Cybergirl Cathy

Alright, I'm going to try my hand at Deltarune theorycrafting. One of the biggest burning questions I have is:

What the hell is Ralsei, exactly?

He's the only Darkner to have no apparent Light World counterpart. There's obviously some kind of connection to Asriel, but nothing as clear-cut as "Ralsei is Asriel."

So, here's my hypothesis: Ralsei is a Titan spawn pretending to be the "dark prince" foretold by the prophecy, which is actually Asriel!

First point: at the start of Chapter 5, each party member has a title referring to flower or plant: "blue rose" for Kris, "violent violet" for Susie, and for Ralsei...

"Artemisia," better known in English as "wormwood," is a bitter herb used in medicinal teas (often for women's health specifically, for what it's worth. Coincidence this detail is given in the same chapter Ralsei being transfem is pretty much confirmed?). Why does this matter?

THIS:

"And so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. Then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. It looked like glass."

This is from the "peculiar book" found in Chapter 4's egg room. It strongly evokes this passage from the Biblical Book of Revelation:

"The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood [a bitter substance]. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter." - Revelation 8:10-11, NIV

So the peculiar book is talking about Ralsei: the name of the star is "Wormwood" (artemisia), "blazing like a torch" (Ralsei can wield fire magic), and the "water" turning "bitter" (more on that in a moment).

And as if the words alone aren't enough, there's this:

An illustration of the Wormwood star from a 1909 Russian Old Believer manuscript. You cannot tell me the resemblance to both the Titan's face shield and the SAVE points is accidental.

The peculiar book can thus be interpreted as, "A Titan called Wormwood/Artemisia/Ralsei fell from the sky; its tears made the water bitter, likely causing many deaths. And from that grew 'shards of glass' (quite possibly the shadow crystals)."

In Biblical texts, especially prophesies, references to water often symbolize Christian doctrine, as an abstract idea. Thus, "bitter water" is often interpreted as meaning "false doctrine; heresy," and "Wormwood" refers to a false prophet, perhaps the Antichrist himself.

Contrary to popular belief, the Antichrist isn't a demonic figure per se. Rather, he's an imposter of Jesus who does everything one would expect Jesus to do, but to deceive his followers rather than help them.

In a very similar way, Deltarune frequently reminds the audience that Asriel (depicted as an Angel in Undertale) will appear sooner or later, yet as of Chapter 5 the foretold older brother still hasn't been seen.

Here's my conjecture regarding the link between Asriel and Ralsei:

A Titan fell from the sky (likely relating to W. D. Gaster, who "fell into his own creation" and "shattered [like glass] across time and space." This glass (the shadow crystals) is what brought the entire Dark World into existence to begin with.

This caused some kind of terrible incident, likely what caused Dess' death/disappearance, which the town blamed Asgore for; the Titan was locked away in the shelter, and that's why it's always locked; consider this dialogue between Kris and Alphys in Chapter 4:

"The shelter… it's… A place for people to survive an emergency, right? But, ever since I've moved here, it's been… closed for some reason. It makes me wonder if… even if there was some disaster… Whatever's inside there… Might be worse…?"

One of the Titan's spawn (the black entities that appear during the boss fight) somehow evaded the shelter and ended up living in the school's storage closet, all alone in the dark.

It desperately craved friendship and belonging, yet came to believe it's continued existence is a fluke; something that's not meant to exist. An impossibility, even:

So, the Titan Spawn inserts itself into the prophecy, choosing to believe that doing so might give meaning to an otherwise irrelevant existence (Consider Goner Kid's words: "Have you ever thought about a world where everything is exactly the same… Except you don't exist?")

It (imperfectly) adopts Asriel's appearance, an anagram of his name, abilities and his role as the "dark prince" (even though Ralsei clearly would rather be a girl instead). Ralsei is the one who teaches Kris, Susie and the audience about the prophecy, yet has repeatedly lied by omission about its contents (in Chapter 4 particularly), making his teachings "false," on some level.