#it's hard to single out a 'different archon' i think venti is connected somehow to traveller's original identity besides the fact he's

[torgawl]

okay, i was reading "the pale princess and the six pygmies" and this book really consolidated my belief that paimon is a seelie and that the traveller and their abyss twin are shade of phanes, more specifically traveller being the shade of life. i swear, it feels so right!!!

the description of the people from the moonlight forest sounds oddly familiar to a little flying lavender melon we know of. their monarch (the pale princess) and her people are symbolically very tied to the moon, much like paimon. i'm not trying to say paimon is the pale princess, but there's a lot of similarities between this story and the liyue tales about seelies seen in "records of jueyun".

seelies are known to be remnants of a bygone race that once held beautiful forms (common characteristic between the moonlight kingdom's people and seelie ancestors) and immense wisdom which they used to guide mankind; travelling alongside them and teaching them languages (as paimon does to traveller) and philosophies of nature.

but more interesting, the ancestor of the seelie from the liyue tale is said to have once met a traveler from afar, whom they swore an oath of union with. something that was witnessed by the three moon sisters. thirty days after the union, a calamity struck; the seelie and their lover fled into exile, but the disaster eventually caught up with them. as punishment, they were separated, and their memories were wiped. the seelie and the moon sisters' previous form, voice, and wisdom were then lost, leading them to offer only small treasures to those willing to follow them.

this tragic ending for the seelie ancestor is actually a bit similar to the end of pale princess' story, in which the pale princess and her people are cursed by the night mother to linger forever in a point between life and death. the pale princess also ends up separated from her lover (who's a prince of the kingdom of light from the other side of the world, someone who can calso classify as a traveller from afar), who dies by the ends of the pygmies that betray them. but the night mother also proclaims a prophecy: her greatest foe shall descend in thousands of years. he who wields a sword that heralds the dawn and wears armor that can reflect the shining sunlight will destroy her kingdom and bring the prince back to life. the princess will then be free from her eternal torment. i will comment more on this prophecy later on but for that to make sense, i need to contextualise something else.

do you know how the elemental gemstones are named after hindu deities? the hydro gemstone is called varunada lazurite, after the deity varuna. remember nara varuna, the golden nara who aided the aranaras during a calamity hundreds of years ago? yeah!!! so varuna is actually a hindu god associated with the sky, oceans and water and until this point everything fits perfectly with the hydro archon which isn't weird for the hydro stone, but there's a catch.

varuna often appears twinned with another hindu god, mitra. in the rigveda, the oldest vedic text, mitra is mostly indistinguishable from varuna, together with whom mitra forms a dvandva pair and it has essentially the same characteristics as varuna alone (doesn't that sounds like twins?). mitra-varuna are considered protectors of the righteous order of rta, the principle of natural order which regulates the operation of the universe and everything within it. now, get ready for the juicy part. mitra-varuna are also addressed as devas, meaning "shiny", "exalted" or "heavenly being", and they're called sustainers of mankind. yes, like the title "sustainer of heavenly principles", also known as the unknown god!!! but it gets better. mitra is heavily associated with the light of dawn and the morning sun, while varuna is connected with the evening, and ultimately the night - morning star and evening star, respectively. which is funny considering the traveller and their twin appeared like shooting stars in the opening cutscene of the game (traveller being the one associated with the morning star and mitra).

we know that in genshin, the shade that took the heart of the primordial sea to create egeria, the first hydro archon, was the shade of life. so it wouldn't be that weird that the stone would contain a reference to them. it's just extremely curious that it simultaneously connects this idea to the twins.

in adittion to all the light motifs around the traveller and the abyss twin, like their names which mean light and clear sky, lucifer is also known as lightbearer and the morning star. he's also associated with the idea of falling from the sky and in poetry, he's referred to as herald of the dawn. what makes this even better is the fact paimon also has a demon name. paimon being the 9th spirit of the ars goetia and the king of hell that is the most obedient to lucifer. and, isn't it fun that paimon is such a faithful travelling companion of the traveller?

going back to "the pale princess and the six pygmies" and the prophecy proclaimed by the night mother, it's curious that the prince from the kingdom of light is described as able to make life flourish around him. it's even more interesting that the one who's prophecised to save the princess and revive the prince wields a sword that heralds the dawn (lucifer's title) and wears armor that can reflect the shining sunlight. can we agree not many descriptions scream traveller so much as much as this one? the fact they started their journey hundred of years after their twin has travelled through teyvat and they're reconstructing their steps in hopes of reuniting with them could also be paralleled to the scenario. especially if the the kingdom of light is supposed to represent the abyss and the prince, by extent, the traveller's twin. this could also fit with the theory that the twin is actually the third descender and someone wants to revive them using the gnosis, but i guess that's a theory for another time.

the books in genshin are often told in allegories or metaphors, or are simply very embelished versions of reality. i don't expect these texts to exactly portray what happened with the seelies or the characters in "the pale princess and the six pygmies" to relate in a super straightforward way to actual characters in the game, but i think the connection between the two books and the repeated themes that point to the traveller are pretty convincing.