#but we can extrapolate it based on the surrounding narrative stuff still around lothric and lorian

[blades-of-miquella]

Millicent being Malenia early on is an oddly common theory but has literally zero evidence behind it. They have different VAs at least as early as the CNT credits, which would have been super far back as Malenia's credited VA isn't Warner there,and Marland said her character was "looking for her mum." Millicent in eventparams is also named マレニアの娘. Likely our "dearest companion" status was just a result of Milli's quest, getting Malenia the dew needle followed by more talking and saving Miquella.

given they both had different VAs and there's evidence recording for elden ring went on for a very long time (per miquella's VA's linkedin stating she recorded with them for a year), i'm not sure if this is strong evidence of anything. the credits aren't exactly a great source of info because for example rico's VA is never credited across 1.00, CNT, or release, despite rico's voice lines being included in the CNT. the 1.00 credits itself uses placeholder names for the majority of the npcs.

it's also worth stating a lot of this earlier 1.00 lore is likely from the earliest drafts, before they even began voice recording.

on the topic of 1.00 text, the needle is specifically said to suppress malenia's rot. other 1.00-specific text doesn't attribute the rot to specifically malenia in the same way (rather that it's just an illness of legend) so to me that implies that the idea is to treat her with the needle and not millicent.

it's also worth pointing out again that millicent is the only character who happens to not have an entry in the designworks. this would not be the first character that this happened with either, as yura was initially conceptualized as guilbert (whose armor set was later given to jerren!).

but moreover malenia being millicent in an earlier version smooths over the rough areas of the questline, clarifies things like the bloom at the haligtree, contextualizes the "valkyrie's prosthetic" and the needle in particular more coherently. when combined with the fact that the player definitively did speak to malenia at some point, and had the opportunity to become closer to her.... the reason it's such a popular idea is because that it makes sense and addresses issues that arise with millicent's questline as presented.

fwiw i'm not taking this as like Literal Development History or Fact, hence my use of 'implication'. it's just that we know both miquella and malenia (and mohg, by proxy) went through a truly ridiculous amount of deep and lengthy rewrites throughout the course of development, in part to facilitate removing miquella's character, so naturally i would assume millicent was part of that.