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ten-ninokuruwa · 4 months ago

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Kris is the Knight: A Comprehensive Breakdown

I’ve been a Knight Kris truther standing firm for the past couple of years. I’ve often seen the sentiment in the Deltarune fandom that Knight Kris is a “simple” take, and that Kris being the Knight is downright impossible, which is something I heavily disagree with. I feel as though this idea revolves around a lot of assumptions the fandom has made about the Knight and the creation of the fountains, and a misunderstanding of the timeframe involved.

With Chapter 3 and 4 on the horizon and our hiatus nearly over with, it’s safe to assume that our answer to the question of “who is the Knight?” will finally be upon us soon. However, before that point, I really want to challenge the idea that that question was the one we were supposed to be asking in the first place - was the Knight ever meant to be a “who-dunnit” mystery that was meant for a grand reveal at the end of the game?

This post will be a breakdown of the theory and why I firmly believe Kris is the most solid candidate for the Knight, and is the only one I believe in.

(note: This post had to be split into two posts due to its length. The other post will be in the reblogs and will be linked at the end!)

PART 1: The Timeframe

A lot of theories regarding the Knight rely on a very specific timeframe for the creation of Chapter 2’s fountain. Namely, the assumption is that the Knight was hiding in the computer lab’s closet and had made the fountain when Berdly and Noelle were in the room. This is built on the fact that Berdly and Noelle were at the desk with their books on the table when they woke up, which wouldn’t make sense if they hadn’t been studying at the time.

However, while there are various other contradictions to the closet timeline that I’ll bring up soon, we actually have a more likely timeframe for the library fountain’s creation judging from various bits of dialogue from NPCs.

From Sweet Cap'n Cakes' shop dialogue, we know that Queen started going into overdrive when the Dark Fountain showed up. However, a plugboy in Cyber Field attributes Queen’s extreme behavior to the internet going down. Both of these dialogues suggest that both events happened at around the same time, since they are both connected to Queen’s corruption.

Then, we have Alphys’s dialogue from the start of the chapter, before Berdly and Noelle even go to the library. It’s from her that we learn that the internet has been down since last night, since she notes Kris couldn’t have been talking to Asriel overnight because of it.

Then, finally, we have Queen’s battle dialogue talking about both events. From all of this combined, we can form a pretty clear timeline of events. The internet goes down, which causes Queen to start worrying. Then, the Dark Fountain appears shortly after and twists Queen’s personality - giving her the “know-how” and influencing her actions.

If the Dark Fountain had appeared during the day when the internet went down during the night, then citing the internet alone as giving Queen the “know-how” and making her extreme doesn’t make much sense. Queen didn’t know what to do when the internet went down, it was the Dark Fountain that gave her purpose and influenced her next actions. The fact that both things are cited as her turning point by separate characters implies that they happened at a very similar time.

Dark Worlds also don’t seem to run on a drastically different timeframe to the real world. Kris and Susie enter the Chapter 1 Dark World in the middle of class, and exit after school has ended. They enter the Chapter 2 Dark World right after school, and exit at the end of the day. By the time Kris and Susie enter the Dark World, Queen has already long since gone into overdrive, and a rebel group has formed against her. This seems like a little too quick if this happens in the short timeframe where Kris and Susie are visiting Castle Town, but makes perfect sense if the Dark World had been there for a while.

On a sidenote, a lot of people like to cite Ralsei’s dialogue about sensing a dark presence as a reason to why the Dark Fountain had to be made while Noelle and Berdly were in the computer lab. However, in the case of Knight Kris, we cannot take this dialogue at face value. Ralsei has a significant level of awareness on things he shouldn’t know and purposefully diverts the player’s attention to talk to Kris alone on multiple occasions, and the two seem to be colluding on something. If Kris is the Knight and made the Dark Fountain, then Ralsei is playing along here.

Besides…

…Isn’t it a bit odd that Ralsei waits for Susie to leave to say this?

PART 2: The Closet Timeframe Is Really Strange Actually?

I wanted to focus more on how I feel the actual timeframe went in the above section, but I really feel like I need to go into depth onto the alternate timeframe that other Knight theories rely on, because there’s so many strange things about it that are baffling from a storytelling standpoint.

The entire timeframe relies on two details: Noelle and Berdly’s positions on the desk, and the closet dialogue. In my personal opinion, these two things are incredibly nitpicky and fall apart when you think about it for a bit.

Things change position in the Dark World, as proven by Chapter 1 where Kris and Susie end up in an entirely different room once the fountain is sealed. People cite Berdly and Noelle being at the desk as to why they had to already have been studying, but Kris and Susie have also changed positions. They should be in front of the door by this logic, but instead they’re standing right in front of the desk.

The idea that Noelle and Berdly are dreaming is a very important aspect to their Dark World experience, and especially Noelle’s. In the Weird Route in particular, she clings to the idea that the Dark World is a dream, and assumes that Berdly’s simply asleep by the end - she’s desperate to believe it. If they were in any other positions, this assumption would not work. If they woke up on the floor, then it would be far harder for them to suspend their disbelief. It would be harder for Noelle to escape reality and believe Berdly is simply dreaming in the Weird Route.

Berdly and Noelle had to be placed in these positions because it was convenient from a storytelling standpoint. The books were placed there so that Berdly could fail to pick them up in the neutral route, thus letting the player know that his arm being injured in the Dark World had real consequences in the Light World. Using the books being on the table as proof that they were undeniably studying beforehand and thus no other timeframe makes sense is a Cinema Sins level of nitpick - these decisions are conveniences to serve the narrative.

Now, let’s actually go over the sequence of events if the Knight truly was hiding in the closet. Alright, how do they make the fountain?

No, really. How on earth would they be able to make it while Berdly and Noelle are in the room?

Queen is the laptop, and the laptop is facing Berdly and Noelle on the desk. Since Queen would’ve only been able to actually witness the fountain’s creation and obtain the video if she was facing the Knight, then this would have to mean that the Knight made the fountain on the opposite side of the desk.

Not only does the recording of the fountain being made have zero indication that anyone else is part of it, only mentioning a single “someone”, this would mean that if Berdly and Noelle were in the library, then the Knight would’ve had to have made the Dark Fountain directly behind them. Why? How would Berdly and Noelle not notice?

Either the Knight put them to sleep with some type of magic, which we have no evidence for and would go against the idea of the Light World distinctly lacking that kind of magic, or these two studious people simply decided to lay there and take a nap for no reason, thus giving the Knight an opportunity to make the fountain. But in that case, why could the Knight not point the laptop in any other direction?

It’s likely that the Knight left the laptop on to make sure Queen could witness the fountain’s creation. In the closet timeframe, this just keeps adding more steps and contrived assumptions. How did they put Berdly and Noelle to sleep? If they didn’t put Berdly and Noelle to sleep, then how did Berdly and Noelle not notice someone fiddling with the laptop in front of them and then making a Dark Fountain directly behind them? Why did the Knight have to make the fountain at that very moment, instead of waiting for them to leave so they didn’t have any witnesses?

But if you use the night timeframe, then it makes things much simpler. The Knight could move as they please and do all the setup they want without being interrupted. They’d be alone, so there’d be no need to worry about anyone else showing up on the recording of the fountain being made.

As a sidenote, this also matches Kris’s actions at the end of the chapter perfectly, which just further strengthens the idea that they’re the Knight. Kris turns the TV on right before making the Dark Fountain in front of it, just as the Knight presumably turned the laptop on right before making the Dark Fountain in front of it. The TV, aka Tenna, is likely going to be the main villain of Chapter 3, just as Queen was the main villain in Chapter 2.

Now, is there a problem with adding foreshadowing in some missable dialogue? Well, technically not. However, we have no proof as of now that the closet dialogue is foreshadowing anything. We have the above timeframe to contradict it, and plenty of other things that make the concept less reasonable that I’ve already explained all working against it. The odds are pretty stacked right now.

However, if you want an example of missable flavor text providing proper, provable foreshadowing, then…

(cont.)

#melty.txt #deltarune.melt #deltarune #deltarune theory #kris dreemurr #kris knight theory

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