merleetomlin6218: I wonder if the "God Hunt" was Marika capturing Gods so she could put them in her children to contain them, and when she was done, she cast aside the Gloam Eyed Queen to protect herself and her children from death ultimately keeping the gods inside them imprisoned.

I don't know, a little unhinged speculation.
GM-xk1nw: Ok f it, Patches was the gloam-eyed queen.
Anubiszz512zz: Another flower based area that sprang to mind was jarburg, which of course would relate to shaman village in other interesting ways
drezz1686: Anyone else just consider that the gate of divinity could've been red because of it being made of FLAYED bodies?
cwill14: This is an old write-up now, with some recent updates from the DLC.

Marika is the Gloam/Dusk-Eyed Queen.

- There's a red and black spike of death impaling Marika and keeping her in place when we find her at the end. Only Maliketh wields this power, and only he could even defeat a God like Marika. But he's so loyal to her, why would he?

- Maliketh "defeated" the Gloam/Dusk-Eyed Queen. We know Shadowbound hounds have to attack their former master if The Fingers feel like the Empyrean is acting against them. We play through this reality with Ranni's quest, and both she and Iji know Blaidd will go mad as she enacts her vision. How do they know this happens? They saw/heard of it happening to Maliketh and Marika already.

- 7 seemingly Grace-tinged faces adorn the aprons of the Godskin Nobles. There are 7 Walking Masoleums in the game. A ghostly NPC mentions in a prayer to Queen Marika that a local one contains "your unwanted child..." within. The corpses we find within are seemingly skinned.

- Only Marika would be able to guide Ranni to the location of the Rune of Death and how to use it for it to be stolen in the first place to forge the Black Knives. Remember, "Marika... is this what it is to sin?" "Why gull me..." Marika, after all, had only one use for Maliketh in the end, after the other work was done... a vessel to seal away Destined Death. And even then, she betrayed him.

- The Beast Eye is a purple, scratched up eye. It's Marika's eye from being defeated and imprisoned by her Shadowbound. No other Queen or Empyrean is "defeated" but not slain, as the text implies there except Marika. And who but her purpose-made hound could even stop her, a God? The one entity empowered enough by the Ring/Fingers to be able to do so should the need arise.

- Dominula Village is much like the Hinterlands and the Shaman Village. We find a skinning ritual and a Godskin Apostle there in Dominula. We learn that the "festival" is old and tacitly accepted by the Golden Order. The aesthetic of these villages is much the same, and they're intimately tied to Marika herself.

- Gideon gives us a boon in the form of a secret rite known only to him, Black Flame Protection. He is alleged to have peered into the will of Queen Marika and shuddered at the end that should not be.

- The Scadutree is of a dual nature. So is Queen Marika. When Gold arose, so too was Shadow born. Gold and Shadow exist as necessary contrasts to each other, yet in a God, in Marika, this duality exists in coalesce, or it did once.

- No other characters are named as Queen or Empyrean that aren't already accounted for/ruled out to be the GEQ, and by that I mean Melina, she was given purpose by her mother at the foot of the Erdtree and that means she is a daughter of Marika, not old enough to be the GEQ but possesses traits of both Marika and Radagon. Eye color and hair color are passed down traits we see in game. Well, sure enough, Melina shows us a purple/gloamy eye in one ending. Inherited trait from her mother, the Queen in Black. Marika's eyes are never shown to us to judge their color.

- Duskborn ending sees Godwyn rise to ascendancy and sees Death restored, with him as the Prince of Death itself. These titles aren't meaningless. Duskborn? The "Prince" of Death? Well, who would the Queen be? If Godwyn is Duskborn, and if he is a Prince, his mother would, of course, be associated with "Dusk" and be a Queen. And we know his mother is Queen Marika.

- Godwyn is referred to as the "Prince of Gold" in an item description. If a Prince of Death could have been a Prince of Gold, why couldn't his mother hold this potential as well, even necessarily so? We see from the Death Knights that Gold and Death can somehow synergize even still... Gold and Shadow, born at the same time, same as it ever was.

- Fia is hooded with a black cloak and comes from some other land. She also helps create Godwyn's Duskborn ending and is Death-aligned. We see Marika wearing black hooded garb in a statue where she also is holding the twins Miquella and Malenia. Her tattered clothing as we find her at the end is also black. She is also associated with the Nox/Numen race and the Black Knife Assassins that come from there as well.

- Statues of Marika in her crucified pose all show her with a flowing black cloth that wraps behind her in almost the exact same shape as the Godslayer Greatsword, which was the weapon or ritual sword of the GEQ/DEQ. You have to pivot the camera a bit to get a good view, but the shape is very similar. Coiled and then open, with one flap slightly longer than the other, same tip design on the Godslayer Greatsword. It's possible that she was propped up by the Hornsent culture and then part of the betrayal was killing other Gods in their pantheon, but what's maybe more possible is as Centered Tarnished pointed out, that Marika culled some other of her "unwanted" children after learning the truth of the broken Fingers and flawed foundations of her Order.

- Hewg prays to Queen Marika about his given task to craft a Godslaying weapon. Very interesting and specific task. Marika wants a God slain. He mentions "the sheer terror of Her..." regarding Marika. Godskins certainly take an interest in killing a God. Who was their leader? A "defeated" Queen who was once an Empyrean. Marika.

- Raging Wolf Vargram is a would-be Shadow. Wolf imagery is on his armor. He wields the Godslayer Greatsword. The weapon art is "The Queen's Black Flame", of course. A statue of Marika exists in Farum Azula, depicting her with three wolves.

- Marika learned the secrets of the Golden Order and realized her children would "amount only to sacrifices" as she instructed them. She knew the Erdtree was a soul parasite, and by sealing Death away, she weakened the Erdtree over time. She also had Godwyn buried at the roots of it, knowing that he would grow and overtake them, choking the Erdtree further. As he was, Godwyn was an "unwanted" child since he embodied the Golden Order, and she was a prisoner to it. He would end up much like Miquella would, a caged divinity of some kind. She was likely opposed to the Erdtree and Greater Will/Fingers for a long time, weaving plots in secret until the Shattering. She realized, only too late, that ultimate power has a way of becoming a curse when the truth of the nature of it all is finally revealed.

Just as Marika shined so brightly with her Golden Order, another aspect of her was as deep as the abyss and as dark as any shadow.
AkioJunichiro: The tail of godskin duo looks like the tail of lampreys in the finger ruins
Minion_5516: We are in the absolute peak of Elden Ring lore rn
Chromacyy: Great theory!
I also love the idea of the Gloam-eyed Queen being one of Marikas siblings - a rival empyrean as you said. People speculate Messmer & Melina are children of the GEQ and that Marika took them after defeating her early on, Just to use and discard them as needed. I do wish we got more information about Melina in the DLC
concretephill8509: Hear me out....
What If : The Festival is meant to end with a death... but there is no longer death, so they dance maddeningly endlessly
mattb6616: im really glad elden ring content creators are finally getting around to this angle. I really think, more than any other radical re-interpretation theory, this most perfectly explains Marika's inscrutable motivations and relations with Maliketh, Melina, Dominula, snakes, etc.

The only other Empyrean shadow reflects his partner, he's granted a cold-infused sword even though he doesn't personally like the cold because Ranni is an empyrean connected to the cold dark moon. Marika's shadow is named Death of the Demigods. He's in all-black armor and wields a sword infused with Death. It just makes sense to me that he's actually the Gloam-Eyed Queen's shadow, and that she went against the intent of her Fingers, causing Maliketh to turn baleful, attack her directly, and bring her to heel. This is why Marika is so bitter towards him and why her only use of him was to seal away Death for later so it could be stolen away and used again. It just makes sense.

Similarly, this really cleans up her whole plot with Hewg about forging a weapon to kill a god (her body, which is enslaved by the Elden Beast). She's aware that "godhood is a prison" as was made explicit in the DLC, and didn't want to be a part of the system, being so prideful she thought she could forge her way into it without being obedient to outside forces. She was forced into it, though, so she had a millenias-long plot to escape.

The Melina thing is easily explained by using Millicent and her sisters as an analogy. She's a separate self, a bunshin/wakemi, an "offshoot" of Marika. A daughter but of a single parent, not even in the Marika/Radagon sense but literally just Marika.
BrassPetals3Voices: A few other tells: the assasins of the round table hold, in particular the confessor assassin Crepus whose name derives from crepuscular: the dim hours of twilight (gloam) and dawn. The formless serpent deadly poison assassins. The scorpion rot blade and other items carried by confessor Rileigh. The shield of the guilty, and Marika's own children who were born from gloam as much as from gold. Miquella and Trina, a weaker version of their mother - Trina being sleep instead of death. The colors are deeply significant and follow the wheel: Marika by day, but at night she is GEQ. It was always there.
TheBigHatLegion: "Honey, knock out the kids and sweep the booze bottles off the table, Zayf put out a new video!"
TheMuzca: I agree with EVERYTHING in this theory.

Crunchy's last video, that came out BEFORE the DLC, touches on this theory as well, recommend the watch.
itzamedio5427: What I find interesting is the androgynous nature of the grandmother who seems to have no breasts, as well as Marika in the dlc trailer.

Perhaps the shaman themselves were a race of beings that had merged male and female together into the alchemical Rebis, and thus were sought by the hornsent for this very ability.

The ability to merge the flesh (and spirit?) of two into a singular whole.
papanurgle8393: I like the "Marika was a originally a jar" theory where this is concerned. She acted as the main Numen "body" of the Jar contents we sometimes run into.

Both Radagon and GEQ were other people/beings blended in with her which she discarded as aspects of her conjoined self (like Miquella casting off St.Trina) while following the ritual for god-hood.

She achieved apotheosis and those pieces of her survived as distinct beings. Radagon longed to become one with her again, while the GEQ did not...
RJKY6676: Marika has a back braid in her statues.

Right braid, back braid, and cut left braid.

Same as Dominula Celebrants.
HalfRedux: Keep em coming
I'll keep watching.
Emone11701: I think the Gloam Eyed Queen is Melina, who is the divested part of Marika. She wiped Melina's mind so that she would meet the tarnished and lead them to kill her. If we follow the Frenzied Flame ending, Marika's divested portion (Melina) would then have her memories restored, recalling that she is the GEQ and sending her after us since she was likely meant to die, sacrificing herself and killing herself to save the world, destroy death and put everything back into order from before the Greater Will came into power which would save the world from the cycle that had been put forth since the GW appeared in their world.

I'd go as far to say that Marika was always the hero of the world, destined to sacrifice herself and loved ones for the greater good of all life, leaving her friends and loved ones behind, but recognizing this was the only way she could save the world.
pilebunker420: also the gloam eyed queen was not really motherly. the virgin abductors are inspired on her, and what the lore on the items suggest is that she kidnaped children, cradled them in the white skin cloth to apostles and then became nobles. that's why there's a noble defending a amniotic sac in mt gleimir.
Misha-lt9vy: A fun obvious fact that I’m surprised isn’t getting talked about enough - the shape of Marika’s rune is also the same as the shape of the light at the divine gate. It also isn’t just that, and the shape of Marika’s crucifixion - it is also the shape of sap flowing down from a wound in the tree. It’s a symbol of plenty just as much as it is a symbol of punishment. A symbol of divine ascension as much as it is a symbol of imprisonment.
Gigawolf1: There are two main ways I see Marika & the GEQ's relationship going:

1: Melina is the GEQ, and she was born during the early days when Marika was working for the Hornsent. One of the things put into Marika's jar/Crucible was the power of the GEQ, which she either wielded on her own or needed a child who had that power. This also assumes that the Hornsent shoved all the other god/cursed bits they could into Marika, and that her children inheriting them is because they're emerging from within her
2: A rival Empyrean was the GEQ, and Marika had to/chose to consume the others in order to become a full God. This was part of Marika's betrayal, as they would've known one another and suffered similar tortures
danieldirocco8282: This makes the timeline and the story cinematic make much more sense! Honestly, why is the sky purple in the trailer, why is everyone skinned on the gate of divinity? The only hitch is the whole 'Maliketh defeating her' side of things, that becomes more confusing if Marika is the GEQ. Still, I think you're definitely on to something!
Stratashpere: Isn't Jar-Burg also a village with a lot of flowers as well? Maybe younger and so lets plentiful, but the flowers are a main aspect of Jar-Burg
Dioptase26: Are we ever told explicitly that Marika was an emperyan? It could be Marika as an emperyan was called the gloam eye queen, then once ascended rebranded.

Aug 30 2024

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