Lopadopalis

Ranni states that, in the wake of Godwyn's murder upon the Night of Black Knives, “Marika was driven to the brink,” while a Finger Reader Crone in the Deeproot Depths laments, “Oh, Lord Godwyn… Such cruelty, such humiliation... My poor, sweet lordling should have died a true death. As the first of the demigods to die.” This Crone is internally labeled as Godwyn's Wet Nurse, an identity alluded to in the Talisman Pouch's description. Godwyn's “inner circle of distinguished golden knights” remain unwavering in their loyalty, donning their own death masks as visards, and journeying into the Realm of Shadow to guard his cadaver surrogates. Like Godwyn’s present descendants, these knights wield axes, the weapon which serves as “an emblem of the golden lineage,” representing the strength of its patriarch; between this, and Godwyn’s waistcloth bearing the same blue hue and “Herb of Many Aspects” motif as Godfrey’s cape, one can safely assume Godwyn to have enjoyed a fair amount of esteem and recognition from his father. Across the land, Godwyn appears to have unilaterally inspired adoration and devotion, yet, following his death, nowhere is there any mention of a grieving spouse, of children bereft of their father. Paradoxically, he is both the only viable candidate for having continued the Golden Lineage, and entirely lacks any reference hinting at such a role. It is practically as though all record of his consort has been scrubbed away, as though there were something shameful or illicit about them.

This leaves the audience to infer either that Godwyn had no children, or else that his consort was secretly a figure associated with him in a manner only explicitly platonic, and excepting his immediate family, no one but Fortissax is indicated to have been especially close with Godwyn. Given the ancient dragon’s willingness to fight “long and hard against the Death within its companion,” to the point of utter corruption, it is clear Godwyn made quite an impression when he himself “fought to the last, earning the friendship of dread Fortissax.” In turn, the Ancient Dragon Cult which arose from their bond models a particular dynamic between humans and dragons, via the ancient dragons who take “human” form to commune with knights as priestesses, a practice inherited from the earlier Dragon Communion faith. Fortissax’s sister, Lansseax, engaged in this, with her most favored knight being Vyke, and our own Tarnished experiences this via Florissax. Both demonstrate this dynamic as echoing the chivalric, quasi-romantic devotional bond of a knight and their sworn lady, much like the dynamic between a Tarnished and their Finger Maiden.

Both pairings also specifically invoke the term “love.” According to Dragonbolt Blessing, “Only those loved by dragons can survive the ordeal of cladding their bodies in lightning,” while Vyke’s Dragonbolt states that he was the knight who Lansseax “loved the most,” and Dragonbolt of Florissax notes, “There was a time when the priestess never knew love, and thus never used this incantation herself.” She both gives this incantation and uses it as a spirit, having sworn herself to the Tarnished as her new lord; for this reason, her spirit ash states, “Now, she has acquired a human heart.”

Aside from a thematic subversion of human drake warriors claiming the literal hearts of dragons, this line alludes both to Florissax having the Tarnished’s “heart” in a relational sense, and to her own nature having become more human than dragon. As she explains, emotions such as “bottomless hunger and fiery ambition,” the “fierceness of spirit that only flows from those young and short of sight,” are very alike to the volatile and ornery Bayle, and are also “unfathomable to ones as old as [ancient dragons].” Such is overtly evocative of Dark Souls’s Hawkeye Gough: “Exhilaration, pride, hatred, rage… The dragons teased out our dearest emotions.” Just as the enmity between Gough and Kalameet parallels that of Igon and Bayle, so too do each worlds’ stony, everlasting ancient dragons reflect one another. Indeed, “teasing out” humans' passion is exactly what Placidusax desires for partakers of dragon communion, and that passion is exactly what stokes the hearts of dragons, their natural state being the implacable patience embodied by Placidusax, whose own name is derived from the Latin for “still/calm/peaceful.” Additionally, Florissax “offers her own sleep” to the Dragonlord each night, in return receiving “the power of His favor,” which she then bestows via the Ancient Dragon’s Blessing, directly mirroring Fia’s Baldachin’s Blessing, the description of which reads: “The favor allows one to forget any aches and pains. In Death, there is only peace, for in Death, there can be no sensation.” Yet, Florissax is stirred from her draconic tranquility, both by the Tarnished’s defeat of Bayle, and by their sabotage of her nightly ritual, granting her the solace of slumber even though she did not ask for such an indulgence.

This further contextualizes how Godwyn earned Fortissax’s respect and loyalty by defeating and sparing it. The establishment of their bond directly parallels that of the Tarnished and Florissax: proof of strength through glorious victory, followed by gentle mercy, and a dragon choosing to take up a new lord. To overcome a dragon’s detached, ascetic stoicism and earn its love is no mean feat, for “expressions of love are among the most fickle.” Yet, even if Fortissax did not bear Godwyn’s children, it is all but undeniable that it loved him in the same manner Lansseax and Florissax love their favored knights. Fortissax’s devotion even puts it in direct conflict with Fia, who seeks to lay with Godwyn as a consort-equivalent, labeling herself “the companion of Godwyn, Prince of Death,” just as the Remembrance of the Lichdragon labels Godwyn as Fortissax’s “companion.” There is a fairly unsubtle implication to the fact that, for Fia to take her desired place at Godwyn’s side, the one who forsook life and lord for him must be slain. Just as the ancient dragons of the prior era “would protect their lord as a wall of living rock,” so does Fortissax do for its chosen lord, even forsaking rest while taking on a Death which offers no peace. And just as Godwyn’s youngest brother, Miquella, prays, “O brother, lord brother, please die a true death,” so is Fortissax committed to letting Godwyn rest, and honoring the true memory of him, rather than the corrupted legacy it is narratively at odds with. It is no coincidence that Kristoff, a knight of the Ancient Dragon Cult, was the one to capture Godefroy the Grafted, now held in the Golden Lineage Evergaol, nor that Godrick the Grafted’s final words, “one day, we'll return together… to our home, bathed in rays of gold…,” echo those of Fia’s nemesis, Devin: “Honeyed rays of gold, deliver my spirit.” The sullied course of the Golden Lineage and the last vestiges of its pride; the woman who gives herself to Godwyn in death and the dragon who gave itself to him in life; each spiraling together ‘til both collide and perish.

Regarding Godrick, though, his dialogue is also a key hint to Fortissax’s true relation to Godwyn. Addressing the deceased drake in his courtyard, Godrick states, “Mighty dragon, thou'rt a trueborn heir[…] Lend me thy strength, o kindred. Deliver me unto greater heights.” To many, this reads as simply poetic language, speaking to how Godrick views himself as kin in spirit to dragons, and to the fallen glory of the Golden Lineage, with Godrick foolishly likening himself to the feeble “lowborn descendants,” for whom the ancient dragons have naught but hatred. However, FromSoft is often wont to hide information in plain sight, via seemingly metaphorical speech that is, in reality, extremely literal. And, as relayed by Kenneth Haight, Godrick did once live in the capital; combined with his fixation upon the Golden Lineage, it is all but impossible for him to be unaware of the true history and dynamic of the dragons and drakes. Moreover, Godrick is a far descendant of Marika, “a distant relation… The runt of the litter, his divine blood sorely diluted.” Yet, not only does he bear a Great Rune, otherwise reserved for Marika and Radagon’s direct children, but his is “the anchor ring, found in the center of the Elden Ring.” Each Great Rune corresponds to a demigod from birth, each then inherited in the wake of the Shattering, but Godrick would not seem to properly qualify as a demigod at all, much less one who warrants such a significant Great Rune. Unless the Great Rune inherited by Godrick should have, by rights, gone to another, who could not inherit it due to being deceased. Godwyn would seem a far more fitting match for this Rune’s demigod, indeed, a perfect fit. Of course, having died prior to the Elden Ring being shattered, his Great Rune would naturally go to his closest descendant. But Godrick is, again, “a distant relation.” Why would there not be any members of the Golden Lineage closer in blood to Godwyn? With how Great Runes seem to be utterly destroyed upon being discarded or lost, it seems extremely implausible that all of Godrick’s elder relations were slain in the Shattering War, and Godrick’s Great Rune has passed through many hands while remaining conveniently intact to the present. With the relative peace and prosperity of the Golden Order pre-Shattering, and the functional immortality of its denizens, it also seems unlikely that they all passed away prior to the Shattering. Unless, of course, they were not immortal.

In the character creation menu, among the base templates, there is one called “Draconian.” Nestled between Nightfolk and Numen, both highly lore-significant races, the Draconian’s description reads, “The stony face of the people of the ancient dragons, among whom life is typically short.” A curious detail, especially given the ancient dragons’ famed immortality. Yet, it does stand to reason that beings of stone and those of flesh would not be especially compatible in yielding offspring. For one such as Marika, fixated upon eternity and boundless life, what greater scandal could there be, but for it to come out that her direct descendants, sired by her heroic, golden scion, are bereft of the abundant longevity that graces even her most common subjects. Hence, the swift passing of generations and diluting of divine blood which leads to the likes of Godrick and his ilk; pitifully frail in body, but with their only pride being their heritage, even they keep the crucial secret of the Golden Lineage’s mortality. How perfectly ironic; practically every word out of Godrick’s mouth is about the pedigree of his forefathers, yet his forefather’s idealistic affection is the very reason for the frailty that he desperately supplements by turning to a practice which haunts Marika's past. And at the same time, it is also the reason he, eldest surviving descendant of Godwyn, inherits his Great Rune.

As it happens, this directly parallels one more element of Dark Souls: the firstborn son of Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. Despite being the spitting image of Gwyn in nearly every manner, and initially fighting alongside his father in the gods’ war against the ancient dragons, the firstborn ultimately defies Gwyn and chooses to side with the dragons. Though a god of war, he proves more taken with the dragons’ ascetic, meditative philosophies, and develops a lifelong bond with one drake, which may potentially have formerly been a certain fellow Dragonslayer. Though tacitly tolerated until Gwyn’s self-sacrificial departure, the firstborn is eventually stripped of his deific status and exiled from the gods’ city of Anor Londo, coming to take the epithet Nightreign players will know him by: the Nameless King. Marika’s parallels to Gwyn are many, and it follows that their eldest divine sons are similarly alike, creating a recurring theme of divine monarchs’ authoritarian measures of control being undermined by the very child who had the most reason to uphold the system. In Marika’s case, it feels most fitting that the pure permanence of her ideology, her projection of a perfect, superior, divine order, would all be secretly withered at its core due to the love between her most perfect son and a dragon, a bond forged from the very battle Godwyn fought for Marika's sake. Simple, earnest love ending a war and sabotaging Marika's projected image, only to be obscured; and just as ever, her attempts at control and suppression only led to the resurgence of her most loathed memories, in the form of grafting.

One final element worth addressing is the thematic texture to this illicit relationship. A child who bears the weight of high expectations, defying their parents’ wishes and taking a lover of a taboo identity; such a plot point carries, shall we say, overt subtext. Yet, FromSoft is hardly a studio which shies away from themes of queerness, even beyond the ever-present archetype of “blonde, androgynous, lastborn aristocratic scion and heir to a bloody legacy.” From outright queer characters, such as Solaire, Ranni, or the Executor, to characters with a thematic relation to queerness, such as Malenia or Boc, it is far from far-fetched to apply a queer lens to these stories. Godwyn and Fortissax, I would strongly argue, warrant such a lens, in large part due to Fortissax’s gender, or lack thereof. Even in the EN localization, Fortissax is referred to only as “it,” and in the JP text, Placidusax, too, is referred to with ungendered language. Conspicuously, this leaves only the priestesses and Bayle as gendered ancient dragons; the latter embodies explosive masculinity, siring the more base and bestial drakes, who are gendered, while the former very likely took feminine identities in service of their duties. In taking human form, they forsake their draconic strength for “feeble flesh,” adopting the feminine role of a holy maiden.

The very same is seen with Metyr, who is described as having been “magnificently gleaming” and a “shooting star,” yet now appears in a withered, warped, and “broken” form, a far cry from the ethereal and ungendered Maris and Elden Beast, the latter internally labeled as “NebulaDragon.” Count Ymir’s name derives from the Norse giant who gave of his flesh to create the world, and this is plainly Metyr’s lot; that she has only four fingers strongly implies that it was indeed she who bestowed the Beastmen their intelligence, and even in her fight, her offspring are born from a gruesome rending of her body. Perhaps, like the dragon communion priestesses, her female identity has come to dwell truly in her heart, though the Gazing Finger makes explicit that she resents being forced to lessen herself so. Regardless, it appears very likely that Metyr, Lansseax, and Florrisax are all instances of once-genderless beings taking on a gendered role for the sake of divine purpose.