Elden Ring: SotET spoiler warning
This is regarding the whole thing with Miquella, Malenia, and Radahn because I see a lot of stuff floating around about them, and I wanted to throw in my two cents. So, y'know, massive spoiler warnings.
Of all the things I've seen people talk about, there's one thing I have not seen crop up (and maybe I've just missed it), which is why Malenia went to Caelid with her army in the first place.
In the base game, we're given to assume that the battle between Malenia's Cleanrot and Radahn's legions was just another part of the Shattering War in which the various demigods vied for fragments of the Elden Ring. The Shadow of the Erdtree sheds more light on that, proving that it was, predictably, a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of things that came to light with the DLC, but I'm going to focus on what I think was the reasoning behind the war in Caelid and here it is:
I think Radahn was scared.
Think about it, why was he in the ass end of the Lands Between in the first place? Do you really think that it was a coincidence that he built his fortress in a place that was literally the geographically furthest location from Miquella's Haligtree? He didn't go there for no reason. He was chased there.
So this is all an educated guess based on geographical location and the revelations in SotET, but I believe that Radahn realized what it was that Miquella was intending to do, realized what it would mean for him to be Miquella's consort--to lose everything that didn't love Miquella--and knowing that confronting Miquella would only result in him being charmed, chose to flee as far as possible from the young god. That, in turn, forced Malenia to chase him all the way from the Haligtree to lower Caelid.
Think about how much the Cleanrot hated Radahn and his Redmane, so much so that they still kill each other endlessly in the War-Dead Catacombs. They hate each other, but why? Why would the Cleanrot hate the Redmane so much? Why would the Redmane hate the Cleanrot? Where does that come from?
What if that hatred is because their God was an oathbreaker? I think that Radahn, realizing to his horror what would happen to him, broke his vow to Miquella and fled to Caelid, and his army fled with him. Malenia, Blade of Miquella, who is a fundamental creature of loyalty above all, and her Cleanrot pursued him across the Lands Between, hating him for what they perceived as his cowardice and betrayal of Miquella, their own goddess' lord brother. Likewise, the Redmane would despise Malenia and the Cleanrot as being lobotomized slaves to Miquella, who were seeking to do the same to their God.
This casts Radahn and the battle in Caelid in a completely different light. Now it makes sense as to why he was clinging to life so desperately in spite of having been driven insane by the Scarlet Rot. What if Radahn refused to die not because he was a god of war but because even in his madness some part of him knew that death was not the end and would lead to a greater horror.
Miquella wanted to bring about an Age of Compassion, but in doing so he would reave everything but compassion from the minds of his subjects, and that terrified Radahn so badly that he fled to the other side of the Lands Between and holed himself up in a fortress to try and stave it off.
Anyways, that's my theory.
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