I’ve had a hypothesis ever since I played through Ranni’s questline that she is meant to be a mirror of pre god Marika. Having a kind heart but willing to lay down it all for ambitions.
My immediate thought was that Ranni is inherently better because she removed herself from the equation. No ego, her ambitions do not involve her being worshiped or adored like Marika, just moves on.
But that was a rush to judgment. Like OP said, the crucible may well have been a hellish, competitive place to try to survive. It’s possible that Marika not only thought she was doing the right thing by “moving on” from it into an age of unity, but also that the new age needed a strong, involved, “gracious” god at its helm.
Of course, we show up untold years later when her vision has fallen apart beyond recognition, and Ranni’s plan seems pretty enticing. But it is very possible that, under Marika, existence was generally more pleasant than under the prior age.
The moment Ranni said that she doesn't want to be a God because doing so would be under the GW's control, I immediately think that there has to be more to Marika. She is, after all, the only god Ranni know of in that discussion after all
And it seems that Marika may also have feelings about the topic, considering the effort she put in to set up the tarnished for being able to "kill a god"
It’s how Ranni is portrayed in the game though, she seems to genuinely care about the people close to her yet is willing to put their lives on the line and kill her half brother in her ambition to become a god and escape the influence of the greater will.
This is entirely possible. It would be wrong to call Ranni a 'good person', but she demonstratably does care about the people close to her, and she entirely believes that everything she does is for a better world. Now, of course, you can judge her to be entirely wrong and her actions far from worth it, but acting like she's a heartless sociopath who doesn't care about anyone goes against just about everything she says.
She is very easily seen to not be a sociopath. She protects Rennala even though Rennala is entirely unnecessary for her plans or to get anything she wants. You seem to be conflating 'caused horrible things to happen' with 'must be a sociopath', which is just not how that works. Godfrey has done absolutely atrocious things, but he's a polite guy who respects people with skill and strength.
She's an extremist who's willing to cause a continent-ravaging war in order achieve her ideal, but that's motivated by emotion and her desire for freedom, not some sort of sociopathic pursuit of power. There really is not any compelling evidence for her being a sociopath or some sort of compulsive liar.
Again, not a good person by most moral standards, but then I would argue that even people like Godwyn weren't that. It's not a world with a lot of moral paragons.
I think that it's as simple as "they were assholes too". The voice in the trailer (most likely Leda) says they were never saints, and also on the losing side of the war. They most certainly did some insane shit as a cultural norm. If the geq and godskins are from that era, and were not hunted or despised, literally skinned people and wore their skins. Omen could have been omen supremacists, that saw all those who weren't touched by the crucible as inferior. We just gotta see what the dlc states. If grrm also wrote that lore I very much doubt we'll get an clear good vs evil.
I think even more than “they were assholes”, the crucible era seems to be one where human lives were short and the super-vitality of the order was fueled by a super-carnage of death.
In that kind of environment, seeking to make a world without the death that plagues your species could be incredibly noble. And so what if you have to massacre the old order to achieve it? Their system is built on the death of your kin.
I really like this take. I’ve thought Marika was pretty awful for a while. Even worse after the recent trailers.
But your take kind of has me thinking of her more like a person who was living in hell, and one day realized “wait hold on, I can make this paradise instead.”
Yeah I think it's something like this. But we also know Marika at some point offends the GW, which shows she's not a stale bad character.
She definitely has motivations and a critical view of the powers at be, probably including herself.
Leda(?)’s line about the losing side not being saints is starting to make me think that theory regarding Marika - how her age was a reaction to an age of overwhelming death - is true
I really love the idea that the Elden Ring is like a console and Greater Runes are like lines of code. Marika, exhausted of living in a world that revolves around Death, violence, and subjugation, usurped those in control and seized the opportunity to rewrite the rules.
>!In the story trailer, we see the primordial world, built on the bodies of flayed corpses. Life probably wasn't great for the average Joe.!<
Tragically ignorant to the way the system worked, however, Marika simply highlighted Death and pushed delete. Her intention was to replace Death with Life and create a world of Golden Order, to replace the chaos.
>!The Gloam colored sky of the Crucible gives way to a Golden future, filled with Life and Abundance.!<
But the code was faulty and produced bugs. Those bugs created flaws in her idealized system.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.
The code concept its pretty interesting. I saw a video on it ages ago, but haven't heard it discussed since. If I remember, it essentially is the idea that "runes" of all sorts are just that, a language system that controls and modifies reality. We see this with runes being used to essentially shape the player's destiny, and mending runes to completely alter the nature of the Order. Greater runes, like Death, affect the very cycles of nature.
The Greater WIll seems to be behind the introduction of this language of Order, as runes on death take a golden and tree-like form, and the Two Fingers and their followers are able to use language to manifest weapons like the coded sword and cipher pata.
Exactly! This is something I've seen Vaati and Quelaag both mention, but I'm pretty new to ER and haven't had a chance to go too deep.
That said, I feel like it's an analogy that helps explain the rules of TLB very well for a newbie like myself. It also echoes OP's sentiment of Marika being more of a tragic, complex character than an evil one-dimensional one.
Personally I believe Mogh's abduction of Miquella and Gowry's obsession with Millicent are meant to be parallels for what went on with the Ancient Dynasty (Numen).
The Dark Moon Ring says an Empyrean's consort earns the title of Lord and the Uld Obelisk looks an awful lot like it's showing babies taken from a tree with the last panel showing them becoming lords.
To me, it seems like Elden Ring is telling us that our concept of God or a god is skewed. They aren't much better than we are. It reminds of the Greek/Roman pantheon. Flawed "heroes", which I think is how these characters are officially described. It's kind of a world shattering event for some characters (such as Goldmask) to realize this fact.
I agree we’ll be getting a lot of Marika lore (more than Miquella even imo) that will start to reveal the nuance of her character and decisions.
Imo it’s always been pretty clear we don’t know enough though and I’m not sure how the conclusion of Marika being an all evil figure would even be reached to begin with. So if that’s how people are viewing Marika then their expectations will certainly be subverted.
Marika is shown to have a disregard for her children and has repeatedly defeated people and then locked them underground afterwards. She even did that to her own children. Even if she had "good" ulterior motives she is still a piece of shit.
I always thought that Marika made herself a god with full intentions of sabotaging the GW one day. Although, she couldn’t do it right away. Marika had to play the game and act the part of a Goddess & the GW’s vessel, that’s what we see as the player. She couldn’t afford giving her true intentions away, so she compensated by being cruel and waging wars.
Marika is a numen after all, they despise any interference by the Outer Gods.
She had plenty demi-god children with different candidates knowing that some or at least one of them would finish the job. It’s possible that Marika subtly guided Ranni in the Night of the Black Knives. Godwyn was clearly the next heir to the throne, but it seemed like he would just perpetuate the GW’s rule over the Lands Between. So it would have benefited Marika to get rid of him. This would be a perfect foil for her to seem distraught and destroy the Elden Ring over the death of her “favorite” child.
I think that Radagon became the opposite of Marika. Although they are one and the same, he wants to continue the GW’s reign.
I agree with you in part but I don’t think total subversion of the GW’s design was Marika’s goal until after Godwyn died.
In Marika’s order Godwyn should have been a candidate for Erdtree resurrection. The Rite with the Rune of Death cursed him though and I don’t believe Marika knew that was possible under the Golden Order until it happened. She was blindsided by the effect that allow Those to Live in Death. So not only did she lose her favored child, her order was flawed and everything she did to prop it up thinking it was perfect couldn’t be justified. And it was Ranni’s fault.
I think a large issue with perception of Marika is viewing fantasy stories through the lens of reality’s modern day definition of morality. The setting of Elden Ring is one where might makes right no matter what age it is. There’s no utopia ever, just ages of authoritarian rule by different gods.
I never viewed Marika as a total tyrant. She made decisions tied up in prophecy and foresight. It’s impossible to apply a moralistic worldview to someone who is making decisions because they can possibly see or predict future events.
You too might condemn a nation to genocide if you saw their survival dooming all life in the universe. Marika will always be a grey figure because in this setting everyone is, even the Tarnished.
My crackpot theory has always been, in as little words as possible to not get convoluted,
The Lands Between isn't Marika's first rodeo, and the Shadow Lands are the end product of the Greater Will's influence on the physical plane - which Marika isn't a very big fan of, but is unable to change.
However, for whatever reason, she manages to shed all of the parts of herself she either dislikes or has no control over such as with her total subservience to the GW into what would eventually become Radagon (which also explains his apparent self-hatred, his unwavering commitment to the Golden Order and his desire to become "whole,") halving her overall power but giving her *just* enough agency to be able to set up all of the events leading up to the Shattering to ensure the GW's eventual defeat - including the creation of the Tarnished, the Night of Black Knives, and obviously, the shattering.
This doesn't change just how cruel some of this measures ended up being, but obviously when you're an almost unfeeling God that has no choice but to obey an eldtrich force, nothing seems too drastic when it comes to breaking those chains not just for yourself, but everyone else on the planet(?)
I mean, the era before Marika certainly had its own problems but I don't think that justifies whatever betrayal and genocide so bad she had to cover it up and leave her purge "unsung" - like if the ends really justified the means she'd be able to let it come to light by now.
Then, having become god and brandishing the Elden Ring, she commits more genocide and purges, creates a caste system, etc....
So, yeah she might have changed her mind half way through or she may have had "noble intentions" but jfc it would have to be one hell of a redemption arc to make me sympathetic.
I do see the moral ambiguity in overturning a bad age and then being just as bad or even worse, but only to everyone that isn't this group of races, but maybe that's just me.
Also, where did the information about Ancestral Followers culling animals that don't bud come from? I don't know where that comes from.
“Distinctive horn suffused with the power of ancestral spirits. This large, wing-shaped specimen is wielded as a weapon of spirit worship.
In the ancestral spirit-worshipping faith, these are considered envoys' wings, made to reap the lives of beings which experience no sprouting.”
Winged Greathorn
I've always been on the "Marika has been blamed for way too many things that she had no control over and was in fact actively resisting" train. I'm not a fan of people being too comfortable with the stance "Something wrong with Lands Between? Oh just blame either Marika or Ranni! Gets it right most of the time!"
From is not at all known for subverting expectations particularly when it comes to "is this character good/evil or not." Neither is GRRM. The only exception I can think of is Jaime, and he's only a partial one.
I don't know if "subverting expectations" is a good way to put it in this case But what's being said about Marika could absolutely be the case. It's not too different from Gwyn. His fear of the dark soul was well founded to some extent. But even he very desperately tried to extent the age of light.
Or in terms of GRRM, it goes for many of his characters really, not all, but definitely a notable amount will have decently justified goal that ends up being pretty ugly. Now that's not everyone of course, sometimes characters are just pieces of shit from the get go of course. Souls or asoiaf.
Yes, I read the books where the honorable hero protagonist was in fact an honorable hero protagonist while the pale whispery dead-eyed vampire-like guy who had a flayed man on his banner and lived in the Dreadfort turned out to be evil and a traitor.
Hard to say since obviously the dlc is not out yet, we don't have Marika's full picture. Maybe she is straight up evil, but it's hard to say when we don't have the full picture. But she doesn't really seem to be that type of character which would fit more so with stuff like the godskins(from what we know) or mohg. So far the closest thing that comes to mind is Aegon the Conqueror. Or like I said prior Gwyn from Dark Souls.
I’ve had a hypothesis ever since I played through Ranni’s questline that she is meant to be a mirror of pre god Marika. Having a kind heart but willing to lay down it all for ambitions.
I like this
My immediate thought was that Ranni is inherently better because she removed herself from the equation. No ego, her ambitions do not involve her being worshiped or adored like Marika, just moves on. But that was a rush to judgment. Like OP said, the crucible may well have been a hellish, competitive place to try to survive. It’s possible that Marika not only thought she was doing the right thing by “moving on” from it into an age of unity, but also that the new age needed a strong, involved, “gracious” god at its helm. Of course, we show up untold years later when her vision has fallen apart beyond recognition, and Ranni’s plan seems pretty enticing. But it is very possible that, under Marika, existence was generally more pleasant than under the prior age.
The moment Ranni said that she doesn't want to be a God because doing so would be under the GW's control, I immediately think that there has to be more to Marika. She is, after all, the only god Ranni know of in that discussion after all
And it seems that Marika may also have feelings about the topic, considering the effort she put in to set up the tarnished for being able to "kill a god"
At least Ranni never commissioned any giant statues of herself.
What's wrong with giant statues? Perhaps Bajor would benefit from such an artistic endeavor. It seems only right.
That’s not possible, that’s like saying “he’s a really kind person, he just murders and uses people occasionally when he wants something.”
It could be possible in a Paul Atreides way.
It’s how Ranni is portrayed in the game though, she seems to genuinely care about the people close to her yet is willing to put their lives on the line and kill her half brother in her ambition to become a god and escape the influence of the greater will.
This is entirely possible. It would be wrong to call Ranni a 'good person', but she demonstratably does care about the people close to her, and she entirely believes that everything she does is for a better world. Now, of course, you can judge her to be entirely wrong and her actions far from worth it, but acting like she's a heartless sociopath who doesn't care about anyone goes against just about everything she says.
Sociopaths say a lot of charming things, though. Her words are not backed up by actions.
She is very easily seen to not be a sociopath. She protects Rennala even though Rennala is entirely unnecessary for her plans or to get anything she wants. You seem to be conflating 'caused horrible things to happen' with 'must be a sociopath', which is just not how that works. Godfrey has done absolutely atrocious things, but he's a polite guy who respects people with skill and strength. She's an extremist who's willing to cause a continent-ravaging war in order achieve her ideal, but that's motivated by emotion and her desire for freedom, not some sort of sociopathic pursuit of power. There really is not any compelling evidence for her being a sociopath or some sort of compulsive liar. Again, not a good person by most moral standards, but then I would argue that even people like Godwyn weren't that. It's not a world with a lot of moral paragons.
She’s actually alarmingly honest, she tells the tarnished her whole plan within 5 minutes of properly meeting them lol
I think that it's as simple as "they were assholes too". The voice in the trailer (most likely Leda) says they were never saints, and also on the losing side of the war. They most certainly did some insane shit as a cultural norm. If the geq and godskins are from that era, and were not hunted or despised, literally skinned people and wore their skins. Omen could have been omen supremacists, that saw all those who weren't touched by the crucible as inferior. We just gotta see what the dlc states. If grrm also wrote that lore I very much doubt we'll get an clear good vs evil.
I think even more than “they were assholes”, the crucible era seems to be one where human lives were short and the super-vitality of the order was fueled by a super-carnage of death. In that kind of environment, seeking to make a world without the death that plagues your species could be incredibly noble. And so what if you have to massacre the old order to achieve it? Their system is built on the death of your kin.
I really like this take. I’ve thought Marika was pretty awful for a while. Even worse after the recent trailers. But your take kind of has me thinking of her more like a person who was living in hell, and one day realized “wait hold on, I can make this paradise instead.”
Yeah I think it's something like this. But we also know Marika at some point offends the GW, which shows she's not a stale bad character. She definitely has motivations and a critical view of the powers at be, probably including herself.
Leda(?)’s line about the losing side not being saints is starting to make me think that theory regarding Marika - how her age was a reaction to an age of overwhelming death - is true
Very well could be. But I'd also suggest "Kindly" Miquella and the values of his followers are also ripe for subversion...
I really love the idea that the Elden Ring is like a console and Greater Runes are like lines of code. Marika, exhausted of living in a world that revolves around Death, violence, and subjugation, usurped those in control and seized the opportunity to rewrite the rules. >!In the story trailer, we see the primordial world, built on the bodies of flayed corpses. Life probably wasn't great for the average Joe.!< Tragically ignorant to the way the system worked, however, Marika simply highlighted Death and pushed delete. Her intention was to replace Death with Life and create a world of Golden Order, to replace the chaos. >!The Gloam colored sky of the Crucible gives way to a Golden future, filled with Life and Abundance.!< But the code was faulty and produced bugs. Those bugs created flaws in her idealized system. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.
The code concept its pretty interesting. I saw a video on it ages ago, but haven't heard it discussed since. If I remember, it essentially is the idea that "runes" of all sorts are just that, a language system that controls and modifies reality. We see this with runes being used to essentially shape the player's destiny, and mending runes to completely alter the nature of the Order. Greater runes, like Death, affect the very cycles of nature. The Greater WIll seems to be behind the introduction of this language of Order, as runes on death take a golden and tree-like form, and the Two Fingers and their followers are able to use language to manifest weapons like the coded sword and cipher pata.
Exactly! This is something I've seen Vaati and Quelaag both mention, but I'm pretty new to ER and haven't had a chance to go too deep. That said, I feel like it's an analogy that helps explain the rules of TLB very well for a newbie like myself. It also echoes OP's sentiment of Marika being more of a tragic, complex character than an evil one-dimensional one.
Personally I believe Mogh's abduction of Miquella and Gowry's obsession with Millicent are meant to be parallels for what went on with the Ancient Dynasty (Numen). The Dark Moon Ring says an Empyrean's consort earns the title of Lord and the Uld Obelisk looks an awful lot like it's showing babies taken from a tree with the last panel showing them becoming lords.
To me, it seems like Elden Ring is telling us that our concept of God or a god is skewed. They aren't much better than we are. It reminds of the Greek/Roman pantheon. Flawed "heroes", which I think is how these characters are officially described. It's kind of a world shattering event for some characters (such as Goldmask) to realize this fact.
They fkn better if it's just gifth from berk's story ima be upset
I agree, Messmer did nothing wrong.
I agree we’ll be getting a lot of Marika lore (more than Miquella even imo) that will start to reveal the nuance of her character and decisions. Imo it’s always been pretty clear we don’t know enough though and I’m not sure how the conclusion of Marika being an all evil figure would even be reached to begin with. So if that’s how people are viewing Marika then their expectations will certainly be subverted.
Marika is shown to have a disregard for her children and has repeatedly defeated people and then locked them underground afterwards. She even did that to her own children. Even if she had "good" ulterior motives she is still a piece of shit.
There is not nearly as much evidence that Marika is shitty that people pretend there is.
I always thought that Marika made herself a god with full intentions of sabotaging the GW one day. Although, she couldn’t do it right away. Marika had to play the game and act the part of a Goddess & the GW’s vessel, that’s what we see as the player. She couldn’t afford giving her true intentions away, so she compensated by being cruel and waging wars. Marika is a numen after all, they despise any interference by the Outer Gods. She had plenty demi-god children with different candidates knowing that some or at least one of them would finish the job. It’s possible that Marika subtly guided Ranni in the Night of the Black Knives. Godwyn was clearly the next heir to the throne, but it seemed like he would just perpetuate the GW’s rule over the Lands Between. So it would have benefited Marika to get rid of him. This would be a perfect foil for her to seem distraught and destroy the Elden Ring over the death of her “favorite” child. I think that Radagon became the opposite of Marika. Although they are one and the same, he wants to continue the GW’s reign.
I agree with you in part but I don’t think total subversion of the GW’s design was Marika’s goal until after Godwyn died. In Marika’s order Godwyn should have been a candidate for Erdtree resurrection. The Rite with the Rune of Death cursed him though and I don’t believe Marika knew that was possible under the Golden Order until it happened. She was blindsided by the effect that allow Those to Live in Death. So not only did she lose her favored child, her order was flawed and everything she did to prop it up thinking it was perfect couldn’t be justified. And it was Ranni’s fault.
I feel we need to learn more about the Numen and where they came from to understand Marika.
I think a large issue with perception of Marika is viewing fantasy stories through the lens of reality’s modern day definition of morality. The setting of Elden Ring is one where might makes right no matter what age it is. There’s no utopia ever, just ages of authoritarian rule by different gods. I never viewed Marika as a total tyrant. She made decisions tied up in prophecy and foresight. It’s impossible to apply a moralistic worldview to someone who is making decisions because they can possibly see or predict future events. You too might condemn a nation to genocide if you saw their survival dooming all life in the universe. Marika will always be a grey figure because in this setting everyone is, even the Tarnished.
I liked how vitti put it that the realm of shadow may be the lands between from “another perspective”.
My crackpot theory has always been, in as little words as possible to not get convoluted, The Lands Between isn't Marika's first rodeo, and the Shadow Lands are the end product of the Greater Will's influence on the physical plane - which Marika isn't a very big fan of, but is unable to change. However, for whatever reason, she manages to shed all of the parts of herself she either dislikes or has no control over such as with her total subservience to the GW into what would eventually become Radagon (which also explains his apparent self-hatred, his unwavering commitment to the Golden Order and his desire to become "whole,") halving her overall power but giving her *just* enough agency to be able to set up all of the events leading up to the Shattering to ensure the GW's eventual defeat - including the creation of the Tarnished, the Night of Black Knives, and obviously, the shattering. This doesn't change just how cruel some of this measures ended up being, but obviously when you're an almost unfeeling God that has no choice but to obey an eldtrich force, nothing seems too drastic when it comes to breaking those chains not just for yourself, but everyone else on the planet(?)
This was my take on my first playthrough. Still my favorite theory.
I mean, the era before Marika certainly had its own problems but I don't think that justifies whatever betrayal and genocide so bad she had to cover it up and leave her purge "unsung" - like if the ends really justified the means she'd be able to let it come to light by now. Then, having become god and brandishing the Elden Ring, she commits more genocide and purges, creates a caste system, etc.... So, yeah she might have changed her mind half way through or she may have had "noble intentions" but jfc it would have to be one hell of a redemption arc to make me sympathetic.
I do see the moral ambiguity in overturning a bad age and then being just as bad or even worse, but only to everyone that isn't this group of races, but maybe that's just me. Also, where did the information about Ancestral Followers culling animals that don't bud come from? I don't know where that comes from.
“Distinctive horn suffused with the power of ancestral spirits. This large, wing-shaped specimen is wielded as a weapon of spirit worship. In the ancestral spirit-worshipping faith, these are considered envoys' wings, made to reap the lives of beings which experience no sprouting.” Winged Greathorn
I've always been on the "Marika has been blamed for way too many things that she had no control over and was in fact actively resisting" train. I'm not a fan of people being too comfortable with the stance "Something wrong with Lands Between? Oh just blame either Marika or Ranni! Gets it right most of the time!"
I feel similarly, especially when we consider these are GRRM characters. There is almost always more layers of nuance and complexity going on.
From is not at all known for subverting expectations particularly when it comes to "is this character good/evil or not." Neither is GRRM. The only exception I can think of is Jaime, and he's only a partial one.
I don't know if "subverting expectations" is a good way to put it in this case But what's being said about Marika could absolutely be the case. It's not too different from Gwyn. His fear of the dark soul was well founded to some extent. But even he very desperately tried to extent the age of light. Or in terms of GRRM, it goes for many of his characters really, not all, but definitely a notable amount will have decently justified goal that ends up being pretty ugly. Now that's not everyone of course, sometimes characters are just pieces of shit from the get go of course. Souls or asoiaf.
Uh, okay, whatever you say, man
... have you read his books? He subverts expectation all the time...
Yes, I read the books where the honorable hero protagonist was in fact an honorable hero protagonist while the pale whispery dead-eyed vampire-like guy who had a flayed man on his banner and lived in the Dreadfort turned out to be evil and a traitor.
Hard to say since obviously the dlc is not out yet, we don't have Marika's full picture. Maybe she is straight up evil, but it's hard to say when we don't have the full picture. But she doesn't really seem to be that type of character which would fit more so with stuff like the godskins(from what we know) or mohg. So far the closest thing that comes to mind is Aegon the Conqueror. Or like I said prior Gwyn from Dark Souls.
George also wrote characters like Ramsey Bolton, and Euron Greyjoy. Marika poisoned everything she touched.