#kindly miquella

[santatrina]

"McQuella the Kind spoke of the hamburger.

The ketchup.

And the mayo."

"He wields Mc do shrive clean the wallets of men. There is nothing more yummy."

mcquella's brainrot cuz since i'm not understanding shit i'm going batshit insane

i'll probably share malenia blade of mcquella later today as well

[feukt-42]

Elden ring + Shadow of the Erdtree lore thoughts

Alright, so, first off, obviously, spoilers ahead.

I've been thoroughly enjoying and getting my ass kicked by SotE and what ive seen of the lore so i wanted to ramble about it.

I specifically wanted to talk about how Elden Ring explores power and godhood.

In the base game, godhood isnt seen as inherently bad. Marika's golden order is fucked up six ways to sunday, but the blame mainly rests on Marika's shoulders it seems. She's a genocidal homewrecking war-mongerer who threw two of her children in the sewers bc of racism, she's not a good god, but it doesnt portray the problem as her being a god, just her being a mess. The game provides several "solutions" to unfuck everything :

Ranni's ending has you completely throw the system in the trash. She says, fuck it, godhood's the problem, im out of here. She is kinda right, but the lands remain fractured and the power vacuum left behind is going to be immense. We're on the right track but could be better.

The frenzied flame ending is just pure concentrated nihilism so i think we can move past it for this one.

The bunch of other endings are fairly similar : you beat Marika/Radagon's ass and you impose yourself as Elden Lord to keep her in check and fix the issues you see as most important. This doesnt fix anything long-term, the god in power is still the exact same fucking mess but with a chaperone now i guess.

None of these endings are very satisfying, they all leave you with a sense of "it could be worse i guess" (except the frenzied flame one but you get the point). This is where Miquella comes in :

Everything we hear about Miquella sounds great. He's kind, compassionate, against racism, doesnt like violence, etc etc. Cherry on top, he's even one of the characters with a direct shot at godhood, brilliant ! Why cant we just put him in charge, he'll do much better than the absolute wreck we have right now.

And thats where the base game leaves us, Marika is a fucked up mess of a person, and the obvious solution is to put the much better Miquella in her place.

Shadow of the erdtree, on the other hands, aims to set the record straight. The problem wasnt just Marika, the problem is inherent to godhood in and of itself.

In SotE, we see the land of shadow, the realm where Marika came from and ascended to godhood, and the realm where Miquella intends to do the same. And the more we hear about who Marika was before in snippets of lore, and the more we watch Miquella tread the road to godhood, we realise something :

There is no such thing as a good god

It doesnt matter how kind and compassionate you were, what your morals were, who you loved, who you loathed, none of it matters because you cannot grasp the power to become a god without sacrificing who you were before.

In the dlc we see Miquella shed more and more of himself, his flesh, his arms, his eye, his heart, his doubts, his fears and even his love. Miquella has shorn so much of who he was that he formed an entire new person (St Trina) from it. Some of him remains, he still wishes for a kinder world, but he cant sacrifice anymore of himself for it. Now he has to start sacrificing others.

Miquella was always blessed with the ability to charm others, and he sees it as the least painful path to make others do as he wishes. And so he charms his sister, he charms Mohg, he charms Radahn, his followers, Leda, Moore, Thiollier, Freyja, the hornsent, Ansbach, and everyone he can convince to give themselves up for his dream of a kinder world, regardless of the pain they might cause or feel by being enthralled by him.

And oh boy do they feel pain. Mohg is used and discarded like a ragdoll, and his followers and dynasty slowly crumble to nothing as the last pureblood knight watches helplessly, himself entranced by the one responsible after he failed to kill him. Radahn's soul is shoved in a corpse so that he can play consort to a god that is his antithesis, depriving him of his glory and honour as lord of the battlefield. Malenia is left alone to rot after Miquella has no use or help for her, and she endlessly waits for her brother to return. Every one of Miquella's followers has to grapple with those feelings of betrayal, manipulation, and lost memories returning all at once. It is by no means painless.

And so we end up with a god that is not much better than Marika was. On his path to godhood, Miquella has caused as much pain to those along the way as his mother once did, in this very same land that still feels the scars of Marika's ascension.

The only way to gain power is to take it from everyone else, and that cannot be achieved without pain.

[toweringclam]

Miquella's followers really just saying the quiet part out loud. Like "If you're here, you must be mind controlled too! Welcome to the Thrall Club! Don't worry about that one weird guy, he's as brainwashed as the rest of us."

[ryann-44]

[luminaryofblood]

There's this joke with Beauty and the Beast about how everyone liked the Beast back when he was... Well. A beast.

So like there's this whole thing about the prince undergoing a transformation back into a beast-- but like, the synopsis works perfectly for Mohg.

Like, here is Mohg, who is as beastly as they come. And then comes Miquella who takes away everything we knew and loved about Mohg, turning him into a beautified Radahn-- which is another thing too! But I'm not going on about Radahn, I'm talking about Mohg!

The whole "prince turning back into a beast" idea works perfectly for Mohg!

Plus Mohg has the thing with the roses.

[just-spacetrash]

⭐

[evilwvergil]

Miquella the kind spoke of the beginning. The seduction and the betrayal. An affair from which Gold arose And so too was Shadow born. What followed was a war unseen One that could never be put to song A purge without Grace or honour The tyranny of Messmer's flame And so Kindly Miquella would abandon everything. His golden flesh, his blinding strength. Even his fate. But we are not deterred. We choose to follow. Will you walk with us? - E L D E N R I N G Shadow of the Erdtree (06.21.2024) -

[feukt-42]

Elden ring + SotE lore rambles part 2 electric boogaloo

Spoilers ahead

If you want, my first post was here, its not necessary to read it to understand but it might also interest you.

Alright, so ive been playing the dlc and thinking a lot about Miquella, Marika, godhood and everything. And in my first post, I speculated that the reason Miquella turns out to be the "bad guy" (big quotation marks bc theres not really an actual "good" here cmon guys its fromsoft were talking about) was because the path to godhood required him to fundamentally change as a person.

We do see how much change is required here, Miquella abandons huge parts of himself, both physical and emotional. But the part that interests me here is St Trina specifically. St Trina is a large part of who Miquella once was, shorn away and made into an entirely new person, cast away in Miquella's post to godhood.

Now that got me thinking, bc doesnt that sound familiar to you ? A young empyrean, casting away part of themselves to become a god, and that part becoming an entirely new person of the opposite gender ? Now where have i heard that before...

Oh hi Radagon, what are you doing here ?

Do you see where i'm going here ? The whole Radagon is Marika thing has been a topic of debate for a while now, and i dont want to toot my own horn here but i might have cracked the code.

I think Marika split Radagon from herself on her own path to godhood just as Miquella did with St Trina.

It works pretty well with every aspect of the lore so far. It explains the how in the Radagon is Marika thing, St Trina is somewhat antagonistic towards Miquella just as Radagon and Marika were somewhat antagonistic towards each other, I dont think either Radagon or St Trina are empyreans despite their other halves being so, etc etc. And we do see that St Trina is a whole ass different person which implies Radagon probably was as well.

Anyways damn, like mother like son amirite ?

[toweringclam]

If the leaks turn out to be true (which I'm skeptical on), it would pretty much upend most lore theories about certain characters. However, it actually fits in pretty well with my own theories.

Spoilers below the break.

So Radahn was meant to be Miquella's consort. Probably.

This... actually works.

First off, my theory has always been that the Empyreans all had designated consorts. It's the best way to explain the connection between Malenia and Rykard, as shown by the Shaded Castle. Probably not a very good relationship, given all the abductor virgins he gave her are broken and stuck in a cave guarded by her soldiers, but a relationship nonetheless.

I had previously assumed that Miquella and Godwyn were betrothed, as they are the two favored children, but I realize that doesn't make much sense in hindsight. Ranni came about long before Miquella, so it only makes sense that the favored son of the Sun and the favored daughter of the Moon would be wed.

Ranni clearly took exception to this.

And that leaves Radahn x Miquella. Now, some people think that there was a conflict between Miquella and Radahn, but that's not the case. It's kind of a thing that Miquella got along with everybody. Why would Radahn be the one exception?

Instead, it's likely that Malenia found he was missing and her twin sense pinged in Caelid. She made some very reasonable conclusions about what had happened and demanded answers from Radahn. Radahn didn't know wtf she was talking about, but instead of sorting this out like a reasonable person, he felt insulted by the question and demanded an apology. One thing led to another, neither one could back down without losing face, and soon you have the last and most devastating battle of the Shattering.

It makes sense.

It's probably wrong because the leaks are pretty dubious.

But it makes sense.

[mikaeled]

And so Kindly Miquella would abandon everything. His golden flesh, his blinding strength. Even his fate. But we are not deterred. We choose to follow. ELDEN RING - Shadow of the Erdtree (June 21st, 2024)

[gallusneve]

Let us both take Kindly Miquella's guidance to heart. May we meet again on the battlefield, brave warrior.

[wodania]

kindly miquella of the haligtree

study of the flower vendor by victor-emile prouvé /// no dlc spoilers in tags please

[theslowesthnery]

it's almost 4am here, the DLC is officially out now so time to scream before i go to bed.

ACTUAL MEGA SPOILERS, DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE THE DLC'S LORE SPOILED

come here, miquella, i have something for you

so!

miquella bewitches people. he has bewitched some if not all of the NPCs following in his footsteps

miquella bewitched mohg. ansbach (a former servant/warrior of mohg) tried to challenge miquella to free mohg from said bewitchment, but got also bewitched

miquella bewitched mohg in order to use him to enter the shadow realm, but that's not all:

after the player kills mohg, miquella has his body delivered to him, and uses it to resurrect radahn, who miquella is in love with and whom miquella wants to be his consort

also like. malenia killed radahn so miquella could have him as a consort? so radahn didn't even want to become his consort? but was forced into it by both malenia and miquella? bruh

in conclusion, and pardon my french, fuck miquella. i don't know or care what his motives were, just fuck him. poor mohg, he wanted to be miquella's king consort to help him ascend to godhood, and he was just...used and cast away. hell, worse than cast away, he even had his corpse used!! not even in death was he respected or cared for!! he was literally just a tool for miquella!!!

eat shit, miquella, you piece of fucking garbage. i refuse to listen to any kind of "b-but he was doing it for the greater good", "b-but it was to make up for marika's actions", "it's just mohg, who cares" handwringing. if miquella wanted to make the world a gentler place, if he wanted to make things right for the hornsent, he should've started with mohg. he didn't deserve to be used like this, both in life and death.

Maybe that's Kindly Miquella's love. Love for all the unloved. Love, to banish the pain.

except mohg.

A thousand year voyage guided by compassion. I'll make the world a gentler place.

except for mohg.

(...and i just noticed that prime!radahn's armor has omen horns growing out of it. because he was resurrected using mohg's body. is no amount of desecration enough?)

going to bed now. fucking hell.

[corvidexoskeleton]

Discussion of the quality of writing aside, its actually so funny that for a while after elden ring was released, there was so much discourse about mohg doing weird nonconsensual incest stuff to his half brother in order to make him ascend and become king consort, only for the dlc to drop and say that actually no. Miquella, the one portrayed as a kindly child-figure, was the one doing the weird nonconsensual incest stuff to his half brother in order to ascend and make a different half brother king consort. Absolutely unparalleled move

[ember-amber]

Actually there is a way I would be able to accept That Thing:tm:. (Mega spoilers to really late game dlc, i havent even gotten to it yet)

I need Radahn to be utterly unimportant in this. Entirely no longer the guy and just a puppet for Miquella. I truly don't care about evil Miquella, in fact I was suspicious ever since they kept calling him "Kindly" repeatedly in the trailer. What I want is for Radahn not to matter.

They said he has no voice lines and the Remembrance description was quite simplistic in saying "Miquella liked him :)". I heard they were going the path of Miquella being a powerful god but still an innocent child. If that is true, I want Radahn to be merely a toy, a prop made copying what Marika had with Godfrey. A pretty and powerful hero to serve as a elden lord/consort, which is apparently a requirement for ascension.

An intricate plan with years of planning for an ultimately childish goal, made by a god cursed to never grow up.

I will accept that so easily you have no idea. I hope it's at least something like that, it would justify the ending enough for me.

[miquella-everywhere]

So I give Godrick a lot of grief because it's easy lol and canonically he is seen as the weakest link of all the Demigods, but one of my very first posts (the chair post lol) I made a joke about how Malenia and Miquella probably detested Godrick, but I actually wanna revisit that, specifically Miquella's relationship with Godrick:

In all honestly, I think that realistically speaking Miquella probably pitied Godrick. Miquella likely saw Godrick for exactly how he was, a weak man who wished to be respected as a Demigod and in desperation grasped for any sort of power. And Miquella being as sympathetic as they are, as well as how they are revered as the Lord of the Meek, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Miquella had extended a kind hand to Godrick, either to act as an ally or to assist him in anyway...

But with Godrick as prideful, egotistical, and insecure as he is, he probably took great offense to Miquellas extended hand and did not take kindly to Miquellas sympathies in the slightest bit, and so rejected them in full. And when you consider how in cut dialogue Godrick refers to the twins as "rank and malformed" like wow rude he very clearly has a sour and disgusted opinion of the twins :/

Your misplaced pride is getting in the way of potentially having a very powerful ally Godrick. But I digress...

And to speak of Malenia and Godrick. If Godrick rejected Miquellas offer and was as objectively rude to Miquella as he is in his cut dialogue, obviously Malenia would have issue with Godrick dissing her brother. And Godrick insulting her during the Shattering was probably all the excuse she needed just to put him in his place.

Also, this is a previous theory that I'm bringing up again, but in both Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula (ie Godricks Domain) you do not find a single Miquella's Lily anywhere. So potentially, Godricks distaste for Miquella is so intense that he ordered any sightings of the Lilys to be ripped up and discarded. But Miquella's identity as St. Trina is a secret, so you can find plenty of Trina's Lilys in Limgrave and the Peninsula.

So in the end, the jokes on Godrick lol