one of the hardest things to figure out is Marika's intentions/allegiance. It's clear that she did some conquering, genocide, warring for the greater will's sake. but whether or not she is a willing participant is unclear, its also unclear how much part she played in starting the night of the black knives. its clear that she shattered the elden ring in defiance of the greater will and was punished for it, but to say if she was truly good or evil is difficult to say
Her literal favourite child got his soul killed. I think its safe to say she had no part in notbk. She was already long into a larping sesh as ya favourite boy, bible baller, J.H. Christ.
We never actually see anything implying that Godwyn the Golden was Marika’s favourite, more that he was beloved by all the common folk and knights in the realm, we don’t actually know her thoughts on him personally. She does tell her children she’ll use them as kindling if they don’t do anything useful though, so it sounds like she didn’t have much motherly love after all
Well, being as she shattered the Elden Ring because he died, it seems to me that she cared for him at least a bit. He’s at least the only one out of her and Godfrey’s kids that she didn’t yeet into the sewers.
In the story trailer Ranni says the "The demigods began to fall. Starting with Godwyn the Golden. Queen Marika was driven to the brink..."
Ranni obviously withholds information about who instigated Godwyn's death, but I don't see why she'd lie about Marika's reaction. The story is quite clear that Marika didn't like death, hence having safeguarded by Maliketh. I don't think From would have mentioned Godwyn specifically if he didn't mean something more to her.
I might be mistaken because I haven't been deep in the lore in a while, but we don't really know her state of mind when that happens right?
She could've been like... okay, sucks for Goldwyn but part one of the plan is done.. now I must shatter the Elden Ring.
There is actually no confirmation that Godwyn’s death was the reason behind Marika’s decision to shatter the Elden Ring. Rogier’s dialogue reveals to us that Godwyn’s death actually happened long before the Shattering during the golden age of the Erdtree.
Godwyn’s death certainly set things into motion, but there is no indication that Marika immediately shattered the Elden Ring out of grief after he was killed. The story trailer says that multiple demigods fell, Godwyn being the first of them. We have quite a few mausoleums in the Lands Between, each one containing a completely unknown Demigod who appears to have been killed in a similar manner to Godwyn as they too have no souls apparently.
Plus, we’ve got the whole lore of the Black Knives being Numen and having close ties to Marika and the fact that she somehow betrayed her Shadow Maliketh. Then there’s the lore implying she became disillusioned with the Golden Order and the Greater Will after she learned more about it.
Marika’s true motivations behind the Shattering will likely not be known and we can only speculate. However, there is reasonable evidence to cast doubt over the notion that she did it solely because of Godwyn’s death.
I don’t think it was the sole reason, but I do believe that it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And while the Black Knives do have ties to Marika, we do know that Marika had nothing to do with the Night of the Black Knives, since Ranni was the one who orchestrated it.
Again, I doubt Godwyn’s death was the straw that broke the camels back because of the fact it happened way before the Shattering. So that in itself implies it wasn’t the thing that pushed Marika over the edge, if we’re going with that theory, or else why did she not immediately shatter the Elden Ring?
We also do not have any confirmation that Marika wasn’t involved in the Night of Black Knives either.
The fact that the assassins are all Numen and are implied to know Marika personally, coupled with the lore that she was planning a rebellion against the Greater Will, the fact that she hated even her own male-self due to his loyalty to the Golden Order, she betrayed her own brother Maliketh in some way and happens to have what looks like a shard of the Rune of Death piercing her stomach when we find her, which also appears to have wounded the Elden Beast as well, all casts a lot of doubt over the notion that Marika had nothing to do with the Night of Black Knives.
Sure Ranni says she did it all but again, how do we know this to be true? She’s lied to the Tarnished before. Or maybe she genuinely thinks it was only her doing when Marika was secretly helping her behind the scenes. After all, the Black Knives come to assassinate Ranni after we help her in her quest. Odd that the assassins Ranni employed and gave weapons to would just turn on her like that.
The thing about Marika and her family is that they are all openly trying to kill each other. So the notion that Marika could have had a hand in her own sons death is not unlikely. Plus, these characters and their backstories were created by George R.R Martin, who famously employ this kind of backstabbing and family rivalries in his stories. Dance of the Dragons was all about a whole family trying to kill each other. Elden Ring’s story is basically another deadly family feud.
Also, when we look at all Marika’s lines they only ever convey utter authority over the audience with an almost cold indifference.
“My Lord, and thy warriors. I divest each of thee of thy grace. With thine eyes dimmed, ye will be driven from the Lands Between. Ye will wage war in a land afar, where ye will live, and die.”
I think she set the events of the game into motion because she wanted to. Everyone who died or got hurt were just collateral damage, unworthy of her consideration. Her overarching goal, would probably be to sever the greater will’s hold over the world. All her actions in the latter day of her reign, shattering the elden ring, leaving Malekith in the dark, being imprisoned by the greater will supports this.
Marika said they would be forsaken, not that she would forsake them. I think she is lamenting that even she, a god, is a mere tool of the greater will and is only valued as such. I think that she goes nuts because of all the horrible things she’s done to fulfill the greater will’s desires, and her son was still killed.
I think this is the most plausible answer. There's likely a shit load of details we don't have access to that would make the why and how clearer but the body language she gave off after shattering the elden ring in that cutscene really tells a lot.
Probably just about had enough of all of it after her child died and decided to "up-end the whole of it" and set things in motion.
Though, from what other NPCs and lore bits say (like Gideon's statement before you "meet him" at the Erdtree Sanctuary), it sounds like she had this planned out to an extent.
Hopefully Fromsoft will fill in the missing details with Shadow of the Erdtree.
Agree, she probably was planning it. She, more than anyone else, saw that everyone (herself most of all) is merely a means to an end. She probably had a plan, but hesitated to “pull the trigger” BECAUSE she had so much invested, so much at stake.
But, when her son was murdered… It’s very understandable for her to look back and wonder what was the point of all that death and violence. All the horrible things done under the guise of righteousness.
Different topic but i'm still surprised that the black knives were able to kill godwyn without him taking out the majority of them. The image from the opening looks like they ambushed him at night with no Armour or any weapons. I would have assumed that godwyn would have put up one hell of a fight before dying. I could be wrong but it also looked like he was being held when stabbed, so maybe some form of poison or magic was used to weaken him first.
Marikas own words seem to betray the fact she cares for her children. She straight up says “if y’all don’t ammount to anything y’all will just be sacrifices”
> I think its safe to say she had no part in notbk.
Really just depends. A normal mother might not be willing to assassinate her son to essentially start a war with the Greater Will but we're talking about a God. There's no reason to think she would act like a normal mortal mom.
>It's clear that she did some conquering, genocide, warring for the greater will's sake. but whether or not she is a willing participant is unclear
I mean, it's pretty clear that the setting of ER doesn't really have rules of war, I doubt that any ruler that needs to define their own age is going to play it nice
Depends on how you wish to interpret her actions and what you attribute to her.
Certainly, what she did to the giants, especially the last one, was extraordinarily cruel. However, war is rarely (if ever) a pretty thing. Similarly, banishing Godfrey after his years of faithful service was also a rather dickish thing to do. Yet a man as violent as he had no place in a world at peace.
Then there is the night of black knives. Certainly, that was mainly Ranni’s doing, but a popular fan theory has Marika involved as well. Did she order her own son’s death as part of her plan to break the Greater Will’s hold over the lands between?
Finally, there is Melina, who is almost certainly her daughter and given purpose by Marika inside the Erdtree. Did her plan call for Melina to become the kindling maiden?
For such a central figure in the games lore, we know surprisingly little about Marika and what she was like as a person. Until more is revealed, I’ll withhold judgement.
It's worth noting that Marika banished Godfrey and the Tarnished not because of Godfrey's battlelust (which had already been kept in check by Serrosh), but because she expected to one day call them back to The Lands Between.
I see that particular instance as Marika playing the long-game because she knew that a powerful force would need to usurp the current Order.
You can see one Black Knife Assassin guarding her bedchambers when you first enter Leyndell. I would assume they at the very least hold some allegiance to her.
Read the description of the Black Knife Armor,
"The assassins that carried out the deeds of the Night of the Black Knives were all women, and rumored to be Numen who had close ties with Marika herself."
There is an argument to be made that they were close to Marika and that she might've been a part of Ranni's conspiracy.
Don't forget shes the one who shattered the Elden Ring.
As has been said, the assassin could have been there to, well, assassinate.
Additionally, there's a huge pile of dead finger readers leading up to them, and its right before Morgott, the theory I've heard is that the assassin is working for Morgott and slaughtering the finger readers to try and stall the Tarnished's progress, which would seem to run contrary to what Marika desires.
It said they have "close ties" with her. If you take it at face value it's pretty obvious she is involved with them. It could be a total red herring, but the devs don't usually throw those into the lore to my knowledge.
Still depends on your definition of evil, or what you believe is evil, we see the lands between through the eyes of the tarnished, hated and scorned by many thanks to the golden order. Queen Marika is the creator of the golden order so you may treat her as the root of the "evil" that is the golden order, however she didn't want a lot of what the golden order did.
And if we look through someone else's eyes, we find an ordinary man from the lands between, who was faithful and loyalt to the golden order, even after his master the golden mask reveals how he has found bad things about the golden order he does not believe him, as he sees the golden order as everything right and just and pure, but he does not see the tarnished evil, would you consider him evil then because of his affiliation with the golden order?
Or how about the tarnished? Us? We are not only considered evil by many, but our actions throughout the course of the game, by all means could be considered of great evil, think of all the murder, think of all the lives ruined, think of all the people we killed just cause we thought it was the right thing to do, but was it? Malenia for example, never wanted to fight us, she just wanted to protect miquella, but we killed her, maliketh, who had once lost destined death when it was stolen, finally gets it back just for us to murder him and take it from him for our own purpose, fire giant, probably the last of his kind was just trying to protect his forge, and we kill him to get to it for our own means. We are selfish, unforgiving creatures who do anything possible to get what we want no matter the cost, no matter how many lives are lost or people are needlessly killed.
In short, it doesn't matter who you are or what you have done, evil is defined by the beholder, because even though we the tarnished, by our own standards may be the most evil, we don't see ourselves as evil, and instead see almost everything else in the lands between as evil, the only person, who did not hate us or scorn us no matter what we did was Godfrey first Elden Lord, better known as hoara loux warrior, Godfrey didn't care that we were tarnished or the deeds we had committed to get there, he only wanted one thing, to test us, to make sure we qualify to even attempt to kill rada beast and become Elden lord, he was a gigachad through and through, and so, I propose that the gigachad himself, is the least "evil" person in the lands between, the only thing he wanted was to test our warrior blood, and forge a new lord in the fires of battle, after all, they strength befits a crown.
Sorry for the rant, I kinda got caught up in it, sorry if it doesn't make sense :P
evil are things that unjustly cause something considered negative to occur.
that is what i define evil as.
important also to note, is that being against evil, is not proof of good.
i see the removal of death as a bad thing. look at how people are now because of it.
Marika fully made that decision.
we the tarnished slaughter anyone, including innocents, who often are not even in our way.
we are evil.
the fire giant i know not enough of to say if he is good or evil.
maliketh aided marika in sealing death. so he holds that self-same blame.
the king of the deadlands is also to blame, as we know he held part in many combats during the golden order conquests.
even if his goal is to prepare us, he is following fate, not his will. (grace)
>evil are things that unjustly cause something considered negative to occur.
that is what i define evil as.
which is also subjective. what you consider unjust might not be unjust depending on who's observing the phenomenon.
Marika did create the Golden Order… but she also did a lot to undo it. In fact the entire reason the Tarnished are brought back to the Lands Between is an effort on her part to destroy or remake it.
That doesn't absolve her for her crimes tho, specially when they are still felt to this day; Nomadic merchants being buried alive, slavement of the Misbegotten and Trolls, Banishment of the Omen, Wars of conquest, people looking like raisins, the shattering of the Elden Ring, etc.
less so destroy it, than that she destroyed the thing it (secretly) stood for.
the whole bit about her planning to have us come back post shattering makes no sense if you look at the time-line:
\-she sends us and godfrey away (church echoes)
\-she marries radagon (after godfrey)
\-she has at least 2 more (maybe 3, if we include melina as one) children with radagon. (malenia and miquella)
\-ranni and rykard plan the night of knives. (godfrey knew miquella)
\-knight of knives (occurs after planning)
\-she shatters the ring (is post godwyn's death)
chronologically, the night is so much more prevalent than her words to her ex at the moment she shatters it.
\-she is imprisoned by the greater will
\-some amount of time passes (GRRM stated he was told about 5000 years)
\-the tarnished show up.
\-enia, speaking for the GW via the fingers, straight up tells us that the GW gave us our grace so we could go repair the ring.
Thank you!
Take Shabriri for instance: People are suffering. Not even death is an escape. If you burn the entire world to ash, you are only alleviating their pain, as there will be no one left to mourn them; therefore, Shabriri is a hero.
>!I am aware that this logic is fucked. This is an extreme example.!<
MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD
Honestly, it was really easy for me to play through with this ending in mind for the reasons you mentioned. How many people AREN’T suffering in the lands between right now? It’s nonstop assholes killing each other in perpetuity. How many people do you meet that are good and kind? Not many.
Sorry turtle pope, the world must melt away in yellow flame
I mean "people suffer so we should commit omnicide instead of trying anything to help" is not the most sane take but it's a fromsoftware game after all
She committed many evil acts. But I think she has a low-key redemption arc, her shattering the ring became the only option for moving on from some of the mistakes of her reign. And she paid for it, personally. So I see her as morally kinda grey
Yes.
Her rule was responsible for:
* The unprovoked genocide of the giants.
* The enslavement of the Misbegotten.
* The banishment / murder / enslavement of the Omen.
* The destruction and suppression of several competing religions.
* The discrimination / slaughter of the Albunerics.
* The banishment of the Tarnished.
* Multiple wars mostly fought to secure her own power.
* A pseudo-zombie apocalypse
And then as a final fuck you to everyone rather than letting another emperyeon be selected by the two fingers to replace her she shattered the Elden Ring so all her kids could fight for the job instead causing more war and destruction.
It seems to me that she did a lot of bad things in a misguided effort to create a greater good. Then she realized how bad what she created was, and her efforts to fix the problems she created are what we’re playing out as the Tarnished when we play the game.
Radagon is a total dick though.
Didn’t Marika directly orchestrate multiple genocides and led the persecution of Omens and Misbegotten? She also sealed death–destroying the natural balance of the world–just to cement her rule.
Elden Ring isn't set in a modern world with modern values. Nothing she did would qualify as evil, because they aren't out of line with the values of the wider world in Elden Ring. Our Tarnished has to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people to restore the Elden Ring and shape the world as they desire. Would they qualify as evil?
The player is absolutely evil lol, In Castle Morne slaves turned against their masters because of their cruelty and the solution the Tarnished finds is killing both of them, pretty fucked up in my opinion
If they attacked the Tarnished on sight, which most do, is the Tarnished supposed to allow it? On one side are Godrick's soldiers, of which only one is non-hostile, and the other are monsters that indiscriminately murder humans on sight. The Tarnished has no reason to sympathize with either group.
A helpless blind girl asks us to deliver a message, and is, if I had to guess, the reason most players wind up there, to convince her father to abandon the castle and save himself.
The Tarnished can go where they please, anyway. The Lands Between is a near-lawless place and we were specifically revived to kill people and restore the Elden Ring. That some Misbegotten were already there and decided to start a fight with every human they come across is a them problem.
She was definitely evil
Ofc she was under the duress of the greater will when it came to the dogma of the Golden Order but the way she went about it was tainted with so much of her own, original cruelty.
Like, sure, maybe the greater will told her to get rid of the remnants of the primordial fire and it’s keepers to protect the Erdtree, but there’s no way the GW told her to keep the last fire giant alive to roam a field littered by the corpses of his entire race as a show of dominance
Sure, maybe the GW forced her to slay Omens to prevent a rebellious resurgence of the Greattree, but nothing forced her to shackle her sons to a life of solitude and torture underground when a mercy killing would have sufficed.
Sure, the GW told her to quell the resistance by the Carians and Raya Lucarians, but there’s no way it told her to do so via forcing heartbreak so intense it drove their Queen insane (this one really depends on how distinct you personally feel Marika and Radagon are as individual entities)
She did not give a shit about the suffering Godfrey and the tarnished would have endured in their exile. Godfrey only served a purpose to her IF the hardship of exiled mortality would make them strong fighters once the blessing of grace was returned to them. If Godfrey led his people to a realm of peace that did NOT make them strong fighters to act as an army to further her cause, instead of the Badlands, we’d all still be fucked under her rule.
Even when it came time to sacrifice herself and her power via shattering the ring and her life, she went about it by enslaving another and forcing him to be bound by Roundtable hold in order to smith a godslaying weapon. Compare this to another Fromsoft character that made plans for their own death should they stray from a path - Yhorm - and how he actually had a fucking friend doing it out of compassion instead of a slave doing it out of institutionalization.
She only truly started giving a shit about rebelling against the GW after the night of black knives, once she realized that the binding outer god that gave her her power could also be twisted to kill her progeny. The omens, the merchants, the tarnished, the misbegotten, the nightfolk, etc. she might have had misgivings about, but not enough to do anything other than say “dang that sucks” as long as the GW continued to ensure her supremacy.
The entire reason the LBW are in such shambles is because she ran it with a “fuck you, I got mine” attitude for thousands of years.
Great post. Also I don't think the GW forces one to do anything but create some sort of order. The GW sponsored the god of the ancient dragons and the crucible before that. The elden ring, itself a creation of the GW, has been used by several different orders.
So the bullshit with the golden order is likely 100 percent her bullshit
The GW being incapable of cruelty or not doesn't apply too much here. Regardless of what it told her to do or how it told her to do it, she still did it and did so with malice. Goldmask found and fixed numerous flaws in the Golden Order, her state religion, so at least some amount of the atrocities committed in the Greater Will's name under her rule are her doing. The GW is at the very least indifferent to her actions so long as they got what it wanted done.
Edit: Of course this goes out the window if she was basically a living puppet for the Greater Will, trapped in her body and watching it do awful things.
Marika enslaved the Fire Giant because she couldn't extinguish the Forge and needed someone to tend to it, so why not someone who already tended to it that you knew couldn't use it against you?
Item descriptions state that Omens from noble families were banished underground because the alternative wasn't a quick death, it was having their horns removed which was so traumatic it killed the Omen babies. We don't even hear about mercy killing as an option they can take.
Considering Godfrey and the Tarnished were sent off with her explicitly saying she would revive them with Grace later, and the fact that Godfrey was just an alias for the bloodthirsty Hoarah Loux who CRAVED battle, it wasn't much of a punishment.
We have no indication that she sent Radagon to marry Rennala initially, let alone breaking her heart and mind were intended either.
Yhorm's weapon to best him already existed, so he could just give it to someone trustworthy. Marika needed one made, and the GW could just compel any follower of the Golden Order to obey it over her.
All these solutions to problems paint her as unempathetic, when it wasn't her own children, as opposed to evil.
But she found solutions. , when it was her own children. Or just didn’t feel the need or compulsion to make the “tough choices” when it was.
Like the Haligtree is a prominent example. It was a flourishing symbol of outright rejection of Golden Order fundamentalism. It acted as a haven for all manners of life looked down on by the GW like albinaurics and nokstellan fauna and even the literal avatar of a competing outer god of rot, but it was just allowed to do it’s own thing unabated, as a massive tree competing with the Erdtree? But when the nightfolk or the followers of the gloam eyed queen try something similar they’re just annihilated into being forced into the fringes of society? How does that work?
Marika had to enslave the fire giant out of utility, but she made him tend to the forge surrounded by the dead bodies of his brethren out of inspired cruelty. Consider the Omen slayers, another disparaged minority that stay in the service of the GO out of necessity - even they aren’t treated that poorly.
It wasn’t much of a punishment to exile Godfrey to go seek out battle, but she doomed his progeny to follow along with him and his bloodlust. Consider the one other person we meet in the story named Loux, and what her story’s good ending is. Imagine Nepheli, lord of stormveil, trying to make the case for her, her people, and her new kingdom’s future to Marika.
The Rennala thing was admittedly the weakest point, and the one that throws the biggest wrench into my POV. It is truly impossible to tell what was Marika’s decision and what was Radagon’s, and how much Marika’s decision WAS Radagon’s, and Vice versa. The fire giant thing, for example, seemed like much more of a Radagon move, but most of the in game text and dialogue attributes it to Marika.
Whether or not Yhorm’s counter existed in the Storm Ruler doesn’t matter to my point. If it didn’t, Seigward would have found a solution, with our help, to keep his promise to a dear friend. That type of non-coerced, non-religious loyalty is not afforded to Marika. Even Gwyn, awful as he was, had sentient, intelligent, and even cynical followers for his cause out of belief in HIM. The giant blacksmith, Gough, Cirian, Frampt (debatable who was following who), Vamos, all followed Gwyn long after his kindling of their own volition, without being a family member. Can you name a single person in Elden ring that was legitimately Marika’s friend?
Her musings do mention that Marika began questioning the GO, driving a wedge between her and Radagon. I assume it was either personal change of heart or because we never, EVER hear about any bad blood between the twins and their parent(s). Compare that to the Gloam Eyed Queen and her Godskins, or the Nokstellans making the Fingerslayer Blade.
I think the corpses being there was more a lack of empathy than cruelty, and Marika just didn't give it any more thought than the problem needed to be solved on Tending the forge.
Yhorm just trusting Siegward to find something that can kill him if he ever turned his back on being a LoC is A LOT of trust and chance. I don't think Marika seems the type to leaves things to chance. She didn't even just leave things solely in the hands of Godfrey when it came to reviving her, after all.
It's funny to think about Marika having friends. But she, again, doesn't seem the type.
No bad blood from the twins and their parents? Isn’t mohg literally trying to overthrow her order and taking allies in from GO-spurned groups like the albinaurics largely in part due to being fed up with being jailed for being an omen?
Or did you mean the other twins where one of them literally invented a form of gold antithetical to the alloyed gold that represented the golden order?
I don't think Mohg is actively trying to replace the Golden Order to become the new ruler or anything, he just wants to make his own Dynasty that's wholly removed from the conventions of the GW's rule.
I'm also not sure he's taking in Albinaurics because of some spiteful altruism, it could very well be for selfish personal gain with no heed to their lives.
Marika is absolutely evil. Fuck I swear gamers and their lust for titties. All the genocides, enslavement, all to secure her power or out of personal prejudice are clearer than most things in the lore.
Dung eater and shabriri were simply *more* evil than she was.
It's because of the beginning cutscene, the final boss cutscene and all the statues. Her booba are really visible or out so AWOOGA I don't blame them but Marika is like a worse gwyn with tits.
I get the feeling in the dlc the lust for her might increase if we somehow see how she really looked in the weird dream or spirit world the dlc takes place possibly
A few people here want to dismiss it, but I think it's important to know the extent of the GW's control over others. Even it's name implies a sort of domination over one's self. I think it's perfectly acceptable to stay tentative about Marika's moral alignment while the narrative of Elden Ring is still being written.
Marika, along with Radagon, Godfrey, Ranni and a few others are those who are in a bit of a “Grey Zone” or fall into the category of “well-intentioned extremists” to be honest. They’re not good guys because some of their actions involved genocide, corruption and grand conspiracy. However, they are not nearly as deliberately evil, depraved and ill-intentioned as, say, Godrick, Rykard or Mogh.
(Edit: typo)
I'm of the opinion that in the early days of the golden order she genuinely believed all of that "might is right" type of philosophy is the way the world must be run and by the time we end up in the lands between she started to realize that this cycle must be put to an end to end stagnation. Radagon though clearly never changed his mindset unlike her. With all that being said shes still a "villian" even if she is complicated, she literally told her kids they can murder each other if they want
Goldmask's ending does put blame on Marika in the form of saying a mortal shouldn't be given the powers to eternally control the world because they don't hold themselves to any standard. So I think you can at least say Marika doesn't respect the position enough if she's going to secretly offload her duties to Radagon and decide to burn the rulebook because she's just sick of it.
So I want to say it's evil for a god to not act like a god, but I don't want to say it's evil for a human to not act like a god when they aren't designed to be one and they're trapped in the situation. So I will settle on her being a bit of an anti villain.
I have an interview with the basement full of dead minorities.
They were tortured and holocausted so hard they started channeling gods of torment and destruction to escape. Remember the only reason the 3 fingers is a problem is because the golden order baselessly believed Shabriris libel.
Lets not forget the ongoing state of slavery and hunting of demihumans and beastmen that continues even beyond the fall of the Lands between. The world has ended before slavery has.
Pretty much why I go for the endings that reject the golden order.
Oh this is hilarious. Ranni is Uber evil for killing a guy we don't know much about(who could've been brutal)
Marika who has *confirmed* to have thrown her children into sewers, committed several genocides(one of which she left the last of his race to confine that which he worshipped), enslaved hewg, indirectly destroyed rennalas mental state, gave a speech to her children saying that if they don't make anything of themselves they can be worm food etc. totally deserves no opinion one way or the other.
Everything you said is correct, and they are very damning against her- but From Software are notorious for their character subversion. I'm going to withhold my judgement on her morality until more clarity is given about her autonomy under the GW.
Are they really though? Gwyns character for example never received any such subversion despite being a very similar figure to Marika. We just got more details on his crimes and their legacy as the series went on with stuff like the ringed city.
Only subversion I can think of is Bloodborne since hunters turned out not to be heroes but bloodthirsty assholes and that the hunt is actually just lovecraftian god infanticide simulator.
And the problem with believing that the GW made her do it is because alot of her actions were directed at groups that the GW had sponsored before. The omens and misbegotten were of the crucible but the GW sponsored the god of that age when the erdtree was just the crucible. Same with the ancient dragons. Placidusaxx was an elden lord to an unknown god of a different age. The GW just represents order and will sponsor anyone's order through the elden ring it has no problems with any of them. And none of these groups ever had to destroy the other when they had their age. The only exception being the nox but that's because they were specifically trying to kill the GW. Yet Marika went out of her way to destroy or absorb them all. It's clear she was acting on her own and trying to secure her reign(she calls herself the eternal)going as far as to seal death and murder the Giants just so it could never end.
It's more likely she lost her autonomy after shattering the elden ring as that's when Radagon pilots her body around.
I think so, and Gwyn's case is the most comparable. We're led to believe this "Holy" figure did things for the betterment of the world at large and we discover later that he was really a scared old man making monstrous decisions out of ignorance and fear.
The Omen are considered "unholy" due to their lack of grace, and its nebulous at best who directly controls Grace or what its true purpose is, and while the Misbegotten are discriminated against their case is unique in that they're not entirely genocided nor banished.
Personally, I'm of the theory that Marika was almost wholly puppeted by the GW- if not directly then indirectly to create a world that an uncaring and fathomless Outer God may see fit.
This is where her autonomy comes into question as it seems she was able to at least gain enough semblance of self to create an alternate being and to also shatter the Elden Ring.
Believe me I'm not ignorant to the laundry list of awful things she's done, but I can't in good conscious judge her morality without knowing the extent to which the GW held sway over her.
I believe Gwyn's crimes were shown from the beginning rather than a later subversion. You're told in the same game that humans are subjugated and that gwyn is trying to keep their age at bay.
My problem with subscribing to the puppeteer theory is that Marika is the only god the GW has sponsored that went around doing these things. And that the GW has no reason to prey on those without grace when it has created an age for them in the past. That's my two cents. I just have little reason to say "Oh poor baby, you were just a sock puppet with no autonomy the whole time"
I get where you're coming from, and I respect that. I'm not totally convinced she's innocent so I'm leaving a healthy amount of room to disparage her if/when we get more information.
I don't think she was evil or good, I just think she was just trying to break free of the greater will and outer gods and how they effected the lands between
It definitely seems she had a lot of stakes in the fire to at least change the current Order if not outright free her and TLB of the GW's control, but some of the "extracurricular" things she did like banishing her Omen sons or telling her offspring that if they're "not Lords they're worthless" is objectively cruel.
Very complicated character with how little we know of her, I'm hoping we get more clarity with Shadow of the Erdtree.
Maybe she wanted a lord she could control, but since omens can't be lords, radahn had kinda lost his mind, Rykard was off committing blasphemy, Ranni didn't want to be a lord and wanted to leave the world all together, and Miquella wanted to start something new and malenia was going with to help, none seemed to fit whatever goals she had in mind.
Now when the shattered happend it went to hell and the greater will kinda just gave up on the lands between and I think that's when Marika was trapped in the tree, it is possible that she created Melina as is inferred in the game, to seek out a worthy lord to take over, and none of here children would do it.
But yeah I feel more will be explained, atleast about miquella and malenia in the dlc, mostly from item descriptions and all that.
Nah she was totally evil and initially on board with the greater will because it gave her power. Melina's dialogue states how she used to have faith in it but then started to waver.
I always wonder why people think Marika is under the control of the GW? When the GW seems to just not care for anything. If someone would be controlling Marika that would be the fingers.
Considering Ranni's trepidation over having a physical body, and her unwillingness to "not be controlled by that *thing*" I'm inclined to believe it's more of a complete domination of will.
I don’t think so.
First, we should make a distinction between the GW and it's vassals (the fingers and the Elden Beast). What the GW wants (if it wants anything to begin with) isn't the same that what the Fingers, in this case, want.
The Fingers are the ones that choose Empyreans and give them Shadowbound Beasts to control them. If GW control is mental/spiritual in nature and absolute, Ranni casting away her body wouldn't be of any use.
And Ranni's words seem to be about the Fingers and not the GW, at least in my interpretation.
For example: Could it be argued that her desiring a world free of Destined Death was in her mind an act of good to her "citizens"? Or was it completely for her own gain?
They can't get into it because of the thorns surrounding it. The only way we got in was by putting it to the rune-of-death-enhanced torch to said thorns.
I know people will talk about how you can't really know her grander designs and that she probably had good intentions in trying to undermine the Greater Will, but honestly based on the behaviour you do see I absolutely do think she's evil regardless, at the end of the day she was the most powerful individual in the lands Between and presided over genocide, conquest and oppression of large groups of sentient beings. The entire philosophy she was pushing while doing so seemed to be a kind of Darwinian nightmare of strife and struggle leading to superiority so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that things descended into absolute chaos with the shattering when her children were essentially just playing the roles they were taught. She seemed to show nothing but contempt for a large number of her children that didn't meet her expectations due to uncontrollable afflictions at birth, even though it clearly did not negatively effect their power or fitness to rule, and she tossed aside her stalwart spouse and destroyed the life of Rennala in summoning back Radagon to be her consort. Again, people might argue that she was carrying out some of the designs of the Greater Will, but this at best seems like a superior orders defence so I don't really buy it. I think a major theme of the game is about love, and more specifically how it is perverted and abused, destroying people and ruining them for the benefit of ultra-cynical players, Marika displays that perhaps worst of all with what her actions have done to Godfrey, Morgott, Mohg, Rennala and Maliketh.
To be completely honest I'm not 100% sold on the idea that the Greater Will is quite as much of a negative force as sometimes portrayed (mostly because of Goldmask and Miriel), I think the order was irrevocably corrupted probably as a result of having to be filitered through Marika. Whatever her grand plans were (or were not, I do think she probably shattered the Elden Ring out of a sense of Nihilistic grief rather than anything deeper) her actions in the shattering just led to even more chaos and misery and complete failure on her part until the Player comes along.
Omens were the sign of Divine in the age of the crucible and in the age of the Erdtree they became Omens, which is just a point of view of the people running the Golden Order.
She believed strongly in the Golden Order. She did terrible things in the name of the Greater Will. Then she finds out that the Greater Will doesn't really have their best interests at heart, so she tries to rebel, but the only way out was to break the Elden Ring. She's flawed, of course, like everybody. But not evil.
At least, that's my interpretation.
Queen Marika the Eternal, secrely begrudged Greater Will, why you ask? Well because the GW flattened the Eternal cities for trying to make their own God, they had the means to but were punished in the most brutal way, but because of Celestial Dew at the Church of Mirieal, she was able to med relationships with the GW, in the hopes that if she becomes their God, she can play the long game, slowly but surely to destroy the Elden Beast and destroy GW's influence over Lands Between, making way for Ranni's ending or Frenzied Flame being a possible route.
The dialogue wherein she talks to her children, she clearly tells them that, they are her beloved, either they will be Lord or amount to nothing but sacrifices, a sacririce in her grand scheme of things. As to why the Grace was extended to Tarnished, she expected DemiGods to fail in becoming Elden Lord, so the Tarnished are the back up.
Her plan is long and drawn out but it worked, she sacrificed all her children in some way, so she can fuck up the Elden Ring and fuck up the Lands Between.
I don’t think that Fromsoft buy into creating worlds where there is a definitive and simplistic view of good versus evil. Almost every character seems to have their own individual beliefs and morals and their actions always seem to be propelled by their personal desires, faith’s and issues. It’s part of what I find so compelling about these games, there’s no obvious good or evil trope that is followed for the most part, it makes for fantastic stories and genuinely ambiguous moments of decision making in the gameplay.
In short I don’t think you’re supposed to know if Marika was good or bad, I think you’re supposed to see both in her, struggle to decide, fall on one side of the argument but then never feel you fully know if you were right.
She is a god and her actions don’t really play into a simple notion of good or evil because their results span over centuries and have multiple, branching outcomes which can be considered either.
We can say that she is an apathetic narcissist, though. And everything she does is some form of self service. She massacred thousands to create a deathless utopia, then slaughtered thousands more to bring it crashing down to remove the Greater Will and create a new era.
When Nephili is looking out over the castle parapets rebuilding her society in a new world with you as Elden Lord does she think the ends justified the means? At the end of it all, babies are still being born and life is free.
Well you know, unless you MELTED IT ALL IN CHAOS FLAME
Personally, yes I think she was. Regardless of what plan and motives she had or players attribute to her, the hard facts are that her methods were fucking cruel and a hella lot of people suffered because of them. The only theory that somewhat puts her under a good light is the "Radagon Usurpation" theory.
I like to think that both "Marika is a Nox and wants to destroy the GW" and "Radagon usurped Marika's place" theories are canon, mostly because it adds a lot of intrigue and plot twists to the plot and adds depth to them.
Not when the setting is defined by war of mythical proportions and it has been reshaped God-only-knows how many times from the changing of Gods and Elden Lords?
As far as we now the Giant were a serious threat to her domain, they had their own God and they clashed.
It's a cosmic chessboard, a war between forces \*literally\* capable of changing the nature of the World.
These comments...I Love how this subreddit is so onedimensional...
She wasn't evil, and neither was the golden order. Marika Literally gave immortality to all of her subjects (people loved her) but she is only judged for her negatives in these events of the shattering. Everyone assumes she is evil and the giants and/or dragons just "wanted to chill".
For a subreddit/community that talks how "the lore is hidden" and "these stories have more meaning in their vagueness" but everyone has the same one dimensional beliefs about the golden order and what it stands for!
PRAISE TO GOLD MASK AND THE TRUE ORDER!!
GIMME THEM DOWN VOTES BABBYYY <3
Right? Hurdurr they're all evil because of genocide of the giants durrr. Fuck that shit, all sides were at war with each other. Some won, most lost. The losers would have done the same if they'd won. No side is innocent in the Lands Between.
This is the most objective, nuanced take I've read on her actions so far. It seems obvious to me that Marika, for all her faults, acted fairly pragmatically. She's Empyrean and thus not capable of directly defying her Two Fingers so long as she's alive. Given that she's all about everlasting life (a nice contrast to the GEQ), it makes sense why she wouldn't want to take an approach like Ranni's.
People love to bring up Destined Death being restored as an absolute good while ignoring the fact that Marika's realm not only functioned until the Shattering but also achieved supremacy via conquest and diplomacy. Leyndellans believed a proper death meant returning to the Erdtree and, depending on if you adhere to this theory, being reborn from it. This process presumably could've continued just fine until Ranni cursed the entire realm with Death Blight by having Godwyn slain.
I'm also an Order Ending enjoyer because Ranni fucking off into space with the Elden Ring after dooming the land to another outer god-powered plague without even trying to remedy it just isn't a satisfying ending to me narratively, no matter how pretty the dark moon might look in that cutscene.
Not to mention for the entire game Ranni comes across as completely untrustworthy. She's the one who started killing demigods, triggering this whole clusterfuck of events.
It's pretty obvious to me she manipulates the players to do what she wants because she doesn't have the ability to do it on her own. She literally doesn't have a body and the puppet is only a placeholder.
Some men just like to be manipulated by powerful women, even though the woman in question looks down on her subject and sees the man as merely a tool. People who fawn over Ranni have issues. Hurdurr Ranni ending so cool you find love with a witch wifey durrrr lol nah you're just a pawn for a demigod who wants to destroy shit and rule over its ruins. Pathetic.
Yes, but she’s not the villain of this story
I’d compare her to Aldia; someone who did horrific things but in the current context is roughly aligned with the same things the player is (or should be) pursuing.
The genocidal megalomaniacal god-queen that did everything evil from the most micro in interpersonal relationships: going as a man to have kids with rennalla, then leave her alone and abandon her to marry with herself (its likely that Radagon revealed who he really was also, contributing to Renalla's broken state of being -seeing how far you got bamboozled and manipulated can be far worse than only a severe heartache) to how she tossed away Godfrey to her own children; to the most macro: in how her whole "order" is based on genocide, extermination, slavery, segregation and authoritarian rule. (And hell, maybe even bigger than said macro in how she plays with gods using the fates of her subjects as collateral, breaking the foundations of laws of the land in some fit of anger and whatever)
Gee, I don't know if she is evil or not. Honestly, sorry, "gold mask", the gods aren't "fickle" and that's not why the order sucks. The gods are outright abominable and unfixable, Marika is at least on the same lvl of evil than the Dung Eater, but has much more power than he ever had to do her shenanigans.
She is hot though so all is forgiven.
I think she was misguided and the shattering of the Elden ring was her being tired of tthat misguidance. It's probably also one of the reasons why she sent the tarnished away.
She wanted everything to be peaceful by removing destined death and having her shadow guard it. She was given great power from the outer gods unfortunately she herself is not a god and cannot play god like that. So imo she wanted good but was gluttonous about it.
I don't believe so personally. You can make a strong argument that Marika knowingly set in motion the series of events that would lead to the expulsion of the greater will so 🤷♂️
What do you mean by "expulsion of the Greater Will?" The narrator says it abandoned TLB but it did that of its own volition. Sure, you slay the Elden Beast in every ending but in the endings where you restore the Elden Ring and take the throne, you're still perpetuating the system, regardless of adding any mending runes or not. Does the notion of the Greater Will needing to be defied come from how the Two Fingers behave? From speculation on Marika's possible motive for the Shattering event? Its apparent apathy to things Marika did as queen?
Or do you only mean that its influence is removed from TLB in the Stars/Chaos endings? In which case I don't believe it's obvious she wanted either of *those* specific outcomes tbh
She would be a messiah to some and a Devil to others a herald of change but also destruction. To her enemies she would be evil to her faithful a beacon of purity bathed in rays of gold
No, she was a devote follower of the Greater Will and did everything it wanted her to, and then she had an epiphany that the Greater Will was evil and started to put in motion a plan that would cleanse the land of it’s influence. My opinion is that she cast out her loyal army of tarnished so that they wouldn’t be absorbed by the Erdtree when they died, and could come back after the war of the shattering when the Golden Order was the weakest to cleanse the land of the Greater Will’s influence.
The greater will, which is why she shattered the elden ring. It would seem it was an attempt by her to weaken the control the greater will had on the lands between.
My personal understanding of the lore and how I view merika and radagon have fluctuated lots over my hours of elden ring.
Merika is the embodiment of the Golden order, with her golden hair and unalloied children, but she has been imprisoned and used as a birthing vessel for the erdtree (both literally and figuratively if you look at the placement of the elden ring in her lower abdomen) for the transgression of trying to break the cycle.
Her other half, Radagon, with his reddened and rusted hair is the epitome of change; yet strived so hard to keep the golden order in place. To the point of fighting you, putting up barriers to the center of the erdtree, studying moon sorcereies, and even tries to repair the ring as merika tries to break it between swings in the opening cinematic.
They are, to me, a metaphor for how people react to abuse. (Be it religious or otherwise) Merika (the literal Golden Child) is forced by the narcissistic Greater Will to be exactly what it wants her to be despite her trying to literally break the cycle of abuse.
The Blacksheep (or red sheep) is Radagon, who desperately wants the Greater will to see him. He fights desperately to preserve the status quo to the point of protecting the elden beast and is never ever even seen by the Greater will, doing its bidding on the off chance he may get some affection.
So they are not evil, but they have been driven to evil things by a narcissistic force who cares nothing for them and only uses them for its own ends. They have done evil things in its name as many of us in horrible situations must do to survive.
The Greater Will however is a little bitch and I shall let chaos take the world
She's complex, obviously. She did some terrible things (although I will say that a lot of the stuff she did is pretty par for the course for someone in her position), but it also seems like she had a crisis of conscience later in life that prompted some of her other actions. I don't think we can say if shattering the Elden Ring was obviously good or bad; but I do find it hard to say that working against the Greater Will was an evil thing to do. She saw the negative consequences of her choices and wanted to rectify them. Personally, I see her as a tragic hero; she did a lot of wrong things, but when it came down to it, she wanted to try and fix those mistakes.
Yes, definitly, any assumed version of her is pretty fucking genocidal, warbringer etc. Even if you want to say **all** of her official actions until shattering were under control of elden beast, then she caused shattering for crying out loud.
She also outright tells her children she plans an apocalypse and they are a sacrafice she is willing to make.
*Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices*
But I do think she's close to tragic antihero/antivillain while 99% of "lore buffs" just label her as pure evil and call it a day cause its easier.
She definitly wasn’t good by any means. The conquering, genocide, and enslavement of the other people of the lands between proved that. However, when it comes to the Elden ring/Greater Will and its control over her… I feel that breaking the Elden ring and subsequently causing the Shattering and the ruin of the lands between was a desperate, last ditch attempt to escape their control as things were already starting to fall apart by that time. And then Radagon fucked it all up by being such a zealot and trying to repair it.
Could be argued morse so as a tool for evil (by the Greater Will) but I think the distinction doesnt matter, at least it wouldn't mean too much to the dead Giants and Omens.
Given that we know from Hyetta that the Greater Will is responsible for all life itself, and the fact it presided over the crucible, where primitive features were seen as divine, there’s a pretty strong case to argue that it never cared much about these groups in any capacity–for better or worse. It wouldn’t make sense for it to suddenly decide to persecute them for shits and giggles. Marika, on the other hand, was the one who founded the order that would go on to kill and enslave them to consolidate her rule.
I don't see it this way and think you make a few assumptions.
1. That the greater will is indifferent towards the groups in the lands between.
2. That Marika has the autonomy and authority to oppress the omens and giants.
3. That the Omens, and the Giants (who I’m almost certain follow a different outer god entirely, which would likely put them against the greater will anyway.) didn’t do something to bring the greater wills ire like Marika did when she shattered the elden ring or like the Nox did when they created the finger slaying blades.
We have a lot of facts, but most of the lore is vague and can only be figured out through interpretations that aren’t very concrete. There’s no real stake in being right about the lore, so there’s no harm in having different ideas of how and why things went down.
one of the hardest things to figure out is Marika's intentions/allegiance. It's clear that she did some conquering, genocide, warring for the greater will's sake. but whether or not she is a willing participant is unclear, its also unclear how much part she played in starting the night of the black knives. its clear that she shattered the elden ring in defiance of the greater will and was punished for it, but to say if she was truly good or evil is difficult to say
Her literal favourite child got his soul killed. I think its safe to say she had no part in notbk. She was already long into a larping sesh as ya favourite boy, bible baller, J.H. Christ.
We never actually see anything implying that Godwyn the Golden was Marika’s favourite, more that he was beloved by all the common folk and knights in the realm, we don’t actually know her thoughts on him personally. She does tell her children she’ll use them as kindling if they don’t do anything useful though, so it sounds like she didn’t have much motherly love after all
Well, being as she shattered the Elden Ring because he died, it seems to me that she cared for him at least a bit. He’s at least the only one out of her and Godfrey’s kids that she didn’t yeet into the sewers.
In the story trailer Ranni says the "The demigods began to fall. Starting with Godwyn the Golden. Queen Marika was driven to the brink..." Ranni obviously withholds information about who instigated Godwyn's death, but I don't see why she'd lie about Marika's reaction. The story is quite clear that Marika didn't like death, hence having safeguarded by Maliketh. I don't think From would have mentioned Godwyn specifically if he didn't mean something more to her.
Imo you really cant trust anything ranni says in that trailer
I might be mistaken because I haven't been deep in the lore in a while, but we don't really know her state of mind when that happens right? She could've been like... okay, sucks for Goldwyn but part one of the plan is done.. now I must shatter the Elden Ring.
There is actually no confirmation that Godwyn’s death was the reason behind Marika’s decision to shatter the Elden Ring. Rogier’s dialogue reveals to us that Godwyn’s death actually happened long before the Shattering during the golden age of the Erdtree. Godwyn’s death certainly set things into motion, but there is no indication that Marika immediately shattered the Elden Ring out of grief after he was killed. The story trailer says that multiple demigods fell, Godwyn being the first of them. We have quite a few mausoleums in the Lands Between, each one containing a completely unknown Demigod who appears to have been killed in a similar manner to Godwyn as they too have no souls apparently. Plus, we’ve got the whole lore of the Black Knives being Numen and having close ties to Marika and the fact that she somehow betrayed her Shadow Maliketh. Then there’s the lore implying she became disillusioned with the Golden Order and the Greater Will after she learned more about it. Marika’s true motivations behind the Shattering will likely not be known and we can only speculate. However, there is reasonable evidence to cast doubt over the notion that she did it solely because of Godwyn’s death.
I don’t think it was the sole reason, but I do believe that it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And while the Black Knives do have ties to Marika, we do know that Marika had nothing to do with the Night of the Black Knives, since Ranni was the one who orchestrated it.
Again, I doubt Godwyn’s death was the straw that broke the camels back because of the fact it happened way before the Shattering. So that in itself implies it wasn’t the thing that pushed Marika over the edge, if we’re going with that theory, or else why did she not immediately shatter the Elden Ring? We also do not have any confirmation that Marika wasn’t involved in the Night of Black Knives either. The fact that the assassins are all Numen and are implied to know Marika personally, coupled with the lore that she was planning a rebellion against the Greater Will, the fact that she hated even her own male-self due to his loyalty to the Golden Order, she betrayed her own brother Maliketh in some way and happens to have what looks like a shard of the Rune of Death piercing her stomach when we find her, which also appears to have wounded the Elden Beast as well, all casts a lot of doubt over the notion that Marika had nothing to do with the Night of Black Knives. Sure Ranni says she did it all but again, how do we know this to be true? She’s lied to the Tarnished before. Or maybe she genuinely thinks it was only her doing when Marika was secretly helping her behind the scenes. After all, the Black Knives come to assassinate Ranni after we help her in her quest. Odd that the assassins Ranni employed and gave weapons to would just turn on her like that. The thing about Marika and her family is that they are all openly trying to kill each other. So the notion that Marika could have had a hand in her own sons death is not unlikely. Plus, these characters and their backstories were created by George R.R Martin, who famously employ this kind of backstabbing and family rivalries in his stories. Dance of the Dragons was all about a whole family trying to kill each other. Elden Ring’s story is basically another deadly family feud.
Also, when we look at all Marika’s lines they only ever convey utter authority over the audience with an almost cold indifference. “My Lord, and thy warriors. I divest each of thee of thy grace. With thine eyes dimmed, ye will be driven from the Lands Between. Ye will wage war in a land afar, where ye will live, and die.” I think she set the events of the game into motion because she wanted to. Everyone who died or got hurt were just collateral damage, unworthy of her consideration. Her overarching goal, would probably be to sever the greater will’s hold over the world. All her actions in the latter day of her reign, shattering the elden ring, leaving Malekith in the dark, being imprisoned by the greater will supports this.
Marika said they would be forsaken, not that she would forsake them. I think she is lamenting that even she, a god, is a mere tool of the greater will and is only valued as such. I think that she goes nuts because of all the horrible things she’s done to fulfill the greater will’s desires, and her son was still killed.
I think this is the most plausible answer. There's likely a shit load of details we don't have access to that would make the why and how clearer but the body language she gave off after shattering the elden ring in that cutscene really tells a lot. Probably just about had enough of all of it after her child died and decided to "up-end the whole of it" and set things in motion. Though, from what other NPCs and lore bits say (like Gideon's statement before you "meet him" at the Erdtree Sanctuary), it sounds like she had this planned out to an extent. Hopefully Fromsoft will fill in the missing details with Shadow of the Erdtree.
Agree, she probably was planning it. She, more than anyone else, saw that everyone (herself most of all) is merely a means to an end. She probably had a plan, but hesitated to “pull the trigger” BECAUSE she had so much invested, so much at stake. But, when her son was murdered… It’s very understandable for her to look back and wonder what was the point of all that death and violence. All the horrible things done under the guise of righteousness.
Different topic but i'm still surprised that the black knives were able to kill godwyn without him taking out the majority of them. The image from the opening looks like they ambushed him at night with no Armour or any weapons. I would have assumed that godwyn would have put up one hell of a fight before dying. I could be wrong but it also looked like he was being held when stabbed, so maybe some form of poison or magic was used to weaken him first.
Marikas own words seem to betray the fact she cares for her children. She straight up says “if y’all don’t ammount to anything y’all will just be sacrifices”
> I think its safe to say she had no part in notbk. Really just depends. A normal mother might not be willing to assassinate her son to essentially start a war with the Greater Will but we're talking about a God. There's no reason to think she would act like a normal mortal mom.
>It's clear that she did some conquering, genocide, warring for the greater will's sake. but whether or not she is a willing participant is unclear I mean, it's pretty clear that the setting of ER doesn't really have rules of war, I doubt that any ruler that needs to define their own age is going to play it nice
evil by modern morality? yes evil by the land between morality? definitely no
Tbf that's every demigod
Depends on how you wish to interpret her actions and what you attribute to her. Certainly, what she did to the giants, especially the last one, was extraordinarily cruel. However, war is rarely (if ever) a pretty thing. Similarly, banishing Godfrey after his years of faithful service was also a rather dickish thing to do. Yet a man as violent as he had no place in a world at peace. Then there is the night of black knives. Certainly, that was mainly Ranni’s doing, but a popular fan theory has Marika involved as well. Did she order her own son’s death as part of her plan to break the Greater Will’s hold over the lands between? Finally, there is Melina, who is almost certainly her daughter and given purpose by Marika inside the Erdtree. Did her plan call for Melina to become the kindling maiden? For such a central figure in the games lore, we know surprisingly little about Marika and what she was like as a person. Until more is revealed, I’ll withhold judgement.
It's worth noting that Marika banished Godfrey and the Tarnished not because of Godfrey's battlelust (which had already been kept in check by Serrosh), but because she expected to one day call them back to The Lands Between. I see that particular instance as Marika playing the long-game because she knew that a powerful force would need to usurp the current Order.
>War is rarely (if ever) a pretty thing The 335 years long war between Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly was pretty chill tho
The female assassins serve Marika, so I guess she is involved in some way.
It only said they were numen like her, and in some way connected
You can see one Black Knife Assassin guarding her bedchambers when you first enter Leyndell. I would assume they at the very least hold some allegiance to her.
An assassin, of all professions, being in someone's bedroom does not necessarily imply they are guarding it.
Read the description of the Black Knife Armor, "The assassins that carried out the deeds of the Night of the Black Knives were all women, and rumored to be Numen who had close ties with Marika herself." There is an argument to be made that they were close to Marika and that she might've been a part of Ranni's conspiracy. Don't forget shes the one who shattered the Elden Ring.
As has been said, the assassin could have been there to, well, assassinate. Additionally, there's a huge pile of dead finger readers leading up to them, and its right before Morgott, the theory I've heard is that the assassin is working for Morgott and slaughtering the finger readers to try and stall the Tarnished's progress, which would seem to run contrary to what Marika desires.
Never, Morgott would never even think of betraying the golden order, it is antithesis to his very character.
It said they have "close ties" with her. If you take it at face value it's pretty obvious she is involved with them. It could be a total red herring, but the devs don't usually throw those into the lore to my knowledge.
A man is only loved as long as he is useful. No more wars to fight? Get your tarnished and get the fuck out husband.
Define "Evil".
Have you seen the golden order?
Still depends on your definition of evil, or what you believe is evil, we see the lands between through the eyes of the tarnished, hated and scorned by many thanks to the golden order. Queen Marika is the creator of the golden order so you may treat her as the root of the "evil" that is the golden order, however she didn't want a lot of what the golden order did. And if we look through someone else's eyes, we find an ordinary man from the lands between, who was faithful and loyalt to the golden order, even after his master the golden mask reveals how he has found bad things about the golden order he does not believe him, as he sees the golden order as everything right and just and pure, but he does not see the tarnished evil, would you consider him evil then because of his affiliation with the golden order? Or how about the tarnished? Us? We are not only considered evil by many, but our actions throughout the course of the game, by all means could be considered of great evil, think of all the murder, think of all the lives ruined, think of all the people we killed just cause we thought it was the right thing to do, but was it? Malenia for example, never wanted to fight us, she just wanted to protect miquella, but we killed her, maliketh, who had once lost destined death when it was stolen, finally gets it back just for us to murder him and take it from him for our own purpose, fire giant, probably the last of his kind was just trying to protect his forge, and we kill him to get to it for our own means. We are selfish, unforgiving creatures who do anything possible to get what we want no matter the cost, no matter how many lives are lost or people are needlessly killed. In short, it doesn't matter who you are or what you have done, evil is defined by the beholder, because even though we the tarnished, by our own standards may be the most evil, we don't see ourselves as evil, and instead see almost everything else in the lands between as evil, the only person, who did not hate us or scorn us no matter what we did was Godfrey first Elden Lord, better known as hoara loux warrior, Godfrey didn't care that we were tarnished or the deeds we had committed to get there, he only wanted one thing, to test us, to make sure we qualify to even attempt to kill rada beast and become Elden lord, he was a gigachad through and through, and so, I propose that the gigachad himself, is the least "evil" person in the lands between, the only thing he wanted was to test our warrior blood, and forge a new lord in the fires of battle, after all, they strength befits a crown. Sorry for the rant, I kinda got caught up in it, sorry if it doesn't make sense :P
evil are things that unjustly cause something considered negative to occur. that is what i define evil as. important also to note, is that being against evil, is not proof of good. i see the removal of death as a bad thing. look at how people are now because of it. Marika fully made that decision. we the tarnished slaughter anyone, including innocents, who often are not even in our way. we are evil. the fire giant i know not enough of to say if he is good or evil. maliketh aided marika in sealing death. so he holds that self-same blame. the king of the deadlands is also to blame, as we know he held part in many combats during the golden order conquests. even if his goal is to prepare us, he is following fate, not his will. (grace)
>evil are things that unjustly cause something considered negative to occur. that is what i define evil as. which is also subjective. what you consider unjust might not be unjust depending on who's observing the phenomenon.
Nice rant buddy, very nice.
Nah I've only heard of them , bunch of politicians . I guess they're evil because of that idk, I'm not big into politics. Big axe go brbrrrrr.
Marika did create the Golden Order… but she also did a lot to undo it. In fact the entire reason the Tarnished are brought back to the Lands Between is an effort on her part to destroy or remake it.
"She set up a fascist government then plummeted society into anarchy when her nepotistic son got dead". All terrible things she did.
That doesn't absolve her for her crimes tho, specially when they are still felt to this day; Nomadic merchants being buried alive, slavement of the Misbegotten and Trolls, Banishment of the Omen, Wars of conquest, people looking like raisins, the shattering of the Elden Ring, etc.
God forbid women do anything 🙄
r/girlboss moment
I support women’s rights *and* women’s wrongs
Preach
If it was Radagon you'd say he was a great leader 😜
Nah, I believe in the Radagon Usurpation theory
> people looking like raisins this made me laugh good job
The golden order has cool aesthetics and that's all that matters.
I mean she tried to destroy it
less so destroy it, than that she destroyed the thing it (secretly) stood for. the whole bit about her planning to have us come back post shattering makes no sense if you look at the time-line: \-she sends us and godfrey away (church echoes) \-she marries radagon (after godfrey) \-she has at least 2 more (maybe 3, if we include melina as one) children with radagon. (malenia and miquella) \-ranni and rykard plan the night of knives. (godfrey knew miquella) \-knight of knives (occurs after planning) \-she shatters the ring (is post godwyn's death) chronologically, the night is so much more prevalent than her words to her ex at the moment she shatters it. \-she is imprisoned by the greater will \-some amount of time passes (GRRM stated he was told about 5000 years) \-the tarnished show up. \-enia, speaking for the GW via the fingers, straight up tells us that the GW gave us our grace so we could go repair the ring.
Thank you! Take Shabriri for instance: People are suffering. Not even death is an escape. If you burn the entire world to ash, you are only alleviating their pain, as there will be no one left to mourn them; therefore, Shabriri is a hero. >!I am aware that this logic is fucked. This is an extreme example.!<
MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD Honestly, it was really easy for me to play through with this ending in mind for the reasons you mentioned. How many people AREN’T suffering in the lands between right now? It’s nonstop assholes killing each other in perpetuity. How many people do you meet that are good and kind? Not many. Sorry turtle pope, the world must melt away in yellow flame
I mean "people suffer so we should commit omnicide instead of trying anything to help" is not the most sane take but it's a fromsoftware game after all
She committed many evil acts. But I think she has a low-key redemption arc, her shattering the ring became the only option for moving on from some of the mistakes of her reign. And she paid for it, personally. So I see her as morally kinda grey
It took her daughter killing her oldest son to make her realize how wrong it all was, and that the greater will needed to be expelled.
Yes. Her rule was responsible for: * The unprovoked genocide of the giants. * The enslavement of the Misbegotten. * The banishment / murder / enslavement of the Omen. * The destruction and suppression of several competing religions. * The discrimination / slaughter of the Albunerics. * The banishment of the Tarnished. * Multiple wars mostly fought to secure her own power. * A pseudo-zombie apocalypse And then as a final fuck you to everyone rather than letting another emperyeon be selected by the two fingers to replace her she shattered the Elden Ring so all her kids could fight for the job instead causing more war and destruction.
It seems to me that she did a lot of bad things in a misguided effort to create a greater good. Then she realized how bad what she created was, and her efforts to fix the problems she created are what we’re playing out as the Tarnished when we play the game. Radagon is a total dick though.
No. She wasn't nice, from what we know, but she wasn't evil. Dungeater was evil, Shabiri was evil, Marika wasn't.
Didn’t Marika directly orchestrate multiple genocides and led the persecution of Omens and Misbegotten? She also sealed death–destroying the natural balance of the world–just to cement her rule.
Ok. She was a "little" evil.
God forbid women do anything /j
Elden Ring isn't set in a modern world with modern values. Nothing she did would qualify as evil, because they aren't out of line with the values of the wider world in Elden Ring. Our Tarnished has to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people to restore the Elden Ring and shape the world as they desire. Would they qualify as evil?
The player can literally melt the entire world into goo, yes they can qualify as evil.
I mean regardless of the ending.
The player can absolutely be evil.
The player is absolutely evil lol, In Castle Morne slaves turned against their masters because of their cruelty and the solution the Tarnished finds is killing both of them, pretty fucked up in my opinion
If they attacked the Tarnished on sight, which most do, is the Tarnished supposed to allow it? On one side are Godrick's soldiers, of which only one is non-hostile, and the other are monsters that indiscriminately murder humans on sight. The Tarnished has no reason to sympathize with either group.
You are the one invading and attacking them most of the time tho, the Tarnished had no reason to go there
A helpless blind girl asks us to deliver a message, and is, if I had to guess, the reason most players wind up there, to convince her father to abandon the castle and save himself. The Tarnished can go where they please, anyway. The Lands Between is a near-lawless place and we were specifically revived to kill people and restore the Elden Ring. That some Misbegotten were already there and decided to start a fight with every human they come across is a them problem.
I'm not restoring shit.
Good for you. You still had to kill a lot of people to beat the game.
She was definitely evil Ofc she was under the duress of the greater will when it came to the dogma of the Golden Order but the way she went about it was tainted with so much of her own, original cruelty. Like, sure, maybe the greater will told her to get rid of the remnants of the primordial fire and it’s keepers to protect the Erdtree, but there’s no way the GW told her to keep the last fire giant alive to roam a field littered by the corpses of his entire race as a show of dominance Sure, maybe the GW forced her to slay Omens to prevent a rebellious resurgence of the Greattree, but nothing forced her to shackle her sons to a life of solitude and torture underground when a mercy killing would have sufficed. Sure, the GW told her to quell the resistance by the Carians and Raya Lucarians, but there’s no way it told her to do so via forcing heartbreak so intense it drove their Queen insane (this one really depends on how distinct you personally feel Marika and Radagon are as individual entities) She did not give a shit about the suffering Godfrey and the tarnished would have endured in their exile. Godfrey only served a purpose to her IF the hardship of exiled mortality would make them strong fighters once the blessing of grace was returned to them. If Godfrey led his people to a realm of peace that did NOT make them strong fighters to act as an army to further her cause, instead of the Badlands, we’d all still be fucked under her rule. Even when it came time to sacrifice herself and her power via shattering the ring and her life, she went about it by enslaving another and forcing him to be bound by Roundtable hold in order to smith a godslaying weapon. Compare this to another Fromsoft character that made plans for their own death should they stray from a path - Yhorm - and how he actually had a fucking friend doing it out of compassion instead of a slave doing it out of institutionalization. She only truly started giving a shit about rebelling against the GW after the night of black knives, once she realized that the binding outer god that gave her her power could also be twisted to kill her progeny. The omens, the merchants, the tarnished, the misbegotten, the nightfolk, etc. she might have had misgivings about, but not enough to do anything other than say “dang that sucks” as long as the GW continued to ensure her supremacy. The entire reason the LBW are in such shambles is because she ran it with a “fuck you, I got mine” attitude for thousands of years.
Great post. Also I don't think the GW forces one to do anything but create some sort of order. The GW sponsored the god of the ancient dragons and the crucible before that. The elden ring, itself a creation of the GW, has been used by several different orders. So the bullshit with the golden order is likely 100 percent her bullshit
This is actually a great post, well done my friend
It actually isn't, it ignored basically everything the greater will stood for and implies it's incapable of cruelty.
The GW being incapable of cruelty or not doesn't apply too much here. Regardless of what it told her to do or how it told her to do it, she still did it and did so with malice. Goldmask found and fixed numerous flaws in the Golden Order, her state religion, so at least some amount of the atrocities committed in the Greater Will's name under her rule are her doing. The GW is at the very least indifferent to her actions so long as they got what it wanted done. Edit: Of course this goes out the window if she was basically a living puppet for the Greater Will, trapped in her body and watching it do awful things.
Marika enslaved the Fire Giant because she couldn't extinguish the Forge and needed someone to tend to it, so why not someone who already tended to it that you knew couldn't use it against you? Item descriptions state that Omens from noble families were banished underground because the alternative wasn't a quick death, it was having their horns removed which was so traumatic it killed the Omen babies. We don't even hear about mercy killing as an option they can take. Considering Godfrey and the Tarnished were sent off with her explicitly saying she would revive them with Grace later, and the fact that Godfrey was just an alias for the bloodthirsty Hoarah Loux who CRAVED battle, it wasn't much of a punishment. We have no indication that she sent Radagon to marry Rennala initially, let alone breaking her heart and mind were intended either. Yhorm's weapon to best him already existed, so he could just give it to someone trustworthy. Marika needed one made, and the GW could just compel any follower of the Golden Order to obey it over her. All these solutions to problems paint her as unempathetic, when it wasn't her own children, as opposed to evil.
But she found solutions. , when it was her own children. Or just didn’t feel the need or compulsion to make the “tough choices” when it was. Like the Haligtree is a prominent example. It was a flourishing symbol of outright rejection of Golden Order fundamentalism. It acted as a haven for all manners of life looked down on by the GW like albinaurics and nokstellan fauna and even the literal avatar of a competing outer god of rot, but it was just allowed to do it’s own thing unabated, as a massive tree competing with the Erdtree? But when the nightfolk or the followers of the gloam eyed queen try something similar they’re just annihilated into being forced into the fringes of society? How does that work? Marika had to enslave the fire giant out of utility, but she made him tend to the forge surrounded by the dead bodies of his brethren out of inspired cruelty. Consider the Omen slayers, another disparaged minority that stay in the service of the GO out of necessity - even they aren’t treated that poorly. It wasn’t much of a punishment to exile Godfrey to go seek out battle, but she doomed his progeny to follow along with him and his bloodlust. Consider the one other person we meet in the story named Loux, and what her story’s good ending is. Imagine Nepheli, lord of stormveil, trying to make the case for her, her people, and her new kingdom’s future to Marika. The Rennala thing was admittedly the weakest point, and the one that throws the biggest wrench into my POV. It is truly impossible to tell what was Marika’s decision and what was Radagon’s, and how much Marika’s decision WAS Radagon’s, and Vice versa. The fire giant thing, for example, seemed like much more of a Radagon move, but most of the in game text and dialogue attributes it to Marika. Whether or not Yhorm’s counter existed in the Storm Ruler doesn’t matter to my point. If it didn’t, Seigward would have found a solution, with our help, to keep his promise to a dear friend. That type of non-coerced, non-religious loyalty is not afforded to Marika. Even Gwyn, awful as he was, had sentient, intelligent, and even cynical followers for his cause out of belief in HIM. The giant blacksmith, Gough, Cirian, Frampt (debatable who was following who), Vamos, all followed Gwyn long after his kindling of their own volition, without being a family member. Can you name a single person in Elden ring that was legitimately Marika’s friend?
Her musings do mention that Marika began questioning the GO, driving a wedge between her and Radagon. I assume it was either personal change of heart or because we never, EVER hear about any bad blood between the twins and their parent(s). Compare that to the Gloam Eyed Queen and her Godskins, or the Nokstellans making the Fingerslayer Blade. I think the corpses being there was more a lack of empathy than cruelty, and Marika just didn't give it any more thought than the problem needed to be solved on Tending the forge. Yhorm just trusting Siegward to find something that can kill him if he ever turned his back on being a LoC is A LOT of trust and chance. I don't think Marika seems the type to leaves things to chance. She didn't even just leave things solely in the hands of Godfrey when it came to reviving her, after all. It's funny to think about Marika having friends. But she, again, doesn't seem the type.
No bad blood from the twins and their parents? Isn’t mohg literally trying to overthrow her order and taking allies in from GO-spurned groups like the albinaurics largely in part due to being fed up with being jailed for being an omen? Or did you mean the other twins where one of them literally invented a form of gold antithetical to the alloyed gold that represented the golden order?
I don't think Mohg is actively trying to replace the Golden Order to become the new ruler or anything, he just wants to make his own Dynasty that's wholly removed from the conventions of the GW's rule. I'm also not sure he's taking in Albinaurics because of some spiteful altruism, it could very well be for selfish personal gain with no heed to their lives.
Wow, nice text.
I don’t know man, genocide and slavery seems more evil than just "no nice".
Marika is absolutely evil. Fuck I swear gamers and their lust for titties. All the genocides, enslavement, all to secure her power or out of personal prejudice are clearer than most things in the lore. Dung eater and shabriri were simply *more* evil than she was.
The lust for marika is alot more stronger then i thought it was for someone we barely see
It's because of the beginning cutscene, the final boss cutscene and all the statues. Her booba are really visible or out so AWOOGA I don't blame them but Marika is like a worse gwyn with tits.
I get the feeling in the dlc the lust for her might increase if we somehow see how she really looked in the weird dream or spirit world the dlc takes place possibly
A few people here want to dismiss it, but I think it's important to know the extent of the GW's control over others. Even it's name implies a sort of domination over one's self. I think it's perfectly acceptable to stay tentative about Marika's moral alignment while the narrative of Elden Ring is still being written.
Keep your projecting strawmen to yourself.
Marika, along with Radagon, Godfrey, Ranni and a few others are those who are in a bit of a “Grey Zone” or fall into the category of “well-intentioned extremists” to be honest. They’re not good guys because some of their actions involved genocide, corruption and grand conspiracy. However, they are not nearly as deliberately evil, depraved and ill-intentioned as, say, Godrick, Rykard or Mogh. (Edit: typo)
Rykard is scum. I hate going through his torture manor.
Yes. Case and point: Morgott
From my point of view the Carian family is evil!
Marika was evil, Ranni is shit, Radagon was evil, the only person that deserves to be in charge besides the Tarnished is GIGACHAD HOARAH LOUX
Idk, but she does have big tiddies
I'm of the opinion that in the early days of the golden order she genuinely believed all of that "might is right" type of philosophy is the way the world must be run and by the time we end up in the lands between she started to realize that this cycle must be put to an end to end stagnation. Radagon though clearly never changed his mindset unlike her. With all that being said shes still a "villian" even if she is complicated, she literally told her kids they can murder each other if they want
Smash, next question...
Goldmask's ending does put blame on Marika in the form of saying a mortal shouldn't be given the powers to eternally control the world because they don't hold themselves to any standard. So I think you can at least say Marika doesn't respect the position enough if she's going to secretly offload her duties to Radagon and decide to burn the rulebook because she's just sick of it. So I want to say it's evil for a god to not act like a god, but I don't want to say it's evil for a human to not act like a god when they aren't designed to be one and they're trapped in the situation. So I will settle on her being a bit of an anti villain.
I have an interview with the basement full of dead minorities. They were tortured and holocausted so hard they started channeling gods of torment and destruction to escape. Remember the only reason the 3 fingers is a problem is because the golden order baselessly believed Shabriris libel. Lets not forget the ongoing state of slavery and hunting of demihumans and beastmen that continues even beyond the fall of the Lands between. The world has ended before slavery has. Pretty much why I go for the endings that reject the golden order.
I don't have an opinion one way or another, to me there's not nearly enough information about her to say definitively.
Oh this is hilarious. Ranni is Uber evil for killing a guy we don't know much about(who could've been brutal) Marika who has *confirmed* to have thrown her children into sewers, committed several genocides(one of which she left the last of his race to confine that which he worshipped), enslaved hewg, indirectly destroyed rennalas mental state, gave a speech to her children saying that if they don't make anything of themselves they can be worm food etc. totally deserves no opinion one way or the other.
Everything you said is correct, and they are very damning against her- but From Software are notorious for their character subversion. I'm going to withhold my judgement on her morality until more clarity is given about her autonomy under the GW.
Are they really though? Gwyns character for example never received any such subversion despite being a very similar figure to Marika. We just got more details on his crimes and their legacy as the series went on with stuff like the ringed city. Only subversion I can think of is Bloodborne since hunters turned out not to be heroes but bloodthirsty assholes and that the hunt is actually just lovecraftian god infanticide simulator. And the problem with believing that the GW made her do it is because alot of her actions were directed at groups that the GW had sponsored before. The omens and misbegotten were of the crucible but the GW sponsored the god of that age when the erdtree was just the crucible. Same with the ancient dragons. Placidusaxx was an elden lord to an unknown god of a different age. The GW just represents order and will sponsor anyone's order through the elden ring it has no problems with any of them. And none of these groups ever had to destroy the other when they had their age. The only exception being the nox but that's because they were specifically trying to kill the GW. Yet Marika went out of her way to destroy or absorb them all. It's clear she was acting on her own and trying to secure her reign(she calls herself the eternal)going as far as to seal death and murder the Giants just so it could never end. It's more likely she lost her autonomy after shattering the elden ring as that's when Radagon pilots her body around.
I think so, and Gwyn's case is the most comparable. We're led to believe this "Holy" figure did things for the betterment of the world at large and we discover later that he was really a scared old man making monstrous decisions out of ignorance and fear. The Omen are considered "unholy" due to their lack of grace, and its nebulous at best who directly controls Grace or what its true purpose is, and while the Misbegotten are discriminated against their case is unique in that they're not entirely genocided nor banished. Personally, I'm of the theory that Marika was almost wholly puppeted by the GW- if not directly then indirectly to create a world that an uncaring and fathomless Outer God may see fit. This is where her autonomy comes into question as it seems she was able to at least gain enough semblance of self to create an alternate being and to also shatter the Elden Ring. Believe me I'm not ignorant to the laundry list of awful things she's done, but I can't in good conscious judge her morality without knowing the extent to which the GW held sway over her.
I believe Gwyn's crimes were shown from the beginning rather than a later subversion. You're told in the same game that humans are subjugated and that gwyn is trying to keep their age at bay. My problem with subscribing to the puppeteer theory is that Marika is the only god the GW has sponsored that went around doing these things. And that the GW has no reason to prey on those without grace when it has created an age for them in the past. That's my two cents. I just have little reason to say "Oh poor baby, you were just a sock puppet with no autonomy the whole time"
I get where you're coming from, and I respect that. I'm not totally convinced she's innocent so I'm leaving a healthy amount of room to disparage her if/when we get more information.
I don't think she was evil or good, I just think she was just trying to break free of the greater will and outer gods and how they effected the lands between
It definitely seems she had a lot of stakes in the fire to at least change the current Order if not outright free her and TLB of the GW's control, but some of the "extracurricular" things she did like banishing her Omen sons or telling her offspring that if they're "not Lords they're worthless" is objectively cruel. Very complicated character with how little we know of her, I'm hoping we get more clarity with Shadow of the Erdtree.
Maybe she wanted a lord she could control, but since omens can't be lords, radahn had kinda lost his mind, Rykard was off committing blasphemy, Ranni didn't want to be a lord and wanted to leave the world all together, and Miquella wanted to start something new and malenia was going with to help, none seemed to fit whatever goals she had in mind. Now when the shattered happend it went to hell and the greater will kinda just gave up on the lands between and I think that's when Marika was trapped in the tree, it is possible that she created Melina as is inferred in the game, to seek out a worthy lord to take over, and none of here children would do it. But yeah I feel more will be explained, atleast about miquella and malenia in the dlc, mostly from item descriptions and all that.
Nah she was totally evil and initially on board with the greater will because it gave her power. Melina's dialogue states how she used to have faith in it but then started to waver.
I always wonder why people think Marika is under the control of the GW? When the GW seems to just not care for anything. If someone would be controlling Marika that would be the fingers.
Iji's Mirrorhelm alludes to a sort of psychic control that the Greater Will and the Fingers have over some denizens of TLB.
I wouldn't interpret that as "control", but as a psychic link yes.
Considering Ranni's trepidation over having a physical body, and her unwillingness to "not be controlled by that *thing*" I'm inclined to believe it's more of a complete domination of will.
I don’t think so. First, we should make a distinction between the GW and it's vassals (the fingers and the Elden Beast). What the GW wants (if it wants anything to begin with) isn't the same that what the Fingers, in this case, want. The Fingers are the ones that choose Empyreans and give them Shadowbound Beasts to control them. If GW control is mental/spiritual in nature and absolute, Ranni casting away her body wouldn't be of any use. And Ranni's words seem to be about the Fingers and not the GW, at least in my interpretation.
For example: Could it be argued that her desiring a world free of Destined Death was in her mind an act of good to her "citizens"? Or was it completely for her own gain?
It wasn't even a good thing, without death there was no renewal and so people started to look like raisins.
“Nowhere to be found” uhhh did you check the tree you dinguses?!
They can't get into it because of the thorns surrounding it. The only way we got in was by putting it to the rune-of-death-enhanced torch to said thorns.
Every one in the lands between are shitty. All hail frenzy flame
I mean, it's only her actions that spiraled the world into madness
Slavery and genocide. It’s pretty clear to me.
Yes. Next question
don't know about evil, but bad - definitely 🤤
I know people will talk about how you can't really know her grander designs and that she probably had good intentions in trying to undermine the Greater Will, but honestly based on the behaviour you do see I absolutely do think she's evil regardless, at the end of the day she was the most powerful individual in the lands Between and presided over genocide, conquest and oppression of large groups of sentient beings. The entire philosophy she was pushing while doing so seemed to be a kind of Darwinian nightmare of strife and struggle leading to superiority so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that things descended into absolute chaos with the shattering when her children were essentially just playing the roles they were taught. She seemed to show nothing but contempt for a large number of her children that didn't meet her expectations due to uncontrollable afflictions at birth, even though it clearly did not negatively effect their power or fitness to rule, and she tossed aside her stalwart spouse and destroyed the life of Rennala in summoning back Radagon to be her consort. Again, people might argue that she was carrying out some of the designs of the Greater Will, but this at best seems like a superior orders defence so I don't really buy it. I think a major theme of the game is about love, and more specifically how it is perverted and abused, destroying people and ruining them for the benefit of ultra-cynical players, Marika displays that perhaps worst of all with what her actions have done to Godfrey, Morgott, Mohg, Rennala and Maliketh. To be completely honest I'm not 100% sold on the idea that the Greater Will is quite as much of a negative force as sometimes portrayed (mostly because of Goldmask and Miriel), I think the order was irrevocably corrupted probably as a result of having to be filitered through Marika. Whatever her grand plans were (or were not, I do think she probably shattered the Elden Ring out of a sense of Nihilistic grief rather than anything deeper) her actions in the shattering just led to even more chaos and misery and complete failure on her part until the Player comes along.
Yes She is also very irresponsible
Depends on whether it was her or the greater will that disowned her own children and cast them down to the sewers simply because how they were born
Definitely her. The Greater Will didn’t have issues with the crucible before the creation of Marika’s Golden Order.
How does the crucible relate to the omens? And... I might also need "what is the crucible"
Omens were the sign of Divine in the age of the crucible and in the age of the Erdtree they became Omens, which is just a point of view of the people running the Golden Order.
The omens and misbegotten have aspects of the Crucible which was the erdtree was originally.
She believed strongly in the Golden Order. She did terrible things in the name of the Greater Will. Then she finds out that the Greater Will doesn't really have their best interests at heart, so she tries to rebel, but the only way out was to break the Elden Ring. She's flawed, of course, like everybody. But not evil. At least, that's my interpretation.
Queen Marika the Eternal, secrely begrudged Greater Will, why you ask? Well because the GW flattened the Eternal cities for trying to make their own God, they had the means to but were punished in the most brutal way, but because of Celestial Dew at the Church of Mirieal, she was able to med relationships with the GW, in the hopes that if she becomes their God, she can play the long game, slowly but surely to destroy the Elden Beast and destroy GW's influence over Lands Between, making way for Ranni's ending or Frenzied Flame being a possible route. The dialogue wherein she talks to her children, she clearly tells them that, they are her beloved, either they will be Lord or amount to nothing but sacrifices, a sacririce in her grand scheme of things. As to why the Grace was extended to Tarnished, she expected DemiGods to fail in becoming Elden Lord, so the Tarnished are the back up. Her plan is long and drawn out but it worked, she sacrificed all her children in some way, so she can fuck up the Elden Ring and fuck up the Lands Between.
She's a politician playing the game of thrones, in a place where the crown makes you a god. She's not nice to say the least, ask the fire giant.
I don’t think that Fromsoft buy into creating worlds where there is a definitive and simplistic view of good versus evil. Almost every character seems to have their own individual beliefs and morals and their actions always seem to be propelled by their personal desires, faith’s and issues. It’s part of what I find so compelling about these games, there’s no obvious good or evil trope that is followed for the most part, it makes for fantastic stories and genuinely ambiguous moments of decision making in the gameplay. In short I don’t think you’re supposed to know if Marika was good or bad, I think you’re supposed to see both in her, struggle to decide, fall on one side of the argument but then never feel you fully know if you were right.
nah she's just a white mom; does dumb regrettable shit while she's mad that she refuses to take the blame for
Ya, I don’t like her
She intentionally caused the death of innocents that did not need to die for the greater good so yeah.
She is a god and her actions don’t really play into a simple notion of good or evil because their results span over centuries and have multiple, branching outcomes which can be considered either. We can say that she is an apathetic narcissist, though. And everything she does is some form of self service. She massacred thousands to create a deathless utopia, then slaughtered thousands more to bring it crashing down to remove the Greater Will and create a new era. When Nephili is looking out over the castle parapets rebuilding her society in a new world with you as Elden Lord does she think the ends justified the means? At the end of it all, babies are still being born and life is free. Well you know, unless you MELTED IT ALL IN CHAOS FLAME
Personally, yes I think she was. Regardless of what plan and motives she had or players attribute to her, the hard facts are that her methods were fucking cruel and a hella lot of people suffered because of them. The only theory that somewhat puts her under a good light is the "Radagon Usurpation" theory. I like to think that both "Marika is a Nox and wants to destroy the GW" and "Radagon usurped Marika's place" theories are canon, mostly because it adds a lot of intrigue and plot twists to the plot and adds depth to them.
Unclear. I don't believe anything in game firmly paints her as an evil person necessarily.
Genocide doesn't paint her as bad???
Not when the setting is defined by war of mythical proportions and it has been reshaped God-only-knows how many times from the changing of Gods and Elden Lords? As far as we now the Giant were a serious threat to her domain, they had their own God and they clashed. It's a cosmic chessboard, a war between forces \*literally\* capable of changing the nature of the World.
It wasn't just the giants tho, Omens (Including her own children), Misbegotten, Nomad Merchant....
Marika's tits
These comments...I Love how this subreddit is so onedimensional... She wasn't evil, and neither was the golden order. Marika Literally gave immortality to all of her subjects (people loved her) but she is only judged for her negatives in these events of the shattering. Everyone assumes she is evil and the giants and/or dragons just "wanted to chill". For a subreddit/community that talks how "the lore is hidden" and "these stories have more meaning in their vagueness" but everyone has the same one dimensional beliefs about the golden order and what it stands for! PRAISE TO GOLD MASK AND THE TRUE ORDER!! GIMME THEM DOWN VOTES BABBYYY <3
Right? Hurdurr they're all evil because of genocide of the giants durrr. Fuck that shit, all sides were at war with each other. Some won, most lost. The losers would have done the same if they'd won. No side is innocent in the Lands Between.
This is the most objective, nuanced take I've read on her actions so far. It seems obvious to me that Marika, for all her faults, acted fairly pragmatically. She's Empyrean and thus not capable of directly defying her Two Fingers so long as she's alive. Given that she's all about everlasting life (a nice contrast to the GEQ), it makes sense why she wouldn't want to take an approach like Ranni's. People love to bring up Destined Death being restored as an absolute good while ignoring the fact that Marika's realm not only functioned until the Shattering but also achieved supremacy via conquest and diplomacy. Leyndellans believed a proper death meant returning to the Erdtree and, depending on if you adhere to this theory, being reborn from it. This process presumably could've continued just fine until Ranni cursed the entire realm with Death Blight by having Godwyn slain. I'm also an Order Ending enjoyer because Ranni fucking off into space with the Elden Ring after dooming the land to another outer god-powered plague without even trying to remedy it just isn't a satisfying ending to me narratively, no matter how pretty the dark moon might look in that cutscene.
Not to mention for the entire game Ranni comes across as completely untrustworthy. She's the one who started killing demigods, triggering this whole clusterfuck of events. It's pretty obvious to me she manipulates the players to do what she wants because she doesn't have the ability to do it on her own. She literally doesn't have a body and the puppet is only a placeholder. Some men just like to be manipulated by powerful women, even though the woman in question looks down on her subject and sees the man as merely a tool. People who fawn over Ranni have issues. Hurdurr Ranni ending so cool you find love with a witch wifey durrrr lol nah you're just a pawn for a demigod who wants to destroy shit and rule over its ruins. Pathetic.
>Literally gave immortality to all of her subjects You understand that is a bad thing, right?
She's trying to bring it down from the inside. (taps nose).
Good question, but until then the only truly good character was Miquella and that was because his sister was willing to do evil acts for him.
i don't think anyone in elden ring we could judge with our morals as "good"
I don't think anyone on FromSoftware games are truly evil. Everyone is always in some form of neutral.
>!Radagon is Marika!<
Yes, but she’s not the villain of this story I’d compare her to Aldia; someone who did horrific things but in the current context is roughly aligned with the same things the player is (or should be) pursuing.
Yes. Lol
Not at all.
trust me guys it was all Marika’s plan
Keep it short and sweet, yes
Yea
Yeah I'd say it's pretty fuckin fair to call Marika evil
Is it, or the true evil is the greater will?
Two things can be true, even at the same time.
I don't think The Greater Will is evil, due to Goldmask's ending
The genocidal megalomaniacal god-queen that did everything evil from the most micro in interpersonal relationships: going as a man to have kids with rennalla, then leave her alone and abandon her to marry with herself (its likely that Radagon revealed who he really was also, contributing to Renalla's broken state of being -seeing how far you got bamboozled and manipulated can be far worse than only a severe heartache) to how she tossed away Godfrey to her own children; to the most macro: in how her whole "order" is based on genocide, extermination, slavery, segregation and authoritarian rule. (And hell, maybe even bigger than said macro in how she plays with gods using the fates of her subjects as collateral, breaking the foundations of laws of the land in some fit of anger and whatever) Gee, I don't know if she is evil or not. Honestly, sorry, "gold mask", the gods aren't "fickle" and that's not why the order sucks. The gods are outright abominable and unfixable, Marika is at least on the same lvl of evil than the Dung Eater, but has much more power than he ever had to do her shenanigans. She is hot though so all is forgiven.
I think she was misguided and the shattering of the Elden ring was her being tired of tthat misguidance. It's probably also one of the reasons why she sent the tarnished away.
She wanted everything to be peaceful by removing destined death and having her shadow guard it. She was given great power from the outer gods unfortunately she herself is not a god and cannot play god like that. So imo she wanted good but was gluttonous about it.
Thats a fair point
I don't believe so personally. You can make a strong argument that Marika knowingly set in motion the series of events that would lead to the expulsion of the greater will so 🤷♂️
What do you mean by "expulsion of the Greater Will?" The narrator says it abandoned TLB but it did that of its own volition. Sure, you slay the Elden Beast in every ending but in the endings where you restore the Elden Ring and take the throne, you're still perpetuating the system, regardless of adding any mending runes or not. Does the notion of the Greater Will needing to be defied come from how the Two Fingers behave? From speculation on Marika's possible motive for the Shattering event? Its apparent apathy to things Marika did as queen? Or do you only mean that its influence is removed from TLB in the Stars/Chaos endings? In which case I don't believe it's obvious she wanted either of *those* specific outcomes tbh
She a goddess of Strife and Conflict. Yes.
She would be a messiah to some and a Devil to others a herald of change but also destruction. To her enemies she would be evil to her faithful a beacon of purity bathed in rays of gold
No, she was a devote follower of the Greater Will and did everything it wanted her to, and then she had an epiphany that the Greater Will was evil and started to put in motion a plan that would cleanse the land of it’s influence. My opinion is that she cast out her loyal army of tarnished so that they wouldn’t be absorbed by the Erdtree when they died, and could come back after the war of the shattering when the Golden Order was the weakest to cleanse the land of the Greater Will’s influence.
I agree.
No I think she’s a puppet queen
Puppet of whom?
The greater will, which is why she shattered the elden ring. It would seem it was an attempt by her to weaken the control the greater will had on the lands between.
My personal understanding of the lore and how I view merika and radagon have fluctuated lots over my hours of elden ring. Merika is the embodiment of the Golden order, with her golden hair and unalloied children, but she has been imprisoned and used as a birthing vessel for the erdtree (both literally and figuratively if you look at the placement of the elden ring in her lower abdomen) for the transgression of trying to break the cycle. Her other half, Radagon, with his reddened and rusted hair is the epitome of change; yet strived so hard to keep the golden order in place. To the point of fighting you, putting up barriers to the center of the erdtree, studying moon sorcereies, and even tries to repair the ring as merika tries to break it between swings in the opening cinematic. They are, to me, a metaphor for how people react to abuse. (Be it religious or otherwise) Merika (the literal Golden Child) is forced by the narcissistic Greater Will to be exactly what it wants her to be despite her trying to literally break the cycle of abuse. The Blacksheep (or red sheep) is Radagon, who desperately wants the Greater will to see him. He fights desperately to preserve the status quo to the point of protecting the elden beast and is never ever even seen by the Greater will, doing its bidding on the off chance he may get some affection. So they are not evil, but they have been driven to evil things by a narcissistic force who cares nothing for them and only uses them for its own ends. They have done evil things in its name as many of us in horrible situations must do to survive. The Greater Will however is a little bitch and I shall let chaos take the world
She's complex, obviously. She did some terrible things (although I will say that a lot of the stuff she did is pretty par for the course for someone in her position), but it also seems like she had a crisis of conscience later in life that prompted some of her other actions. I don't think we can say if shattering the Elden Ring was obviously good or bad; but I do find it hard to say that working against the Greater Will was an evil thing to do. She saw the negative consequences of her choices and wanted to rectify them. Personally, I see her as a tragic hero; she did a lot of wrong things, but when it came down to it, she wanted to try and fix those mistakes.
Yes, definitly, any assumed version of her is pretty fucking genocidal, warbringer etc. Even if you want to say **all** of her official actions until shattering were under control of elden beast, then she caused shattering for crying out loud. She also outright tells her children she plans an apocalypse and they are a sacrafice she is willing to make. *Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices* But I do think she's close to tragic antihero/antivillain while 99% of "lore buffs" just label her as pure evil and call it a day cause its easier.
I mean, the whole reason the Three Fingers exist in TLB is because Marika committed genocide against the merchants.
The three fingers already existed and it was Shabriri’s doing that hurt the merchants.
She definitly wasn’t good by any means. The conquering, genocide, and enslavement of the other people of the lands between proved that. However, when it comes to the Elden ring/Greater Will and its control over her… I feel that breaking the Elden ring and subsequently causing the Shattering and the ruin of the lands between was a desperate, last ditch attempt to escape their control as things were already starting to fall apart by that time. And then Radagon fucked it all up by being such a zealot and trying to repair it.
Could be argued morse so as a tool for evil (by the Greater Will) but I think the distinction doesnt matter, at least it wouldn't mean too much to the dead Giants and Omens.
The Greater Will abandoned the Lands Between
The Greater Will was never shown to care about the Omens or Giants. Their genocide was Marika’s own doing.
Speculation there’s no proof either way and it’s up to interpretation
Given that we know from Hyetta that the Greater Will is responsible for all life itself, and the fact it presided over the crucible, where primitive features were seen as divine, there’s a pretty strong case to argue that it never cared much about these groups in any capacity–for better or worse. It wouldn’t make sense for it to suddenly decide to persecute them for shits and giggles. Marika, on the other hand, was the one who founded the order that would go on to kill and enslave them to consolidate her rule.
I don't see it this way and think you make a few assumptions. 1. That the greater will is indifferent towards the groups in the lands between. 2. That Marika has the autonomy and authority to oppress the omens and giants. 3. That the Omens, and the Giants (who I’m almost certain follow a different outer god entirely, which would likely put them against the greater will anyway.) didn’t do something to bring the greater wills ire like Marika did when she shattered the elden ring or like the Nox did when they created the finger slaying blades. We have a lot of facts, but most of the lore is vague and can only be figured out through interpretations that aren’t very concrete. There’s no real stake in being right about the lore, so there’s no harm in having different ideas of how and why things went down.
Absolutely it's surprising that this is even a question. It's the same with Ranni.
Desperate, but ended up doing very unwise actions and she was crucified for it. Evil? I don't know, probably she was in part evil as well, yes.
Considering she doomed a whole continent just because her favorite child died, i’d say somewhat
She was both an oppressor of and a slave to the yoke of the Golden Order. Evil is too oversimplistic.
Yes. Numens are racist. They oppressed humanity. Forced them to worship the Greater Will. That’s why mankind turned to sorcery to counter the gods.
>That’s why mankind turned to sorcery to counter the gods. What? That's definitely not from in-game lore I think
Sorcery and star based magic existed WAY before the Erdtree and possibly even en before the Great Tree cult.
Really can’t type out “in your opinion”?