One of the recurring themes in Dark Souls that I'm obsessed with and keep coming back to is what I think of as the tendency for the ruling classes to descend deeper and deeper into depravity as they try to perpetuate their existence forever.
The chief example is, of course, Gwyn, this great king who hollows himself out and sacrifices himself to the fire to keep his kingdom alive, and for what? The function of a kingdom is to produce value for its king, so what good is it to keep your kingdom alive if you kill yourself in the process? Dark Souls is not exactly concerned with modes of production and exchange, but there's enough there in the worldbuilding and level design to imply that Lordran once was a proper kingdom with farms, workshops, kitchens, sewers - everything a large nation needs to reproduce its own existence - and also higher functions of the state/superstructure - prisons, churches, colleges, and so on. The implication is that this was a real society predicated upon the exploitation of the working classes by the ruling classes. At a certain point, the underlying reason for the existence of a given state is lost, and its rulers chief concern simply becomes reproducing the state-as-state. Killing yourself to preserve the thing that keeps you alive as it rots away is the action of someone who has been reproducing the same cycle over and over again already and has forgotten that anything else is possible.
Alongside Gwyn, we can also see what's left of the old rulers of the world. Pre-Gwyn ancient dragon society isn't discussed much, and it doesn't seem like they really had any sort of state or anything recognisable as a society in a strictly literal view of the story, but their symbolic role in the story is that of a group of deposed, wonderful, ancient kings. They are majestic, beautiful, even aspirational creatures whose radiance many have tried in vain to recapture for themselves. There aren't many of them left by the time of Dark Souls, but what's left of them hardly inspires feelings of majesty. The notable 3 are the Gaping Dragon, the Undead Dragon, and Seath the Scaleless. Each of these three are shambling, monstrous, vile creatures; warped and disgusting abominations that are barely clinging to existence. The Gaping Dragon has become so twisted with hunger it transformed into one big mouth and continues to starve anyway; the Undead Dragon is rotting as it still "lives" after being permanently cut into two pieces and is barely able to move (except for its many butts down in Izalith for some reason); and Seath has only managed to survive by constructing a massive institution of torture in the name of medical research, sacrificing who knows how many people in the pursuit of immortality, just as Gwyn himself did after Seath helped him slaughter most of his own kind specifically because he was jealous of their majesty and wanted it for himself.
Of the true dragons in Dark Souls, the one that only one that really comes close to possessing the majesty of the old dragons (not counting Kalameet, who is dead by the time it actually takes place) is the Stone Dragon. This one seems to be juvenile based on its down-feathered appearance, and is in my estimation much younger than Lordran itself, though I'm not aware of any objective statement in that regard. If it is indeed younger, then this is a dragon which has never known kingship, which has only grown up in a world beneath Gwyn's shadow, and is still coming into being rather than clinging onto its old existence. It makes sense, then, that this would be the only one which seems beautiful in the way the true dragons are typically described. Notably, it's also helpful as a covenant leader, rather than being an enemy like every other dragon or dragon-related creature.
In many ways, Dark Souls is the story of a wretched king trying to preserve his kingdom against the other kings he conquered before him, and from whatever system of production and exchange and rule will inevitably come after. The main victims in all of this are the people of Lordran, who have all become undead as the curse produced by Gwyn's own stubbornness spreads and infects all. Negation tries its hardest to stave off the negation-of-the-negation, but in doing so only produces the conditions which bring it about. The undead melt and twist and warp eternally because ultimately, the nature of undead existence is to be subservient to and exploited by the system Gwyn built, even longer after Gwyn himself has become hollowed out and all but destroyed just in the name of perpetuating it. The only way it stops is when the Chosen Undead finally puts out the flame and brings about the Age of Dark, which amounts to a revolution of some sort - I read it optimistically as something akin to a socialist revolution, one which abolishes the contradictions of previous society, as this seems most in line with the theme of ending the needless pursuit of endlessness, but ultimately it's left vague and it might as well be something akin to a capitalist revolution consuming feudalism and producing its own twisted negation on top of the last.
anyway my undead is like if lenin was a cute girl who stunk real bad on account of the rot
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