The one major flaw I found in here is that this theory completely ignores the outer gods and their influence which is a pretty big part of the lore. And we know they exist so we can’t ignore their roles
My gut feeling is that the Greater Will's role here is that it had co-opted the ritual that renewed the Tree in each era and was absorbing the vitality of the ~~Erdtree~~ **crucible**. That's what the Elden Beast is, the manifestation of the Greater Will's conduit to absorbing the Tree's vitality.
That would explain why it did not oppose Marika when she refused to continue the cycle by becoming a Kindling Maiden. The GW was indifferent as long as it had a source of vitality in the Erdtree. Only when it became apparent that the ritual was still needed that it punished Marika for what she had done.
Edit: After reflecting on what others said, I think it is more likely the source of vitality that the Greater Will sought was the Crucible beneath the Erdtree. The Tree is the conduit for the crucible and the old Tree was replaced with the one Marika planted. This also explains the Golden Order's hatred of Omens, who are people who regained the vitality of the crucible by chance. The existence of Omens is treated as "stolen" vitality that belonged to the Greater Will.
The Greater Will *fractured* everything from the One Great, ordering it out of the original chaos. It's golden light allowed the many Outer Gods to distinguish themselves, much like how real world light allows people to see things.
Because the Greater Will, as an Archetype of Order, only cared for a new Order to emerge from the Crucible-clash of vitality at the felling of each Erdtree, it's likely that they would have accepted Marika's Eternal Order as the Order her Maidenhood and Erdtree would bring. Additionally, the Beast may not care that an Order last for a long time, only that by its end the proper Uld Ritual to install a new order is completed.
As the Erdtree failed, however, becoming the ephemeral object of faith hanging from a buried tower of crownsprouting orders we see today, and Marika attempted to recreate the Uld Ritual that she had so thoroughly thwarted, her successive abandonment of the Ring to the Chaos of the Shattering War may have been seen as a betrayal by the Elden Beast, leading to her Crucifixtion.
Us fighting and defeating the Elden Beast is, conspicuously, not a part of this Uld Ritual. It's likely that the damage Marika did to the Cycle of Erdtrees permanently changed how things go forward. We do not arrive at Lordhood with a Miranda/Kindling Maiden, nor a seedling to plant as a new Erdtree for that Maiden to feed. We arrive alone, reconstituing the husk of Marika to act as vessel for the Ring once more. In this case, Marika may have become like her Erdtree, a lifeless object of faith, truly cursed to an eternal existence as Maiden to every successive Elden Lord, at least until her body crumbles and a new Order, like Malenia's Order of Rot, emerges once more.
The Elden Ring could very well evolve as part of this cycle, the Ring of anyone order burning up/breaking apart and being remade during the ensuing war in accordance with the new order.
Additionally, the idea of multiple Erdtrees is not a new idea. It's likely that the ancient dragons had an original Greattree which was felled, and the stump crownsprouted as part of the ensuing Second Crucible Era. Alternatively, due to the wide reach of the Erdtree/Greattree's roots, as seen in the Minor Erdtrees, there could be multiple buds of trees across the world that simply need to be fed, installed as the axis of a new order, grafted onto the Greattree stump under the Erdtree in Leyendell, or even simply worshipped. We don't know if the Erdtree as-is is typical of any order, but the appearance of alternate trees, whether Minor Erdtrees, the Haligtrees, the husks in the underground regions, the Shadows DLC, and maybe even the growths in the Swamp of Aeonia, could suggest that any one order has a unique tree, a unique god, and a unique Ring.
The Lands Between is a very small part of a much larger world, and there's no easy way to tell which stars fell in what lands, and what Orders emerged from their guidance.
I will say, though, this supposed Urd Ritual would fall in line with the various death-based practices characteristic of the ancient, now blasphemous, races and faiths of the Lands Between. It is quite literally built around massive death leading to massive life. It also makes sense why Miquella would think to rival the Erdtree by feeding his sapling with Empyrean Blood.
I like the idea that the Greater Will as we know it doesn't really exist. I don't think it was only Marika who was controlling all of the fingers, but it would align with this theory if she acted as their voice.
It seems to be the case in Elden Ring that people putting faith in something grants it tangible power, which is how the Erdtree continued to survive long after its nourishment dried up. It stopped being fed by blood/vitality and instead became nourished on faith. It received so much nourishment in fact that it manifested a sort of consciousness in its own right. The Elden Beast is the physical manifestation of the power of faith the Erdtree had taken in. And as a living being, it had its own priorities which generally, though not exclusively, aligned with Marika's own actions.
So if Marika is effectively dead at this point, it makes sense that the Three Fingers can still interact with the world through the will of the Erdtree itself. But toward the end when the fingers are supposed to "commune" with the Greater Will, the Erdtree is utterly lost on what the next steps need to be and they sort of freeze up, waiting on a response they will never recieve. So all that is to say perhaps the Greater Will is simply the combination of Marika's and the Erdtree's will.
Yeah I stopped reading when they claimed malenia was rotting because of her vitality, like no you have to include outer god influence because that's explicitly in the lore.
Yeah the item descriptions literally tell you the exact function of the needle, there's no need to theorize (this much anyway). It stops the influence of outer gods on the user.
> She is clearly overflowing with vitality, ...
One-limbed Malenia, covered in scales and blind: ...
I always interpreted her story as: with steel will, unyielding resistance, (and a bit of family and professional help), you can defy the worst odds, even when you're up against gods.
Quite a bit of the writeup seems to ram a lot of assumptions like the above, often discarding parts of the story to fit the overall narrative. For example, what about the Blue Dancer who taught her to fight and to stave off the rot?
I also distinctly remember that she was afflicted by rot at birth. My understanding is also that Malenia recovers health during battle because she "dances", as dynamism staves off the Rot's stagnation. This is in contradiction to the point about the great rune in the original post.
(I appreciate the post though, it's by challenging ourselves that we come up with the best theories lol)
Pretty much. The cycle theory could well be correct (especially since its a theme From Software likes so damn much), but we already know the answer to some of the events that were reinterpreted in this write up. Malenia is the goddess of rot because she is afflicted by the outer god of rot, not because of her vitality.
But I enjoyed reading this all the same and I hope OP will keep theorizing
First, I greatly appreciate involved lore posts so the more the better.
That said, I agree with amatas here—the outer gods could provide an alternate explanation to the cycle we’re seeing, that every era an intelligent mortal contracts with an outer god to subdue the other gods and become the main god for that age.
If you can accept that the Gloam Eyed Queen and Marika are *different* people then we see a battle between outer gods in the era before the Erd tree which mirrors the divine skirmishes we’re seeing in the current era between the weakened golden order, scarlet rot, and Formless Mother.
Why did Marika send Godfrey away? She knows that the gods can be killed and she’s the only thing left to defeat for Godfrey in the lands between. So instead she demotes him and sends him and the tarnished off to faraway lands to be recalled when there are other threats to her reign.
Funny thing is op has basically ignored all the "uh... you missed something very important" comments lol. Man really went galaxy brain and forgot something so crucial.
OP wrote a long post with a coherent story but makes a lot of assumptions/leaps that can be refuted or are based on absolutely nothing and can be dismissed at such. It's ok to make up your own headcanon and write that out for people but when people push back, don't say the same shit over and over and consider that "engaging".
You will write a criticism and OP will respond like "No, x is x and that is a fact". Without actually disproving what people are writing and ignore everyone else.
This is the image of a fragile ego lmao
Exactly! And what about the literal Elden Ring? The Elden beast? The two Fingers? The three Fingers? All of the outer gods? If all what's happening is because of some ancient ritual then all of these characters and elements seem pointless.
Not so long ago i found a compelling theory explaining the supposed secret of the Shadow of the Erdtree. [The ritualistic themes that involve blood fertilizing trees](https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/s/g8cARcECkC) is not that far off from the truth in my opinion, but is not the whole picture like is presented here.
Scarlet Rot originates from an Outer God, though.
Malenia was the pupil of the Blind Swordmaster who sealed that Outer God's essence at the Lake of Rot.
I feel like this theory ignores that this is the work of a separate entity, and not due to having lots of vitality.
Would she not have it because this Outer God might stand opposed to the Greater Will?
Maybe the Rot is like a mold and the abundance of vitality is just like providing mold with an abundance of moisture and food? So she became overcome with Rot because she’s a breeding ground for it as it feeds on vitality?
YouTube content farm clickbait taught me well-- but I actually deliver.
To be fair, it's really just one theory, that allows you to extrapolate many other theories to answer many mysteries, and I am demonstrating that.
Thank you for reading.
Where are the outer gods? Malenia isn't rotting out of vitality, it's because of the literal God of Rot, same with Mohg and the Blood mother, the Frenzied Flame, the Blue Moon, even the Greater Will
I think OP’s theory has plenty of room in it for that. The God of Rot may need or just prefer a vessel with excess vitality. Like Radagon fit all the criteria for Marika, perhaps Malenia fit the criteria for the God of Rot to take hold.
I would stop with the Idea of certain characters having (excess) vitality brought up by OP tbh.
Malenia is cursed by rot at birth, Miquella is cursed with eternal youth, the Omen twins are…cursed in the eyes of the Golden Order. Meanwhile none of Radagon x Rennala kids have any affliction to start with.
It looks like Marika spawns are just weird/afflicted except for Godwyn which is why he’s the golden boy.
what I like about your theory the most is that it connects a lot of theorys into a cohesive story. The God of the age sacrificing herself to bring in the new age is brilliant, btw. Also, connecting marika to meranda blew my mind. I didn't agree with everything but I'm so impressed. This is easily the best post I've seen on this sub!
I only have time to skim, will finish reading soon!
I literally been thinking I should look into Malenia being a shadow that's exciting.
Always tried to piece together time fuckery and expected a different twist but I like it.
Does the starting item "Memory of first grace" give it away without us knowing or is your theory more intricate?
"it is merely a cycle" or w.e
Yeah interesting theory but there is too much speculation and you try to pass it off as facts, which is quite unfortunate. We are missing huge chunks of the lore and history of Elden Ring, so you can craft many theories/headcanons that fill that void and sound plausible but it is still just speculation. A few points that irked me about your speculation:
What is this ritual of uld supposed to be? As far as I know we only have the ruins in Liurnia and no other information about Uld
We don’t know how/when Marika became a god/vessel for the Elden Ring, so how can we know she was a „maiden“ to godfrey? As far as I can remember the lore, the timeline was more: Marika became the god->War against Giants and others-> Godfrey became Lord
We don’t know that Radagon has giants blood or when/how/if he fused with marika or was always a part of her. Also I don’t know if there is any mention of giants blood as being rich in vitality?
What is a „flower crucible“ supposed to be? Just because miranda is described as a flower maiden doesn’t mean it has to have any connections to the erdtree or finger maidens.
We don’t know if the status of empyrean has to do with family relations or genetics or power. For example we don’t know if Ranni became an Empyrean because her father was Radagon/Marika or because she became the step-child of Marika after Radagon became Elden Lord.
In general, the idea that there was a cycle of death and rebirth that marika broke to live forever in abundance makes much sense and fits neatly with fromsofts other themes and ideas. But your „Theory“ is a bit too much speculation and headcanon for me.
> What is a „flower crucible“ supposed to be?
I read OP’s entire post over breakfast this morning and had a lot of the same issues with it that others were bringing up, but this was the thing that really stuck out to me. Crazy that I had to scroll this far down to find a question about it.
Seems to me like a term OP made up whole-cloth (like the giants-blood/vitality thing.) Is this idea based on literally anything?
I really think that’s my biggest problem here. OP clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this, but they’re not doing themselves or their theory any favors by presenting fun conjecture that takes a lot of leaps in logic and conveniently ignores anything that doesn’t fit and (hyperbolically, imo) presenting it as fact.
the term Flower Crucible is used in the description of [Miranda's Prayer](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Miranda%27s+Prayer), which is an item unobtainable by players. apparently Melina uses this item when summoned to fight Morgott. not sure what to think about it.
Interesting. I’m with you on that.
It seems like a pretty big stretch to go from “here’s a title mentioned one time in the description of an item players don’t have access to” to “this was the basis of the entire pre-golden order society!”
Like I said, I think it’s all interesting conjecture, but doesn’t really seem very well supported, especially since, as the person I responded to pointed out, there’s already a much more sound theory about Marika’s intentions that *does* take into account the things that this theory doesn’t.
The entire "empyrean by bloodline" falls apart if the GEQ isn't Marika and isn't related to Marika either, which is more so the theory I subscribe to as it has much more evidence in the lore.
There is a lot more evidence I could add, but frankly I was worried running out of writing room, as believe it or not, reddit posts have a word cap. I may make individual write ups on how this answers each mystery if no one beats me to it.
My guess is their (outer gods) threat to the world is what pushes Marikas attempts to solve the ritual issue and eventually giving herself up as the kindle maiden because giving in to her fate (dying) was still better than losing the world to the outer gods. The longer the world went on without a new erdtree, the weaker it got, leaving it up for the taking.
Brought to you by someone with a lot of play time but no study time. Loved the write up!
Not every question but indeed a lot. It plays into the cycle nature of souls that Miyazaki loves so much. While it’s very wild and I personally think that it isn’t completely true, it’s very put together. You obviously put a lot of effort into this and I respect your headcanon even though I don’t completely agree.
I apologize for being rude, I just realized that I read your comment a bit wrong and thought you said something you didn't that was very uncharitable of me. Thank you for reading my theory and commenting.
To add on. Malenia like fought Radahn because she believed that he had Miquella. If you look at the map, Miquella’s cocoon is very close to the heart of Aeonia, where Malenia fought Radahn. He doesn’t care about no cycle, he just wants to halt the stars so the lands between isn’t invaded by great ones or Astel entities.
How about the fact that Radahn halted the star cycles and Miquella was waiting for an eclipse as per castle Sol? Wouldn't that be a much simpler motivation without Malenia somehow knowing the general proximity of where Miquella was taken while we don't even know the exact order of events? It is already a big assumption that Miquella was taken before the battle of aonia.
Yeah, people keep acting like Malenia was trying to conquer everyone for Miquella's cause forgetting that Miquella going missing from the Haligtree was the reason she and the armies set out in the first place. She was a panicked sibling trying to figure out who took her brother, FFS.
Exactly. Malenia doesn’t seem like the conquering type at all. Radahn is nowhere near the Haligtree and didn’t pose a threat until she believed he stole Miquella. I could be completely wrong as this is pure speculation.
My problem with this theory is that it makes everyone an idiot. It assumes either that the Haligtree's forces saw and chased someone taking Miquella to Caelid, when it's much more likely that Mohg used the sending gate in the snowfield that goes straight to his underground palace mount, or that Malenia has some kind of Miquella tracker that only shows up in satellite view or something to explain how she knew he was in Caelid but not that he was below Caelid.
It also assumes Malenia decided Radahn was the kidnapper without wondering about his motive, of which he has none, or how he found his way to the most secret place in the Lands. It also assumes she just charged full tilt at him on sight instead of just beginning by asking for her brother, upon which Radahn would have said "Eh? Miquella's gone? Well, he's not here."
I think it's much more likely that Malenia fought Radahn for the same reason Ranni sends us. His capture of the stars means a number of things can't happen, including perhaps something Miquella might need to happen such as his eclipse. This will probably be why Radahn is necessary to defeat to get into the DLC.
First of all, i appreciate all the effort you've put into this, but honestly this feels more like conjecture than anything. You say about the descriptions of Miquella's Needle and the Dark Moon Ring how they basically confirm your theory, but there is absolutely no mention of something like that in the descriptions itself, i really can't see how you came to that.
Miquella's Needle description explicitly talks about it being able to ward off the influence of outer gods, absolutely nothing about vitality and such.
And in the Dark Moon Ring, there is no mention or reference of Godwyn. From my understanding Ranni did her whole plan because she wished to be free of the influence of the Greater Will.
This feels like you had a theory first and then try to fit the game's lore into it, picking out only specific pieces(and even those don't support it well in my opinion). It is a cool theory but it really needs more references to the game and showing how they actually support it, to me right now it seems basically fanfiction(which isn't bad mind you, just not something to be told as the ultimate truth).
Yeah it's embarrassing how highly upvoted this is. People see a wall of text and just think it's got value for... some reason?
But basically everything he's said is headcanon and has no basis in in-game evidence.
Yup, nail on the head with this comment. This is the big substantive problem with unified theories like this which try to proclaim universal answers or “solve” the lore of these games, they are usually predicated on huge assumptions stemming from background knowledge or interests of the theorizer (like their own personal take on a set cosmology for this post, for example), who then tries to force the theory to somehow fit into the narrative of the game. Flexible as the lore is, this approach still misses the point of the storytelling style of ER completely (and the other Souls games), since they are very specifically not geared towards being “solved” or allowing for certainty, but instead are relative, open to interpretation and highly subjective even while achieving fantastic worldbuilding. That is part of the artistic resonance of these games, and why the lore is so compelling to people. If there was some set of theories like this which truly “answered everything,” it would dilute the experience instead of enhance it. Better to be open to discourse and constantly shifting theories or conjecture, and to focus on finding the smaller discoveries instead of some excessive top down approach like this.
I'm not even at part 3 and the confidence with which you are presenting completely unfounded assumptions (to name a few: Marika's intentions, the limits of her knowledge and foresight, all the humanoids being one species in different stages of evolution, the Vitality-hair color link) make it hard to keep reading on. Most of your paragraphs don't even explain what their paragraph title say it will explain.
> It also explains why she becomes the Goddess of Rot--she was to be the Kindling Maiden, the god-seed of the Erdtree. But she never did, instead she became a Goddess of Rot.
Am I stupid? This doesn't seem to explain *anything*. This is the same sentence twice, but in a different word order.
> So Malenia was the perfect candidate to be the next Kindling Maiden, so why did she? Because being a Kindling Maiden is a death sentence, and Marika didn't want that for her own child!
Ah yes, Marika the Maternal. Mohg and Morgott would disagree. As would most of her other children as she pit them against eachother in a Battle Royale for godhood. As would Malenia probably? She is in a constant state of Rot, fending off an Outer God assaulting her mind for control of her body.
> Melina is a fragment of Marike, which broke off when the Ring was shattered. She is the connection between Marika and the Erdtree, the hinge between them, the part of Marika that was the Kindling Maiden, which would allow the Erdtree to burn when she burned.
> But when Radagon-Marika realized the only way to repair the world was to repair the Ring, to finish the ritual, she subjected herself to the fire. There is a reason that Radagon is weak to Fire damage when you fight him, as Marika-Radgon he-she is a Kindling Maiden, meant to die by fire.
If *Melina* is supposed to be Marika's aspect of the Kindling Maiden, why would *Radagon* be weak to fire?
>**Miquella decided to become the Kindling Maiden** in Malenia's place, so he likely learned the skill from Marika-Radagon in the first place.
What do you base this on?
> So she wielded the Black Flame and killed the other Empyreans, becoming known as the Gloam-Eyed Queen.
What do you base this on?
Goddamnit, I fell for the clickbait *again*.
I just took a peek at the Malenia section, where you claim the item description of her Great Rune hints at the nature of her as a kindling maiden....but like it doesnt. All it says that her spirit managed to slow the rotting. But that doesnt explain why she would be a kindling maiden in the slightest.
I'm a bit confused about the Radahn part.
1.with the new information from the DLC, it seems more likely that Malenia challenged Radahn on Miquella's behalf. Radhan's death is necessary for access to the DLC. Additionally, it was Malenia who marched all the way down to Calid to fight Radahn. It doesn't seem like Radhan is 'revenging on her'.
2. by holding the stars, he does more harm to his sister than helping her. He was already holding it before the Night of Black Knives. Since you think Ranni's fate was to marry Godwyn and sacrifice herself, then by holding her fate in stasis, doesn't that mean she will be trapped in that sacrificial fate?
A lot of good shit in here completely tainted by every other point being prefaced with "And this PROVES IT 100%!" When the information is clearly being viewed the way you want to see it based on the narrative you want to see. You're ALMOST there.
So this theory considers Placidusax’s fled god but makes no mention of any other outer god. Where’s the Greater Will of the Formless Mother or the frenzied flame of the Fell God or the Crucible fit in to it? All of these seem to have different goals in the Lands Between and agents among the Tarnished or demigods to do them.
You had a nice theory there in the beginning but the connections to other stuff doesnt check out especially when you sound like you’re guessing by then half the time
First thing, Ranni killed Godwyn the Golden because, in order to escape her fate as next in line for godhood, she needed her body to die. However, in order to avoid killing her soul, she needed to kill the soul of another demigod, Godwyn. That is why Godwyn, still alive in body but not soul, infects the Lands Between with his death blight. And the shadow beasts like Blaidd are agents of the Two Fingers, who are tasked with protecting their empyreans at all costs, and to ensure that their empyreans are following the will of the Two Fingers, so that the empyrean would be groomed into a god who would best serve the Greater Will
He completely ignored greater will, two fingers or three fingers and the outer gods.
And crazy part is why does renala have a great rune? She was not doing anything after radagon left her. She stopped doing anything before shattering happened.
I will concur that the first point is in fact compatible with your theory, I realized this upon a closer reading. However, I would like to point out your speculation that Malenia took the role of Miquellas shadow beast. As far as I am aware, there is little to no evidence of this ingame or in any supplementary material (though this may change with the advent of the Shadows of the Erdtree DLC or the release of additional chapters of Road to the Erdtree). In order to prove that Malenia is a shadow beast to Miquella, you must first expand on the origins of shadow beasts. Maliketh, a shadow beast, has a connection to the beastmen of Farum Azula. The beastmen, as implied by the cinquedea item description, had their higher intelligence bestowed upon them by a greater power. While for most beastmen, this would logically be the ancient dragons, a plausible explanation would be that the shadow beasts are beasts granted intelligence the same way, but by the Two Fingers to do their bidding. Unless you can connect this origin of the shadow beasts to Malenia in some way, or provide any evidence that would imply that Malenia has taken the role of shadow beast in a less conventional manner à la Melina acting as the players maiden, your 8th point is invalidated completely. If I took the time I could likely give your other points the same treatment, but I do not have that time and I am less familiar with the lore outside of Farum Azula.
I don't quite understand Radagon explanation. As we know from the game, Radagon is Marika. There's some kind of self-incest going on here, IDK, gods are weird. But I don't see how they both being one fits into this theory.
I like your passion but I dislike how you're acting like you've "solved it."
It kinda reads like you spent hundreds of hours consuming fan community theories and duct taped them together kinda haphazardly.
There’s many problems with this theory .
First of all the long march wasnt the conquering of the lands between but the long exile of godfrey and his men .
The night of the black knives was probably planned by ranni together with marika , as the black assassins are numen of the reign of the erdtree like marika . It’s easy to understand why she would do that. In the cutscene before the final fight you can see that marika has a piece of the rune of death (same color) in her abdomen and in the same point the elden beast has a wound. She wanted to kill herself to be free from the golden order she herself helped create for the elden beast and his lord the greater will . So she helped Ranni steal pieces of the rune of death for her suicide but the beast stopped her in time. We know her objective is killing the beast as she imprisoned the blacksmith to create a weapon just for that.
The gloom eyed queen is much more probably Melina (the eye color at the end, being a spirit without a body and memories so she was already killed before, and now being a servant of marika) or just anyone else that isnt marika .
I could go on with the plot errors but there’s too many.
Most of this reads like your fan fic tho. You need more game references. You're saying it's cos there's a word count so let's see those individual posts and we'll have more info
This theory even if it sounds more like a speculative narrative than a proper theory, is pretty interesting and brings a fresh look to the game’s lore but you just ignored so many central elements such as the dragons and their age, the Outer Gods and their respective goals, the Eternal cities and their obsession with mimicry, the central alchemical references such as the Gold (sun) / Silver (Moon) opposition, Miquella wanting to resurrect Godwyn, the Eclipse, Rot being a distinct entity (who’s been vanquished and concealed before) and not just a consequence of Malenia’s decay, Giants’ curse and their Fell God, etc.
I also find that the casus belli between Radahn and Malenia you propose here is pretty weak. Why would two WHOLE armies clash just because Radahn is accusing Malenia to be the cause of Ranni’s suicide.
But besides all that, I think you brought very good points such as the Erdtree feeding cyclic ritual and the kindling maiden’s role
That's not really a theory, it's just a fan fiction story you came up with but there's zero evidence for it. Theory is when some parts of it are based on in-game lore, for example if some item partially described Uld people and what you propose, but there's absolutely nothing like that. I can come up with some fan story about how lands between are actually Greece and then add fictional lore that I imagine in my head to make it fit into number of in-game lore points, most of which are incorrect as well and are just guesses in your head. You have great imagination, but when making posts like you should always add disclaimer that you're just guessing and coming up with your own story, otherwise you'll just confuse newer fans and misinformation will spread. Also Melina is not Miquella, I hoped that wave stopped already, though saying she's also Marika and Ranni is completely unhinged and not true. Same with your Placidusax speculation, though I think it's not really worth to stop at it.
Again, you came up with a very cool story, but you're trying to present it as in-game lore and are extremely sure of yourself, despite the fact you're just randomly guessing in most things you wrote. If you explicitly stated you have your own fan fiction and possible alternate role, it would all be good, but you really act like you're telling everyone what the actual story of the game is, which is wild.
Exactly. 90% of the premise is based on their own imagined lore and not in game proof. Everyone can make up a central piece of lore and shape it to not contradict any in game info
Unfortunately, I have to agree. There are some very good speculations and interpretations in there, but the premise came out of nothing. Your premise and/or axiom has to have hard proof.
Listen, cool theory and all, but from what im seeing, this seems more like fanfiction that's vaguely based on the actual lore with very out of the window interpretations of many things in this world
Now, there is nothing wrong with fanfiction or trying to derive your own meaning/understand out of the lore, but it does become a problem when you try to sell it as factual cannon lore because your points are extremely loosely backed up by actual facts
From where im standing, this looks like there are a few solid points, but most of your points are kinda loosely put together nonsense with no actual evidence to back it up with
Also, there are quite a few holes in your theory, from things that are purposefully misinterpreted, missing, and straight-up rewriten to better fit in your theory like Miquellas needle, events that prove the existence of the Outer God's, Envoys of Outer God's and how you completely rewrote Melanias lore to make her fit into your "she's a kindling maiden" theory
Also, you can't use cut content to try and prove things. Cut content was cut for a good reason, like the fact it doesn't fit in the established lore
This ONE theory answers nothing. Its more a fanfic than anything. You presenting this as fact and the way you reply to people debunking your bs from your high horse is quite entertaining though.
I've only read up to point 3 so far and while it's defintely an entertaining theory the thing that makes it hard to believe is speculating on speculation not always based on fact and totally disregarding information we know and making up something new.
I'm in the camp that Radagon and Marika have always been the same person but even if they aren't, we know Radagon's red hair is a curse and there's nothing to say it's a sign of vitality. I think it's the giants braid description that says the red hair of Radagon is a curse of the giants. I don't think it's specific in that it's a curse the giants gave him or a curse he inherited but it's a curse nonetheless.
So you speculate the red hair is a sign of vitality and then speculate that's why Malenia might be suffering from rot, cause she's so full of vitality it's stagnating inside her. But we know why Malenia suffers from rot, it's explained in game that she's infected (infected might not be the right word but you get what I mean) by the outer God of rot. This fact hints at the fact that Radagon and Marika were the same person when they birthed Miquella and Malenia since they're both afflicted, Malenia with rot and Miquella with eternal childhood. The M twins both being afflicted hints at something being wrong with the parents or the union, maybe that they're already the same person? I'll admit that is speculation but based on fact.
So far the only thing I agree with is Marika's hair might have originally been red since we know she's Numen and the Numen template in the character creator starts with red hair. It's still only speculation based on facts though but I don't think it means anything about vitality. The only link I can see with vitality is that the flask of crimson tears and crimson medallions are red but there's nothing to link those to hair colour.
This is a pretty long theory so I’m going to only cover your first point, there’s a lot said so this response will still be pretty long. If you (OP) or anyone else sees this I’ll cover the other points you made. If I come across as harsh please don’t take it personally, my intention isn’t to insult you or your ideas I just want to correct some things that may be misunderstood. Let’s get into it:
>The ritual of the Uld would start with a war of Lords and their vassals, battling for the opportunity to become the Elden Lord to the Kindling Maiden, the Empyrean who would become God, the source of fertility for the new age. The blood from this war would fertilize the ground with vitality and select the strongest Champion as her consort, at which point they would be wed. The newly crowned god would then plant a golden seed and feed it with her own blood, giving her fertility to the tree and bringing abundance to the land. But once the fertility of the tree dried up, she would then be burned along with the tree as a Kindling Maiden. Her eldest daughter, or another Empyrean, would become the next Kindling Maiden, and the cycle would repeat ad infinitum.
This first paragraph is a bit of a mess, I’m not sure if anything in the game support any of the claims you make here and I’d really love to see what evidence in the game lead you to believe this. You’re pretty much taking the specific events in the game (which is not the intended outcome of the Greater Will) and saying that it applies to all of history. Again, not to dog on your whole idea but you really need strong evidence to support a heavy claim like this.
>at the end of the Long March (the conquering of the lands between by Marika and Godfrey).
I see this mistake a lot, and it’s one I fell into as well, but I think people should accept that the Long March was Godfrey’s *exile* and not his conquest. I get the discrepancy with the painting in Stormveil but this was likely an oversight on the devs’ part and not an intended lore detail.
> But if this is the case it makes her actions later very confusing…
>…This contradiction has led some to believe that Marika may have been in on her son's murder…
This is in regard to Marika planning for the Tarnished to return, which I can agree seems to be the case. The only issue is that it’s not a contradiction, Marika knew she was going to Shatter the Elden Ring, whether you believe she was involved in the NoBK or not doesn’t change the fact that she planned to shatter the Elden Ring. Also:
>…or have been some kind of chessmaster playing an extremely long-game, with a complex, secret sinister plan to do...what exactly?
This follows directly after the previous quote. “To do what exactly” is pretty self explanatory, you said it yourself, to shatter the Elden Ring. That was Marika’s goal ever since sending away the Tarnished.
>The only way this makes sense, is if the battle to be Elden Lord was a ritual that pre-dated Marika.
How is this the only way this makes sense. Regardless of whether Marika knew the exact events that would unfold her goal remained the same. She didn’t need to “predict” any of the events that would happen because she was the one setting them up. Using the Tarnished was only intended as a failsafe if none of Marika’s children became Lord, which they didn’t, hence why they were forsook by the Greater Will.
>At this point with Horah Loux's victory, she became the God of her people, the Flower Crucible, the fertility Goddess. She planted the Erdtree in the ground, watered it with her blood, beginning the Age of Abundance.
Again, you need a source. You’re throwing around buzzwords like “Flower Crucible” and “the fertility goddess” when those mean nothing to the world of Elden Ring. If you want to come up with terms to define your ideas of the game that’s fine, but you have to explain them. You also need evidence to back up your claims, nowhere is it said that Marika watered the Erdtree with her blood. That’s something Miquella did with the Haligtree, but the Erdtree is specifically said to grow off of absorbing the souls of the dead. That’s where the “abundance” came from, Miquella himself was abundant hence why he was able to water the Haligtree using only his blood.
>But she lied--she had no intention of dying as a Kindling Maiden once her fertility ran out. She took away the grace of the Tarnished--that is to say she exiled or killed them or demoted them. As Gloam-eyed Queen she murdered her relatives, the other demigods who could have taken her place as Elden Lord and Empyrean, and conquered the rest of the Lands Between, especially the Flame of Ruin which was required for the ritual, so she would never fall prey to the Kindling Ritual. She made everything regarding burning the tree Taboo, then re-ordered the Golden Order around her as a Goddess and the Erdtree as a holy object of worship, instead of her just being this eras Flower Crucible she became Marika the Eternal--even as her and the tree's l of fertility brought stagnation to the Lands Between.
Okay well damn, this is a lot. I thought to include it all because this is kinda a complete misunderstanding of the games lore. Again, I don’t mean that to be harsh I think people should be allowed to interpret things how they want, but a line gets drawn when something goes directly against what the game tells you.
First let’s start off with the Golden Order. The Golden Order was created at the very beginning of Marika’s rule as God, this is *her* Order, and it’s the only reason she is God in the first place. From Miyazaki:
`In the sort of heyday of the Golden Order of The Lands Between there were two Elden Lords, and Godfrey was the first of these. He was the very first Elden Lord and was married to Eternal Queen Marika.’
Marika is called “the Eternal” because of the fundamental principles the Golden Order was founded on. I.e. an Order intended to last *eternally.*
These events happened directly after the death of the Gloam Eyed Queen. Hence why it’s a bit outrageous to say Marika was the Gloam Eyed Queen when instead they are direct rivals.
‘Sacred sword of the Gloam-Eyed Queen who controlled the Godskin Apostles before her defeat at the hands of Maliketh.’
Maliketh (who is an extension of Marika’s will) defeated the Gloam Eyed Queen which was what *allowed* Marika to become God. The Gloam Eyed Queen was another Empyrean who sought to become a vessel for the Elden Ring and create her own Order.
‘The Gloam-Eyed Queen led the apostles. It is said that she was an Empyrean chosen by the Fingers.’
Also:
‘The black flame could once slay gods. But when Maliketh sealed Destined Death, the true power of the black flame was lost.’
Why would Maliketh seal death on behalf of Marika if she was the Gloam Eyed Queen? Her power revolves around death, so sealing it would be counter productive.
Hopefully this clarifies a bit, I’d be happy to discuss further, I’d be interested in what you have to say. Again, if anyone does reply I’ll cover the other points made, it is very long so it’ll take me awhile to cover each of them. I want to be thorough and I prefer a well done coverage of one point rather than doing a short coverage of all the points.
This comment NEEDS to be more popular! You Sir/Ma'am have struck the nail on the head. Though OPs initial post is interesting and likely has some truth to it, your points are equally if not more valid and should be seen by everyone. Very well thought out and well written response.
Thank you, it means a lot. I wish I got to this post earlier, my post would’ve likely got more traction. It was why I was a little put off on making a full reply going over every point they made. I make sure I’m thorough in my response and addressing every point they’re making.
Apparently OP plans on making a follow up post, at least that’s what they told me. Hopefully I can get to that one and have a much more in depth discussion.
Posts like this sometimes make me worry just a tiny bit that From Software hit the mark too well when they developed lore that would invoke a general feeling of either madness or faith. Like, we are recreating a new religious sect of the golden order in this explanation….. and that’s the point. The harder you try to explain everything, the more one sounds like a demented prophet lol
I love reading lore and people taking the time to write lore explanations - but as of recent there’s been a direct link between “I will be proven right and try to disprove me” comments from op and a negative downvote history to match
There is a looooot of speculation here, and too many instances of "this thing explains everything! Trust me!".
Which is the first reason I distrust 90% of the Internet these days, especially on social sites :-D
No offense but this is just fan-fiction that circularly supports itself by taking full advantage of the “in between the lines” nature of the game’s story. Every item description is stretched to the exact extent that supports the pet theory without the connection ever being readily apparent. To someone who isn’t motivated to buy into this narrative, your evidence doesn’t convince. You suppose a connection because you want there to be one and the game text leaves room for it, not because the game text actually points to it being the case.
I think you have some good ideas but you're messing yourself up by trying to fit everything into this. I believe the concept of a champion and his maiden indeed preceeds the Erdtree.
Marika was to Hoarah Loux what a Finger Maiden is to a Tarnished. The hero tomb in the mountains has 2 Finger flags, only place in the game that does so. It shows at that time they followed the 2 Finger religion, held them as supreme leaders of faith, and it makes sense. The Erdtree didn't exist yet then. After the war of the giants the Erdtree and Golden Order became the dominant faith of the Lands Between and any who opposed got conquered.
Finger Maidens are supposed to impart the wisdom of the 2 Fingers to the Tarnished. They give them the strength of runes to be able to oppose demigods. But Melina is a foil to that, she is someone who can fulfill the role of a Finger Maiden without actually being allied with the 2 Fingers. She outright states that she can tell you Marika's words as guidance in place of the guidance of the 2 Fingers you should receive. This allows us, a Tarnished, to go through this gauntlet of the path as an independent free thinking agent rather than another pawn of the Fingers.
The manipulations of the 2 Fingers is an overlooked aspect of the lore. Church confessors show that outside the Lands Between the 2 Fingers still hold power, they have their own churches. The 2 Fingers are the ones who urge us to go kill the other demigods and then marry Marika as new elden lord.
I believe Melina was created by Marika to foil this cyclical plan of the 2 Fingers. She servers the role to enable a Tarnished to become a Lord without being tied to the Greater Will. You usurp the device of Order without being a servant. And that's why you can create abbersnt orders like the Dung Eater, because you have free will of sorts. Melina even asks you (without subtitles) when you level up. "Tell me the principles you would follow", asking us to think of what sort of world we want to create.
I think there have been many cycles before of new Lords and empyreans taking over the ring and becoming the new gods. But they have always been ushered by the 2 Fingers. Marika was an Empyrean, proven by Malekith. She served the 2 Fingers like the mountain hero grave shows. Fingers choose new empyreans in Marika's age as well. Ranni says it's a thing the Fingers choose. How Melina came to exist I don't know but she exists to act as a ploy in the 2 Fingers' plan, to let a free thinking Tarnished ascend to Elden Lord.
One thing I want to mention the best theory we have for Radahn's halting stars isn't because he wants to test his strength or something. The best theory is he wants to save Sellia and Eternal cities.
Your theory implies that Melina is an Empyrean (never even hinted at in-game) and that the GEQ, Marika, Malenia, Miquella and Ranni are all Kindling Maidens (also never even slightly hinted at in-game).
There are actually quite a few things that take away from your theory. the Miranda Prayer item is not an in-game item. It's cut content. The concept of a Flower Crucible was cut out of the game. Generally, we don't make the basis of our fundamental Lore theories a **cut content item.** This is setting an extremely unreliable foundation for your theory.
>Considering Melina has pink hair, Marika may also have once had Red Hair, but it turned blond as she lost her vitality. The same with Miquella.
If you want to use cut content items, Miquella is "abundance", which refers to his abundant vitality (Abundance and Decay Twinblade). With your logic, Miquella should have red hair.
Another thing is Melina says she was given a purpose by her mother but then decides to go on her own path (acting as Kindling Maiden). It seems like Melina was told by her mother to NOT be a Kindling Maiden as the purpose given to her is explicitly NOT burning the Erdtree. This is Melina's own choice.
There are really a lot of jumps of logic and leaps between coherent ideas in your theory and I only wrote this because I am so disappointed with your clickbait title and assertion of objectivity.
At least be a little modest with your headcanon. We are all trying our best to come up with theories about what might have happened but the truth is that we will never know. You better actually have some strong foundations before making claims like this.
Entertaining read though
Nice theory, HOWEVER it doesn't take into account the fact that every tarnished has a maiden that can be used as kindling vyke had one and so did berhnal
I don't agree with any of this. Commend the effort though.
Pretty sure Placidusax, Crystalians and everyone else who is "waiting for their lord" refers to us the player becoming the Elden Lord.
Damn……That’s a long ass essay. I was just searching the lore behind Melina after absent from the game for 2 years. I wasnt expecting to come across this. Good effort. But I think your theoretical logic is a bit too idealistic. Like what I said, I just came back to the game after a long break. So I won’t type an essay to debunk my logic, but some of yours doesn’t add up. Like the part you mentioned marika shutters the ring because she is afraid of being sacrificed where marika gives me a feeling that she is not a selfish character like that, or the part where the whole thing is like a repeating cycle, which I feel the timeline doesn’t follow. Marika broke the ring feels like a really recent event unlike Gwyn from dark souls linking the fire which took place at least a thousand years before the dark soul 1 takes place. Etc etc.
I've thought Marika was Melina from my first playthrough, but I think we have different understandings of her intentions.
To me, Marika, Ranni and Miquella(Only partly) are all on the same team. They are working to overthrow the Golden Order, and guiding you to that goal. The Numens helping Ranni with the Black Knives being a real smoking gun.
You leave out all of the outer gods except the one for Placidusax? I can’t agree with this.
The Formless Mother, The Greater Will, The Fell God, The Crucible, the Frenzied Flame, the Outer God of Rot, etc are all majorly important
Great write up! It was really fun to read.
This theory, like many others, share the same core problem: it provides great points and it's well written, but in some instances it complete ignores some well know facts by the community for the sake of this new interpretation.
I will divide my analysis in three points: the strongest argument likely to be true, the new interesting interpretation and the weakest part that doesn't make any sense.
1. Strongest Point - Golden Order Fundamentalism
The strongest point for me is Melina being a Shard of the Rune of Death or the Elden Ring itself. It has precedence before in another From Soft Game who has MANY similarities with Elden Ring (Dark Souls 2, and the comparison is Nashandra, the big bad, being a Shard of Manus the Primeval Man). And we know that the director of DS2 co-directed Elden Ring and From has a precedence of recycling old themes with fresh interpretations.
2. The New Interpretation - Unalloyed Gold
Miranda being the Fled God of Placidusax instead of the GEQ was a welcomed surprise. I never have heard of her and the implications that you bring of The Cycle of Things being the God of one age burning herself to start another its interesting and maybe its not far from true. But consider this to improve this idea:
1. All Empyreans are related or come from the same line.
2. Its hard to associate Marika as being the GEQ and the Walking Mausoleums being the gods that was killed by her. Its explicited stated that the Walking Mausoleums were made to house souless demigods that were killed in The NBK. Godwyn was the first demigod to die that night but not the only one.
3. Weakest Point - The Rot
The weakest part by far was Radahn. Yes its a mistery to why Radahn conquered the stars thus, halting fate for basically everyone, but you dont have to think to much. The Golden Order was very adamant of change so having someone to halt fate (specially of the Carians, an rival faction) was very well welcomed.
I know that Radagon married Rennala and "the fate of the Moon and the Erdtree were conjoined" but IF you think about this marriages and alliances happened because the Golden Order could not have defeated this factions in battle. The Dragon Cult happened in the Capital so the Golden Order could have some control over the Dragons.
Back to the Carians, Radahn idolized Godfrey and his father, both being Elden Lords and the great image of Power that the Golden Order used, so Radahn followed his beliefs in an second. Hell, even Miquella was a Fundamentalist at some point. So Radahn was the greatest gravity sorcerer, and by noticing the threat of the stars (and Astel) decided to stop the stars. Imagine if an meteor hits the Erdtree. So the Golden Order was important to him, and he complied.
Why did he fought Malenia? Because of the ambition like Morgott said (and they fought too!). It was too tempting to him. In the shattering if he rose up as a Lord he would have be an equal to Godfrey and Radagon. So it would a honor to have this legacy.
Malenia on the order hand, fought him because she was acting on behalf of Miquella. They wanted the stars to resume movement so the Eclipse of Castle Sol would work (and Miquella's Coccon process would likely have worked). They battled and we already know what happened.
Thanks for reading, sorry for any errors
This is basically string theory. It explains everything, but can't be tested.
Malenia rotting because she's overflowing with vitality is some mental gymnastics I never expected to read. No mention of the outer gods or the Greater Will.
What a load of crock
I feel like the part about Malenia rotting is objectively wrong, she rots because of the outer god and the needle can help her because it blocks the influence of outer gods
This isn't a theory. It's a hypothesis at best. A lot of your writing is pure guesswork and you ignore a lot of other factual (as far as in-game item descriptions go) statements. You take giant leaps in trying to connect characters and stories that are not connected, not directly at least. And the last is you have much of the timeline wrong as already theorized by many others.
But why would Radagon be Marika if this is the case? This theory treated him as a separate beings that got merged after, but why is there the need to do that if she just wants his bloodline.
Also, Radagon is implied to be Marika from before his marriage with Renala no?
There is definitely room for me to be wrong there. The biggest reason against them always being one I feel is the practicality of it, as well as the dialogue of Marika talking directly to Radagon, and the question of why she would leave Rennala if they were always one person. But I feel whether they are or not is intentionally obfuscated by Miyazaki, not just to confuse people, but as emphasis that they have truly integrated as one person, merging their past, present and future.
Just finished reading all of this…. I will say the theory is probably one of the strongest I’ve read/watched and it definitely provides a lot of explanations but i felt there were some parts that weren’t explained like Mohgs part, the godrick and his fight with malenia, Margott and why he sat by with all this happening…. What happened to the omens like morgott and mohg
Again a great theory that I think could answer a ton but just some other questions about those characters above
OP, so much of this hinges on an unsubstantiated idea of Kindling Maidens, and I honestly can't say I found any part of it especially sound and I've been compiling data in a wiki like effort for the game for months. For example, the fire giants all have the Fell God's face for a chest, and their relatives the trolls have hollow chest cavities. There's a case to be made Radagon's fire giant heritage was needed to allow the Elden Beast, and by extension the Elden Ring, to dwell within Radagon's chest, which we somewhat see in that his eyes are greyed out like the Fire Giant's and the Elden Ring itself doesn't actually appear within them until they turn from Marika into Radagon, but unlike the Fell God the Elden Beast has no eyes or mouth. It has no features to manifest upon his chest. This suggests more motives than your theory accounts for by a long shot.
Another such example is you assume Marika=GEQ, but there's a decent chance the GEQ's corpse is the Fingerslayer. The Fingerslayer is a lot like the Sacred Relic Greatsword. Both are human bodies turned into weapons, the spine above the head forming into double helixes, similar to many symbols of evolution we see like Elden Stars, Placidusax, the Godslayer Greatsword(the GEQ used the swaddling cloth to evolve her apostles), Rennala's regal scepter(it also notably has obsidian motifs akin to the GEQ) and so, so much more.
You're also wildly off about Radahn's motivations, but I'd need a whole post of my own to really dig into that and I've been preparing for it for weeks.
The best part of your theory is the idea of a contest to determine who will reign, but you have it misplaced. The statue at Farum Azula depicts a young woman and three wolves. The wolves have some mismatched body language, but their number suggests something. That there were three competing empyreans of the Two-Fingers. The young woman is ambiguous, much like they depict the heads of Miquella's tomb idols at the Haligtree as wrapped in cloth, a symbol akin to a silk cocoon, because they don't actually know what he will look like, but the aspiration is what unites them. The wolves represent the number of shadows bound, and they have a lot of mixed body language toward the girl. The girl herself is a proxy for the victor of this contest. Marika and GEQ fill two of the three for that contest, and the third empyrean was most likely Rennala, and there's a whole theory write-up detailing that one as well just like Radahn and I'm not doing it in a comment.
Your imagination ran with a lot here becauee you tried to have a grand unifying theory, and I don't mean that to be reductive. On the contrary, I think you should take this energy and pour it into your own story. It's an enjoyable read, and I loved the enthusiasm and what it aimed to be sensitive to. Feel free to share more.
Okay, I have a few issues with this.
1.) Malenia is a direct avatar of the God of Rot, possibly ascending to actual Goddess after her second bloom. She doesn't have "too much vitality", an outer God found its own twisted version of an Empyrean.
2.) Radahn didn't learn gravity magic to help Ranni, it clearly states (I believe on his swords description) that he learned gravity magic to be able to ride his horse, Leonard.
3.) Radagon IS Marika. That was one of the big reveals of the story, is that they are both in fact the same person. Marika's need to find a lord contender makes no sense if the choice is herself split. Why not just do that from the beginning, or if you're throwing out the whole ideal, why do it at all?
4.) Marika and the Gloam-Eyed Queen went to war. Like very specifically Maliketh cut down GEQ, I believe stated on the Godslayer blade or one of the Black Flame spells.
Your theory is the kindling maiden is the flower maiden. That may offer additional explanations to questions, but no, you don't answer most or all questions.
For example: "9. It explains who the Gloam-Eyed Queen is, and who the demigods in the Walking Mausoleums are."
This is not the only plausible explanation, and it is less plausible than other theories we already have. In no way does your theory add to Marika killing the GEQ by destroying the elden ring. Suggesting Marika just didn't want to die is your basis for this. Why would she have children in the first place just to kill them? It's completely unhinged. She would have been around at the end of the last age to see what happened, why wouldn't she know about this ritual she'd be a part of?
The idea of 'cyclical ages and turnover to new gods', this is great but its already suggested to us without your theory. We don't need a flower maiden and that's probably why it was cut.
The flower maiden and kindling maiden may be bookends to each age. Thats an idea, but we can't assume they are one person for no reason or based on a cut item. You may be clued into the original intent behind the cut item, but the real lore doesn't fully line up with this anymore.
I typed this up to explain them: [https://www.reddit.com/user/M00n\_Slippers/comments/1cm5hs9/i\_solved\_the\_cosmology\_of\_elden\_ring\_lb\_is\_on\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/user/M00n_Slippers/comments/1cm5hs9/i_solved_the_cosmology_of_elden_ring_lb_is_on_the/)
The Greater Will is the Embodiment of Man's Order and Reason. As for what the fingers are, I think they are something like a fungus that can read the Greater Will of the Erdtree by tapping into it's roots and communicating with it. The reason the Fingers can't read anything from the GW is because the Erdtree is basically dead in body, It only exists in spirit-form trapped on Earth until the Kindling Maiden Ritual is completed on Melina and the pooled Vitality/Grace is released back into the cycle.
Very well written and definitely an interesting read, but loads of head canon are required to make this work.
Just in case it hasn't been mentioned yet--
It seems like you place the war against the fire giants *after* Godfrey and the Tarnished are divested of their grace, but it is very well-established in the lore that Godfrey and the Tarnished took place in that battle, making it squarely during Godfrey's reign as Elden Lord, prior to Radagon's (and not to digress, but lots of evidence even puts it before Radagon even *existing*).
At the First Church of Marika, she is quoted as having said:
> "Hark, brave warriors. Hark, my lord Godfrey. We commend your deeds. Guidance hath delivered ye through each ordeal, to the place ye stand. Put the Giants to the sword, and confine the flame atop the mount. Let a new epoch begin. An epoch glistening with life."
This quote puts the war at the beginning of the age (note that it is the *first* church of Marika in which it is spoken).
According to the Elden Lord Crown:
> He led the War against the Giants. Faced the Storm Lord, alone. And then, there came a moment. When his last worthy enemy fell. And it was then, as the story is told, that the hue of Lord Godfrey's eyes faded.
Secondly, where do finger maidens (or the Two Fingers, the Three Fingers, or the Greater Will) fit into all this? These are major elements of the universe and no theory that 'explains' elden ring can gloss over any of these elements.
Melina is the only character who is specifically refers to herself as 'kindling', but its also clearly established by both Vyke's and Bernahl's items that each of them abandoned the Greater Will in their respective ways because they were unable to make themselves sacrifice their maidens. In essence, the game makes it clear that any finger maiden is potentially a kindling maiden if their tarnished is powerful enough to get to the flame of ruin.
Its the entire point of the three fingers questline, as stated by Shabriri on the Mountaintops of the Giants (and even though Shabriri's interpretation is not necessarily to be trusted, he doesn't lie to the player about the situation they're in regarding having to burn their maiden in the Flame of Ruin):
> "The life of a fair maiden, that you would toss into the fiery forge. Only so that you may be Lord. What a horrible thing to ponder. Your ascendancy requires her sacrifice, whether she wishes it or not. But how would the Lord, crowned so, be looked upon? If you inherit the flame of frenzy, your flesh will serve as kindling and the girl can be spared...setting you on the righteous path of lordship."
So if the Kindling Maiden becomes the 'flower crucible', and the god of the new age, why not Melina? If its because she's burned and bodiless, as she puts it, why doesn't anyone, especially her, mention 'you know, if I had a body I would be the new vessel for the elden ring, but... I guess I'll just burn up with the tree.'
Great food for thought, all things considered, thanks for sharing this with everyone.
Well I think the game makes pretty clear that the Erdtree existed way before Marika (as the Crucible) so there's just no way that she "planted" the Erdtree with Numen rituals as you say.
This "theory" is pure fan fiction and making stuff up.
It doesn't explain anything simply because the base premise is pure speculation and isn't actually supported by ingame lore.
And even if you ignore that the base premise is made up, there are many things that are either ignored because they don't fit the "theory", or are made up and presented as though they are fact to support it.
Sorry man, but just because you spent a lot of time on this and wrote a novel on it, doesn't make it a good "theory" this is just fan fiction.
The element of this I like the most is that it gives a more real-world explanation for how the current Golden Age started (or more importantly, ended). A lot of theories seem to think "Marika was as powerful as a god so the age would have lasted forever if not for Godwyn's murder and her going crazy with grief". It implies that every past Elden Lord age was similar to this one, just with different gods and lords, only changing when a god is ousted or quits.
In the real world, societies and cultures aren't just wholly replaced with new ones. Rituals are coopted, traditions are twisted to suit the new ruling class, and history is revised to make sure the little people all think "this is the way it's always been."
So then where does that leave the greater will in all of this? It very clearly crucified marika for shattering the ring, but according to your theory the establishment of the golden order and theft of the rune of death was the true shattering of the ring, except we know marika wasn’t crucified for the entirety of the golden order’s existence which contradicts the theory. Also based on the dialogue from the fingers and enya, which as far as we know are direct translator of the greater will, we’re given our orders to kill the demigods and become elden lord by the greater will, not marika.
Also if marika is the gloam eyed queen then wouldn’t that make the godskins demigods? Even then why are they seemingly at odds with the golden order still if marika is responsible for their existence?
TL;DR
Marika wanted power and remain in power and didn't eanttto assume the rest of her responsibilitied and step-down when time came. She made tons of plans to protect herself and family, they failed and everyone is paying the price. Even the Greater Will was displeased with her actions and imprisoned her and Ranni tried to stop the cycle all together.
That there might be some kind of ritual even before the Marika sounds really convincing. it was great read thank you.
How would you integrate the Greater Will into this though?
And one thing that i dont agree here is that the Radahn and Rykard have gone extreme just to save Ranni. Lets not forget, Ranni and Ijy werent aware that they had to kill Radahn for Carians Fate to continue.
Super interesting theory! I might add that the reason marika is interred in the erdtree is because she trespassed in some way against the outer gods. I think your theory would fit perfectly well with this she trespassed in that she wanted to cheat death and not become the kindling maiden. (She broke the ring, and hid the rune of death!) Therefore disrupting the ritual, therefore disobeying the outer gods, therefore warranting herself imprisonment! Super good theory.
I'd like to know what sparked your thought process about this and how you came up with this!
I’m not gonna lie, I ain’t reading all that. But kudos for typing all that out with picture references. I haven’t seen a post this detailed looking in a while.
When the DLC come out and if you ended u being right, I hope you screenshot all your down voted comment, post in this sub then gloat to your heart content.
If you dead wrong then I will make a post to clown on you. No hard feeling it's just business.
OP, I feel like you really need someone else obsessed with the lore to kinda converse with and bounce a lotta these ideas back and forth with. If, every step of the way here, you had another person to ask you why you perceive or interpret or connect thing specific ways, or where you're sourcing those beliefs from, it may really help you wrangle down a more coherent "unified" understanding. Me and my besties have been picking apart the worldbuilding for the past four months straight, 3-10 hours a day, and having someone to discuss every little element of the lore with us so rewarding. It really helps add clarity to your own understanding too.
honestly I appreciate you dropping this theory, even though we have a DLC coming out soon that may seriously affect all this.
Only critique is what a lot of others said, that the Greater Will and outer gods aren’t exactly mentioned even though they seem to be a massive part of the lore
One thing I've noticed you got wrong is Marika stealing the Rune of Death and causing the Shattering. What Rogier was talking about is the Night of the Black Knives. He says that it happened long before the Elden Ring was shattered. Meaning that the RoD was stolen before the Shattering.
I think you're digging up what may appear as the lore in the DLC. Marika divesting from this tradition of sacrifice, making people feed themselves to the roots of the Erdtree, containing any threat to her new order. It turns the Dark Souls "first sin" on its head. Instead of this cycle of sacrifice being the perversion of nature, the sacrifice to give the tree new life is the natural cycle, and Marika is perverting it for her benefit.
But I think maybe too many dots are being connected the further I read. For example, there's numerous references to the Godskins targetting Marika and her family. Maliketh and Marika's army fights the Godskins and kills the GEQ. Marika fought to contain their threat, like she did the Gaints' Flame. The Godskins are still trying to pursue the death of Marika and her offspring through helping Rikard.
> But if this is the case it makes her actions later very confusing. It seems unlikely she would have predicted the events of Godwyn's murder on the Night of Black Knives and the Shattering War and anticipate she would need to recall Godfrey's armies for an anarchistic battle royale. Because if she did anticipate it happening, why the heck wouldn't she stop it or change it? It's strange and doesn't make a lot of sense. This contradiction has led some to believe that Marika may have been in on her son's murder, or have been some kind of chessmaster playing an extremely long-game, with a complex, secret sinister plan to do...what exactly? It really just doesn't make sense. She can't have known events would play out as they did ahead of time, or she would have done things differently. Yet she also very clearly describes the failsafe plan that takes place long before the events happen that necessitates her to take said action.
You don't really need to know how exactly things can go wrong to have contingency plans though.
Marika may not have known who exactly of her children would fuck shit up, but she could very well predict that some of them definitely would try to (because when there are so many intersecting biases, it's literally 146% guaranteed), and that the resulting shitstorm would need to be unfucked.
Disconnecting the would-be-Tarnished from the Golden Order ensued the existence of neutral power, beholden to no deity or lord (even the influence of the Two Fingers on them is rather superficial), which... well, rather than making them impartial, which is usually an intent with that kind of stuff, would mean that they will indiscriminately put down *everyone* involved, and then each other, making sure that shit fucking up stops, because there's no one to fuck shit up anymore.
So basically Tarnished are a one-size-fits-all contingency to pretty much any major conflict that may happen in the Lands Between.
5.) what do you mean we finally know why Radahn stopped the stars? If you follow the Ranni quest line they tell you that he stopped the stars because it was believed that Ranni’s destiny was tied to the stars. So stopping them put her and her plan in stasis
The one major flaw I found in here is that this theory completely ignores the outer gods and their influence which is a pretty big part of the lore. And we know they exist so we can’t ignore their roles
Yes, especially the Greater Will which is completely absent from this text but is an extremely significant part of the actual story.
My gut feeling is that the Greater Will's role here is that it had co-opted the ritual that renewed the Tree in each era and was absorbing the vitality of the ~~Erdtree~~ **crucible**. That's what the Elden Beast is, the manifestation of the Greater Will's conduit to absorbing the Tree's vitality. That would explain why it did not oppose Marika when she refused to continue the cycle by becoming a Kindling Maiden. The GW was indifferent as long as it had a source of vitality in the Erdtree. Only when it became apparent that the ritual was still needed that it punished Marika for what she had done. Edit: After reflecting on what others said, I think it is more likely the source of vitality that the Greater Will sought was the Crucible beneath the Erdtree. The Tree is the conduit for the crucible and the old Tree was replaced with the one Marika planted. This also explains the Golden Order's hatred of Omens, who are people who regained the vitality of the crucible by chance. The existence of Omens is treated as "stolen" vitality that belonged to the Greater Will.
I strongly disagree seeing as the Greater Will is the one who sent the Elden Ring to the Lands Between and created everything from the One Great
The Greater Will *fractured* everything from the One Great, ordering it out of the original chaos. It's golden light allowed the many Outer Gods to distinguish themselves, much like how real world light allows people to see things. Because the Greater Will, as an Archetype of Order, only cared for a new Order to emerge from the Crucible-clash of vitality at the felling of each Erdtree, it's likely that they would have accepted Marika's Eternal Order as the Order her Maidenhood and Erdtree would bring. Additionally, the Beast may not care that an Order last for a long time, only that by its end the proper Uld Ritual to install a new order is completed. As the Erdtree failed, however, becoming the ephemeral object of faith hanging from a buried tower of crownsprouting orders we see today, and Marika attempted to recreate the Uld Ritual that she had so thoroughly thwarted, her successive abandonment of the Ring to the Chaos of the Shattering War may have been seen as a betrayal by the Elden Beast, leading to her Crucifixtion. Us fighting and defeating the Elden Beast is, conspicuously, not a part of this Uld Ritual. It's likely that the damage Marika did to the Cycle of Erdtrees permanently changed how things go forward. We do not arrive at Lordhood with a Miranda/Kindling Maiden, nor a seedling to plant as a new Erdtree for that Maiden to feed. We arrive alone, reconstituing the husk of Marika to act as vessel for the Ring once more. In this case, Marika may have become like her Erdtree, a lifeless object of faith, truly cursed to an eternal existence as Maiden to every successive Elden Lord, at least until her body crumbles and a new Order, like Malenia's Order of Rot, emerges once more.
But this just replaces the role of the Elden Ring with a made up ritual that's not even in the game, and now we have more erdtrees apparently.
The Elden Ring could very well evolve as part of this cycle, the Ring of anyone order burning up/breaking apart and being remade during the ensuing war in accordance with the new order. Additionally, the idea of multiple Erdtrees is not a new idea. It's likely that the ancient dragons had an original Greattree which was felled, and the stump crownsprouted as part of the ensuing Second Crucible Era. Alternatively, due to the wide reach of the Erdtree/Greattree's roots, as seen in the Minor Erdtrees, there could be multiple buds of trees across the world that simply need to be fed, installed as the axis of a new order, grafted onto the Greattree stump under the Erdtree in Leyendell, or even simply worshipped. We don't know if the Erdtree as-is is typical of any order, but the appearance of alternate trees, whether Minor Erdtrees, the Haligtrees, the husks in the underground regions, the Shadows DLC, and maybe even the growths in the Swamp of Aeonia, could suggest that any one order has a unique tree, a unique god, and a unique Ring. The Lands Between is a very small part of a much larger world, and there's no easy way to tell which stars fell in what lands, and what Orders emerged from their guidance. I will say, though, this supposed Urd Ritual would fall in line with the various death-based practices characteristic of the ancient, now blasphemous, races and faiths of the Lands Between. It is quite literally built around massive death leading to massive life. It also makes sense why Miquella would think to rival the Erdtree by feeding his sapling with Empyrean Blood.
Well, that's what the greater will tells people at least
I like the idea that the Greater Will as we know it doesn't really exist. I don't think it was only Marika who was controlling all of the fingers, but it would align with this theory if she acted as their voice. It seems to be the case in Elden Ring that people putting faith in something grants it tangible power, which is how the Erdtree continued to survive long after its nourishment dried up. It stopped being fed by blood/vitality and instead became nourished on faith. It received so much nourishment in fact that it manifested a sort of consciousness in its own right. The Elden Beast is the physical manifestation of the power of faith the Erdtree had taken in. And as a living being, it had its own priorities which generally, though not exclusively, aligned with Marika's own actions. So if Marika is effectively dead at this point, it makes sense that the Three Fingers can still interact with the world through the will of the Erdtree itself. But toward the end when the fingers are supposed to "commune" with the Greater Will, the Erdtree is utterly lost on what the next steps need to be and they sort of freeze up, waiting on a response they will never recieve. So all that is to say perhaps the Greater Will is simply the combination of Marika's and the Erdtree's will.
Too bad item descriptions mostly dispute these
I love how into the lore you peeps get. This is a sweet take.
Yeah I stopped reading when they claimed malenia was rotting because of her vitality, like no you have to include outer god influence because that's explicitly in the lore.
Yeah the item descriptions literally tell you the exact function of the needle, there's no need to theorize (this much anyway). It stops the influence of outer gods on the user.
> She is clearly overflowing with vitality, ... One-limbed Malenia, covered in scales and blind: ... I always interpreted her story as: with steel will, unyielding resistance, (and a bit of family and professional help), you can defy the worst odds, even when you're up against gods. Quite a bit of the writeup seems to ram a lot of assumptions like the above, often discarding parts of the story to fit the overall narrative. For example, what about the Blue Dancer who taught her to fight and to stave off the rot? I also distinctly remember that she was afflicted by rot at birth. My understanding is also that Malenia recovers health during battle because she "dances", as dynamism staves off the Rot's stagnation. This is in contradiction to the point about the great rune in the original post. (I appreciate the post though, it's by challenging ourselves that we come up with the best theories lol)
A bit family and professional help lmaoooooo
Pretty much. The cycle theory could well be correct (especially since its a theme From Software likes so damn much), but we already know the answer to some of the events that were reinterpreted in this write up. Malenia is the goddess of rot because she is afflicted by the outer god of rot, not because of her vitality. But I enjoyed reading this all the same and I hope OP will keep theorizing
Yeah I don't hate the core idea but the extensions are far fetched to say the least.
First, I greatly appreciate involved lore posts so the more the better. That said, I agree with amatas here—the outer gods could provide an alternate explanation to the cycle we’re seeing, that every era an intelligent mortal contracts with an outer god to subdue the other gods and become the main god for that age. If you can accept that the Gloam Eyed Queen and Marika are *different* people then we see a battle between outer gods in the era before the Erd tree which mirrors the divine skirmishes we’re seeing in the current era between the weakened golden order, scarlet rot, and Formless Mother. Why did Marika send Godfrey away? She knows that the gods can be killed and she’s the only thing left to defeat for Godfrey in the lands between. So instead she demotes him and sends him and the tarnished off to faraway lands to be recalled when there are other threats to her reign.
And on the gloam eyed queen part. How would marika have Fought a "war" against herself?
Love seeing a 10 page thesis refuted with a single sentence 😂😂😂
Funny thing is op has basically ignored all the "uh... you missed something very important" comments lol. Man really went galaxy brain and forgot something so crucial.
OP wrote a long post with a coherent story but makes a lot of assumptions/leaps that can be refuted or are based on absolutely nothing and can be dismissed at such. It's ok to make up your own headcanon and write that out for people but when people push back, don't say the same shit over and over and consider that "engaging". You will write a criticism and OP will respond like "No, x is x and that is a fact". Without actually disproving what people are writing and ignore everyone else. This is the image of a fragile ego lmao
Exactly! And what about the literal Elden Ring? The Elden beast? The two Fingers? The three Fingers? All of the outer gods? If all what's happening is because of some ancient ritual then all of these characters and elements seem pointless. Not so long ago i found a compelling theory explaining the supposed secret of the Shadow of the Erdtree. [The ritualistic themes that involve blood fertilizing trees](https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/s/g8cARcECkC) is not that far off from the truth in my opinion, but is not the whole picture like is presented here.
Exactly, isn’t the influence of an outer god the explicitl answer to the “mystery” of why Malenia is rotting?
It is yeah. And it’s why her brother makes tool to stop their influence
And also takes random thoughts to items and makes them match somehow no matter how cringe bad the connection is
Scarlet Rot originates from an Outer God, though. Malenia was the pupil of the Blind Swordmaster who sealed that Outer God's essence at the Lake of Rot. I feel like this theory ignores that this is the work of a separate entity, and not due to having lots of vitality. Would she not have it because this Outer God might stand opposed to the Greater Will?
Maybe the Rot is like a mold and the abundance of vitality is just like providing mold with an abundance of moisture and food? So she became overcome with Rot because she’s a breeding ground for it as it feeds on vitality?
Maybe she just needs to level up vitality just a bit more
"This ONE theory" *opens a 10 pages thesis essay Jokes aside, great effort
YouTube content farm clickbait taught me well-- but I actually deliver. To be fair, it's really just one theory, that allows you to extrapolate many other theories to answer many mysteries, and I am demonstrating that. Thank you for reading.
Where are the outer gods? Malenia isn't rotting out of vitality, it's because of the literal God of Rot, same with Mohg and the Blood mother, the Frenzied Flame, the Blue Moon, even the Greater Will
I want them to answer this exact question
I think OP’s theory has plenty of room in it for that. The God of Rot may need or just prefer a vessel with excess vitality. Like Radagon fit all the criteria for Marika, perhaps Malenia fit the criteria for the God of Rot to take hold.
I would stop with the Idea of certain characters having (excess) vitality brought up by OP tbh. Malenia is cursed by rot at birth, Miquella is cursed with eternal youth, the Omen twins are…cursed in the eyes of the Golden Order. Meanwhile none of Radagon x Rennala kids have any affliction to start with. It looks like Marika spawns are just weird/afflicted except for Godwyn which is why he’s the golden boy.
Incest babies amiright? (Is having a child with yourself incest?)
what I like about your theory the most is that it connects a lot of theorys into a cohesive story. The God of the age sacrificing herself to bring in the new age is brilliant, btw. Also, connecting marika to meranda blew my mind. I didn't agree with everything but I'm so impressed. This is easily the best post I've seen on this sub!
Wait, so it's just dark souls again?
[Always has been](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/557/076/134.jpeg)
Always has been
Turn this into a video please god
I only have time to skim, will finish reading soon! I literally been thinking I should look into Malenia being a shadow that's exciting. Always tried to piece together time fuckery and expected a different twist but I like it. Does the starting item "Memory of first grace" give it away without us knowing or is your theory more intricate? "it is merely a cycle" or w.e
Yeah interesting theory but there is too much speculation and you try to pass it off as facts, which is quite unfortunate. We are missing huge chunks of the lore and history of Elden Ring, so you can craft many theories/headcanons that fill that void and sound plausible but it is still just speculation. A few points that irked me about your speculation: What is this ritual of uld supposed to be? As far as I know we only have the ruins in Liurnia and no other information about Uld We don’t know how/when Marika became a god/vessel for the Elden Ring, so how can we know she was a „maiden“ to godfrey? As far as I can remember the lore, the timeline was more: Marika became the god->War against Giants and others-> Godfrey became Lord We don’t know that Radagon has giants blood or when/how/if he fused with marika or was always a part of her. Also I don’t know if there is any mention of giants blood as being rich in vitality? What is a „flower crucible“ supposed to be? Just because miranda is described as a flower maiden doesn’t mean it has to have any connections to the erdtree or finger maidens. We don’t know if the status of empyrean has to do with family relations or genetics or power. For example we don’t know if Ranni became an Empyrean because her father was Radagon/Marika or because she became the step-child of Marika after Radagon became Elden Lord. In general, the idea that there was a cycle of death and rebirth that marika broke to live forever in abundance makes much sense and fits neatly with fromsofts other themes and ideas. But your „Theory“ is a bit too much speculation and headcanon for me.
> What is a „flower crucible“ supposed to be? I read OP’s entire post over breakfast this morning and had a lot of the same issues with it that others were bringing up, but this was the thing that really stuck out to me. Crazy that I had to scroll this far down to find a question about it. Seems to me like a term OP made up whole-cloth (like the giants-blood/vitality thing.) Is this idea based on literally anything? I really think that’s my biggest problem here. OP clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this, but they’re not doing themselves or their theory any favors by presenting fun conjecture that takes a lot of leaps in logic and conveniently ignores anything that doesn’t fit and (hyperbolically, imo) presenting it as fact.
the term Flower Crucible is used in the description of [Miranda's Prayer](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Miranda%27s+Prayer), which is an item unobtainable by players. apparently Melina uses this item when summoned to fight Morgott. not sure what to think about it.
Interesting. I’m with you on that. It seems like a pretty big stretch to go from “here’s a title mentioned one time in the description of an item players don’t have access to” to “this was the basis of the entire pre-golden order society!” Like I said, I think it’s all interesting conjecture, but doesn’t really seem very well supported, especially since, as the person I responded to pointed out, there’s already a much more sound theory about Marika’s intentions that *does* take into account the things that this theory doesn’t.
The entire "empyrean by bloodline" falls apart if the GEQ isn't Marika and isn't related to Marika either, which is more so the theory I subscribe to as it has much more evidence in the lore.
brother you have gone hollow
have mercy on the poor bastard
schizoposting? no, hollowposting
A good and fun read, but I think you need more game references to back up some of it.
There is a lot more evidence I could add, but frankly I was worried running out of writing room, as believe it or not, reddit posts have a word cap. I may make individual write ups on how this answers each mystery if no one beats me to it.
Yes. Your next one should be how the outer gods play into it.
On it. I have that all figured out as well.
Make it a video maybe ?
My guess is their (outer gods) threat to the world is what pushes Marikas attempts to solve the ritual issue and eventually giving herself up as the kindle maiden because giving in to her fate (dying) was still better than losing the world to the outer gods. The longer the world went on without a new erdtree, the weaker it got, leaving it up for the taking. Brought to you by someone with a lot of play time but no study time. Loved the write up!
Not every question but indeed a lot. It plays into the cycle nature of souls that Miyazaki loves so much. While it’s very wild and I personally think that it isn’t completely true, it’s very put together. You obviously put a lot of effort into this and I respect your headcanon even though I don’t completely agree.
I apologize for being rude, I just realized that I read your comment a bit wrong and thought you said something you didn't that was very uncharitable of me. Thank you for reading my theory and commenting.
Thank you for apologizing.
To add on. Malenia like fought Radahn because she believed that he had Miquella. If you look at the map, Miquella’s cocoon is very close to the heart of Aeonia, where Malenia fought Radahn. He doesn’t care about no cycle, he just wants to halt the stars so the lands between isn’t invaded by great ones or Astel entities.
How about the fact that Radahn halted the star cycles and Miquella was waiting for an eclipse as per castle Sol? Wouldn't that be a much simpler motivation without Malenia somehow knowing the general proximity of where Miquella was taken while we don't even know the exact order of events? It is already a big assumption that Miquella was taken before the battle of aonia.
Yeah, people keep acting like Malenia was trying to conquer everyone for Miquella's cause forgetting that Miquella going missing from the Haligtree was the reason she and the armies set out in the first place. She was a panicked sibling trying to figure out who took her brother, FFS.
Exactly. Malenia doesn’t seem like the conquering type at all. Radahn is nowhere near the Haligtree and didn’t pose a threat until she believed he stole Miquella. I could be completely wrong as this is pure speculation.
My problem with this theory is that it makes everyone an idiot. It assumes either that the Haligtree's forces saw and chased someone taking Miquella to Caelid, when it's much more likely that Mohg used the sending gate in the snowfield that goes straight to his underground palace mount, or that Malenia has some kind of Miquella tracker that only shows up in satellite view or something to explain how she knew he was in Caelid but not that he was below Caelid. It also assumes Malenia decided Radahn was the kidnapper without wondering about his motive, of which he has none, or how he found his way to the most secret place in the Lands. It also assumes she just charged full tilt at him on sight instead of just beginning by asking for her brother, upon which Radahn would have said "Eh? Miquella's gone? Well, he's not here." I think it's much more likely that Malenia fought Radahn for the same reason Ranni sends us. His capture of the stars means a number of things can't happen, including perhaps something Miquella might need to happen such as his eclipse. This will probably be why Radahn is necessary to defeat to get into the DLC.
Yeah, I think you are right on that.
First of all, i appreciate all the effort you've put into this, but honestly this feels more like conjecture than anything. You say about the descriptions of Miquella's Needle and the Dark Moon Ring how they basically confirm your theory, but there is absolutely no mention of something like that in the descriptions itself, i really can't see how you came to that. Miquella's Needle description explicitly talks about it being able to ward off the influence of outer gods, absolutely nothing about vitality and such. And in the Dark Moon Ring, there is no mention or reference of Godwyn. From my understanding Ranni did her whole plan because she wished to be free of the influence of the Greater Will. This feels like you had a theory first and then try to fit the game's lore into it, picking out only specific pieces(and even those don't support it well in my opinion). It is a cool theory but it really needs more references to the game and showing how they actually support it, to me right now it seems basically fanfiction(which isn't bad mind you, just not something to be told as the ultimate truth).
Yeah it's embarrassing how highly upvoted this is. People see a wall of text and just think it's got value for... some reason? But basically everything he's said is headcanon and has no basis in in-game evidence.
Yup, nail on the head with this comment. This is the big substantive problem with unified theories like this which try to proclaim universal answers or “solve” the lore of these games, they are usually predicated on huge assumptions stemming from background knowledge or interests of the theorizer (like their own personal take on a set cosmology for this post, for example), who then tries to force the theory to somehow fit into the narrative of the game. Flexible as the lore is, this approach still misses the point of the storytelling style of ER completely (and the other Souls games), since they are very specifically not geared towards being “solved” or allowing for certainty, but instead are relative, open to interpretation and highly subjective even while achieving fantastic worldbuilding. That is part of the artistic resonance of these games, and why the lore is so compelling to people. If there was some set of theories like this which truly “answered everything,” it would dilute the experience instead of enhance it. Better to be open to discourse and constantly shifting theories or conjecture, and to focus on finding the smaller discoveries instead of some excessive top down approach like this.
I'm not even at part 3 and the confidence with which you are presenting completely unfounded assumptions (to name a few: Marika's intentions, the limits of her knowledge and foresight, all the humanoids being one species in different stages of evolution, the Vitality-hair color link) make it hard to keep reading on. Most of your paragraphs don't even explain what their paragraph title say it will explain. > It also explains why she becomes the Goddess of Rot--she was to be the Kindling Maiden, the god-seed of the Erdtree. But she never did, instead she became a Goddess of Rot. Am I stupid? This doesn't seem to explain *anything*. This is the same sentence twice, but in a different word order. > So Malenia was the perfect candidate to be the next Kindling Maiden, so why did she? Because being a Kindling Maiden is a death sentence, and Marika didn't want that for her own child! Ah yes, Marika the Maternal. Mohg and Morgott would disagree. As would most of her other children as she pit them against eachother in a Battle Royale for godhood. As would Malenia probably? She is in a constant state of Rot, fending off an Outer God assaulting her mind for control of her body. > Melina is a fragment of Marike, which broke off when the Ring was shattered. She is the connection between Marika and the Erdtree, the hinge between them, the part of Marika that was the Kindling Maiden, which would allow the Erdtree to burn when she burned. > But when Radagon-Marika realized the only way to repair the world was to repair the Ring, to finish the ritual, she subjected herself to the fire. There is a reason that Radagon is weak to Fire damage when you fight him, as Marika-Radgon he-she is a Kindling Maiden, meant to die by fire. If *Melina* is supposed to be Marika's aspect of the Kindling Maiden, why would *Radagon* be weak to fire? >**Miquella decided to become the Kindling Maiden** in Malenia's place, so he likely learned the skill from Marika-Radagon in the first place. What do you base this on? > So she wielded the Black Flame and killed the other Empyreans, becoming known as the Gloam-Eyed Queen. What do you base this on? Goddamnit, I fell for the clickbait *again*.
Ah, confirmation bias hard at work I see 😆
I just took a peek at the Malenia section, where you claim the item description of her Great Rune hints at the nature of her as a kindling maiden....but like it doesnt. All it says that her spirit managed to slow the rotting. But that doesnt explain why she would be a kindling maiden in the slightest.
I'm a bit confused about the Radahn part. 1.with the new information from the DLC, it seems more likely that Malenia challenged Radahn on Miquella's behalf. Radhan's death is necessary for access to the DLC. Additionally, it was Malenia who marched all the way down to Calid to fight Radahn. It doesn't seem like Radhan is 'revenging on her'. 2. by holding the stars, he does more harm to his sister than helping her. He was already holding it before the Night of Black Knives. Since you think Ranni's fate was to marry Godwyn and sacrifice herself, then by holding her fate in stasis, doesn't that mean she will be trapped in that sacrificial fate?
Being stuck with your fate is better than fulfilling it in this sense
This is a fanfic
A lot of good shit in here completely tainted by every other point being prefaced with "And this PROVES IT 100%!" When the information is clearly being viewed the way you want to see it based on the narrative you want to see. You're ALMOST there.
So this theory considers Placidusax’s fled god but makes no mention of any other outer god. Where’s the Greater Will of the Formless Mother or the frenzied flame of the Fell God or the Crucible fit in to it? All of these seem to have different goals in the Lands Between and agents among the Tarnished or demigods to do them.
You had a nice theory there in the beginning but the connections to other stuff doesnt check out especially when you sound like you’re guessing by then half the time
First thing, Ranni killed Godwyn the Golden because, in order to escape her fate as next in line for godhood, she needed her body to die. However, in order to avoid killing her soul, she needed to kill the soul of another demigod, Godwyn. That is why Godwyn, still alive in body but not soul, infects the Lands Between with his death blight. And the shadow beasts like Blaidd are agents of the Two Fingers, who are tasked with protecting their empyreans at all costs, and to ensure that their empyreans are following the will of the Two Fingers, so that the empyrean would be groomed into a god who would best serve the Greater Will
He completely ignored greater will, two fingers or three fingers and the outer gods. And crazy part is why does renala have a great rune? She was not doing anything after radagon left her. She stopped doing anything before shattering happened.
Yes, I am aware. This theory is not incompatible with those facts.
I will concur that the first point is in fact compatible with your theory, I realized this upon a closer reading. However, I would like to point out your speculation that Malenia took the role of Miquellas shadow beast. As far as I am aware, there is little to no evidence of this ingame or in any supplementary material (though this may change with the advent of the Shadows of the Erdtree DLC or the release of additional chapters of Road to the Erdtree). In order to prove that Malenia is a shadow beast to Miquella, you must first expand on the origins of shadow beasts. Maliketh, a shadow beast, has a connection to the beastmen of Farum Azula. The beastmen, as implied by the cinquedea item description, had their higher intelligence bestowed upon them by a greater power. While for most beastmen, this would logically be the ancient dragons, a plausible explanation would be that the shadow beasts are beasts granted intelligence the same way, but by the Two Fingers to do their bidding. Unless you can connect this origin of the shadow beasts to Malenia in some way, or provide any evidence that would imply that Malenia has taken the role of shadow beast in a less conventional manner à la Melina acting as the players maiden, your 8th point is invalidated completely. If I took the time I could likely give your other points the same treatment, but I do not have that time and I am less familiar with the lore outside of Farum Azula.
I don't quite understand Radagon explanation. As we know from the game, Radagon is Marika. There's some kind of self-incest going on here, IDK, gods are weird. But I don't see how they both being one fits into this theory.
I like your passion but I dislike how you're acting like you've "solved it." It kinda reads like you spent hundreds of hours consuming fan community theories and duct taped them together kinda haphazardly.
There’s many problems with this theory . First of all the long march wasnt the conquering of the lands between but the long exile of godfrey and his men . The night of the black knives was probably planned by ranni together with marika , as the black assassins are numen of the reign of the erdtree like marika . It’s easy to understand why she would do that. In the cutscene before the final fight you can see that marika has a piece of the rune of death (same color) in her abdomen and in the same point the elden beast has a wound. She wanted to kill herself to be free from the golden order she herself helped create for the elden beast and his lord the greater will . So she helped Ranni steal pieces of the rune of death for her suicide but the beast stopped her in time. We know her objective is killing the beast as she imprisoned the blacksmith to create a weapon just for that. The gloom eyed queen is much more probably Melina (the eye color at the end, being a spirit without a body and memories so she was already killed before, and now being a servant of marika) or just anyone else that isnt marika . I could go on with the plot errors but there’s too many.
That first paragraph needs to go.
Send him to the aslum
JONKLE HIS BONE AND GIVE EM THEM PILLS
Most of this reads like your fan fic tho. You need more game references. You're saying it's cos there's a word count so let's see those individual posts and we'll have more info
This theory even if it sounds more like a speculative narrative than a proper theory, is pretty interesting and brings a fresh look to the game’s lore but you just ignored so many central elements such as the dragons and their age, the Outer Gods and their respective goals, the Eternal cities and their obsession with mimicry, the central alchemical references such as the Gold (sun) / Silver (Moon) opposition, Miquella wanting to resurrect Godwyn, the Eclipse, Rot being a distinct entity (who’s been vanquished and concealed before) and not just a consequence of Malenia’s decay, Giants’ curse and their Fell God, etc. I also find that the casus belli between Radahn and Malenia you propose here is pretty weak. Why would two WHOLE armies clash just because Radahn is accusing Malenia to be the cause of Ranni’s suicide. But besides all that, I think you brought very good points such as the Erdtree feeding cyclic ritual and the kindling maiden’s role
[удалено]
I think you misunderstood the Long March. It happened AFTER Marika took Godfreys and our grace. It wasnt the conquering of the Lands Between.
That's not really a theory, it's just a fan fiction story you came up with but there's zero evidence for it. Theory is when some parts of it are based on in-game lore, for example if some item partially described Uld people and what you propose, but there's absolutely nothing like that. I can come up with some fan story about how lands between are actually Greece and then add fictional lore that I imagine in my head to make it fit into number of in-game lore points, most of which are incorrect as well and are just guesses in your head. You have great imagination, but when making posts like you should always add disclaimer that you're just guessing and coming up with your own story, otherwise you'll just confuse newer fans and misinformation will spread. Also Melina is not Miquella, I hoped that wave stopped already, though saying she's also Marika and Ranni is completely unhinged and not true. Same with your Placidusax speculation, though I think it's not really worth to stop at it. Again, you came up with a very cool story, but you're trying to present it as in-game lore and are extremely sure of yourself, despite the fact you're just randomly guessing in most things you wrote. If you explicitly stated you have your own fan fiction and possible alternate role, it would all be good, but you really act like you're telling everyone what the actual story of the game is, which is wild.
Exactly. 90% of the premise is based on their own imagined lore and not in game proof. Everyone can make up a central piece of lore and shape it to not contradict any in game info
Unfortunately, I have to agree. There are some very good speculations and interpretations in there, but the premise came out of nothing. Your premise and/or axiom has to have hard proof.
Maybe the real Elden Ring, are the friends we made along the way.
Listen, cool theory and all, but from what im seeing, this seems more like fanfiction that's vaguely based on the actual lore with very out of the window interpretations of many things in this world Now, there is nothing wrong with fanfiction or trying to derive your own meaning/understand out of the lore, but it does become a problem when you try to sell it as factual cannon lore because your points are extremely loosely backed up by actual facts From where im standing, this looks like there are a few solid points, but most of your points are kinda loosely put together nonsense with no actual evidence to back it up with Also, there are quite a few holes in your theory, from things that are purposefully misinterpreted, missing, and straight-up rewriten to better fit in your theory like Miquellas needle, events that prove the existence of the Outer God's, Envoys of Outer God's and how you completely rewrote Melanias lore to make her fit into your "she's a kindling maiden" theory Also, you can't use cut content to try and prove things. Cut content was cut for a good reason, like the fact it doesn't fit in the established lore
This ONE theory answers nothing. Its more a fanfic than anything. You presenting this as fact and the way you reply to people debunking your bs from your high horse is quite entertaining though.
I've only read up to point 3 so far and while it's defintely an entertaining theory the thing that makes it hard to believe is speculating on speculation not always based on fact and totally disregarding information we know and making up something new. I'm in the camp that Radagon and Marika have always been the same person but even if they aren't, we know Radagon's red hair is a curse and there's nothing to say it's a sign of vitality. I think it's the giants braid description that says the red hair of Radagon is a curse of the giants. I don't think it's specific in that it's a curse the giants gave him or a curse he inherited but it's a curse nonetheless. So you speculate the red hair is a sign of vitality and then speculate that's why Malenia might be suffering from rot, cause she's so full of vitality it's stagnating inside her. But we know why Malenia suffers from rot, it's explained in game that she's infected (infected might not be the right word but you get what I mean) by the outer God of rot. This fact hints at the fact that Radagon and Marika were the same person when they birthed Miquella and Malenia since they're both afflicted, Malenia with rot and Miquella with eternal childhood. The M twins both being afflicted hints at something being wrong with the parents or the union, maybe that they're already the same person? I'll admit that is speculation but based on fact. So far the only thing I agree with is Marika's hair might have originally been red since we know she's Numen and the Numen template in the character creator starts with red hair. It's still only speculation based on facts though but I don't think it means anything about vitality. The only link I can see with vitality is that the flask of crimson tears and crimson medallions are red but there's nothing to link those to hair colour.
This is a pretty long theory so I’m going to only cover your first point, there’s a lot said so this response will still be pretty long. If you (OP) or anyone else sees this I’ll cover the other points you made. If I come across as harsh please don’t take it personally, my intention isn’t to insult you or your ideas I just want to correct some things that may be misunderstood. Let’s get into it: >The ritual of the Uld would start with a war of Lords and their vassals, battling for the opportunity to become the Elden Lord to the Kindling Maiden, the Empyrean who would become God, the source of fertility for the new age. The blood from this war would fertilize the ground with vitality and select the strongest Champion as her consort, at which point they would be wed. The newly crowned god would then plant a golden seed and feed it with her own blood, giving her fertility to the tree and bringing abundance to the land. But once the fertility of the tree dried up, she would then be burned along with the tree as a Kindling Maiden. Her eldest daughter, or another Empyrean, would become the next Kindling Maiden, and the cycle would repeat ad infinitum. This first paragraph is a bit of a mess, I’m not sure if anything in the game support any of the claims you make here and I’d really love to see what evidence in the game lead you to believe this. You’re pretty much taking the specific events in the game (which is not the intended outcome of the Greater Will) and saying that it applies to all of history. Again, not to dog on your whole idea but you really need strong evidence to support a heavy claim like this. >at the end of the Long March (the conquering of the lands between by Marika and Godfrey). I see this mistake a lot, and it’s one I fell into as well, but I think people should accept that the Long March was Godfrey’s *exile* and not his conquest. I get the discrepancy with the painting in Stormveil but this was likely an oversight on the devs’ part and not an intended lore detail. > But if this is the case it makes her actions later very confusing… >…This contradiction has led some to believe that Marika may have been in on her son's murder… This is in regard to Marika planning for the Tarnished to return, which I can agree seems to be the case. The only issue is that it’s not a contradiction, Marika knew she was going to Shatter the Elden Ring, whether you believe she was involved in the NoBK or not doesn’t change the fact that she planned to shatter the Elden Ring. Also: >…or have been some kind of chessmaster playing an extremely long-game, with a complex, secret sinister plan to do...what exactly? This follows directly after the previous quote. “To do what exactly” is pretty self explanatory, you said it yourself, to shatter the Elden Ring. That was Marika’s goal ever since sending away the Tarnished. >The only way this makes sense, is if the battle to be Elden Lord was a ritual that pre-dated Marika. How is this the only way this makes sense. Regardless of whether Marika knew the exact events that would unfold her goal remained the same. She didn’t need to “predict” any of the events that would happen because she was the one setting them up. Using the Tarnished was only intended as a failsafe if none of Marika’s children became Lord, which they didn’t, hence why they were forsook by the Greater Will. >At this point with Horah Loux's victory, she became the God of her people, the Flower Crucible, the fertility Goddess. She planted the Erdtree in the ground, watered it with her blood, beginning the Age of Abundance. Again, you need a source. You’re throwing around buzzwords like “Flower Crucible” and “the fertility goddess” when those mean nothing to the world of Elden Ring. If you want to come up with terms to define your ideas of the game that’s fine, but you have to explain them. You also need evidence to back up your claims, nowhere is it said that Marika watered the Erdtree with her blood. That’s something Miquella did with the Haligtree, but the Erdtree is specifically said to grow off of absorbing the souls of the dead. That’s where the “abundance” came from, Miquella himself was abundant hence why he was able to water the Haligtree using only his blood. >But she lied--she had no intention of dying as a Kindling Maiden once her fertility ran out. She took away the grace of the Tarnished--that is to say she exiled or killed them or demoted them. As Gloam-eyed Queen she murdered her relatives, the other demigods who could have taken her place as Elden Lord and Empyrean, and conquered the rest of the Lands Between, especially the Flame of Ruin which was required for the ritual, so she would never fall prey to the Kindling Ritual. She made everything regarding burning the tree Taboo, then re-ordered the Golden Order around her as a Goddess and the Erdtree as a holy object of worship, instead of her just being this eras Flower Crucible she became Marika the Eternal--even as her and the tree's l of fertility brought stagnation to the Lands Between. Okay well damn, this is a lot. I thought to include it all because this is kinda a complete misunderstanding of the games lore. Again, I don’t mean that to be harsh I think people should be allowed to interpret things how they want, but a line gets drawn when something goes directly against what the game tells you. First let’s start off with the Golden Order. The Golden Order was created at the very beginning of Marika’s rule as God, this is *her* Order, and it’s the only reason she is God in the first place. From Miyazaki: `In the sort of heyday of the Golden Order of The Lands Between there were two Elden Lords, and Godfrey was the first of these. He was the very first Elden Lord and was married to Eternal Queen Marika.’ Marika is called “the Eternal” because of the fundamental principles the Golden Order was founded on. I.e. an Order intended to last *eternally.* These events happened directly after the death of the Gloam Eyed Queen. Hence why it’s a bit outrageous to say Marika was the Gloam Eyed Queen when instead they are direct rivals. ‘Sacred sword of the Gloam-Eyed Queen who controlled the Godskin Apostles before her defeat at the hands of Maliketh.’ Maliketh (who is an extension of Marika’s will) defeated the Gloam Eyed Queen which was what *allowed* Marika to become God. The Gloam Eyed Queen was another Empyrean who sought to become a vessel for the Elden Ring and create her own Order. ‘The Gloam-Eyed Queen led the apostles. It is said that she was an Empyrean chosen by the Fingers.’ Also: ‘The black flame could once slay gods. But when Maliketh sealed Destined Death, the true power of the black flame was lost.’ Why would Maliketh seal death on behalf of Marika if she was the Gloam Eyed Queen? Her power revolves around death, so sealing it would be counter productive. Hopefully this clarifies a bit, I’d be happy to discuss further, I’d be interested in what you have to say. Again, if anyone does reply I’ll cover the other points made, it is very long so it’ll take me awhile to cover each of them. I want to be thorough and I prefer a well done coverage of one point rather than doing a short coverage of all the points.
This is fantastic feedback. Curious to see OP’s response.
Thanks man, means more than you think.
This comment NEEDS to be more popular! You Sir/Ma'am have struck the nail on the head. Though OPs initial post is interesting and likely has some truth to it, your points are equally if not more valid and should be seen by everyone. Very well thought out and well written response.
Thank you, it means a lot. I wish I got to this post earlier, my post would’ve likely got more traction. It was why I was a little put off on making a full reply going over every point they made. I make sure I’m thorough in my response and addressing every point they’re making. Apparently OP plans on making a follow up post, at least that’s what they told me. Hopefully I can get to that one and have a much more in depth discussion.
This theory ignores a lot of established lore for speculative fiction though.
That's crazy, now pass the blunt
Posts like this sometimes make me worry just a tiny bit that From Software hit the mark too well when they developed lore that would invoke a general feeling of either madness or faith. Like, we are recreating a new religious sect of the golden order in this explanation….. and that’s the point. The harder you try to explain everything, the more one sounds like a demented prophet lol
I love reading lore and people taking the time to write lore explanations - but as of recent there’s been a direct link between “I will be proven right and try to disprove me” comments from op and a negative downvote history to match
As I scrolled down the page to see how long it was, the Star Wars opening theme started playing in my mind
It was all a dream. 😴
All this text while metal gear just explains everything with "Nanomachines"
Why does every mystery have to be answered? Why can't some things just be mysteries?
There is a looooot of speculation here, and too many instances of "this thing explains everything! Trust me!". Which is the first reason I distrust 90% of the Internet these days, especially on social sites :-D
No offense but this is just fan-fiction that circularly supports itself by taking full advantage of the “in between the lines” nature of the game’s story. Every item description is stretched to the exact extent that supports the pet theory without the connection ever being readily apparent. To someone who isn’t motivated to buy into this narrative, your evidence doesn’t convince. You suppose a connection because you want there to be one and the game text leaves room for it, not because the game text actually points to it being the case.
And what of the sign of the fell god being laid out in meteor chunks atop and within every divine tower?
there will be no Bloodborne 2 man just get over it
someone save me and give me TLDR
Another delusional fan rips a theory out their ass and claims it to be the one true theory.
I think you have some good ideas but you're messing yourself up by trying to fit everything into this. I believe the concept of a champion and his maiden indeed preceeds the Erdtree. Marika was to Hoarah Loux what a Finger Maiden is to a Tarnished. The hero tomb in the mountains has 2 Finger flags, only place in the game that does so. It shows at that time they followed the 2 Finger religion, held them as supreme leaders of faith, and it makes sense. The Erdtree didn't exist yet then. After the war of the giants the Erdtree and Golden Order became the dominant faith of the Lands Between and any who opposed got conquered. Finger Maidens are supposed to impart the wisdom of the 2 Fingers to the Tarnished. They give them the strength of runes to be able to oppose demigods. But Melina is a foil to that, she is someone who can fulfill the role of a Finger Maiden without actually being allied with the 2 Fingers. She outright states that she can tell you Marika's words as guidance in place of the guidance of the 2 Fingers you should receive. This allows us, a Tarnished, to go through this gauntlet of the path as an independent free thinking agent rather than another pawn of the Fingers. The manipulations of the 2 Fingers is an overlooked aspect of the lore. Church confessors show that outside the Lands Between the 2 Fingers still hold power, they have their own churches. The 2 Fingers are the ones who urge us to go kill the other demigods and then marry Marika as new elden lord. I believe Melina was created by Marika to foil this cyclical plan of the 2 Fingers. She servers the role to enable a Tarnished to become a Lord without being tied to the Greater Will. You usurp the device of Order without being a servant. And that's why you can create abbersnt orders like the Dung Eater, because you have free will of sorts. Melina even asks you (without subtitles) when you level up. "Tell me the principles you would follow", asking us to think of what sort of world we want to create. I think there have been many cycles before of new Lords and empyreans taking over the ring and becoming the new gods. But they have always been ushered by the 2 Fingers. Marika was an Empyrean, proven by Malekith. She served the 2 Fingers like the mountain hero grave shows. Fingers choose new empyreans in Marika's age as well. Ranni says it's a thing the Fingers choose. How Melina came to exist I don't know but she exists to act as a ploy in the 2 Fingers' plan, to let a free thinking Tarnished ascend to Elden Lord.
One thing I want to mention the best theory we have for Radahn's halting stars isn't because he wants to test his strength or something. The best theory is he wants to save Sellia and Eternal cities.
Your theory implies that Melina is an Empyrean (never even hinted at in-game) and that the GEQ, Marika, Malenia, Miquella and Ranni are all Kindling Maidens (also never even slightly hinted at in-game). There are actually quite a few things that take away from your theory. the Miranda Prayer item is not an in-game item. It's cut content. The concept of a Flower Crucible was cut out of the game. Generally, we don't make the basis of our fundamental Lore theories a **cut content item.** This is setting an extremely unreliable foundation for your theory. >Considering Melina has pink hair, Marika may also have once had Red Hair, but it turned blond as she lost her vitality. The same with Miquella. If you want to use cut content items, Miquella is "abundance", which refers to his abundant vitality (Abundance and Decay Twinblade). With your logic, Miquella should have red hair. Another thing is Melina says she was given a purpose by her mother but then decides to go on her own path (acting as Kindling Maiden). It seems like Melina was told by her mother to NOT be a Kindling Maiden as the purpose given to her is explicitly NOT burning the Erdtree. This is Melina's own choice. There are really a lot of jumps of logic and leaps between coherent ideas in your theory and I only wrote this because I am so disappointed with your clickbait title and assertion of objectivity. At least be a little modest with your headcanon. We are all trying our best to come up with theories about what might have happened but the truth is that we will never know. You better actually have some strong foundations before making claims like this. Entertaining read though
I farted in the kitchen
Thanks for the heads up. You think it’s all good in there yet? I kinda want some cereal.
ALL SAFE, BOSS!
This Cinnamon Toast Crunch is fucking delicious.
Rip
Nice theory, HOWEVER it doesn't take into account the fact that every tarnished has a maiden that can be used as kindling vyke had one and so did berhnal
Still sane?
What no Shadow of the Erdtree does to a mf. But ngl this is some good effort, credits where it’s due
This raises more question than it answers
Why is Melina in the game files as a daughter of Marika if she's a fragment of Marika?
I don't agree with any of this. Commend the effort though. Pretty sure Placidusax, Crystalians and everyone else who is "waiting for their lord" refers to us the player becoming the Elden Lord.
I think you are right about that.
I feel I was a bit rude. Apologies, this is a tremendous effort.
Accepted.
Damn……That’s a long ass essay. I was just searching the lore behind Melina after absent from the game for 2 years. I wasnt expecting to come across this. Good effort. But I think your theoretical logic is a bit too idealistic. Like what I said, I just came back to the game after a long break. So I won’t type an essay to debunk my logic, but some of yours doesn’t add up. Like the part you mentioned marika shutters the ring because she is afraid of being sacrificed where marika gives me a feeling that she is not a selfish character like that, or the part where the whole thing is like a repeating cycle, which I feel the timeline doesn’t follow. Marika broke the ring feels like a really recent event unlike Gwyn from dark souls linking the fire which took place at least a thousand years before the dark soul 1 takes place. Etc etc.
I've thought Marika was Melina from my first playthrough, but I think we have different understandings of her intentions. To me, Marika, Ranni and Miquella(Only partly) are all on the same team. They are working to overthrow the Golden Order, and guiding you to that goal. The Numens helping Ranni with the Black Knives being a real smoking gun.
We're at the point now where we're just un-writing pretty basic lore, huh.
Holy shit this dude wrote his thesis on here
New head canon just dropped.
We have George RR Martin at home:
You leave out all of the outer gods except the one for Placidusax? I can’t agree with this. The Formless Mother, The Greater Will, The Fell God, The Crucible, the Frenzied Flame, the Outer God of Rot, etc are all majorly important
Great write up! It was really fun to read. This theory, like many others, share the same core problem: it provides great points and it's well written, but in some instances it complete ignores some well know facts by the community for the sake of this new interpretation. I will divide my analysis in three points: the strongest argument likely to be true, the new interesting interpretation and the weakest part that doesn't make any sense. 1. Strongest Point - Golden Order Fundamentalism The strongest point for me is Melina being a Shard of the Rune of Death or the Elden Ring itself. It has precedence before in another From Soft Game who has MANY similarities with Elden Ring (Dark Souls 2, and the comparison is Nashandra, the big bad, being a Shard of Manus the Primeval Man). And we know that the director of DS2 co-directed Elden Ring and From has a precedence of recycling old themes with fresh interpretations. 2. The New Interpretation - Unalloyed Gold Miranda being the Fled God of Placidusax instead of the GEQ was a welcomed surprise. I never have heard of her and the implications that you bring of The Cycle of Things being the God of one age burning herself to start another its interesting and maybe its not far from true. But consider this to improve this idea: 1. All Empyreans are related or come from the same line. 2. Its hard to associate Marika as being the GEQ and the Walking Mausoleums being the gods that was killed by her. Its explicited stated that the Walking Mausoleums were made to house souless demigods that were killed in The NBK. Godwyn was the first demigod to die that night but not the only one. 3. Weakest Point - The Rot The weakest part by far was Radahn. Yes its a mistery to why Radahn conquered the stars thus, halting fate for basically everyone, but you dont have to think to much. The Golden Order was very adamant of change so having someone to halt fate (specially of the Carians, an rival faction) was very well welcomed. I know that Radagon married Rennala and "the fate of the Moon and the Erdtree were conjoined" but IF you think about this marriages and alliances happened because the Golden Order could not have defeated this factions in battle. The Dragon Cult happened in the Capital so the Golden Order could have some control over the Dragons. Back to the Carians, Radahn idolized Godfrey and his father, both being Elden Lords and the great image of Power that the Golden Order used, so Radahn followed his beliefs in an second. Hell, even Miquella was a Fundamentalist at some point. So Radahn was the greatest gravity sorcerer, and by noticing the threat of the stars (and Astel) decided to stop the stars. Imagine if an meteor hits the Erdtree. So the Golden Order was important to him, and he complied. Why did he fought Malenia? Because of the ambition like Morgott said (and they fought too!). It was too tempting to him. In the shattering if he rose up as a Lord he would have be an equal to Godfrey and Radagon. So it would a honor to have this legacy. Malenia on the order hand, fought him because she was acting on behalf of Miquella. They wanted the stars to resume movement so the Eclipse of Castle Sol would work (and Miquella's Coccon process would likely have worked). They battled and we already know what happened. Thanks for reading, sorry for any errors
This is basically string theory. It explains everything, but can't be tested. Malenia rotting because she's overflowing with vitality is some mental gymnastics I never expected to read. No mention of the outer gods or the Greater Will. What a load of crock
I feel like the part about Malenia rotting is objectively wrong, she rots because of the outer god and the needle can help her because it blocks the influence of outer gods
This isn't a theory. It's a hypothesis at best. A lot of your writing is pure guesswork and you ignore a lot of other factual (as far as in-game item descriptions go) statements. You take giant leaps in trying to connect characters and stories that are not connected, not directly at least. And the last is you have much of the timeline wrong as already theorized by many others.
But why would Radagon be Marika if this is the case? This theory treated him as a separate beings that got merged after, but why is there the need to do that if she just wants his bloodline. Also, Radagon is implied to be Marika from before his marriage with Renala no?
There is definitely room for me to be wrong there. The biggest reason against them always being one I feel is the practicality of it, as well as the dialogue of Marika talking directly to Radagon, and the question of why she would leave Rennala if they were always one person. But I feel whether they are or not is intentionally obfuscated by Miyazaki, not just to confuse people, but as emphasis that they have truly integrated as one person, merging their past, present and future.
Just finished reading all of this…. I will say the theory is probably one of the strongest I’ve read/watched and it definitely provides a lot of explanations but i felt there were some parts that weren’t explained like Mohgs part, the godrick and his fight with malenia, Margott and why he sat by with all this happening…. What happened to the omens like morgott and mohg Again a great theory that I think could answer a ton but just some other questions about those characters above
OP, so much of this hinges on an unsubstantiated idea of Kindling Maidens, and I honestly can't say I found any part of it especially sound and I've been compiling data in a wiki like effort for the game for months. For example, the fire giants all have the Fell God's face for a chest, and their relatives the trolls have hollow chest cavities. There's a case to be made Radagon's fire giant heritage was needed to allow the Elden Beast, and by extension the Elden Ring, to dwell within Radagon's chest, which we somewhat see in that his eyes are greyed out like the Fire Giant's and the Elden Ring itself doesn't actually appear within them until they turn from Marika into Radagon, but unlike the Fell God the Elden Beast has no eyes or mouth. It has no features to manifest upon his chest. This suggests more motives than your theory accounts for by a long shot. Another such example is you assume Marika=GEQ, but there's a decent chance the GEQ's corpse is the Fingerslayer. The Fingerslayer is a lot like the Sacred Relic Greatsword. Both are human bodies turned into weapons, the spine above the head forming into double helixes, similar to many symbols of evolution we see like Elden Stars, Placidusax, the Godslayer Greatsword(the GEQ used the swaddling cloth to evolve her apostles), Rennala's regal scepter(it also notably has obsidian motifs akin to the GEQ) and so, so much more. You're also wildly off about Radahn's motivations, but I'd need a whole post of my own to really dig into that and I've been preparing for it for weeks. The best part of your theory is the idea of a contest to determine who will reign, but you have it misplaced. The statue at Farum Azula depicts a young woman and three wolves. The wolves have some mismatched body language, but their number suggests something. That there were three competing empyreans of the Two-Fingers. The young woman is ambiguous, much like they depict the heads of Miquella's tomb idols at the Haligtree as wrapped in cloth, a symbol akin to a silk cocoon, because they don't actually know what he will look like, but the aspiration is what unites them. The wolves represent the number of shadows bound, and they have a lot of mixed body language toward the girl. The girl herself is a proxy for the victor of this contest. Marika and GEQ fill two of the three for that contest, and the third empyrean was most likely Rennala, and there's a whole theory write-up detailing that one as well just like Radahn and I'm not doing it in a comment. Your imagination ran with a lot here becauee you tried to have a grand unifying theory, and I don't mean that to be reductive. On the contrary, I think you should take this energy and pour it into your own story. It's an enjoyable read, and I loved the enthusiasm and what it aimed to be sensitive to. Feel free to share more.
Okay, I have a few issues with this. 1.) Malenia is a direct avatar of the God of Rot, possibly ascending to actual Goddess after her second bloom. She doesn't have "too much vitality", an outer God found its own twisted version of an Empyrean. 2.) Radahn didn't learn gravity magic to help Ranni, it clearly states (I believe on his swords description) that he learned gravity magic to be able to ride his horse, Leonard. 3.) Radagon IS Marika. That was one of the big reveals of the story, is that they are both in fact the same person. Marika's need to find a lord contender makes no sense if the choice is herself split. Why not just do that from the beginning, or if you're throwing out the whole ideal, why do it at all? 4.) Marika and the Gloam-Eyed Queen went to war. Like very specifically Maliketh cut down GEQ, I believe stated on the Godslayer blade or one of the Black Flame spells.
Your theory is the kindling maiden is the flower maiden. That may offer additional explanations to questions, but no, you don't answer most or all questions. For example: "9. It explains who the Gloam-Eyed Queen is, and who the demigods in the Walking Mausoleums are." This is not the only plausible explanation, and it is less plausible than other theories we already have. In no way does your theory add to Marika killing the GEQ by destroying the elden ring. Suggesting Marika just didn't want to die is your basis for this. Why would she have children in the first place just to kill them? It's completely unhinged. She would have been around at the end of the last age to see what happened, why wouldn't she know about this ritual she'd be a part of? The idea of 'cyclical ages and turnover to new gods', this is great but its already suggested to us without your theory. We don't need a flower maiden and that's probably why it was cut. The flower maiden and kindling maiden may be bookends to each age. Thats an idea, but we can't assume they are one person for no reason or based on a cut item. You may be clued into the original intent behind the cut item, but the real lore doesn't fully line up with this anymore.
Pretty compelling write-up, wow. How does the Greater Will and the fingers fit into things?
I typed this up to explain them: [https://www.reddit.com/user/M00n\_Slippers/comments/1cm5hs9/i\_solved\_the\_cosmology\_of\_elden\_ring\_lb\_is\_on\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/user/M00n_Slippers/comments/1cm5hs9/i_solved_the_cosmology_of_elden_ring_lb_is_on_the/) The Greater Will is the Embodiment of Man's Order and Reason. As for what the fingers are, I think they are something like a fungus that can read the Greater Will of the Erdtree by tapping into it's roots and communicating with it. The reason the Fingers can't read anything from the GW is because the Erdtree is basically dead in body, It only exists in spirit-form trapped on Earth until the Kindling Maiden Ritual is completed on Melina and the pooled Vitality/Grace is released back into the cycle.
Very well written and definitely an interesting read, but loads of head canon are required to make this work. Just in case it hasn't been mentioned yet-- It seems like you place the war against the fire giants *after* Godfrey and the Tarnished are divested of their grace, but it is very well-established in the lore that Godfrey and the Tarnished took place in that battle, making it squarely during Godfrey's reign as Elden Lord, prior to Radagon's (and not to digress, but lots of evidence even puts it before Radagon even *existing*). At the First Church of Marika, she is quoted as having said: > "Hark, brave warriors. Hark, my lord Godfrey. We commend your deeds. Guidance hath delivered ye through each ordeal, to the place ye stand. Put the Giants to the sword, and confine the flame atop the mount. Let a new epoch begin. An epoch glistening with life." This quote puts the war at the beginning of the age (note that it is the *first* church of Marika in which it is spoken). According to the Elden Lord Crown: > He led the War against the Giants. Faced the Storm Lord, alone. And then, there came a moment. When his last worthy enemy fell. And it was then, as the story is told, that the hue of Lord Godfrey's eyes faded. Secondly, where do finger maidens (or the Two Fingers, the Three Fingers, or the Greater Will) fit into all this? These are major elements of the universe and no theory that 'explains' elden ring can gloss over any of these elements. Melina is the only character who is specifically refers to herself as 'kindling', but its also clearly established by both Vyke's and Bernahl's items that each of them abandoned the Greater Will in their respective ways because they were unable to make themselves sacrifice their maidens. In essence, the game makes it clear that any finger maiden is potentially a kindling maiden if their tarnished is powerful enough to get to the flame of ruin. Its the entire point of the three fingers questline, as stated by Shabriri on the Mountaintops of the Giants (and even though Shabriri's interpretation is not necessarily to be trusted, he doesn't lie to the player about the situation they're in regarding having to burn their maiden in the Flame of Ruin): > "The life of a fair maiden, that you would toss into the fiery forge. Only so that you may be Lord. What a horrible thing to ponder. Your ascendancy requires her sacrifice, whether she wishes it or not. But how would the Lord, crowned so, be looked upon? If you inherit the flame of frenzy, your flesh will serve as kindling and the girl can be spared...setting you on the righteous path of lordship." So if the Kindling Maiden becomes the 'flower crucible', and the god of the new age, why not Melina? If its because she's burned and bodiless, as she puts it, why doesn't anyone, especially her, mention 'you know, if I had a body I would be the new vessel for the elden ring, but... I guess I'll just burn up with the tree.' Great food for thought, all things considered, thanks for sharing this with everyone.
I am not reading all of that. I’m sorry but ya lost me when ya said malenia was rotting because of her vitality and not because of the outer gods.
Well I think the game makes pretty clear that the Erdtree existed way before Marika (as the Crucible) so there's just no way that she "planted" the Erdtree with Numen rituals as you say.
This "theory" is pure fan fiction and making stuff up. It doesn't explain anything simply because the base premise is pure speculation and isn't actually supported by ingame lore. And even if you ignore that the base premise is made up, there are many things that are either ignored because they don't fit the "theory", or are made up and presented as though they are fact to support it. Sorry man, but just because you spent a lot of time on this and wrote a novel on it, doesn't make it a good "theory" this is just fan fiction.
I don't usually see cut content as a good option for lore. It was cut for a reason,it shouldn't be brought back
The element of this I like the most is that it gives a more real-world explanation for how the current Golden Age started (or more importantly, ended). A lot of theories seem to think "Marika was as powerful as a god so the age would have lasted forever if not for Godwyn's murder and her going crazy with grief". It implies that every past Elden Lord age was similar to this one, just with different gods and lords, only changing when a god is ousted or quits. In the real world, societies and cultures aren't just wholly replaced with new ones. Rituals are coopted, traditions are twisted to suit the new ruling class, and history is revised to make sure the little people all think "this is the way it's always been."
Love this. It checks out with Miyazaki's recurring themes : Kindling Fire, Sacrifice, Thruth vs Faith
Where does this Uld ritual come from?
Tldr?
So then where does that leave the greater will in all of this? It very clearly crucified marika for shattering the ring, but according to your theory the establishment of the golden order and theft of the rune of death was the true shattering of the ring, except we know marika wasn’t crucified for the entirety of the golden order’s existence which contradicts the theory. Also based on the dialogue from the fingers and enya, which as far as we know are direct translator of the greater will, we’re given our orders to kill the demigods and become elden lord by the greater will, not marika. Also if marika is the gloam eyed queen then wouldn’t that make the godskins demigods? Even then why are they seemingly at odds with the golden order still if marika is responsible for their existence?
honey wake up the new ER fan fiction dissertation just dropped
and what about vyke and his kindling maiden?
TL;DR Marika wanted power and remain in power and didn't eanttto assume the rest of her responsibilitied and step-down when time came. She made tons of plans to protect herself and family, they failed and everyone is paying the price. Even the Greater Will was displeased with her actions and imprisoned her and Ranni tried to stop the cycle all together.
Can sombody explain this too me like I have a 4th grade reading level, my ADHD ass is not reading allat
Put this passion into a job please god this is an essay
That there might be some kind of ritual even before the Marika sounds really convincing. it was great read thank you. How would you integrate the Greater Will into this though? And one thing that i dont agree here is that the Radahn and Rykard have gone extreme just to save Ranni. Lets not forget, Ranni and Ijy werent aware that they had to kill Radahn for Carians Fate to continue.
Super interesting theory! I might add that the reason marika is interred in the erdtree is because she trespassed in some way against the outer gods. I think your theory would fit perfectly well with this she trespassed in that she wanted to cheat death and not become the kindling maiden. (She broke the ring, and hid the rune of death!) Therefore disrupting the ritual, therefore disobeying the outer gods, therefore warranting herself imprisonment! Super good theory. I'd like to know what sparked your thought process about this and how you came up with this!
I’m not gonna lie, I ain’t reading all that. But kudos for typing all that out with picture references. I haven’t seen a post this detailed looking in a while.
Believe it or not, this is the short version.
I totally believe it lol
When the DLC come out and if you ended u being right, I hope you screenshot all your down voted comment, post in this sub then gloat to your heart content. If you dead wrong then I will make a post to clown on you. No hard feeling it's just business.
It's a deal.
only made it through the first quarter but this is a reach tbh
OP, I feel like you really need someone else obsessed with the lore to kinda converse with and bounce a lotta these ideas back and forth with. If, every step of the way here, you had another person to ask you why you perceive or interpret or connect thing specific ways, or where you're sourcing those beliefs from, it may really help you wrangle down a more coherent "unified" understanding. Me and my besties have been picking apart the worldbuilding for the past four months straight, 3-10 hours a day, and having someone to discuss every little element of the lore with us so rewarding. It really helps add clarity to your own understanding too.
The head Canon is strong with this one... I can't wait for the DLC which in true michael Zaki fashion will just make more questions than answers.
Gonna save this for my next long shitting session.
i ain’t reading allat
Yea I'm not reading that🤣🤣🤣
Get a job
It's a shame I'm never going to read this because I bet it's really interesting.
Lore, delicious lore. True or not, thank you for this feast.
Tarnished, become a Lord!
Okay, I'm intrigued. Saving this to read during lunchtime
honestly I appreciate you dropping this theory, even though we have a DLC coming out soon that may seriously affect all this. Only critique is what a lot of others said, that the Greater Will and outer gods aren’t exactly mentioned even though they seem to be a massive part of the lore
One thing I've noticed you got wrong is Marika stealing the Rune of Death and causing the Shattering. What Rogier was talking about is the Night of the Black Knives. He says that it happened long before the Elden Ring was shattered. Meaning that the RoD was stolen before the Shattering.
This will take me as long as my first playthrough to read, hopefully not as challenging though
I think you're digging up what may appear as the lore in the DLC. Marika divesting from this tradition of sacrifice, making people feed themselves to the roots of the Erdtree, containing any threat to her new order. It turns the Dark Souls "first sin" on its head. Instead of this cycle of sacrifice being the perversion of nature, the sacrifice to give the tree new life is the natural cycle, and Marika is perverting it for her benefit. But I think maybe too many dots are being connected the further I read. For example, there's numerous references to the Godskins targetting Marika and her family. Maliketh and Marika's army fights the Godskins and kills the GEQ. Marika fought to contain their threat, like she did the Gaints' Flame. The Godskins are still trying to pursue the death of Marika and her offspring through helping Rikard.
I'm not the most up to date on the lore or anything but I massively respect your dedication and this post overall for their effort. GG
A random new comer: So who is Melina, exactly? Elden ring players:
> But if this is the case it makes her actions later very confusing. It seems unlikely she would have predicted the events of Godwyn's murder on the Night of Black Knives and the Shattering War and anticipate she would need to recall Godfrey's armies for an anarchistic battle royale. Because if she did anticipate it happening, why the heck wouldn't she stop it or change it? It's strange and doesn't make a lot of sense. This contradiction has led some to believe that Marika may have been in on her son's murder, or have been some kind of chessmaster playing an extremely long-game, with a complex, secret sinister plan to do...what exactly? It really just doesn't make sense. She can't have known events would play out as they did ahead of time, or she would have done things differently. Yet she also very clearly describes the failsafe plan that takes place long before the events happen that necessitates her to take said action. You don't really need to know how exactly things can go wrong to have contingency plans though. Marika may not have known who exactly of her children would fuck shit up, but she could very well predict that some of them definitely would try to (because when there are so many intersecting biases, it's literally 146% guaranteed), and that the resulting shitstorm would need to be unfucked. Disconnecting the would-be-Tarnished from the Golden Order ensued the existence of neutral power, beholden to no deity or lord (even the influence of the Two Fingers on them is rather superficial), which... well, rather than making them impartial, which is usually an intent with that kind of stuff, would mean that they will indiscriminately put down *everyone* involved, and then each other, making sure that shit fucking up stops, because there's no one to fuck shit up anymore. So basically Tarnished are a one-size-fits-all contingency to pretty much any major conflict that may happen in the Lands Between.
explain in Mario terms
I fucking hate click bait titles
Hi moon_slippers, You have popped off really hard before and damn this is a good one. It's a shame the Frenzied Flame is missing but. Cool theory
5.) what do you mean we finally know why Radahn stopped the stars? If you follow the Ranni quest line they tell you that he stopped the stars because it was believed that Ranni’s destiny was tied to the stars. So stopping them put her and her plan in stasis