me, the Collective shadow of Men are... The Others . The WHITE Shadows. Or, if you want, the GREAT OTHER.
They are in-human, alien, not of flesh and blood but of ice. Nevertheless they look human, they skinchange (not living things but dead bodies), they talk, laugh and fight.
In essence, the collective shadow is the combined projection of the shadow of every human ever lived. And it has remained in darkness and growing deeper, darker and larger for a very long time. Imagine the collective shadow as an invisible but very real potent energy force made up by the antithesis of humanity. Imagine this, locked up, removed from westeros. Not in the underworld, not under the earth, but in the far North, removed, isolated, brooding by a barrier. Like a HUGE magical ice wall that divides physically and mentally (jon struggles to sense Ghost while the wall stands in the middle) a continent.
The majority of the population are oblivious to its existence and potential danger, going about their daily lives with no awareness of what is on the other side and what is about to occur. Sooner or later, the pressure builds to such a level that it can no longer be contained, and the wall explodes - leaving everyone in complete shock, and catastrophic death and destruction in its wake. And when the collective shadow is huge enough, it casts a LONG NIGHT.
Sensitive people can feel the collective shadow; are aware of its existence. This is why many people have had feelings, insights, dreams, that something big was coming this year. Jung himself viewed the World Wars as expressions/projections of the collective shadow and he was so intuitive that he dreamt of and sensed the war drawing near way before it was evident to others. Those attuned to Mother Nature, the environment and the animal kingdom, knew that we were reaching a tolerance point. And so are a lot of men in Planetos.
And now we are arrinving to the last, but not least, part. The Manic aspect of the unconscious psyche. The most famous of Jung's concepts: the Archetypes. And yes i'm talking about the Faith of the seven. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger are 100% junghian archetypes. The role of the Faith was to stop the Ego driven Old Religion, to encourage the Men to discover their true selves. Sadly septons became politicians and the Faith lost its way.
But what does it mean, why GRRM would ever structure is supernatural world like that? Well, we know that his preferred narratives are anti-war narratives. And for Jung, the psychological process to overcome the conflicts between the ego, the shadow, the mana, and the dreams is the process of acceptance and INTEGRATION.
One of the most important pieces to understanding Elden Ring is understanding the Law of Causality and Regression: that all things are linked in a chain of relation and that we can look at each piece in the chain to understand why it is there.
The reason why that is important is because three of our most pivotal characters are aware of this as well: Miqeulla, Radagon, and Marika.
They know that if you want Y sometimes you have to create X, you want an effect so you create the cause.
Miquella being eternally young is not JUST him being frail like Bran and Sweetrobin but it also parallels Bran being able time-travel.
You gotta be a fan of the Time-traveling Bran theory and that Bran is the Three Eyed Crow for this to all work for you.
Since you cannot know Miquella's age we must assume that he is much older than actually portrayed, both of his parents are the same person and have unknown origins and life spans, and his twin is also in a limbo where she eternally decays.
So being older than most other characters he knows more than them, being eternally youthful he can deceive other characters, being able to bewitch others means he can manipulate people to do what he wants, and knowing Causality and Regression means he can set up a chain of events that will allow him to reach his goal.
From the DLC webpage, we know that: It was to this land that Miquella departed.
Divesting himself of his flesh, his strength, his lineage.
Of all things Golden.
The way that Miquella fed the Haligtree was with his own blood, and that this failed and the tree fell to rot, but it only looks like failure if you think the goal was to grow a nice big healthy tree.
Instead we can see that Miquella was attempting to divest himself of his flesh and all things Golden so he could make it the Land of Shadow via his spirit.
In Elden Ring, spirits get hewned into the Erdtree via the roots. In order to prevent your soul from being vacuumed up by the tree you need something to prevent that, you need Deathroot.
When Godwyn was murdered and buried into the Greattree Roots it spread, preventing souls from being consumed by the Erdtree and creating Those Who Live in Death(who all happen to either be bandits, soldiers of the previous ruling power, or hexers who practice heretical magic)
Looks like Deathroot might protect Miquella's soul as it travels to the Land of Shadow.
With the death of Godwyn we get the events that lead to the Shattering, the war and the Shattering of the Elden Ring. This destabilization throws the world into chaos, many people die, the power structures that currently hold society crumble.
You have Malenia, the undefeated Swordswoman who can't defeat Radahn, so she nukes Caelid with Rot, causing Radahn to go mad and regress into a dog like beast.
Radahn is holding up the stars in stasis, and his death is necessary to access the DLC. Most think that Malenia failed to kill Radahn, but I don't think that was her mission, or at least not what Miquella wanted.
Miquella was abducted by Mohg and brought beneath Caelid in what looks like a large tree stump. Beneath where Radahn and Malenia fought, the blood seeped through the earth and made a blood swamp. Perhaps this was the goal all along for Miquella: Murder Godwyn, get deathroot, destabilize the world, divest grace by feeding Haligtree, get abducted by Mohg and brought under Caelid, sister comes looking for him and causes a massive war, blood leaks into Mohgwyn, Radahn had 70 IQ shaved off the top so he can't let go of the stars.
During all of this chaos, the Tarnished return, and it just so happens that the last Tarnished to return is chosen by Miquella's horse: Torrent. For someone reason, our player character is special and Torrent knows it.
Are Tarnished has a pretty easy time in the Lands Between all things considered, we get to level up with Runes, ghost girl in a doll gives us a bell to summons spirits to help us, and the power structures that would have guided, indoctrinated, or hindered Tarnished mostly dont exist anymore.
Everyone is mad and deathless and doesn't really pay attention to Torrent's Chosen Tarnished as he goes on a checklist of killing everything. Seems pretty convenient
This chosen Tarnished is also the one who kills Radahn and unlocks the stars, perhaps this is what Miquella wanted. If Radahn was sane, or killed too soon, then the stars would unlock before Torrent's chosen might have even been around.
If this is what Miquella is doing, then what could Bran be up to?
Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.
Miquella genuinely appears to be helping people unlike Bran who is getting fed dead people and hooking up to the weirwood internet gaming all night
Hey there, I've spent the last couple of days listening to everything you have online. I love your ideas and how you put them forth.
I'm sorry that this is a little out of context for the video but when bran is first learning to fly, his vision is taken north of the wall to the heart of Winter which is where he has that moment of terror.
In Danny's vision in the house of undying she sees the blue heart surrounded by the undying. I believe this blue heart represents the heart of Winter, the same heart of Winter which bran sees far north of the wall.
I therefore think that whatever needs to be destroyed to free the others who are chained to these trees is the tree at the heart of Winter, not only the trees at the wall itself.
The wall will have to come down in order for Danny on Drogon, to get to the heart of Winter and free the undying.
Love your ideas man!
Finally someone else connected the dots I thought I was crazy man
That was really Interesting, I had no idea about the scope of ASOIAF magic system, that stuff tends to get buried by the inter house conflicts in the show.
As a big elden ring fan, it's so cool to see a fresh perspective on the lore.
The elden ring lore and story is so vague, that sometimes it feels like grasping for straws. But seeing all these parallels gives some of the more unhinged things some legitimacy.
I'm excited to see more!
Great video. Elden Ring might hold the answer to some other issues I've always had as well. With Ranni, she also matches up really well with the Bloodstone Emperor, who also killed a sibling to shatter the reigning world order. Ranni's original body was destroyed, meaning there is a chance that the Bloodstone Emperor is the Great Other residing in the weirwoods. Also this connection could recast the original Long Night as something similar to the Shattering, a super magical War of the Five Kings that saw the whole world engulfed in a conflict nobody won and all sorts of supernatural entities.
Another thing is the parallels between Rykard and Euron. I've never believed that Euron wanted anything to do with the Others and instead had his own plan for godhood. I'm thinking like Rykard he seeks to consume the power of the other 'gods' and become a new god himself, creating a dark age free from the Weirwoods but ruled by his own evil. It would set him up as a dark foil to Bran and the new order he seeks to create and match up with endings like the 'Frenzied Flame' ending or Blessing of Despair ending of Elden Ring.
Also the Night of Black Knives is very reminiscent of the assassination of Renly. Especially if you believe that Ranni is a stand in for Melisandre. The game describes the women attackers as phantoms, sneeking in a murdering Godwyn with "stolen" fragments of the Elden Ring, which were used by Ranni to forge knives that could kill a god.
Thank you for this Micheal I've been asking people for this for a long time and you are the only one who delivered!!! Of course everyone will now probably make a video on this but nah you did the work here not them
The Elden Ring itself is a star that fell to the earth. Aligns with LmL's theories about meteors.
So is Glintstone, magic powered life crystals.
As it is explained Golden Amber, the star of the Elden Ring, contains the remnants of ancient life. This likely refers to the Elden Beast.
Glintstone contains residual life, and the power of the cosmos.
What I'm getting at is that the 2 most powerful magic systems in Elden Ring uses life as a magical power source, just like ASOIAF. There is also just plain Blood Magic, crystalized blood used as Glintstone, and Fire magic that uses humans as kindling.
Freaky, it draws parallels to the real world state of currencies and electricity, the way that power shifts within our own world, and how having accurate and reliable communication is a power within itself.
One addition I think might be relevant. In the Elden Ring lore, everyone I can think of that has some interaction or association with Gods seem to have only one eye open (Mohg, Ranni, Morgott, and now Messmer). In my mind this is because they have one eye anchoring them to reality and one eye focussed on the metaphysical.
You mentioned Bloodraven as someone who shares this property of only having one eye physically open. I think this is for the same reason. His physical eye anchors him to the real world, whilst his closed eye is more spiritually aligned.
Who else has only one eye physically open? Euron Crow's Eye. I think he could be analogous to either Mohg or Messmer as this figure who is in communion with some metaphysical force that wants to corrupt the current order.
Have you looked into how Elden Ring’s history lines up with irl history? There’s a whole thing about cultures being built on top of previous cultures, taken directly from the last 5000 years of human civilization, Quelaag has a whole video on it Elden Ring History [and how it broke me] or something like that
Melina is also the sister and/or the daughter of Marika, giving her “kings blood” like Shireen. The Gloam-Eyed Queen was probably Marika’s sister as Empyrean status is seemingly familial, and after her defeat and rebirth Marika gave her the name Melina and set her on a path to find a new Elden Lord for Marika.
28:30 Technically... Burning Shireen did work in the show. They make a point of it to show that the weather got warmer and the snow was melting.
But the burning itself is what made Stannis lose most of his army and therefore the battle.
32:28 Asshai is made up of Oily Black Stone, the 5 Forts are fused black stone, not the same.
Hi, about the "demigods missing one eye" theme section: One huge parallel which may be more coincidence than not, but there is a character named Mohg. He is a pretty powerful demigod. He has a horn growing through one eye. Basically his entire theme revolves around blood (and especially bloodflame, which is why I kinda sat up for a bit when you said "Fire and Blood"), and in phase 2 of his bossfight, he sprouts huge, black bird wings. Bloodraven.... blood.. raven... hmmm. Coincidence......
Mogh serves the formless mother another outer god entity. So to please his formless mother he kidnapps his brothersister for marriage. I’m trying to make the bloodraven connection but it might not be directly here
Have you read George’s short story a song for lya? About psychics that go to a planet where people grow plants from their head and join the plant hive mind when they die?
At the end of Elden Ring, in only 1 of the 6 endings has you assist an empyrean to start a new age. 1 ending is just basically repairing the old order, 3 endings are assisting other tarnished in creating a new rune to fuse with the elden ring to start a new age with a twist. The final ending is assisting an eldrich chaos god to destroy the world.
One of the weirdest things I've noticed in the Elden Ring community is a thread of disdain and occasionally hostility towards GRRM. Certainly I don't wish to generalize; not everyone in the community shares this opinion, but I often see people downplay or outright deny George's contributions even while trying to analyze it. It makes no sense to me, because even if you really just don't like GRRM's work, his ideas are still important for understanding Elden Ring. So if you want to learn as much as possible about the lore in Elden Ring, at some point you need to take a look at George's work and ideas.
Those are the fans that arent familiar with ASOIAF and want to reject it cause they dont understand it/dont know about it. They just played all the souls games and are familiar with From Softwares past titles, and arent interested in ASOIAF/GOT so they try to downplay GRRM's contribution to the story.
Great video, this inspired me to read ASOIAF! I love all things from soft and they're world building is a perfect match for for George RR Martin, you got my sub!!
I have something I would like to point out, dragons in Elden Ring lore are beings that in the past already had a lord and a god who ruled the world, in this case Placidusax and the god mentioned in his remembrance, now, we have countless evidence that points to that dragons also served the same outer god of the current era, the greater will, whether due to the fact that Placidusax is called elden lord, a title that seems linked only with the consorts of the gods of the greater will, with other outer gods apparently having the title of different lords such as lord of Frenzied flame, lord of blood for Mohg and the formless mother and lord of the night for the prophesied lord of the nox which is most likely what we became in the age of stars, Placidusax being an elden lord that would make him servant of greater will, and other evidence is the incredible amount of correlations that dragons have with gold and gold being a representation of the influence of the greater will (I wasn't going into details of all of them because there are many correlations with gold) interestingly the city capital of the ancient dragons was destroyed by a catastrophic event that was the fall of a meteor in their city, any similarity with Valyria and its fall is mere coincidence...
interestingly this would make dragons still in some ways still in the age of influence of the current god (the greater will) just as the valiryan empire rose and fell during what would be the age setting that the chronicles world is still in?
There's another character in Elden Ring named Bernahl, who is a parallel to the player character and also attempts to burn the Erdtree. However, he didn't meet Melina, and he sacrifices his own maiden to no avail and never becomes Elden Lord. The sacrifice of Shireen could similarly be in vain. Also, Ranni's Dark Moon is the one that's viewable in the sky, one which produces no moonlight. It's the normal full moon that's obscured and only visible from the area Moonlight Altar which you need to do Ranni's questline to access, where moonlight does spill.
I like how a key component of this old magic stuff is dragon glass which is essentially fire ice, if this fire ice is what makes the blood magic and all that it would be perfect for its counter to be true flame. It's all coming together
The Marika having a shadow out there theory is spot on. Hence where the dlc is to take place. The Shadow Lands……….
I been thinking about doing a deep dive on Elden ring lore but been putting it off because I’ve never played the game and I thought it was just to extensive and confusing but thia just convinced me. I got into ASOIAF lore so can’t be too much harder based off listening to you.
The only way that Elden Ring lore is likely to be "harder" to get into is the fact that it's not very pushy about presenting it to you. When the ASOIAF novels want to tell you what happened at a particular castle, they're going to tell you by putting text on the page. When Elden Ring wants to tell you what happened at a castle, the information will probably be scattered among various item descriptions that you have to go out of your way to read, along with dialogue with NPCs that you have to go out of your way to talk to, plus some environmental storytelling (e.g. the picture of a specific demigod in a place of honor on the wall of someone's fortress signaling that the demigod in question was highly regarded by the people who lived there). So the actual lore isn't so hard, but finding the pieces is a bit of a quest.
Regarding your connection between the shadowbound beasts and Melisandre’s shadow babies, Blaidd the Halfwolf (the shadowbound beast of Ranni the Witch) calls himself a “part of her very being.” So shadowbound beasts do have a connection to their empyreans that you described the shadow babies had to their masters.
One parallel you missed that is way to clear now that I look into it: Dragon Glass = Glintstone. Both are two magical wonder materials with many uses and if your shattered dragon moon story is correct both fel from the sky. Glass candle = Glintstone staff, Obsidian sacrificial knife = primal glintstone blade, Obsidian weaponry is imbued with fire magic = To give magical abilities to weaponry fashion it from or adorn it with glintstone.
To explain what Glintstone sorcery in elden ring is we compare it to what it isn't, Incantations. Incantations are cast with a magic seal, a symbol of faith but as you progress you find formless seal which means that the actual physical seal is a dumbos magic feather and the spell is actually mental. Sorceries on the other hand always need a staff with a crystal even if the stealth magic staff has an invisible or lost crystal it is still connected to a crystal. What are these crystals? Most are glintstones, crystals of starlight or star life energy. However we know that you can also make crystals out of other sources of life energy, red glintstone made of blood or amber from the life energy collected by the erdtree.
So glintstone sorcery is magic cast with the help of a crystal containing life energy and glintstones themselves are a type of crystal that is good at containing life energy. Since magic is more overt in Elden ring it is hard to draw any lore connections for Elden ring from ASOIAF but the reverse is potentially possible.
* Glintstone sorcery staffs uses life energy collected from stars to help a sorcerer to cast magic just like a Glass candle collects energy from either dragons or directly from the celestial red comet to enhance fire and divination magic. It is possible that just like glintstone staffs need rare high quality glintstones it might be that a glass candle needs rare high quality dragon glass.
* Weaponry made by sorcerors are adorned with glintstones to hold the magic in them. It is possible that one part of the secret to valyrian steel is that dragon glass is mixed into the metal to keep the magic from leaving the metal. Or allowing metal to store the life energy or spirit of the valyrian steel.
* Perhaps most importantly ancient sorcerors cut out their hearts with glintstone and then placed the stone in a puppet body that then begin to move by itself. This technique of storing your lifeforce in a glintstone to avoid death has facinating implications for the Others creation. Especially since Sorceress Selen reveals that she is a projection cast by a puppet body bound to a wall in a tomb. You free her by pulling out the glintstone holding her lifeforce, then you insert it into a different body. Maybe an other will either try or succed in freeing themself by removing the obsidian dagger holding their lifeforce and inserting it into someone else and taking over their body. Could be either a good sympathetic other like maybe the night queen or maybe the other(s) trying to kill all humans as vengeance. It could also be what separates a greenseer from an other, the greenseer is sustained and then absorbed by the weirwood but an other is sustained by the weirwood but also trapped inside their body since the dragonglass dagger traps the lifeforce within itself. Symbolically and literally traping the spirit in the body and preventing the weirwood from decomposing the body and releasing the spirit.
Heck if we go with the theory of the others bodies being preserved by the obsidian then that gives us another parallel with elden ring. Others = Godwyn the prince of death and Wights = those who live in death. While Godwyn is preserved between life and death in another way than the others he is still a corpse that can't truelly die connected to and corrupting a tree based afterlife. Just like those who live in death sprang from a halfdead corpse that couldn't be absorbed by the erdtree the others could have sprung from interrupted sacrifices to the weirwoods. Since they were fed to the weirwoods but they could never truelly leave their bodies and be absorbed by the weirwood.
* More speculative but just like how low quality glintstone is used for other uses like single use parlor trick magic maybe low quality dragon glass is a component to dragonstone. If the Valyrians mined obsidian like cracy then extra hard stone seems like a good use for all the surplus low quality material.
Awesome video hope you read this Michael.
Now that I check it again Dragonstone soil has lots of obsidian/dragon glass. It could very well be that the entire original reason for building the Valyrian colony in westeros is to mine obsidian for the Valyrians fire magic.
I always thought of the whole returning to Erdtree after death as a natural cycle of life thing, but now that i think more about it, i like your interpretation of how it's sinister in both ASOIAF and ER. Please consider making more videos about ER in comparison with ASOIAF, there's a lot more interesting lore left.
There's more celestial themes in Elden ring than just the moon. One of Ranni's brothers Radahn uses gravity magic. Once you kill him, you get a meteor shower cut scene and you also get story progression/access to new area. His gravity magic was holding the stars hostage and by killing him you free the stars and lets things change. Killing him is also required for Ranni's quests and the access to Mohg/upcoming DLC area. Although I've heard theorists say the stars in ER are creatures (some of them are bosses) so maybe that complicates things.
You can actually go to Moghwyn palace without killing Radhan
so so glad so see someone finally making this video, ive been leaving comments on elden ring youtubers for literally years now “read asoiaf please it will all make so much more sense” and telling asoiaf youtubers to play elden ring lol
as a Elden ring nut and someone who has read and seen GoT this was a great vid.
I was just watching a video on how they are connecting mushrooms, or rather, fungus, to Computers, bcuz the fungus can compute the fastest routes for energy to travel, & can perform complex mathematics & geometry, etc. And can do many other complicated tasks, that would increase computing power & performance, as the species is highly intelligent. And they are attaching this actual fungus, or it's spider web-like, ("WEB- worldwide web...), fibers, (not mushrooms, into the processor's mechanisms. Incredible.
Made me think, immediately, of the Wierwood Net. I'm sure u know what I mean, without explaining, as it's been discussed prior.
And they're hoping this will transition us to quantum computing. It's amazing to me, to blend organic materials with machines, very dystopian, lol, & cyborg-esque.
Great video as always, thanks Michael! If the Flame of Ruin proceeded the age of the Erdtree this also mirrors Tolkien where the Valar created the two Lamps which once destroyed by Melkor was replaced by the Years of the Trees of Valinor
Another interesting thing about the Erdtree is that not only is Marika inside of it but there’s a burial rite performed by society in Elden Ring where when you die, your body is placed next to roots of the erdtree in hopes that you’re reborn through the branches. It’s also implied that more hi-born individuals get placed closer and closer to the base of the erdtree, Godwyns corpse is placed directly beneath the erdtree as he is a direct descendant of Marika and the first demigod to die.
Strangely you can also find Godwyns corpse in another location in stormveil castle
@@fakeaccountzsthat is not his body beneath the castle, his body is spreading death root in the erdtree, and sometimes this corruption shows up as his corrupted, decaying face.
Now the ending we got with Bran becoming king finally makes sense.
It already did make sense if you knew your Celtic folklore. He's named after Bran the Blessed, whose buried head is supposed to magically sustain and control the British Isles.
We're getting our erdtree burial with this one. 🔥🔥🔥
When it comes to the One Eye gods, it seems there was a deity before the Erdtree and Marika that the Fire Giants host, it has one giant eye.
There is also the "blood star" that you can see if you poke out your eyes.
Mogh, the Lord of Blood's own horn poked his eye out, and now he is in contact with an Outer God called the Formless Mother who craves wounds and blood. This parallels another Blood God in Fromsoft's game Bloodborn called the Formless Odeon.
So there seems to be a connection between godhood and one-eyed-ness / blindness.
We really don't know much about the process of becoming a god and growing an Erdtree outside of it needs blood. Even then, with Miquellas holy blood, his Haligtree (Holy Tree) failed.
We are in high anticipation of the DLC that has been promised to answer many questions regarding Marikas godhood, Erdtrees, the Crucible (the previous age), and the long forgotten history of the Lands of Shadow.
honestly glad i stumbled upon this video, but if you haven't yet i recommend looking into a possible connection to Miquella as he is trying to make his own competitor to the Erdtree. i would also recommend looking into Mohg "one of the demi gods in game and someone who steals Miquella from his sleep" and his connection to bloodflame, which might lead down a rabbit hole with the Omen curse, as well as the outer god he serves, The Formless Mother
About Stannis' sacrifice of Shirey not working: Look up Bernahl, in Elden Ring. He sacrificed his maiden before the player did and it didn't work. If he parallels Stannis, then it means that his maiden probably didn't have the right lineage/the right type of king's blood and, in the case of ER, a child of Marika, or descendent, is required. This would mean that there is a family out there in ASOIAF that does have the right blood and one of their young female members will be/have to be sacrificed. My bet is on one of the Starks, given that they are most connected to the Weirwoods.
About Ranni being the Night Queen: She learned her ice magic from a blue skinned Ice Witch (she modeled the puppet her soul now resides in after that person). The Ice witch is probably the Night Queen parallel.
About the Wall being build from bodies: ER's Volcano Manor is build from bodies. In some places where the building is destroyed, you can literally see the body parts in the 'stone'. The magic of Mt Gelmir is considered heretical/blasphemous, though, so not sure how well that fits into ASOIAF, beyond the current generation probably being repulsed by knowing the truth of the construction of the Wall.
34:38 if I remember correctly in Norse mythology Odin sacrifices one of his eyes to drink from a well of knowledge and gains divine wisdom and becomes even more perceptive than with two eyes maybe this could fit in with blood raven being that Odin's story is how nothing is too much to sacrifice for wisdom(also there's a world tree in Norse mythology) I'd love to see a complete theory from you one day 🤞🏻
Ps. Odin has two crows with names translate to thought and mind and they bring information to him
🎉so hype for ER & aSoIaF comparisons. Until we see Martin's lore book for the game, it'll be hard to tell where he ends and FromSoft begins.
Agreed. If I had to guess what happened I think they basically told Martin they wanted the same magical skeleton and rules and such and promised that they would take it and turn it way up where he takes it and turns it down in ASOIAF. This means the properties would be different enough but running the same way.
Main easy example is how the people strapped to trees and their magical descendants in ASOIAF seem to be just normal people where as in Elden Ring it is a literal god and demi-gods. I think a lot of the parallels fit this general idea, but would love to find out more about what Martin actually gave them.
@@michaeltalksaboutstuff I think that George gave them a world and history and Miyazaki made the shattering that destroyed peace and added his dark souls flavor
I’m honestly suprised no one noticed the ASOIAF Easter eggs and cross references. Stormviel being a baby of the storm lands, the bloodhound knights cape being yellow and having a dog like house Clegane, the incest and infighting of the demigods( aka royalty like the infighting of tarageyns and lanisters) , the grafted sword and so much more are all present in Elden ring. Even land of giants kinda mirrors the land beyond the wall. Hell even Iji mask looks like the chicks from that desert city in the thrones tv show
Wow! I’ve never heard of Elden Ring but this is very compelling.
For real?! It was like one of the biggest games that dropped and it was written by GRRM. It even won a nebula - so of course it should be looked at if you want to look at ASOIAF
Boy oh boy you got about 100+ hours of a fantastical and beautiful world that GRRM had a hand in creating and an amazing story he also wrote the history for.
I'm not a gamer.@@Henbot
@@Henbot "written by GRRM" is a misleading statement. GRRM set the backstory. He didnt, for example, write dialogues or most of the characters you actually meet.
@waynethompson6667 there's always time, bub
About the second moon in Elden Ring; the "lost black moon" of Nokstella (an underground city with its own night sky) is actually a lesser known third moon. Ranni's Dark Moon is actually distinct, as it is not destroyed, and has notable visual differences, but it *is* generally hidden from sight apart from in specific circumstances.
It seems that at some point in the past, the Nox people underwent some kind of cataclysm, leading to the loss of their moon. In Elden Ring, there are certain peoples whose fate is written in the stars, and the moons are the guiding forces of those stars. So for the Nox to lose their moon implies also a loss of their fate.
It's possible the downfall of the Nox was some kind of punishment by the Greater Will for the treachery of crafting the Fingerslayer Blade, a weapon capable of harming the Two Fingers and the Greater Will.
Also some discrepancies I want to point out, not to diminish from the valid similarities you discussed:
1: The Demigod descendants of Marika in Elden Ring already had power before Marika was imprisoned and crucified for shattering the Elden Ring.
2: Of the Demigods, not all of them are necessarily descended from Marika by blood. All the Carian family (Rykard, Radahn, Ranni (who is an Empyrean)) are children of Renalla and Radagon, and only became Demigods after Radagon married Marika and fused with her. There's some contention as to whether Radagon was already fused with Marika when he sired the Carian children, or whether they fused later, so this may or may not be important (I fall on the "fused later" side).
3: Empyreans do not need to be descendants of Marika. All Empyrean means is that you have been chosen by the Two Fingers as a candidate to become the new God, vessel of the Elden Ring and representative of the Greater Will. Marika was herself once an Empyrean, and seems to have warred against other Empyreans such as the Gloam Eyed Queen in order to become a God. As far as we know, at this time there was no-one crucified in the Erdtree, though admittedly we don't know enough about the period before the Age of the Erdtree to say there wasn't for sure.
However the only other prior Age we know of was the Age of the Ancient Dragons, and if Placidusax is anything to go by, their God was probably a dragon. It's possible there are some humans descended from dragons that could have become Empyreans by the bloodline connection you suggest, but we haven't heard of any, and besides that Marika is a Numen, who came from a land outside the Lands Between, and descended from denizens of another world entirely, so the chances she could be a descendant of a previous God bloodline is very low.
4: You say we "choose which Empyrean to team up with to remake the world", but this isn't really accurate. We only get the chance to team up with Ranni. Of the other two Empyreans, Malenia is dedicated to Miquella, and Miquella is currently absent.
Other than the Age of Fracture, which just puts the world back how it was but still slightly damaged, there are three endings where you remake the world by adding Mending Runes to the Elden Ring, which are created not by Demigods or Empyreans, but by Tarnished.
Then the last ending is the Frenzied Flame ending, which is brought about by an Outer God, not an Empyrean.
5: You don't explicitly state this, but being crucified within the Erdtree did not give Marika eternal life, she already had eternal life. It's important to understand that there was a great deal of time between Marika becoming God and the Shattering. It's unclear exactly how long because most of the main players we know about are immortal, but enough generations for Godrick to be "a distant relation, his blood sorely diluted".
I've been brow deep in obsession with Asoiaf and Elden Lore forever so to see this makes me quite happy. A lot Elden Rings fans don't give GRRM any credit in the story when it's got GRRM all over it in every aspect.
I really love the comparison between Melina and Shireen. Especially because in GoT poor Shireen did not have a choice. But in Elden Ring, Melina herself makes the choice to be the kindling.
Also, I want to say the idea of blood or human sacrifice being used for ascension to godhood(and trees) is also prevalent in Elden Ring. We see the same themes of stagnation and how fear or avoidance of death causes ripples of problems.
Your new analysis makes the gaggle of Gods more intelligible and coherent to me. I had considered the enchanted world presented in the books and the show as an element required by the genre G.R.R. Martin uses. But I am an atheist, so that thought easily comes to my mind.
As presented in the show, R'hllor and Fire Magic seemed unrelated or weakly related to Tree and Blood Magic and the Old Gods, to the Seven, to the fact that deos abscondus et non est praesens. The Gods or any God never answers prayers in the books or the shows, a fact that drove some characters to despair. The Gods communicate cryptically and indirectly or not at all. At best, the Gods have intermediaries (agents) who have faith (an irrational belief) but understand little or nothing of what those Gods are trying to accomplish. (We serve without understanding. I don't know what the Gods want. I don't know their names. There is something greater than us.) Book Melisandre (and the Red preisthood in general) might be a partial exception to this rule. But I doubt Stannis will realize the Azor Ahai prophecy. He's neither a Targaryan (fire) nor a Stark (ice). His person does not prefigure a New Age. It instead reflects the age to be replaced, an age of violence and tyrany, Blood Magic and the living deaths of the sacrificed. He does not evoke a 'dream of spring.' He is cold and merciless. He maims his friend and murders his brother and daughter. His justice is inhuman. His commitment to duty is cold and absolute. Jon Snow, on the other hand, is a Stark, a Targaryan and neither (a bastard). He is all three because he rejected his Stark and Targaryan identities when he chose to remain Jon Snow. He made that his shield!, as Tyrion counseled. He became a hero and King because events compelled him to become each, to act justly and ethically under the circumstances he confronted. ("I never wanted it. I never asked for it.") He accepts exile from Westros (he committed a crime, regicide) but not from humanity. He went to live with the outcasts, of which he is one. He generates solidarity among enemies and strangers, doing so not by conqust and, pace Dany, tyrannide or maternalism (Mhysa), but by finding common ground, by reasoning with them, by consideringthem as equals. Dany aspired to take what was rightfully hers (she was entitled, she was a queen by birth) and wanted to free the world from tyrany (to be a messiah). She aspired to be a God-like creature -- omniscient (I know what's best) and nearly omnipotent (I have Dothraki, Unsullied and a Dragon). That expressed her madness. It was, she believed, her destiny, her title. Jon, a lord by birth and a bastard by choice, was everyone (no one is entitled by nature but to be a mere human being, mortal, limited) and no one but himself (which is all anyone can be). The symbolic meaning of a bastard expresses the universality of the human condition. Jon represented everyone and no one but himself, common and unique. Together, fighting the Night King and his army, destroying House Lannister, Jon and Dany and the wars they fought were the birth pangs of a New Age. Neither would rule during this New Age (neither conquest nor successesion establish rightful governance). That lack completed the breaking of the wheel. The New Age will begin as weakly democratic, as Tyrion requested. Samwell Tarlly prefigured the development of the New Age when he suggested giving the frachise to the commoners, which brought an ignorant but derisive laughter from the lords present at the Tyrion's presentation to Westrosi aristocracy. Bran's election mark it as an Age of Enlightenment when compareed to the Old Age. Absolutism entered its period of decay.
I believe it is significant that the outcasts (dwarves, cripples, bastards, cowards) would be the leaders of this Age of Enlightenment. They are the symbolic representatives of the common people of the Age to Come. They are the "meek who will inherit the earth."
Eventually, as your analysis suggests, Green Magic will replace, in part, Blood, Fire and Ice Magic. This replacement would complete the cycle that began when the Children of the Forest were forced to defend themselves against the First Men, which brought Ice, Fire and Blood Magic into the world. I wonder if magic will have any place at all when an Enlightened Age replaces an Age of Enlightenment? If history is cyclical, then it likely would.
Thank you for your work!
Good observations! There's other parallels I could think of, like women using love to gather life force in order to awaken something (Melisandre with the shadows and Fia with Godwyn). And also in the game's ending, Marika's head is used for some reason (by the player or Ranni), and the new age starts. Maybe that'll happen too in the books, since there's a lot of beheadings in them.
man i had finished ASoIaF not too long before the release of ER. Was super excited to look for a hint or two snuck inside the game. Thought I had missed it all while trying into survive and didnt realize the metanarratives might be coinciding. wow, glad others were looking!
17:44 the corrupting event can't be the shattering as it happens much after the erdtree is established from the old "great tree" which existed in the prior ages ( before even the age when the dragons ruled the golden order and greater will had a dragon as it's empyrean god)
The greater will corrupted the erdtree when it placed it's Elden Ring/Elden Beast inside the tree, or perhaps when Marika conquered the Altus Plateau upon exiting the shadowlands
You should actually revisit Elden Ring lore after "shadow of the erdtree" drops in July since there's hints that the erdtree is an illusion obfuscating an entire invisible landmass called the shadowlands
yes this is roughly my concern: the shattering and subsequent captivity of Marika in the Erdtree occurs when the current age and order is on the decline.
That actually a good thought that Night King and Queen may have been vilified 🤔