#shadow fo the erdtree spoilers

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

Thinking a lot about Romina...

Can't get over how she experienced something truly horrible. Even though Hornsent society was corrupt, nothing can excuse what Queen Marika did to them. Even while all the loreheads bicker with shit like "No wonder Queen Marika did what she did!", like, sure there is a reason to it, with how she and her people faced subjugation and prosecution in Hornsent society, but that cannot excuse what followed. Her "purging", her distaste for any and all Hornsent, her sheer disgust for her own children, when they bore horns, and how she abandoned them, the way she banished and severed the horns from the Hornsent, the way she gave them the dirty name of "Omen", everything that she's done, with all the cruelty that follows...

but that's a different story. What really matters here is what I will say about Saint Romina. What really gets me about her is that she really and truly does add so much perspective to the events that transpire. The way her entire world burned down around her, and all she could do is look on in shock, almost certainly traumatized by what she saw before her, all while she held onto a Bud. Her Bud. The Bud that would continue to spread, but never bloom. That Bud that embodied what she would become, her new faith. Her new beauty, being a Saint for the Scarlet Rot...

Rot has always been so interesting in Elden Ring, because you see how it gruesomely withers everything around it, but also gains purchase to life, life that is both twisted and beautiful... the way that Rot is both Life and Decay really does shine with Elden Ring's scarlet rot, I must say!

I am really happy to see that the Scarlet Rot has even more significance now through Saint Romina, and her breathtaking beauty, that leaves me stunned anytime I look upon her...

I absolutely adore her design and story and larger narrative implications of her, but I must profess to a truth about how I feel about her...

I carnally desire her. Her beauty comes in many forms, but I can't help but feel a special sensual desire for her when I gaze upon the whole of her form...

Oh Romina...