#i love living in the space of sympathizing with ranni's goals but seeing her do something horrible to someone in order to achieve them

[blasphemousclaw]

my sister is playing elden ring for the first time and she's convinced godwyn was in on the night of the black knives. her reasoning is that it's strange that a demigod known for taking part in a war against dragons would put up so little of a fight and that he doesn't seem like he would approve of morgott and mohg being thrown down a well, that marika doing that might've been enough to make him lose faith in the golden order. I don't know if there's anything in game that particularly supports that interpretation but I do think it's a very interesting characterization, that godwyn would allow himself to be killed to bring about the end of something he once supported but now sees as fundamentally corrupt.

As far as I could find, there isn’t really any hard evidence for or against this theory, so my feelings on this theory are solely character-based… while I do think it would make Godwyn’s character interesting, I actually think it would make Ranni’s character less interesting. 

The crux of Ranni’s character for me is her being willing to go through with the unthinkable because she believes it necessary to achieve her goals; how the idea of being controlled by a higher power against her will is so intolerable to her that she would choose to condemn another person (her step-brother, someone who was by all accounts a rather decent person) to a horrific fate, a fate worse than death, in order to avoid it. Godwyn being a willing sacrifice instead of a victim takes some of the blame away from Ranni and makes her choice less morally difficult, which makes her choice less impactful to me. 

I do like the idea of Godwyn becoming more jaded about the Golden Order as time went on though… It’s implied that Godwyn was close with Miquella and Malenia, and both of them ended up ditching the Golden Order. And we don’t have any evidence of Godwyn interacting with the omen twins, but I love the hypothetical of Godwyn regretting not being able to save his twins brothers, so he later becomes protective of his twin brother and sister? 

But anyway in conclusion I don’t really like the theory that Godwyn sacrificed himself solely because of how it would affect Ranni’s character. Hoping we’ll get more Godwyn answers in the DLC though