Miquella Theory: The Blood of a Demigod
As I progress through my journey to catalogue the location of every Lily, Butterfly and any sort of connection to the young Demigod Miquella, I began noticing something very strange...
Whenever I encountered a Miquella's Lily, no matter where it may be, every-so often I noticed that there was an Arteria Leaf close by...
At first I brushed it off, didn't think much of it, but then it started happening more and more frequently to the point where it couldn't be just a coincidence.
This is Elden Ring afterall, and I'm on the hunt for Lily's to dig into the lore of a character with zero dialogue 😂 These Arteria Leaves being so close by definitely has some meaning.
So my first thought was of Mohg. The Omen bastard child of Queen Marika and kidnapper of Miquella. So that makes sense; wherever you find a Miquella's Lily an Arteria Leaf is looming close by, paralleling the twisted one-sided relationship between the two half-siblings.
Creepy... But lorewise very accurate.
But then I started thinking some more... And then it started to become more and more apparent to me that this goes even deeper than just Mohg.
Mohg proclaims himself as the so called "Lord of Blood" thanks to his connection to the Formless Mother, but what if he's not the only Demigod with a proficiency for blood? What if Miquella is a natural-born master at controlling the nature of blood?
The item description of the Arteria Leaf describes it as "exceedingly rare to find," Now we all have made jokes about how they are certainly not exceedingly rare to find lmao But this brings to mind only three other items that you can pick up that have the exact same description....
All items directly related to Miquella... All items that are exceedingly rare to find...
And then you dig deeper into Miquella's own lore and, what was it that they watered the sapling Haligtree with???? That's right.
Not to mention the existence of the Sacramental Buds where Miquella has literally managed to cultivate their own blood.
And then you read the item descriptions of the only two items that call for Sacramental Buds in order to craft:
So then this means that Miquella's blood potentially has the ability to both heal and bewitch.... Intriguing 🤔
But then I noticed something else about Miquella that supports this blood theory even more: On the statues depicting Miquella they all seem to have very pronounced veins on their arms, indicating that they have an abundance of blood within them (and also that they may be left handed 🤷)
So at this point, with all the evidence layed out- to say that Miquella has an unspoken affinity for blood and the arcane isn't too much of a stretch. But unfortunately thanks to Mohg and his Sanguine followers, Miquella's Divine and Holy blood has been twisted and fetishized for their own purposes.
And now, this next part might be a bit of a stretch, but another theory I have about Miquella is about the origins of Unalloyed Gold... Well, perhaps Unalloyed Gold is actually derived from Miquella's blood?
I say this because the only item in the game that can alleviate the build up of Scarlet Rot(aside from the Needle) is the Preserving Boluses that specifically requires Sacramental Buds to craft, instead of, oddly enough, a Miquella's Lily, which is apparently made of unalloyed gold... a red herring perhaps? 🤔
And then there's this one item in the game that caught my attention, that really makes me scratch my brain, and that item is the common Beast Blood:
If simple beast's blood has small specs of gold within it then what about the blood of a higher being? What about the blood of Miquella the Unalloyed?
The ichor of the eternally young Demigod.
(Also the fact that the Arteria Leaf is described as having a faint pulse makes me think that maybe it's Miquella's pulse, proving that in the cocoon they are indeed, not dead, but only dreaming, with their heart beating oh-so slowly in their slumber :)