#but yeah i'm very interested in this whole purgatory idea and i hope arlecchino's story somehow intertwines with this cause i think it's fun

[torgawl]

once again finding a connection between the crimson moon, remuria and the concept of purging and i need to write it somewhere!!!

the golden troupe artifact set tells the story of remuria's golden age and its destruction, and there's two specific things that caught my eye. to kind of summarise remuria's history, before adding the bits i want to highlight:

after the "first era", likely the primordial one's, humanity began to desire things that belonged to celestia and attempted to break away from their fates, and so they were punished and buried underwater ("drowned all sin and arrogation"). for a long time, no true civilization was built until remus arrived on meropis. he conquered the other islands in the region and scylla, the “great dragon beneath the abyssal depths”, yielded to him.

he believed that so long as the "harmonious symphony of prosperity" continued to play, remuria would prosper forever. however, remuria was prophesied to face "the most utter destruction" and its people to return to the primordial sea. to escape the prophecy, remus aimed to eliminate all who might have brought destruction or who did not accept his rules, which were lochfolks, vishaps and barbarians.

hoping to make remuria's people escape the flood, he mixed the primordial water with an immortal stone to create a golden ichor (ichor is fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the god, according to greek mythology) who would contain the souls and minds of his people and placed this ichor full of souls into golems, and tried to replace the entire primordial water with his golden ichor.

continuing remuria's history, barbarians and vishaps eventually started a rebellion under the leadership of the dragon scylla against remus. remus eventually realized his wrongs while remuria was being destroyed and gave out his final orders, attempting to restore peace but it was already too late, the harmost boethius saw his retreat as a betrayal, stole the golden ichor and sealed the dragon scylla with it.

this is also very likely the reason behind petrichor's name, as seen in bravais' hidden study - a place that requires arkhium lumenite to unlock. arkhium, by the way, has a very interesting description. some say it can bring disaster and misfortune (fortuna - the goddess of fortune/luck and fate - is very associated with fontaine's story, for example with remus) and it's said to have "immense energetic potential" and the "power to shatter the shackles of the earth" while being considered "the key to the gate of salvation".

so what exactly is interesting about this? remuria and its people were curiously swept away by the abyss at the same time the dragon was sealed. yes, the abyss, also known as the void realm. there's not any further information about this, as far as i'm aware, but isn't it just really interesting that a civilization that challenged celestia (remus shared divine power with the harmosts, who were human) was swallowed by a realm that's currently incompatible with the others?

but moving on, the golden ichor was eventually corroded by the primordial sea and the survivors turned back into "barbarism and annihilation" until the hydro archon egeria appeared and settled the conflicts between tribes.

there's one specific moment during the conflict where the word "purged" (which means to cleanse or purify) is used to assign the fate of the tribes that were deemed unworthy, which led to the fall of the golden age. and it makes a lot of sense for a land where its history is tainted with sin.

now, if anyone is reading this you may be asking "okay, but where does the crimson moon relate to all this?" and i got you.

the place musicians used to play in remuria, which is now underwater, is described as a faded golden castle. there'es this one book found in fontaine called the fall of the faded castle which is very obviously about remuria. at the end of that book/poem, the faded castle is swallowed by glimmering waves and you know what happens next? a blood moon re-appears in the sky!!!

i don't think i'm crazy to think there's a significant connection between this crimson moon, which is also the name of the khaenri'ah dinasty before the cataclysm, and concepts of sin and purging. there's also different ways khaenri'ah and remuria intersect, even outside the whole arlecchino symbolism that i went through already, one of them is this relation to the abyss.

i also want to add here the last stanza from volume 2 of the book: "and all before his eyes would be turned into dust, the souls of his guests, and his own, included, as tribute to that dark, ancient world". this is where my research started diverging into other topics, which i would like to make another post about, because this reminds me a lot of albedo's character details. it includes this line: "the universe is heaven reversed, and the earth is a dream lost to time. this is dust, the most basic form of complex life". we all know rhinedottir (also known as gold), his creator, is a researcher from khaenri'ah and practitioner of the art of khemia. dust is also associated heavily with guizhong, who's associated a lot with flowers - a form of life. i won't go too deep on this right now but i thought this idea of a population returning to an almost elemental form was very interesting considering the theme of destruction and death. especially because if this dark and ancient world is the abyss, it's described as diametrically opposed and incompatible with the light realm - that of vishaps and dragons. but we know abyssal creatures possess elemental powers (which hilichurls also venerate, despite not venerating gods) and we know gold created some of these creatures like the rift wolves. maybe it's nothing but something about this, although a bit unrelated to the rest of the post, is interesting.

i was a reading a bit more on purgatory and purgatorius ignis (cleansing fire), which is a concept that existed even before the notion that purgatory itself was a third other-world domain, similar to heaven and hell, when i suddenly remembered dante's la divina commedia and decided to revisit the story a little. and i found something interesting as i was scrolling through the wikipedia page.

so, purgatory is the second part of la divina commedia, following inferno, and is an allegory telling of the climb of dante up the mount of purgatory, guided by the roman poet virgil. alegorically, purgatorio represents the penitent christian life (and christianity, as we know, is one of the core themes of fontaine's archon quests that arlecchino was a part of). while describing the climb dante focuses a lot on the nature of sin, examples of vice and virtue, as well as moral issues in politics and in the church. what's interesting, though, is that the poem posits the theory that all sins arise from love – either perverted love directed towards others' harm, or deficient love, or the disordered or excessive love of good things.

why is this interesting, you ask? let me add here a few quotes before i contextualise it:

"she is a god with no love left for her people, nor do they have any left for her" - dainsleif about the cryo archon, the tsaritsa

"her royal highness the tsaritsa is actually a gentle soul. too gentle, in fact, and that's why she had to harden herself. likewise, she declared war against the whole world only because she dreams of peace. and because she made an enemy of the world, i now have a friend in you." - childe about the tsaritsa

"everyone praises her for her kindness and benevolence, but they forget that love is also a form of sin. what if she's just trying to compensate for something?" - wanderer about the tsaritsa

the tsaritsa, the cryo archon and the person arlecchino is devoted to, is theorised and hinted multiples times to be the god of love. yes, the love that is said to be the origin of sin in la divina commedia. we can also draw parallels between the idea of perverted love talked about in the poem and the relationship between arlecchino and others, for instance the kids of the house of the hearth.

arlecchino's drip marketing including an excerpt where the scene goes from a gentle warm environment, seemingly mistaken as a loving family home full of innocent looking children, that quickly shifts into a somber and dark atmosphere under her authority - the children answering instantly, without hesitation and completely obedient -, is the perfect illustration of the duality within her character. there's an obvious exploitative and manipulative system making use of the house of the hearth and the orphans under its roof, where arlecchino (as the one running the orphanage) is the provider and the kids are brought up to be dependable and further dispatched as fatui soldiers when "potential" is recognised. and we can deduce that there's ways that their education is done from a very young age so it prevents or punishes any sort of dissent, something not hard to imagine when we know from freminet that arlecchino doesn't like when the kids cry or show emotional vulnerability, something she sees as weakness, for example. but if there's this dark side to her, there's also certain attitudes that demonstrate her care for the children or even her care for the world around her. arlecchino helping freminet get closure on his mother's death, the reformation of the house of the hearth (which we know used to have a much more punishitive and strict leader before arlecchino took over) or even her devotion and deep respect towards the tsaritsa are some examples of the way she shows care for other people. now, we can theorise that these good deeds directed towards the orphans under her care are very much purposeful to better manipulate them, but i think that's exactly what the notion of perverted love in la divina commedia tries to hint at.

besides this concept, there's something else that peaked my interest in dante's poem. dante pictures purgatory as an island at the antipodes of jerusalem, pushed up, in an otherwise empty sea, by the displacement caused by the fall of satan, which left him fixed at the central point of the earth. it's a cone-shaped island that has seven terraces on which souls are cleansed from the seven deadly sins or capital vices as they ascend. at the summit is the garden of eden, from where the souls, cleansed of evil tendencies and made perfect, are taken to heaven.

as we know, arlecchino is being introduced in fontaine, her homeland, and the idea of purgatory as an island in the sea leading its way to heaven caused by the fall of a sinful being sort of reminded me of remuria. remuria was the civilization in fontaine which directly preceded the previous hydro archon egeria's rule. its downfall occurred as a result of remus' attempt to avert its predicted destruction, and in particular, by his act of sharing his power and authority — reserved only for gods — with the four human harmosts he appointed to govern his cities. remuria eventually ended up being sunken into the abyss, devouring everything including the people and remus himself. we know there's still a region in fontaine's map that wasn't yet released, so how odd would it be that the last part to be revealed in fontaine might just be the land that was once sunken? after the little note about the samsara cycles near the tower of the narzissenkreuz ordo, which referenced a cycle called remuria, i would not be surprised at all. it's also particularly funny that fontaine is directly below celestia. yes, the floating island in the sky above teyvat which is the residence of the gods, the same gods that made remuria fall. as the contemporary philosophers of our time have said, that's sus!!!

i don't want to get too ahead of myself because i don't have a theory about what's going to happen or what role arlecchino will play exactly but i don't think it would be shocking if we got to know more about remuria during her release. and still in the purgatory idea, i think the angel of death (azreal) might be an interesting parallel to make with arlecchino. azrael's role is seen as benevolent, transporting souls after death. it fits perfectly well with the idea of purgatorius ignis, that signifies transformation. in different cultural and religious contexts, fire can also symbolize destruction renewal and even rebirth so i'm very very curious to see what arlecchino's story will be like.