#rhinedottir genshin

[aardwoof]

behold, me screaming on my discord server about an idea/theory/fever dream i had

[asukazooka]

[freeros]

[gorkaya-trava]

*trows their entire desk* HEAR ME OUT.

let's. let's just imagine for a second WHAT IF RHINEDOTTIR IS REALLY AN ABUSIVE MOTHER. like we all know that she's created a bunch of kids and then abandoned or eliminated them before finally creating albedo and declaring him The Final One right?? so my take here is: she never treated him as a child. she never saw him as a living human being let alone a living human child. it's literally mentioned in his voicelines, that she always was cold and distant and threatened him to abandon him if he screws up. right???

SO. what if. just what if she didn't try to give him "a happy life" sending him to mondstadt as he assumes. like what if it always was her plan? to create him, to raise him, to bring him up according to her own design. there never was a room for his own wishes and thoughts. so there's a purpose of sending him there, right? and what if it always was intended for him to destroy mondstadt?

like. we know that she creates her children using some kind of abyssal powers and they all have brought destruction to teyvat in one way or another. so what if it's not albedo's researches or anything that would destroy mondstadt but just his own nature? what if he just doesn't have another choice than to lose himself one day and become the "gold" he's intended to become? it's not him who pursues "gold" but the very way he was created; it's just the abyssal energy deep within him that would answer the abyss call one day and prevail over him and everything that makes him human.

this is why albedo is so tragic for me. it's one of my favorite tropes in fiction - an inhumane creature whose greatest wish is to become a human. to feel like one, to find and understand what makes one a human. he was raised knowing he resembles people but would never become a real person; that he has to blend in with the society to eventually destroy it; that he has to become greater than a human. bonus points if rhinedottir created him in her own image so everytime he looks into a mirror his own reflection reminds him of what he is and what he would eventually become.

rhinedottir's plan, if it ever existed, is both brilliant and cruel - to create an ideal human, to teach him to hate those who live on the surface, to make him start the long-awaited war between abyss and teyvat... but there's one flaw in it. she just did a really good job creating albedo, so good that he turned out more human than it was intended. she didn't see him as a living human being, and that was her fatal mistake - because when albedo came to mondstadt, because when he met alice, klee and everyone else, it was the first time in his very long life when he was treated as a person.

[eiscoathanger]

despite many people hcing pierro and rhinedottir as enemies, i shall use the lack of lore to my advatage and make them friends in my head (best of friends)

i want them to be those rebelious teens that do shit just to do shit, just to have fun

i want to have a criminal record by the age of 24 cause of the rebelious things they did as teens

i want them to play house with the homunculus and going through 30 divorces (can include other people to spice the game up)

i want them to be friends cause they might have the potential of understanding each other, rhine being viewed as crazy (post cataclysm, idk if she was prior) and pierro not being as talented as the other mages, therefore not being able to alert and/or stop the king and the higher mages

i just want khaenri’ahns to stick together ahagagagagagga

[ahbeduo]

[sgrimp]

Sinners

[nutmeg-on-a-stick]

A comic I made a year back when I still played genshin :,,)

The only thing that’s gonna make me come back is if they release rhinedottir or any hexen member OR drop major abyss lore 😭

This old haggle of ladies are all the emotional connection I have left IF THEY MESS IT UP AND MAKE THEM LOOK 19 OR GIVE THEM INCOMPREHENSIBLE CHARACTERISATION ISTG

[ksiezniczka-lancelot]

...kinda that what happened 516 years ago !!!!! happy bday albedo yay

[torgawl]

started thinking about "the pale princess and the six pygmies" again and realised the five unloyal pygmies match the sinners of khaenri'ah pretty well.

when the pale princess from the moonlight forest and the prince from the kingdom of light enter the kingdom of pygmies, one pygmy (deformed pygmy) asks her help to save his five brothers who were trapped under different circumstances in exchange for their loyalty to her. and so starts the journey of saving each of the five pygmies.

after saving all the pygmies, she took them to the kingdom of light as part of her people and the pygmies started serving both the princess and the prince. "but they were still heinous creatures from the land of night, and corruption flowed in their veins. as the days traveling to the kingdom of light grew long and dangerous, the root of evil would again blossom in their hearts". the pygmies then started plotting revenge and ended up poisoning the prince.

one of the pygmies though (deformed pygmy), was still loyal to the princess and felt guilty for the plan and so he spirited the prince's body away from his wicked brethren and took it to where the princess was staying. what he didn't know was that the night mother had already found the princess, who she emprisoned. before collapsing, transforming into a pile of sludge and worms, and leaving the pygmy to grieve, she proclaimed one prophecy: "in thousands of years time, my greatest foe will descend. he wields a sword that heralds the dawn and wears armor that can reflect the shining sunlight. he shall destroy my kingdom and bring the prince back to life. the princess will then be free from her eternal torment. until then, i fear not a single soul in the land of might, for nothing will bring an end to my kingdom except for the catastrophe foretold by the prophecy. as for you, the treacherous slave that poisoned his master… fate shall see that you get what you deserve". at last, the pygmy hid the body in a tree hole and walked off alone into the night, into a self-imposed exile.

what specifically caught my attention was the motives each of the five unloyal pygmies gave to betray the prince, which seem to mirror the five sinners of khaenri'ah. and i guess it's also relevant to add that alberich in "the ring of the nibelung" was, in fact, ruler of the dwarves. in this case, pygmies as an allegorical parallel could very well make sense to refer to the people of khaenri'ah.

to make a few of the connections i made between the sinners and the pygmies, i went into speculation and theory territory, so take what i'm saying with a grain of salt. but going into each of them:

hroptatyr means 'sage' in old norse and was one of the many names that odin went by. the one entity in khaenri'ah, who happens to parallel odin and a sage, simultaneously, and who also made use of power from beyond beyond the skies is non other than king irmin. he became "indisposed" during the cataclysm and didn't defend his kingdom, which led to anfortas taking his place as regent. this description of events very much matches what dainsleif told us about the sinners not fullfiling their role and being unable to protect the kingdom. it also adds some context as to why the only justification for why irmin wasn't able to rule at the time of the cataclysm was because he was "indisposed". king irmin is also known to only have one eye so his respective pygmy being "blind" is very fitting.

dain also refers to himself and the sinners as "the six of us". if the loyal pygmy from the book represents dain, this would make a lot of sense. i forgot to add before but the line about corruption flowing through the pygmies veins caught my eye as well as we know the sinners shared this sinful power between them and in "a drunkard's tale", wine is used as a metaphor for the abyss. the sinners are what led to the creation of the abyss order.

from the very little we know about vedrfolnir, he's able to foresee the future. the foolish pygmy envies the smart. pierro is one of theorised identities for "the visionary". besides his title being "the jester" which is pretty much another variation for fool, he has an interesting quote in the 'pale flame' set: "since my level of learning could not compare with the sages, i failed to earn the favor of the previous ruler". it implies he used to crave knowledge, like the pygmy, and it mentions irmin, who he served while he was still in khaenri'ah. pierro is also the one behind the fatui's plans, he seems to always plan ahead and all his goals end up being fullfiled even after many complications. he also possesses great historical knowledge, both abouth the future and past, as he seems to know about arlecchino's history despite being part of the later eclipse dynasty.

surtalogi "the foul" is the one behind "foul's legacy", a combat technique used by childe. he has ties to the abyss and much like childe's combat-hungry spirit, the timid pygmy desired to battle the prince.

the shrunken pygmy is the most straightforward one. rhinedottir is a practitioner of the art of khemia, probably the most proefficient one too. like the pygmy, her focus is on creating life through alchemy.

as for rerir's connection to the carefree pygmy, i placed him by process of elimination. we know nothing about them so i don't think it's possible to make a very factual connection but the pygmy's sentiment of wanting to avenge his situation seems silimar to the feeling behind title "avenger of solnari". despite solnari not having a very clear origin, it either stems from: 'solari', related to the sun; or 'solunar', pertaining to the rising and setting times of the sun and moon, phases of the moon, eclipses, etc. the princess and the prince in the book represent the moon and sun, respectively. and there's also the ties to the eclipse dynasty in khaenri'ah.

another parallel between the sinners is the primordial one and the four shades. but rather than representing each other, they work as counterparts: hroptatyr vs primordial one, vedrfolnir vs istaroth, rhinedottir vs the shade of life, rerir vs the shade of death (?) and surtalogi vs the shade of void (?).

not sure if there's a connection between each of the sumeru akademiya's cardinal sins and the pygmies since they're also six but they seem like sins commited by khaenri'ah either way:

"revering gods without acts of devotion" caught my attention because khaenri'ah is supposed to be a godless nation yet we see hilichurls around the thousand wind temple while also having banners with istaroth's symbol in their camps, as if they followed istaroth somehow. i have my thoughts about some of the other sins (like the human evolution one), istaroth being connected to khaenri'ah, her theorised identity as a moon sister and her possible ties to this book as the pale princess but i think i'll leave that to another day. i'm very sure other people made the connection between the pygmies and the sinners too, i am probably very late to the party but i just wanted to add my two cents on it and make a post with my current ideas on the identities of hroptatyr and vderfolnir. don't trust me, though!! the pygmy isn't the only fool, i'm just having fun thinking these possibilities. thanks for reading, if you did ahah

edit (23/08/24): i never came back to this post but i realised the identities can be easier to infer without speculation, since the names are clearly the opposite of their desires. the pygmy who wanted to see makes sense to be vedrfolnir, the visionary - blind pygmy. the foolish pygmy, the one who wanted to become smart is obviously hroptatyr (and here pierro makes a lot more sense, i know some people theorised pierro to be hroptatyr). the pygmy who wanted courage makes sense to be the timid pygmy, possibly rerir. rhinedottir is without doubt the shrunken pygmy which leaves us with surtalogi being the carefree pygmy. the carefree pygmy much like the deformed pygmy don't really have any desires, but the title "the foul" contrasts carefree really well. wanted to reiterate this since people keep relogging this post. i didn't really go to deep into the sinners either though i will leave here that the name khaenri'ah is possibly derived from an arabic phrase meaning "betrayer of winds" (خائن رياح) and the pygmies betrayed the pale princess and the light prince (represents the sun and gold - end goal of magnum opus) in the book. which leads us to istaroth, "the thousand winds of time". i said i wasn't going to go into it but i cannot stop myself from saying this because i wasn't clear earlier and i feel like this is cool. okay, bye!!

[rect-bibi]

giving faces to faceless khaenri'ah ladies

i mean i know skirk isnt CONFIRMED khaenri'ahn but like. delulu. i love delulu

ALSO CLOSE UPS AND THEM TOGETHER WITH NO EFFECTS NOR BGS:

[pixiltalks]

Can't sleep. Post Dorian.

[luffysbasement]

flowers for chalk 🌸

[whalemarch]

09.13. "reach the far side of philosophy, and create a new destiny for myself and your brothers."

[lilyandthegenshinbrainrot]

does this freak even know that Rhinedottir is the reason he exists.

does he know that she created the technology that Ei found to create him

god. can you imagine what it would do to him to learn that he was only possible through the works of the Great Sinner. how do you continue your repentance knowing that. "is it nature or was it nurture?" well !! in his case !!!!!!!!! was it the humanity. did she pour so much soul into her works that the reason she left Albedo is the same one that Ei abandoned Scaramouche for. can anyone hear me

[midnight-arandombanana]

Do you ever think about how malnutrition must’ve been so common in Khaenri’ah. Do you ever think about Khaenri’ahns with food insecurity. Do you ever think about how Rhinedottir was probably responsible for the majority of food production in the country. Do you ever think about how much of herself she sacrificed to feed the country she lived in. Do you ever think about how much it hurt to have *all that work* be for nothing. Do you ever think about how shocked a Khaenri’ahn might be upon going to Teyvat and seeing food *just hanging off trees, free for the taking*. Do you