#ehhhh.

they don't get along.

The answer is, quite literally stealing Gwyn's aura, and hear me out:

Our Bearer of the Curse first arrives in the Thing Betwix as a 'male' character- ask literally any dataminer! It is just how it is! However, "he" is very Hollowed, and is able to regain appearance and name by clutching a Human Effigy. But the thing is, Bearer of the Curse can come back from Hollowing as any race or any gender! Recollecting something else entirely can give them new body. It correlates very nicely with how first created humans were shown as genderless, raceless, featureless "ideas" of human beings ever since Dark Souls 1 and with that darn Trans Coffin in the Thing Betwix itself hghgjvn. Fromsoft proposes that, since Flame gave humans races and genders, one could come all the way back to "blank state" and return from it something else! It is in plain sight! Genesis and all that.

So, as for Queen of Venn? She gained spiritual kinship with Izalith, who was envious of Gwyn's First Flame and unleashed the Chaos in an attempt to imitate it! And Iron King, her once-sweetheart, got spiritual kinship with Gwyn, to complete the parallel. Notice how similar she appears to Gwyn in both looks and fighting style! As much as I am attached to my headcanons, I believe the "canon" implication here is that through (vicariously) experiencing yearning for having what Gwyn has, she came back from her Hollowing as someone very similar to Gwyn.

Personally, I just really love the idea that she used to flip-flop between two biological genders, since Venn was connected to Moon, and moonlight IS gender-fuckery force of Dark Souls. After all, she has breasts too, not just beard. xD But yeah... It is fair to assume that there are little to no "true" trans characters canonically in Soulsborne; they all have very solid lore reason for why they are like this. Recent example: Executor not being "true" nonbinary character since they are quite literally a man and a woman fused together. I think From is more than deserving of having their own ideas being heard and analyzed even if they are not always what we want them to be, but also we can really just write what we resonate with better.

P.S.: Some retranslators are very adamant on misgendering her because Japanese script fully omits her pronouns (Japanese language can do that), but there is an important note. Every single time pronouns is omitted in Japanese, localisation translates as 'he'... except, for this time. We know for a fact that localisation of Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring got reviewed by the devs beyond just approving of voice acting itself, so they would sure not sleep on changing the gender of one of THE main characters of Dark Souls 2!

Please reblog and put in the tags which character from IZ you are particularly obsessed with. Anyone that screams to you from the screen? Someone you've analyzed and watched the scenes of over and over again enough to recite them by memory. Someone you know DEEP in your bones that you've familiarized yourself with someone that you can point to a fan interpretation of and go "they would not fucking say that" accurately every time you see it.

Favorite character. That you know everything about. Tags. Please and thank you. I'll go first.