ER simp

[blender2902]

DEBUNKING THE NIGHT OF THE BLACK KNIVES ALLEGATIONS + Theory on Marika reviving the soulless demigods

This was originally going to be a small post on just my theory on Godwyn and the soulless demigods but as I kept writing that, I kept bringing up why the night of the black knives theory does not work. So, I just ended up dedicating the first part of this post to giving all the arguments against that theory. This turned out to be the majority of this post ironically lol.

Do read my messmer post as that will make what I say next in this entire post make more sense as the timeline I follow is based on that. It’s a long post so the TLDR of the post, Marika sealed Messmer away in LOS after godwyn’s death in order to protect him. (Only thing to add to that is the sentry torch being held by the tree sentinel outside shaman village and Messmer’s remembrance being mistranslated. The sentry torch was made after godwyn’s death and Messmer’s remembrance’s original Japanese descriptions mentions nothing about fear just that Messmer’s eye was sealed and then he was sealed in LOS which leaves the timeline and motives pretty vague

Marika planning Godwyn’s murder is what I will call the biggest conspiracy theory in the Elden Ring lore. However, I believe that this theory has very, very shaky grounds to stand on and fundamentally fails in logic when we go into the details. I will say it here, whether Marika had a hand in aiding Ranni or not I simply see no logical way Marika would want Godwyn dead. The problems with this theory can be classified under 2 categories- evidence and motivations.

Evidence: -

I have spent some time looking at all the common pieces of evidence that ‘supports’ this theory. Let me refute them one by one.

Black knife assassin Armor-

Like many have said before me, the original Japanese description of this armor is very vague about the ties between Marika and these assassins. It could simply mean that Marika and the assassins were from the same race and nothing else. Also, the eternal city is stated to have been banished by the greater will-

According to Rogier, the black knife assassins are scions of the eternal cities so it would be very odd for them to have helped the god chosen by the greater will (or at least said to have been chosen). All in all, this is way too shaky to count as anything solid.

2. Gurranq’s death dialogue-

Every person who believes in this theory loves to show Gurranq’s death dialogue-

Conveniently leaving out his final line-

‘why shatter’ hmmmmmmmmm.

So, the ‘gulling’ Malekith is talking about is not stealing the rune of death but shattering the elden ring. This line of dialogue pretty much confirms that entirely. It is kinda baffling to me that people confidently give this out as proof that Marika planned Godwyn’s death when the same speech directly contradicts it. I understand missing an item description or two (the game is huge after all) but missing this while citing the previous two lines is just ??? but whatever.

3. The black knife assassin ‘guarding Marika’s bedchamber’-

So, to decipher the implications of this enemy location let’s look that the environment-

A bunch of dead finger readers who do not pose a single threat at all, the assassin is implied to have killed them clearly. We do know that many demigods were slain during the night of the black knives so the black knife assassins were going for several demigods. This one here was likely trying to kill Morgott but failed. We do see black knife assassins at ordina(the town from which we access haligtree) so those guys were trying to kill Miquella or Malenia so this does check out. The environmental storytelling here is quite clear to me so this is not a good piece of evidence at all. I swear the next conspiracy we hear will be ‘Miquella planned godwyn’s death’ pointing at the black knife assassins in ordina or something like that. This is flimsy evidence at best.

4. Marika supposedly wanting to sacrifice her kids

Everybody loves to point towards the Melina dialogue outside of capital when they say this. Let’s fully break it down.

2 ways of interpreting this. 1) she will sacrifice them if they don’t become ‘aught at all’ or 2) she is giving them a warning that soon they will have to make something of themselves or they will be sacrificed by someone or something which she does not want so basically tough love through advice. Which is the more suitable interpretation based on actions? Well, the only way to judge is by seeing what happens next in the story. The guidance of grace is likely controlled by Marika as the greater will has left the damned place. How much control does she have is unclear but for the sake of this argument let’s just assume she had complete control over it as this will be the hardest and most interesting interpretation for me argue against. Now if she does not have full control over grace then nothing can be determined as we can make up an endless number of rules for grace. Let’s assume that Marika controls where grace points.

People who make this assumption always say that ‘Marika guided the tarnished towards her kids to kill them for (insert whatever reason)’ So yeah, the guidance of grace points towards the demigods right? Which would mean that this take is correct right? NO! First let’s take a close look at where grace points.

If you observe closely, you will notice that grace only points towards the demigods from Radagon and Rennala’s side of the family (who technically aren’t hers) and Godrick (who nobody likes and he disrespects the golden lineage)  with the sole exception of Miquella(I’ll talk about him later) and Morgott but in his case he is literally guarding the erdtree so not much choice there and if you want to go into delulu territory then in Godfrey’s cutscene Morgott turns into grace and points Godfrey towards us which kinda implies Marika taking revenge for Morgott in a way(like I said delulu). Another important point to mention here is Vyke. He somehow got to the forge of the giants without killing any shardbearer which means Marika at first had a way to get to the forge while avoiding Morgott but that ended up failing. It is also important to point out that no site of grace points towards mohg as you can see here-

So, it may not exactly be an omen twins thing but either way that is a discussion for another day, what matters most is that Marika actively avoids pointing towards her own children. ‘AHA you forgot about the divine beast grace pointing towards Messmer’ No I didn’t, because that grace does not point towards him. If you follow its trajectory with a straight line, you will see that it points towards scadutree avatar, you know the boss holding Miquella’s great rune-

Miquella at this point was shedding aspects of himself which would lead him to failure like his mother and he would be in the same prison as her. Hence death would be a mercy. It is likely Marika can guide us to the shardbearers because she can feel the great runes, hence we are guided here. Marika guides us towards Miquella’s great rune but we are too late and he sheds it. Now we can observe that no site of grace points towards Messmer at all. This is because Marika knows that killing Messmer is the only way in which we can reach Miquella. She probably thought ‘Tarnished please just take that great rune get out of that place. Let my son live please.’ Or something along those lines but we end up killing Messmer anyway. Now that the damage is done, might as well finish the job, and put Miquella to rest. Then Marika starts guiding us towards Miquella. There could also be an angle of revenge here as it is Leda and Danes notes which directly tell us to kill Messmer. They serve Miquella, so he got Messmer killed in a way. All in all, even in the dlc she is actively avoiding pointing towards Messmer and is trying to put Miquella to rest so she is not really sacrificing them.

Some other graces in the base game worth mentioning-

Castle sol and Millicent

Sorry for the low-quality pics

These are interesting as they point towards a npc and an item that leads to Malenia. However, if Marika did know where these are and points there, why not point towards Malenia? No grace on the map points towards Haligtree. If she can sense an offshoot of Malenia why can she not sense Malenia herself? She is holding a great rune for crying out loud. There must be another explanation for these. For Millicent maybe Marika is just pointing towards Radahn, it’s just that the road is not right. For castle sol, maybe it’s the same as castle Morne, where she is pointing towards a place where we can get stronger-

Ranni-

It’s a bit hard to see due to low quality but Marika points towards renna’s rise when we rest after ranni leaves. The simple explanation to this is Marika wants Ranni to be killed as she got Godwyn murdered. This is quite funny as most of us just ended up marrying her lol. The spicier interpretation of this is that even though Ranni got Godwyn killed, Marika does agree with Ranni’s end goal and is hence willing to help her out with that. In Ranni’s ending cutscene she does hold Marika’s head in a gentle way so that does imply some respect. Also in that ending Ranni does put Marika to rest in a way so that could play a role too.

So that covers everything related to grace. Now what we get is a Marika trying her best to get the tarnished to become elden lord while avoiding her children getting killed as much as possible. This pretty much refutes the perspective to ‘Marika wanted to sacrifice her kids.' All this to say that all the implications point towards the second perspective of ‘Marika giving her kids some hard advice which deep down comes from love’ being true.

Like I already said, if you think Marika does not control grace (kinda unlikely tbh) then we simply cannot determine anything about her motives behind this dialogue, hence it does not prove or disprove anything.

Now that is all the common pieces of evidence covered. As you can see, they were shaky at best.

Motivations

This is in my opinion the biggest problem with this theory. There is not a single motive that even makes complete sense. By that I mean that killing Godwyn would have been the best/only option Marika had to achieve whatever her motives are. Let’s go over all the common motives I have seen and explain why they don’t make sense.

Killing godwyn would show the flaw in the golden order-

This assumes that Marika wanted the order to change(which I believe is part of her motivations). Why would she even think this would work? Radagon had made sure everyone in the golden order blindly believes in it so why would they see this as a flaw? Like we do not see a single person in the game that sees               Godwyn’s death as a flaw. Instead, we see D (a golden order fanatic) hunting down those who live in death. There are literal incantations made to fight them off. Everybody who is discriminated by the order already know that it’s full of shit. This motive just does not add up.

2. To rebel against the greater will/golden order

This is similar to the last one but slightly different. This comes with the assumption of Godwyn being loyal to the golden order rather than his mother. We don’t get anything directly characterising godwyn’s feelings so we must look at implications, and they point towards him being loyal to his mom. The first one being the general development of Marika’s order. At first, during the age of plenty before Radagon, the erdtree was giving away plenty of blessing. However, as time moved on, the erdtree became an object of faith. Marika herself became doubtful according to her dialogue in the minor erdtree church. Also Marika does go inert during Radagon’s age while he is just doing a bunch of stuff(creating golden order fundamentalism). This plus the way Radagon shows a more dominant posture in his statue-

Implies that Radagon was being the more dominant half during his reign which further supports my take on the golden order changing as the timeline progressed. Godwyn was around during the age of plenty so naturally he would see how Marika developed overtime as well. The biggest clue though is the crimson, viridian and cerulean amber medallion +3 description-

These were made during Godfrey’s age where Marika had 100% free reign on what she could do. These were given to Godwyn’s death knights which was likely seen as a precious gift that would help them protect their master. Seeing this Godwyn would likely be loyal towards his mother. Godwyn being loyal to the order that is heavily implied to be changed by Radagon in many ways instead of his mother who gifted his knights these ‘precious jewels’ is just very unlikely. Hence if rebelling was the motive, then she would immediately shatter the elden ring.

3.To attempt to restore death (in whatever way) so she could die

If this was her goal then why would she not just go fight Malekith herself? She probably can teleport just like Radagon so it’s unlikely Malekith could restrain her. This means that either she dies (mission accomplished) or Malekith dies and the rune of death is free so she can die (mission accomplished). Fighting Malekith to the death in some remote location would simply be the best option instead of whatever ends up happening if this was motive. Now if you wanna argue Radagon was restricting Marika so she could not go ahead with the Malekith plan, then tell me how she could plan the assassination with him around? Also the rune of death was stolen and the black knife assassins were running around. Find one and accomplish your goal. Yet she did not do that. The logic just does not add up here.

4. All the theories along the lines of ‘Marika planned to grant Godwyn a higher state of existence of some kind.’

All these theories have one big problem, evidence. Pretty much all these theories are just ideas people have which have zero grounds to stand on. I do believe Marika tried to revive godwyn over her grief but I see no way that she could ever foresee what these theories suggest.

So that should be it for all the arguments I have against the night of the black knives theory. Now onto my personal theory and speculation about Marika trying to revive Godwyn and possibly the undead demigods in the mausoleums too.

In my Messmer post from earlier, I did touch on Marika allowing the death knights into the realm of shadow but I did not go too deep into that rabbit hole but I will here. Like I said in my Messmer post, the incantations that do more damage against those who live in death are all golden order fundamentalist incantations not erdtree incantations. Erdtree incantations are linked to Marika and Golden order incantations are linked to Radagon. This implies that the stigma against those who live in death was mostly Radagon’s doing. Also something interesting about the death knights is that the last rites ash of war’s effect that makes us do 2x damage against those who live in death suddenly does not work on them, I used the golden arcs incantation with min stat req and a plus 0 finger seal at blessing level 9 or 10 I don’t remember exactly, before the buff the incantation did a max of 126 damage and after the buff it did 138 damage max which I am pretty sure is the +25 holy damage that the buff adds which means the game does not count these guys as a part of those who live in death and hence are not ‘dead’. This would make it even unlikelier that the death knights got into the LOS through some death stuff. Anyways the death knights were sent to find and protect the ‘cadaver surrogate’ which means second body. Why would they need a second body? Well for his revival of course. So, during the period between the night of the black knives and the shattering, Godwyn’s corpse must have started to mutate and all the death cult stuff started. Now as to who sent the death knights to search for the cadaver surrogate, I have 2 answers 1) It was Godwyn’s corpse itself that somehow gave them a message and they went in search for the cadaver surrogate. They needed entry into the LOS which Marika granted them. Marika saw this as a possible way to bring Godwyn back so she was in support of this. 2) Marika herself got some sort of message from Godwyn’s corpse and sent the death knights herself. Either explanation results in the same story. Now I see many people talking about the dialogue of the ghost about the ‘unwanted child’ in weeping peninsula but there is one item description that flips this entire thing on its head.

Lhutel the headless spirit ash-

So, she sacrificed her life to protect an ‘unwanted child’ of Marika yet was awarded with the honour of Erdtree Burial, a practise which Marika herself developed. Also, she has an attack where she straight up throws a spear at an enemy which is quite reminiscent of the smithscript weapons (and messmer’s spear) we find in the dlc. A whole lot of dots here. All of this leads me to believe that maybe the demigods in the mausoleum maybe aren’t even unwanted at all as Marika is helping in their revival. Oh, and not to mentions that all this is found in weeping peninsula where we find a catacomb called Impaler’s catacomb-

This catacombs also has spike traps which are not quite the same as the ones found in the dlc but are similar-

Impaler’s catacomb spike trap-

Dlc catacomb spike trap-

So maybe Messmer used this place for early versions of his spike traps which were also used/tested in other catacombs in the base game like the seeth water catacomb for example. There are a lot of things in weeping peninsula connecting to death and Messmer which is very intriguing.

Maybe the stone tablets in Marika’s bedchambers which look exactly like the ones in shadow keep were being studied by her to find a way to revive Godwyn along with finding a way of curing the jar innards.

So, this is how I believe the story went. Godwyn was murdered in the night of the black knives and Marika fell into depression. When all the death cult stuff formed, Marika sent the death knights to find Godwyn’s cadaver surrogate. She saw this as an opportunity to possibly revive the undead demigods (maybe the ones that died in the night of the black knives as well) hence honouring Lhutel. However, before she could do anything, Messmer’s base serpent got revealed to the public and she sealed him away into the Land of shadows where he would be safe. In the process she also gave up the opportunity to revive godwyn(and the undead demigods). However, it does seem that Marika still tries to have godwyn revived in a way by granting grace to Fia. Godwyn’s corpse does fight back if you attack Fia, so it appears some part of Godwyn might be kind of alive in a way and is trying to protect Fia. Marika might have learned about Fia somehow and granted her grace so that she could go on her quest to help Godwyn. Not too sure on the logistics of everything but I feel this is a very interesting theory and the Lhutel descriptions + all the minor details provide quite a bit of support.

[blender2902]

Melina Chose To Sacrifice Herself(Marika Did Not Ask Her To Do It)

For the last 2 years, a take that I believed in was ‘Marika gave Melina her purpose, to help the tarnished become elden lord by burning the erdtree’ but now I believe that this take is simply untrue if we take all the pieces of evidence and dialogue. After looking into the lore again, I have concluded that Marika did not tell Melina to sacrifice herself but Melina chose to burn the erdtree by her own decision which she made when we after seeing her mother(Marika) in her crucified state. Don't expect any GEQ stuff, that shit is left too vague.

First let’s look at what initially suggested that Marika gave Melina the purpose of burning the erdtree-

These lines of dialogue from Melina when we reach altus-

The dialogue after defeating Morgott-

These lines of dialogue suggests that Marika gave Melina the purpose of helping the tarnished become elden lord which would lead to Melina sacrificing herself. BUT there is another piece of dialogue that flips this perspective on its head-

This one after we speak with sabriri-

Melina straight up says that whatever she is doing is out of her own free will. Let’s list down all the relevant things that we know about her goals-

She wants to help the tarnished become elden lord even though she would have to sacrifice herself for it.

She does not want us to inherit the frenzied flame as then we would end up destroying the world which means that Melina does not want life to end.

Melina is doing this ‘of her own volition’ and ‘Regardless of mother’s(Marika’s) designs.’ The first line basically tells us that sacrificing herself is Melina’s own choice and the second line implies that burning the erdtree was not part of Marika’s design (at least originally). Will discuss this point further later in this post.

Melina’s purpose that was given by Marika is different from what she ends up doing i.e. Melina choosing to sacrifice herself was Melina’s choice not Marika’s.

Let’s refute the theory where Marika gave Melina the purpose of sacrificing herself-

The assumptions made in that theory (from what I remember) were-

Marika told Melina to sacrifice herself for the tarnished

Marika likely gave torrent to Melina to help her.

When Melina went back to the erdtree, Marika somehow reminded Melina of her purpose

Let’s debunk these one by one-

Marika told Melina to sacrifice herself: The dialogue I provided earlier pretty much confirms that Melina’s sacrifice was her own choice. If Maika really did want Melina to help her accomplish her goal then Melina would have been trying a whole lot harder. Marika’s goal in guiding the tarnished via grace is 1) Free Marika from godhood and 2) free the world of the golden order. If Marika really sent out Melina to help the tarnished then I feel Melina would have given her help to many more tarnished than just us. I do believe Marika has some bias when it come to whom she wants to free her (I believe that at the end she wanted to see Godfrey one last time) but ultimately what she wants is for anyone to come and kill her along with Radagon and elden beast ending the golden order. Therefore it would be more logical for her to have Melina go for as many tarnished as possible to increase the odds but as far as we are aware Melina will only serve the one torrent chooses. There are plenty of strong tarnished in the lore so logically Melina should have helped them out but she did not it seems. This assumption simply does not add up logically and Melina’s dialogue after shabriri does contradict this.

Marika likely gave torrent to Melina: From the little we get about torrent, we know that Miquella was likely his original owner based on the first dlc image. Marika could have given it to Miquella when he was little but by the time Marika shattered the elden ring Miquella was torrents owner. Therefore its more likely that Miquella gave torrent to Melina after the shattering (probably after the battle of Aeonia) so that the tarnished could kill Radahn and send his soul to Miquella. Maybe my theory here is not exactly perfect but the point is that Marika being the one to give torrent to Melina is highly unlikely.

Melina went back to the erdtree and Marika somehow reminded Melina of her purpose: Again the dialogue I gave earlier makes it clear that whatever purpose Marika gave to Melina is different from Melina choosing to sacrifice herself. I also doubt Marika could have communicated with Melina in the state we find her in, like neither her nor Radagon speak a word.

With all this in mind we have a few facts that are established-

Melina chose to sacrifice herself out of her own volition.

The purpose Marika gave Melina is not burning the erdtree but something else.

So now we are left with a few questions-

Why did Melina choose to burn the erdtree ‘Regardless of mother’s design’

What purpose did Marika give to Melina?

Why doesn’t Melina return after we cure ourselves of the frenzied flame?

Let’s answer these one by one

Why did Melina choose to burn the erdtree ‘Regardless of mother’s design’?

To answer this, we must first see what Melina must have witnessed at Leyndell. She said that she was born at the foot of the erdtree and she is summonable for Morgott which heavily implies that she went inside the erdtree somehow. What did she see inside the erdtree? Her mother crucified in a state where she can’t be put to rest. Now we must ask, how does Melina feel about Marika? We don’t get much but the minor erdtree incantation is stated to be a ‘secret incantation of Queen Marika’ and Melina also uses this. For Melina to know how to use this incantation, she must have learned it from Marika as its her ‘secret incantation’. This implies that Marika taught Melina her secret incantation which means they must have been close. With all this in mind, we get a clear picture- Melina, wanting to ascertain her purpose. goes to her birthplace, the erdtree. Upon entering the erdtree she is met with the sight of her mother, who was very close to her, crucified. This would naturally shake her. After recovering from the shock she is reminded of one of the many conversations she had with Marika, in this one Marika talked about how the flame of the forge possessed the power to burn the erdtree and destroy it(along with the destined death stuff which could have happened here or maybe in another conversation). Now determined to free her mother from her state and finally put her to rest, she goes on another journey to burn the erdtree by sacrificing her life, all for the sake of freeing her mother. She would go against what Marika had designed for the order, which she later came to regret.

What purpose did Marika give to Melina?

This is purely up to speculation but let’s go about it logically. All the stuff with torrent is likely related with Miquella so we can rule that out. Melina serving as kindling was her own choice as I have already explained so we can rule that out as well. Now what I am going to say next will be based on my Messmer theory which you can read here-

TLDR of that post is Messmer was sealed after the night of the black knives by Marika in order to protect his life, as the base serpent got revealed somehow to the public.

Melina is implied to be Messmer’s sister so I can make the connection of her wanting to protect Messmer also applying to Melina. With all this in mind here is my theory. Before Marika shattered the Elden ring she gave Melina her purpose, to avoid all conflict and live. Years later she started doubting that Marika would give her a purpose so simple and, in a way, meaningless. Thus, she decides to venture to the erdtree. This theory answers all the questions I had about Melina’s behaviour. Why does she seemingly try so little to get an elden lord? That was not what her purpose was hence she would not try very hard. Why would she forget such an important thing? She did not forget it; she simply doubted her memory. This theory makes complete logical sense to me so I would be interested if anyone can poke a hole into this.

Why doesn’t Melina return after we cure ourselves of the frenzied flame?

There are 2 explainations to this. 1) She does not even know that we did cure ourselves. 2) Maybe she just wanted to be her mom’s saviour in a way and we took that away from her so she is pissed or maybe she just kept doing what Marika told her to do, live and forget about us.

Summary of Melina’s story- Before shattering the elden ring, Marika sent Melina away with the purpose of staying away from all the wars and to survive. This fits in with my Messmer take. After the battle of Aeonia, Miquella gave torrent to Melina so that torrent could choose a tarnished strong enough to kill Radahn and send him to the shadow realm. After a long period of time Melina starts to doubt that surviving was the purpose Marika gave her so she decides to go on a journey to the erdtree to ascertain her purpose. When she reached the erdtree she saw her mother in her crucified husk of a state. Melina then decided that she would free her mother once and for all and serve as kindling to the flame of ruin. She talks with us after meeting shabriri as the frenzied flame would kill everything which is a big no-no to Melina. Marika did not have any communication with Melina when she got into the erdtree. Marika and Melina are implied to be close as Melina uses the minor erdtree incantation which is a ’secret incantation of Queen Marika’ so its likely that Marika talked about the forge and the order of the erdtree with Melina which explains how Melina knew exactly what to do to burn the erdtree and why she thought that burning the erdtree might go against Marika’s design. She would only say ‘Regardless of my mother’s design’ if what she was doing went against what Marika had talked to her about.  Melina chose to oppose what her mother wants her to do (Marika wants her to live) to finally put Marika to rest even if it means sacrificing her own life.

[blender2902]

INTRODUCING THE CLEANROT KNIGHT FINLAY OF THE DLC

This perfumer right over here. This guy, in search of aromatics according to his perfume bottle-

Decided to venture into the death knight catacombs and place a stake of his queen along the way –

Placed another stake right before jori and somehow went past him-

Went deeper into the abyssal woods and went past a bunch of ageing untouchable placing stakes along the way-

Then this guy finally ended up at the church where he met his end-

Here is the path this guy took-

What a legend am I right?

[blender2902]

MARIKA NEVER ABANDONED MESSMER! (IN DEFENCE OF MARIKA PART 2)

Well it would be more accurate to say that they were seeing each other regularly until the shattering. I know I am not the first person to say this but I have not seen anyone make a dedicated lore post establishing a solid timeline with proper evidence so, I shall be the one to do it. My goal is to prove that Marika had contact with Messmer until she shattered the Elden ring.

Let’s first establish a general timeline of the events that are going to be relevant-

We know from gaius’s remembrance and Rellana’s lore that Messmer’s crusade must have begun sometime after 2nd Liurnian wars. The crusade must have begun before Radagon became elden lord as he removed all colosseum practices in his era as per the ritual sword talisman description and in the lands of shadow we find the dueling shield which says that these practices somehow remained in the shadow realm.

Now, whether the crusade took place before or after Godfrey’s banishment is unclear. I have seen many claim that Messmer knows what a tarnished is so the crusade must have begun after his banishment but then you are assuming that Marika abandoned Messmer as soon as she sent him there. If you believe that the YOU ARE DEAD WRONG! Two item descriptions refute this theory completely-

Black Knight Andreas spirit ash-

Focus on the line I have underlined, ‘flight from the Erdtree’. This description is straight up saying that during the crusade Messmer did go back home but then he was chased away

Don’t try to argue that the flight was the beginning of the crusade as it was commemorated which means that the crusade had the support of the erdtree at its beginning.

This means that the flight must have happened after the crusade began.

To further solidify this, the stone tablets at the specimen storehouse and the queen’s bedchambers are the exact same-

This is not a case of reused assets because these tablets are found nowhere else in the base game to my knowledge. Messmer must have brought these to Marika by himself. This also disproves the assumption that Marika wanted Messmer to be forgotten, since if she really did want that, she would have destroyed those stone tablets as well. Why does Marika want these tablets? Well, the answer doesn’t really matter but my personal headcannon is that Messmer found out that the jar innards are still alive and he told Marika so she started doing research in an attempt to cure them but it seems she was unsuccessful. Anyhow, what matters is that Messmer did return to her.

Here is how the timeline looks like now-

So now we know that the crusade must have started around the time Godfrey was banished but we still don’t know when the Messmer was sealed in the lands of shadow. Thus, we must look at another piece of lore from the dlc, the death knights of Godwyn. From what I have seen most people just ignore this part of the dlc lore, which is a shame, because this fundamentally changes our understanding of the timeline. The death knight armour says-

“Cadaver Surrogate” means a substitute for the corpse itself. What is this substitute? It must be what these death knights are guarding.

We don’t see this face in any other catacombs both in the dlc and in the base game. We find one of these faces in stormveil castle. Rogier straight up calls that thing a corpse-

All hints point towards those faces being the “Cadaver Surrogate.” This leads me to believe that the knights did not get to the realm of shadow through some ‘deathroot bulshit’ and got to the realm of shadow using those faces because these knights went there to specifically search for these. If they were transported to them, then it would make no sense to say that they went to search for them. Now, let’s look at some interesting enemies we find in these catacombs.

These guys belong to Messmer’s army. The black knights are right behind the fire knights when it comes to position in the army so it doesn’t make much sense that they would be here without orders. The shield those little guys drop literally says they are loyal to Messmer which means he must have ordered them-

We can argue that these guys are here just to protect the spirit ashes of Andreas and Huw respectively but there is one detail that goes against that, this stake of Marika here which is right before the Death knight boss-

Who could have placed this here? It must have been Messmer’s soldiers as I do not think the death knights would carry these around. Therefore, this heavily implies that Messmer sent these guys here to protect the death knights. The fact that these guys only appear in death knight catacombs but do not in any other mini dungeon further proves that. Now comes the question, why would Messmer send these guys here? His mission is to purge the hornsent not to help the death knights out right? Well, the only way we can make sense of this jumble is if Marika was the one to order Messmer to guard these knights. Remember, after Godwyn’s death, Marika is through with the golden order and has lost all faith in it. The golden order fanatics that hunt those who live in death use fundamentalist incantations which were created by Radagon not Marika which implies the stigma against them was Radagon’s doing not Marika’s. Therefore, it is well within Marika’s character to help these death knights out and send them to the shadow realm. Whether she was the one who came up with the idea of the “Cadaver Surrogate” I am not sure but that does not matter. What matters is that Marika let the death knights go to the shadow realm to accomplish their mission and asked Messmer to protect them. She might have thought that the death knights could revive Godwyn but that is a discussion for another day.

Even if you want to argue that the death knights placed this here, that still implies that Marika sent these guys there which means the Lands of shadow was not sealed yet.

This means that Marika had contact with Messmer AFTER THE NIGHT OF THE BLACK KNIVES which means Messmer was sealed AFTER GODWYN’S DEATH.

Here is the finished timeline-

To clear up some confusion about the sealing of the shadow realm and the timeline-

The shadow realm had two things happen to it-

The shadow land was veiled (the place was hidden but traveling there was possible): During Marika’s ascension to godhood she veiled the lands BUT THERE WAS STILL A WAY TO TRAVEL BETWEEN THE LAND OF SHADOWS AND THE LANDS BETWEEN which likely only she could access. The veiling must have happened before Messmer’s crusade because in the story trailer we see that Messmer is assaulting Belurat when the lands of shadow is veiled. Why do I think the place was veiled at Marika’s ascension? It is heavily implied that the Scadutree is responsible for the veil and the Scadutree avatar’s remembrance says-

The Scadutree is called the shadow of the Erdtree which along with the line from the story trailer ‘gold arose and shadow too was born’ implies that when the erdtree was born so too was the scadutree.

2. The shadow lands were sealed (all forms of travel were cut off): This, as I have proven in this post, happened after the knight of the black knives.

Many people have this notion that Marika shattered the Elden ring immediately after Godwyn died but according to Rogier’s dialogue, there was a period of time between the shattering and the night of the black knives. Messmer was sealed during this time.

Now there are several justifiable reasons I could give to Marika for sealing Messmer away but there is one that is supported the most. Messmer was sealed because in one of his visits the base serpent revealed itself somehow which caused the people to turn on him. Fearing for Messmer’s life, especially after losing Godwyn, she sealed him in the shadow realm where he would be safe.

Here is the evidence pointing towards this-

Let’s look at Andreas’s description again

Look at the part I underlined in yellow, Andreas somehow learned of Messmer’s serpentine nature. This serpentine nature has to be the base serpent and not the winged serpents for 2 reasons- 1) the winged serpents are visible on messmer at all times and 2) the winged serpents are depicted on the serpent crest shield so they must have been common knowledge. This implies that the base serpent was somehow able to reveal itself despite Marika’s seal

2. The Erdtree society hated serpents even before the crusade as we learn from the duelist helm description-

These colosseums existed during Godfrey’s era, when Messmer was living at Leyndell, which implies Messmer was never too popular among the upper echelons to begin with due to his winged serpents. The colosseum practices were removed by Radagon but the hatred for serpents must have persisted.

3.Correct me if I am wrong on this but the base serpent in the original Japanese description is called ‘malevolent serpent’ not base serpent. Either way it is called a piece of shit in every item description which implies that it is not necessarily impure but inherently evil which would only make people hate it more.

All this combined with the details about the timeline makes the set of events clear to me - After the night of the black knives, Messmer visited his mom again. During this visit, the base serpent somehow revealed itself to the public. This caused a massive uproar due the widespread hatred of serpents and the nature of the base serpent. All this pressure on top of the fact that Godwyn died made Marika fear for Messmer’s life, so she sealed him away in the shadow realm where he would be safe. Due to the widespread scorn for Messmer, the people would remove all traces of him from history. This would make for another motive for Marika shattering the Elden ring. This is just my speculation, so you can have your interpretation of events but I believe this is supported the most by facts and implications.

Some counterpoints I want to refute-

Why do Messmer’s armies in the lands of shadow ask Marika for a sign to end the crusade? Would that not imply that she said nothing to Messmer? -

Well, Messmer could simply have chosen to keep that business a secret and continue the crusade. When his armies got mad, he let them decapitate Marika’s statues instead of telling them the truth as then his secret would be known by even more people causing more rebellions, which he did not want as that would result in him killing more of his comrades.

2.Why does Messmer’s armor say that Marika wanted him to take the blame for the crusade? -

If this is what you think the armor description says then I have a lot to tell you my friend.

Let’s look at what it is actually saying-

What does this tell us for a fact? It tells us that Marika wished for Messmer to purge the hornsent. Now for some reason people think the ‘direct thy maledictions, thine ire, and thy grief towards me alone’ part means Messmer took the blame for the crusade. With all due respect, this take is just terrible for many reasons-

Why would he need to take the blame for the crusade? The only reason I have seen people throw around is that the crusade ‘became too violent’ which is stupid for 2 reasons- 1) the Land of Shadows (LOS in short) was veiled during the crusade as we can see in the story trailer so how in the almighty name of fuck would anybody know it was violent? ’Oh someone could have travelled to LOS and seen the crusade.’ Marika is the only person capable of allowing travel between the realms, why would she allow a random noble to go to the LOS which is literally the place where all manners of death wash up. Why would any noble want to wander into the LOS anyway like they would know that is the place where the hornsent reside, you know the race of people racist to everyone without horns. 2) Even if it was violent why would the people of the erdtree mind it? Like they are fine with butchering omen babies and stick their horns on a cleaver and all the fucked up bulshit happening to albunaurics at volcano manor (we do see tortured albunaurics at Leynedell right before the entrance to the sewers). If they are fine with these practices, why would they take issue with the race of horned people who made the lives of all those living without horns miserable? It’s just stupid, Messmer would not have to take the blame for anything.

Let’s translate what those last lines mean into simple english-

"Direct thy maledictions, thine ire, and thy grief towards me alone" means:

"Send all your curses, anger, and sorrow to me only."

If we were to consider that Messmer is speaking to the erdtree people then the first two words make sense, curses and anger, but then comes sorrow. What would the erdtree people be sorrowful of? Nothing! They lose nothing from the purge of the hornsent. Don’t say that ‘Oh they lost their sons who became fire knights’ They did not, they shunned them after scorning Messmer as the fire knights were chased due to their allegiance to Messmer.

This means they had no reason for being sorrowful before shunning Messmer. It is logically impossible for Messmer to be addressing the erdtree people here.

Who is he addressing then? The hornsent. He is asking them to curse him and not Marika. Why is that? Well, there is the dialogue of the hornsent grandam cursing Marika with ‘an omen’ which has some heavy implications which I will have to elaborate on in a future post but nonetheless Messmer is talking to the hornsent here not the erdtree people according to logic and evidence.

3. Let’s question the fact that it is Messmer saying those lines. We can clearly see the hornsent still curse Marika to hell. We can also see that Messmer’s armies have started to resent her and cut the heads off of her statues, which is in a way cursing her. Even Messmer himself curses her when he dies due to the influence of the base serpent. Nobody besides the hornsent is cursing Messmer in the game. All this suggests that Marika wishes for Messmer and his armies to direct their curses and grievances towards her and not towards Messmer. She is the more significant character of the two so this is very much a valid interpretation. You can disagree with this third point but I fell the first two are quite solid.

Ok that should do it for this talking point. If you are somehow still convinced Messmer took the blame for the crusade from the erdtree people then I am willing to hear you out though I think that is simply impossible.

3. Why does Messmer curse Marika with his dying breath? This would imply that she abandoned him, right? –

No. He curses her due to the influence of the base serpent. Messmer knew why he was sealed and was perfectly fine with it. However, when the Elden Ring was shattered, it was seen as a sign of wrath according to the wrath from afar description.

This would make Messmer have doubts which would turn into resentment. This resentment however, is overshadowed by his loyalty and love towards his mother as shown by him having only love and reverence when he speaks of her; her statue in his room is the only one with its head intact. He only curses her when the base serpent takes over. That thing is stated to be evil in multiple item descriptions as I have said earlier so it is not much of a stretch to assume that it would amplify any negative feelings Messmer would have once it takes over. I have also seen some people say that in the Japanese lines Messmer says ‘I curse you’, but the kanji of you he says is the most respectful one which suggests that he was fighting the base serpent for control. I could be wrong about the kanji but either way, what we gather is that 1) Messmer shows nothing but sheer reverence towards Marika before letting the base serpent take over him and 2) that the base serpent is called evil in all item descriptions which implies that it amplifies all negative emotions. This means Messmer was fine with being sealed until the Elden ring was shattered which caused him to have some amount of resentment. When he removed the seal, these feelings were amplified and he cursed his mother.

Other Interpretations I would like to refute-

Marika always planned to abandon Messmer because he was a threat to the Erdtree in one way or another- Impossible, as he returned home and was sealed after the night of the black knives. If she saw him as a threat, he would have been sealed right from the get go.

Marika abandoned him because the crusade got too violent- I’ll copy/paste my points from earlier, 1) the LOS was veiled during the crusade as we can see in the story trailer so how in the almighty name of fuck would anybody know it was violent? ’Oh someone could have travelled to LOS and seen the crusade.’ Marika is the only person capable of allowing travel between the realms, why would she allow a random noble to go to the LOS which is literally the place where all manners of death wash up. Why would any noble want to wander into the LOS anyway like they would know that is the place where the hornsent reside, you know the race of people racist to everyone without horns. 2) Even if it was violent why would the people of the erdtree mind it? Like they are fine with butchering omen babies and stick their horns on a cleaver and all the fucked up bulshit happening to albunaurics at volcano manor (we do see tortured albunaurics at Leynedell right before the entrance to the sewers). If they are fine with these practices, why would they take issue with the race of horned people who made the lives of all those living without horns miserable?

And that is the end of my post. If you disagree with anything feel free to argue. Do present your arguments pointwise

[drenched-in-sunlight]

today i remember this headless shrine maiden (shaman) in Bonny Village & how you find the O' Mother gesture here

& i wonder... if it's Marika herself who told the sculptors to make her statues in Lands of Shadow headless.

so the Hornsent will be remind of what they've done to her Mother, her family, to tell them this is the vengeance of the headless shamans.

like sure, i see the logic in the Crusade army themselves defacing her statues out of despair, but at the same time... something about that interpretation doesn't seem right to me (some statues are very big and tall, if they could reach up there to destroy the head... why not just pull the whole thing down? Plus, despite there being so many statues, we find no traces of any ruined heads. None.

What’s more, they have no bracelets like other Marika statues, & the two braids are nearly identical in length).

I feel like all those statues have been headless from the start. And they are meant to represent all of Marika’s sisters and mothers who died.

with the Furnace Golem bearing the likeness of the Fell God to evoke fear in the Hornsent (Furnace Visage description), i honestly think these headless statues are also meant to evoke their sin, to tell them clearly this is their reckoning.

[blender2902]

To further support this theory, we find a stake of Marika right before Messmer

This stake is in perfect conditions as you can see. Interestingly we find a defaced statue right before Messmer's boss room

Why is it that only one of these is vandalised while the other is in perfect condition? Like you have to go past the stake of Marika to get to this statue so its pretty odd that it was left alone. This theory answers this pretty effectively.

[val-of-the-north]

The "Hornsent deserved it" sentiments make me lose my goddamn mind

Short answer: No they didn't.

Long answer: Oh my gooooooooooood can we NOT do this shit, please???

There are two underlying sentiments to this line of thinking.

The Hornsent hurt Marika's people, thus Marika did nothing wrong, therefore they deserved to die badly

The Hornsent hurt Marika's people + Midra and some others, Marika is still evil, but the Hornsent deserved to be destroyed

Both may even come to the extreme of "Messmer wasn't cruel enough" or some other nonsense in the same vein.

-

Number 1

To tackle number one, we need to remember a little thing called Elden Ring's base game. The Hornsent's jar ritual is undoubtedly abhorrent, that much is true. But I urge you to remember the things that happened during Marika's reign. She:

Murdered all of the Fire Giants but one, subjecting him to a fate similar to hers but worse, forced into labor confined on the mountain among the remains of his people and culture. She mocked him, to boot. All of this because they might have burnt the Erdtree.

Enslaved the Misbegotten from birth "or worse" because their species just so happened to have made contact with the Crucible.

Rewarded her own loyal Crucible Knights with scorn because of it too, as they didn't fit her current society that they fought to establish.

Made sure the Albinaurics were seen as lesser just because they were graceless, which influenced the way they were treated. She even had her Inquisition, run by Rykard, torture them in needlessly cruel manners, as they appear to be their main victims.

Just in general, she allowed Rykard to run a sadistic Inquisition to torture heretics to the Golden Order in the first place, and she saw nothing wrong with it or their practices.

She entombed the entire Great Caravan over a false rumor, which is the sole reason why the Flame of Frenzy was even a problem during her reign. This has also scarred the remainder of their people greatly.

Made the lives of all Omen a living hell either by cutting their horns just as they were born which often kills them, hunting them down in as cruel a way as possible by using their trauma and body parts against them, or throwing them in a sewer to fester with evil spirits hidden from view. She also used to shackle them, including her two children, just to make extra sure they wouldn't crawl out.

Shunned anyone who saw a vision of the Erdtree burning, regardless of who it was, and chased them away from their homes.

Literally allowed the belief that shorter people are somehow lesser, for apparently no reason at all (her most random discrimination decision tbh). This forces them to band together and take up honorless jobs just to get by, and in turn, people start to spread rumors of their inhuman practices, which are likely all untrue.

Had people literally work as slaves for the nobility just by virtue of "being born into obscurity", whatever that means. As well as other accounts of slavery like the Fallen Hawks (likely tied to the defeated soldiers of ancient Stormveil).

Likely endorsed viewing anyone without Grace as inferior beings, which includes the Tarnished that only exist because she divested them of it. She has done nothing to ease their discrimination (despite potentially seeing them as a future asset of sorts), as even the members of the Crusade are more than ready to kill us, like Fire Knight Queelign.

All of this was done in service to HER religion and order. Killing all the Fire Giants and burying the Nomadic Merchants alive? Oh, they could have ruined her age with those pesky flames of theirs.

Systematically oppressing Omen, Misbegotten, Albinaurics and the likes? Oh, they are impure creatures, unlike her people, blessed with the Grace of Gold, elevated from the rest. (Which is the exact same line of thinking as the Hornsent and their horns for crying out loud).

"Oh but the Hornsent stuffed her people into jars" yeah, and I am not arguing the contrary! It was a cruel, deranged practice, born of simple superstition that their victims would be reborn as "good people". But Marika's answer if you don't fit her vision of the world is to either get rid of you and your people through extermination, by literally hounding you from your rightful home, or by enslaving you.

Both sides are genuinely awful... but there's only one side that people are justifying, and it sure as hell isn't the Hornsent.

Marika's backstory is meant to make her less a god, which is all we have ever known her to be before the DLC, and more a human, which is what she once was. It gives her complexity as a character, it's meant to be the catalyst from which we learn why she took the path that she took. It is absolutely not meant to make us go "holy shit guys, Marika was the good guy all along???", because what she brought upon this world through her burning desire for vengeance has ruined it irreparably, and ruined the lives of most of the creatures who inhabit it.

This includes her ruthless, honorless, pointless Crusade against the Hornsent. Sure, it was her own son that started it, but it was for her sake. It was her who allowed him to wage it, he had her full support... until the thing turned to such a slaughter-fest that even she could not associate with it anymore due to how appalling it all was. And what better way to do that than to seal her own son away to wage war endlessly? And not just because his actions made her look bad, but also for the same crippling fear and prejudice that saw her kill all Fire Giants but one and scar the Great Caravan.

Gratuitous violence across the board, and for what?

(I want to make it absolutely clear that I don't mean you can't like Marika now. In fact, I'd say the DLC made her much more of an interesting character to me as well. I just cannot fathom seeing the entirety of Elden Ring and coming out thinking "wow Marika was the good guy" because she isn't. Heck, coming out thinking that she'd be disgusted with what her grandson Godrick is doing with grafting as if she isn't the queen of having zero empathy for those who are graceless or aren't her family, which the Tarnished he grafts are neither. She'd probably be very proud if anything. Marika is a monster. She became one the moment she obtained godhood, because no milestone would quell her. She did all the wrongs, so take this whole section as a refresher in case you had forgotten)

-

Number 2

Now, to tackle number 2... this one seemingly has more nuance, but falls for the tried and true pitfall of "the many must pay for the crimes of the few" which is exactly where it rots and collapses onto itself.

Apparently, because of the perpetrators of the Jar Rituals, ALL Hornsent, INDISCRIMINATELY, deserve to be destroyed. They all, each and every single one, deserve the Crusade and the absolute pointless ruin that it brought them. From the children, to the ones who were friends with people with no horns, to the ones who found their own practices grotesque, to the ones that weren't even tied to the Tower's religion and were just simply living their lives.

They ALL, EQUALLY deserve to be burned, to have their cities destroyed, to have their lives ruined. All of them. Ok.

Number 2 works with the assumption that the Hornsent are some sort of hive mind. Some sort of all-encompassing religious order who believes in their superiority. But that's just the Tower's religion. Hornsent are a people. And people are individuals, with their own opinions, their own lives. In fact, from the perspective of the average Hornsent citizen, they were attacked out of nowhere as they were living in peace, which likely means they weren't even at war with Marika before this event.

People also have the assumption that all of the Hornsent were benefiting from their society, which is blatantly false. In fact, outside the treatment of the Shamans, the people that we know the Hornsent have hurt the most are their fellow Hornsent. We know of quite a few of them suffering at the hands of their kin BECAUSE of their religious and cultural practices.

Being Hornsent isn't a "free from mistreatment" card. If anything, the large Gaols where they were imprisoned were built specifically to house them. The main prisoners we find in large numbers are commoners, the same types as the ones scavenging the ruins of their ravaged towns. They are often seen eating maggots off the floor and cowering in fear. All of them were Hornsent too, locked away for who knows what crime. Could have been big and important, small and insignificant, or even just a failure to do something properly (there's precedent), point is, it's clear the Hornsent weren't having a good time in there.

The jar rituals were used mainly as punishment for the imprisoned Hornsent themselves, as a way to have them become "good people". This was just as horrifying for the Hornsent prisoners as it was for the Shamans I assume. Look how terrified this Hornsent seemed at the prospect of sharing that fate. This is the reason why they chopped up Shamans in the first place, as ritual ingredients for a punishment meant primarily for their kin.

And there were more Hornsent who suffered because of the leading ideology. Curseblades were once shunned because they failed to become tutelary deities, and so they were thrown in the Jar Gaols. They were only let out so they could use their expertise and flowing movements to defend their homeland when Messmer invaded, otherwise they'd be rotting with the Innard Shamans and the other Hornsent prisoners the way Labirith is.

It's also worth pointing out that Midra's Mense was filled with Hornsent attendants who sided with their sagely master regardless of his lack of horns and what the Inquisition believed of him. If we were to operate with reasoning number 2, they too would deserve to be murdered in the Crusade because they just so happened to be Hornsent. Because ALL Hornsent deserve extermination for what happened to the Shamans.

And we also know that the Hornsent can find what happens in Bonny Village revolting. In fact, we know that from someone who was born and raised there.

This sounds nothing like someone who thought any of that was ok. So who is to say other Hornsent weren't like this too, especially those who DIDN'T live in Bonny Village? Those who risked being stuffed into those same jars themselves? We make waaaay too many assumptions about an entire race, and that in itself is foolish enough.

If there's someone to blame, it's the Tower's Inquisition. They are the religious order that governs the Hornsent. They have all the power in their society... and yet, would you look at that? Enir-Ilim, their sanctum, the one place where those calling the shots reside, is completely untouched. And what about Bonny, the most structurally fine Hornsent settlement, when you'd expect it to be a black stain of char by now. But nope, no sign of Messmer activity and the Greater Potentates are just running around naked, doing their thing as usual.

The Crusade isn't even a good tool of vengeance, the only ones suffering are the civilians who were likely the ones with a higher risk of ritual jar punishment anyway. If this isn't proof enough that the Crusade is a completely petty, useless revenge war that accomplishes nothing I don't know what else to say. I'll just leave with what the people taking part in it were taking pride in doing.

These are people who, without a shadow of a doubt, would have chopped up most of the oppressed groups described earlier and stuffed them into jars if Marika had told them to do so. (Heck, something like this was being done to the Albinaurics already, as we have seen previously...)

They have zero moral superiority, their deranged zealotry is the only reason they act in the first place. Not to mention that they have no connection to Marika's struggles or past, nor were they informed of them I bet. It's likely only Messmer truly knows the reason for the Crusade, and that's only because he is her child and shoulders all the blame onto himself.

"Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death" is LITERALLY their motto. Do you really think they stopped at the Hornsent? They were just their main target, but judging by the way all of Messmer's soldiers, including Queelign and the other Fire Knights, and even HE HIMSELF, attack us on sight for the simple fact we are Tarnished and lack Grace in our eyes, I have no doubt in my mind these people were just rounding up and killing anyone who didn't conform with the Golden Order.

THESE are the people who should be allowed to play judge, jury and executioner with the entire Hornsent race. And people will genuinely, with a straight face, tell you "That's right".

-

To conclude... I think I actually hate reasoning 2 more than reasoning 1 lol, despite not liking either at all. At least 1 is understandable. Marika is a very interesting character, one that we have known for a few years now. We have an attachment to her, heck, sentiments of her being some sort of misunderstood/rebellious figure were already there before the DLC. In that regard, I understand the emotional response, even though I still think it's a wrong mindset to have. I have at least some hope that it is purely in the realm of fiction because it's a beloved character, nothing more...

Reasoning 2, on the other hand, attempts to be nuanced, or at least pretends to be. In reality, all it peddles is the "an eye for an eye" mentality which is much too common irl as well. Not only that, but it deals in monoliths. All people belonging to a group or race are equally responsible for stuff they didn't even commit, stuff that could have even harmed them, because their leaders decided to commit crimes against another set of people. And don't get me wrong, there will be even commoners from that group or race that will agree with and celebrate that bad deed, but just as many will not, but will be either scared, powerless, already being punished for speaking up through physical violence or elaborate shunning, or currently protesting and doing something to hopefully ignite a change.

But that reasoning only exists to perpetuate cycles; of war, violence, and hate for the most part. And sadly, this mindset is very prevalent, a lot of people fail to see the issue with wanton violence as long as it's to stroke that lust for vengeance. And vengeance is a theme that Elden Ring criticizes multiple times in a row, even beyond the obvious horror of the Crusade.

[blender2902]

I heavily disagree with most of the stuff here so here's my response-

Now yes Marika is a war criminal but I don't like her getting slandered for things she didn't do. I do agree this sentiment of 'the hornsent deserved it' is pretty nuts but that doesn't mean I'll just let Marika get slandered for the wrong reasons. Hate her for the right reasons is what I am saying.

My response is based on the theories that 1) Radagon was taking control away from Marika when he became elden lord. The evidence for this is that after Radagon became elden lord Marika became pretty much inert for the rest of the story up till the shattering of the elden ring while Radagon is doing all sorts of stuff. 2)that Marika was planning on Godfrey returning to free her from godhood. 3) The nature of grace: Its left pretty vague how grace really works but I honestly don't think Marika can control who gets grace and who doesn't either by the broken directions of the two fingers or her own design which later backfired on her. The main evidence being Messmer and the omen enemies. If we look at the eyes of the omen they are golden heavily implying that they have grace. I don't see why she wouldn't just take grace away from them when she is having them be discriminated. Now Messmer has a seal of grace and unlike the iris of grace we find, its permanent. When Messmer breaks his seal his holy resistance gets down to zero. This to suggests to me that she can't control who gets grace but can grant a permanent seal of grace to hide the graceless. We can even argue that having grace or not doesn't mean much when it comes to discrimination as we the tarnished are given grace and guided by it but many npcs still don't like us and call us graceless in spite of that. Again this is left pretty vague but as long as there is ambiguity we can't determine stuff for sure but we can interpret it in a way that favours us.

Ok so first the points I agree with-

Misbegottens and omens- timeline wise these must have happened during Age of plenty when Marika was in control so she gets blamed for this.

Fire giants: She literally participated in this so yeah. Now I agree that genocide was too far but you are wording it like she had almost no reason to war with them and that the giants were chill when the fire giants literally have an entire history of being war criminals. I will get deeper into this later but don't get me wrong a war crime is a war crime and the last fire giant had it pretty bad but we must consider their history if we are to judge where the morality lies here.

The great caravan(merchants): This is probably her doing but I have a few doubts about it but for the sake of this response I'll put it on her.

The points I am not so sure on-

Pages: I have no idea at what point in the timeline these guys appeared. I don't remember seeing a single one in LOS so that could be a hint or it could simply be that none went there so idk.

Prophets: same thing I have zero idea when they started having visions. If it was during Radagon's time then yeah that's his fault but again idk.

Now to the disagreements:

Crucible knights: The crucible knights were never loyal to Marika. They were loyal to Godfrey. After he left the knights chose to do whatever they wanted. They were respected during the age of plenty because Godfrey was around but after Radagon took over he started removing all signs of Godfrey from the capital as seen from the colosseum practises being stopped so not much of a stretch to assume he would be responsible for the crucible knights being scorned.

Albunauric: This is what really made we want to respond to this. So lets see how and when the Albunaurics were discriminated against. The cuckoo knights in Liurnia who had nothing to do with Marika. And then comes Rykard who just so happens to have established volcano manor when Radagon took his place as second Elden lord. Before this there is no evidence of atrocities against the Albunaurics from the golden order. Everything points the blame towards Radagon and not Marika. In fact if anything it appears that she was kinda chill with the albunauric. Messmer is heavily implied to have lived in Leyndell before the crusade and he made friend with an albunauric, Gaius. I doubt Marika would not have known this as she seems to favour Messmer over other demigod as implied by the blessing of Marika description. This means she just let one of her children be friend with an Albunauric and have him be Messmer's chief in command without any hiccups. Now before you think 'She was planning to abandon both Gaius and Messmer in the shadow land' no she didn't. I will discuss this in my Messmer section. TLDR the albunaurics were all Radagon's doings.

Vulgar militia: The description you have provided imply that the small were scorned literally everywhere even outside of Marika's influence. It could simply be that the small were scorned even before Marika came along and she either just didn't care enough about them to stop it or she wanted to stay in the people's good graces so she let them do as they please. Also Malekith and Messmer seems to be chill with them so I doubt Marika would have started the discrimination. TLDR Highly unlikely she started it. It was probably a thing that started before her and she just didn't want to bother with them. You can blame her for not changing the sentiments against them but again its likely that the rumors started before she came into power and she probably came to believe it to a certain degree. Their weapons are serrated and I remember cut content where they had bear traps so I think there is certainly some truth to the rumours.

Endorsing the belief that anyone without grace is inferior: Now this is just up to interpretation but the order healing description 'The noble Goldmask lamented what had become of the hunters. How easy it is for learning and learnedness to be reduced to the ravings of fanatics; all the good and the great wanted, in their foolishness, was an absolute evil to contend with' implies to me that whatever the people choose to discriminate against is their own choice not what the gods tell them. The fact that npcs scorn us the player guided by grace is proof of that.

Messmer: Ok so with all due respect, I hate, Hate, HATE when people say she sealed Messmer away to wage endless war or that because she was scared of the serpent or because she didn't want her reputation be stained by the crusade being too, violent. Looking at the timeline and implications this is simply impossible to be true.Lets first establish some important things that are unfortunately not brought up much-

1 ) Black Knight commander Andreas description:  Though he remained a devout follower of Messmer after his flight from the Erdtree, he would rebel after learning of his liege's serpentine nature. His righteous stand was rewarded with imprisonment in an underground tomb. Lets focus on that first line 'flight from the erdtree' which implies that he was chased away.

2 )This flight could not have been the beginning of the crusade as it was commemorated by the serpent crest shield(A finely-made "redshield" featuring an engraving of a winged serpent. Excels at guarding against fire. Said to have been made to commemorate the beginnings of the crusade started by Messmer, son of Marika.) which implies that the crusade was supported. This pretty much confirms that Messmer went back and forth between Leyndell and the Lands of shadow during the early stages of the crusade so throw that theory that abandoning him was her plan out of the window.

3 )To further strengthen this argument the stone tablets in Marika's bedchambers is the same as the ones we find in shadow keep. This is not a case of reused assets as those models are never used anywhere else. Why are those stone tablets at Marika's bedchamber? My theory is that Messmers found out that the jar innards are still alive so went and told Marika about this. She then started doing research so that she could find find a way to cure the jar innards but it appears she failed. This also proves that her wanting to remove Messmer from history is not true at all because then she would have also removed the stone tablets but she didn't.

Also the claim that messmer was sealed because the crusade got too violent is so ??? Like we see in the story trailer that the lands of shadow is veiled so how could anybody have ever known that the crusade was violent? That reasoning is just nonsensical if you ask me especially considering that no one seemed to have any problems with the brutal practises that happened under the golden order.

Now why was Messmer chased away from home? Lets look at some clues-

1 )Andreas found out about Messmer's serpentine nature. This nature must have been the base serpent as the winged serpents are out at all times and are even depicted on multiple items. This means that Marika's seal likely weakened over time and the base serpent was able to show itself somehow.

2 )The serpent was hated during Godfrey's reign as we learn from the duellist helm.

3 )The fire knight armour description also seem imply that Messmer wasn't like all that much even before the crusade and eventually the upper echelons started to scorn him.

4 )Marika appears to have cared about him the most out of all demigods(Blessings of Marika were made just for his sake and Marika gave pretty much all of her effort into curing him) and Messmer has like the largest army in the golden order and they are all loyal to her. Its pretty stupid to want to weaken your own army intentionally and create a power vacuum.

With all these points in mind we get an answer- On one of Messmer's visits to Leyndell the base serpent revealed itself in front of the upper echelons/ public which led to him getting scorned by them and thus his flight. The fire knights chose to stay loyal to him which led to them getting scorned. Now the upper echelons are providing ample political pressure on Marika not to mention that Radagon was around at this point so he may have played a role too in the political pressure. All this lead to her sealing Messmer in the shadow realm and her fear mentioned in Messmer's description was not of what the base serpent would do to her reputation (becuz if that was the case then it would make zero sense to have messmer return at all) but the fear for Messmer's safety as even his loyal knights betrayed him after they found out about the base serpent so we can only imagine what the upper echelons would do.

Fire Giants: Not too proud about what I am about to say about them but the boss fight sucks so whatever. This is like the only war crime where we can argue that all the ones who were killed deserved it mainly because as far as I am aware no fire giant babies(trolls) were killed cuz they were ones doing the killing lol. The fire giants are stated to have fought the ice drakes and chase them away in the borealis ice breath description. Considering that there is only one ice drake left, the giants caused their extinction. The fire giants never even belonged to the mountaintops in the first place and they just invaded the place and drove the ones living there to extinction. They were even at war with the zamor warriors before the erdtree came along. Yes they were peaceful with the astrologers but again those guys were likely not very threatening to the fire giants and its probably just that the fell god doesn't see the moon as an enemy. Now the ice drakes must have been large in numbers to be the lords of the mountaintops which leads me to believe that all the fire giants must have worked together to defeat them thus driving them to extinction. So an argument can be made that all fire giants participated in the genocide of the ice drakes and were thus too much of a threat. What happened to the last fire giant was extreme as fuck tho so I wont defend that at all. Again I am interpreting the fire giants in a bad faith and I don't really like defending war crimes at all but I just needed to this out of my system lol.

'She would be proud of grafting'- I am sorry what?: In her dialogue she literally speaks about Godfrey and the tarnished very respectfully and she is the ones giving the guidance of grace out to the tarnished so that they can come and free her. She wanted them to go to the far away lands so they could get stronger. She would 100% be disgusted by grafting. This is just blatant mischaracterisation.

I also disagree that she made the world objectively worse like yeah you could say she was the catalyst for it but lets look at the actions she took during her age from an objective lens. 1) Fire giants were territorial war criminals so taking them out was pretty much a net positive (for the zamor warriors especially) 2) She seemingly left the hornsent in the shadow realm to do whatever they wanted to do and just went on her merry way. She removed them from the world without killing them for a time(it appears she just wanted to forget about them). A popular theory is that the crusade was a response to the omen curse. If you buy this theory then the crusade might have been an attempt to stop the omen curse. Now the morality is pretty complex so you can be the judge of that. 3) She also allowed the ancient dragons to become allies with her. 4) She personally went out to give blessings to all her subjects. Heading into the bad stuff she did in age of plenty- 1) subjugating omens and misbegottens but its important to mention that there were attempts to cure them. 2) becoming a tyrant and all the wars.3) the great caravan. Now the worst atrocities the GO committed (albunaurics and all) were done under Radagons reign and not during the age of plenty so I wont consider that. To me it appears she at first took out the ones who posed a real threat (Fire giants and hornsent) then she became a tyrant but still tried to cure the omens and misbegottens(I will discuss this later). Overall its either that the world stayed the same during the age of plenty or it was slightly improved. Eventually the world would go to shit but that was not her original intension at all plus the one making the world worse was Radagon not her. Marika's crimes extend only up to the hornsent. Nearly everythig after that was Radagon's doing. We can blame her for perpetuating this mess but its important to realise what her really intensions were.

OK done with the disagreements but I feel like I need to add a few more things to humanise her a bit more as those last few paragraphs are just so ??? to me.

She attempted to cure the misbegottens and omens at first but she failed: the perfumer travelling garb says 'The armor is said to belong to a traveling perfumer who is an associate of a healer. He is believed to be searching for new aromatics and flower gardens in order to treat those who are seen as impure, such as Misbegotten and Omen. ' These perfumers serve the golden order and thus Marika. This means that even though they triggered her ptsd she still tried to get rid of their curses(well the horns aren't curses per se but you know what I mean). There was a genuine attempt from her to integrate them into her society but those failed and we know how they were treated later.

She tried to help Malenia's curse: Now this is just speculation but we find Marika's soreseal at the bottom of the haligtree. The last time she used one of her seals was to seal Messmer's curse. So it appears that she tried to do the same for Malenia but it didn't work. If you buy into the theory that the soreseals are eyes then that just adds a whole other layer to this

She is heavily implied to have cared about the omen twins: There are 2 items which support this- the erdtree favour +1 found in sewer mohg's arena and the regal omen bairn. The erdtree favour description literally says that Marika personally handed these out to everyone in the age of plenty. Therefore she must have given these to the omen twins. The regal omen bairn implies to resemble Morgott must have been sewn by her as the golden needle description says that Radagon knew how to sew so its not much of a stretch to say Marika also knew. No I don't think its Godfrey doing this at all as he has 0 things that tie him to sewing and the erdtree description literally says that Marika handed these out personally. He definitely must have cared about them as his cutscene would imply. Now he is also proof of Marika's care for the omen bros. He literally went to the erdtree without any hesitation when Marika's grace called him back. Cut dialogue also implies that he loved her dearly and there is literally zero hints of him having any ill will against her. It would make no sense for him to lover her if she was hostile towards the omen bros. So she must have cared if Godfrey is still loyal to her at the end.

She was accepting of the ancient dragons in spite of the damage they caused: The ancient dragons caused massive damage to Leyndell yet she still allowed Godwyn to befriend them and make the dragon cult. She does have the capacity to forgive it seems

Final thoughts:-

I just feel like 99% of people mischaracterise Marika by a lot. on one side you got the people saying she did nothing wrong which is a massive disservice to her character. Then on the other side we the people who act like she is a literal demon who nerver cared about anyone when so many details provided in the game say otherwise which is just as much if not more of a disservice. I also think its a massive disservice to her character to act like her only complexity is her tragic past and that she instantly became a monster after becoming a god when there is so much going against that notion. I also really dislike the community's inability to think that she wanted to take down her own order. Like we literally get dialogue of her saying that she doubts the golden order and wanted to search its depths. What did she find? I think its either that the greater will was never there or that the 2 fingers/Metyr wanted her to be their eternal slave. Whatever it is she then planned to take down the golden order and rid the world of this cycle but then Radagon was called to take control. Treating her like monster throughout is not only heavily contradicted but also a massive disservice to her character. Yes she was responsible for a lot of discrimination directly and indirectly but again she can only be held directly responsible for omens and Misbegottens and the merchants too i guess. Its important to realise the dynamic between Marika and Radagon. Marika is the kindness of gold (as flawed as she may be) while Radagon is the order. This is seen by her attempts to cure the omens and misbegottens despite the trauma, her attempts to heal Malenia and Messmer's curses and the heavy implications of her caring for the omen twins show that. All we see from Radagon is that he and Miquella were closed but her only taught him offensive incantations and seemingly didn't at all with Malenia's curse. Even his love towards Rennala is questionable as he redesigned the moonlight greatsword and just threw it away. Its his seal that guards the erdtree putting the world in a state where things cannot continue just so his precious order could be preserved.

All in all Marika has done inexcusable actions (Omens, misbegottens (eventhough she tried to cure them) and the merchants etc), morally complex actions (Fire giants and hornsents, although the hornsent genocide involved children so its inexcusable unless you buy into the theory that they caused the omen curse in which case it comes back to morally complex) and good actions (accepting the ancient dragons even after their attack, did her best to heal Messmer and Malenia and tried to rid the world of the cycle she perpetuated(well I guess her means are morally questionable but again its all she could do)). Many of the worst atrocities under the golden order, specifically the Albunaurics and the general shit happening at volcano manor, were probably not sanctioned by her according to the timeline but by Radagon. If you ask me its very important to see her as a human being above all. Her story is about how she wanted to create a world without death after loosing everyone she cared about but in doing so she perpetuated the cycle of violence doing morally ambiguous and immoral things due to her past trauma and by the broken guidance of the two fingers in hopes of achieving an utopia. But as time passed she realised what she had done and decided to end the cycle once and for all so that the world could move on. Its completely fine to call her evil as she was responsible for like 3 genocides(1 of which was completely inexcusable) but we must understand the moral complexities behind all her actions and its even more important to know what she was responsible for and what she wasn't responsible for. Most important of all we must look at the her genuine acts of kindness and how she wanted to free the world of the cycle she started.

I apologise for the walls of text and if I came across as rude at any point. If you think any of my points are wrong I am more than willing to change my mind if your argument is good. Have a great rest of your life!