#relationship study

"I told you to rent the SUV."

“And I said, we don’t need one!” Lando protested, his voice cracking slightly as he gestured wildly at the frosted window.

“Clearly, we do because your dysfunctional car drifted into a pine tree that is now blocking the very exit we need. Lando, we are fucking stuck here."

You stood by the window of the cabin, arms crossed, staring out at the disaster in the driveway. The McLaren Artura—a vehicle worth more than most houses and designed exclusively for dry asphalt—was buried up to its wheel arches in a Finnish snowdrift and a huge pine tree just mocking both of you. It looked ridiculous.

You stared at the car, a bitter laugh bubbling in your chest. It was so typical. Lando Norris: the boy who lives life like a game. He never planned for the bad weather. He never planned for the hard days. He just assumed everything would work out if he went fast enough.

That was exactly why you were leaving him. You were tired of being the passenger in a life that was moving too fast to actually be lived.

Inside, the air was already turning stale and cold. The "smart heating system" Lando had insisted on installing two years ago was currently flashing a red error code that probably meant Game Over in Finnish, and the WiFi router was dead.

Lando was pacing the length of the living room rug. He was wearing a bright neon green Quadrant beanie that clashed violently with the rustic timber walls, looking less like a Formula 1 driver and more like a glow stick experiencing an existential crisis.

"My stream," he muttered, tapping his phone screen aggressively. "I was supposed to be live in a few hours. The chat is going to think I died."

"Priorities, Lando," you sighed, turning away from the window to face the room. "We are trapped in a blizzard with no heat, no internet, and..." You gestured to the coffee table.

There, the reason why you both are here in the first place, sitting in the center of the room like a radioactive device, was the thick manila envelope. The divorce papers.

Lando’s eyes flicked to the envelope, then immediately away, bouncing to the ceiling, the floor, the window—anywhere but the evidence of your failing marriage. He pulled his beanie down lower. "I’m going to check the fuse box again."

"You don't know what a fuse box looks like.”

“I can be an engineer if I wanted to!" he yelled over his shoulder, fleeing into the kitchen.

—————————

Two hours later, the engineering attempt had failed, and the silence was louder than the wind howling outside. You were both huddled on opposite ends of the oversized leather sofa, wrapped in whatever blankets you could find.

Since talking about why you were divorcing was too painful, and talking about the weather was too depressing, you had resorted to arguing about the assets, specifically the things in the last house that you were unable to sell. It was petty, it was stupid, and it was the only thing keeping you from crying.

"I don't want the deer," Lando said, pointing a gloved hand at the terrifying taxidermy head mounted above the fireplace. "It looks like it’s judging me… kind of reminds me of you, actually.”

"Well, I don't want it!" you snapped, pulling your blanket tighter. "You bought it! You said it gave the place 'scandi-vibes'!"

"I was drunk! That shouldn't be legally binding!"

You looked at the deer, and a memory hit you so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of you. You remembered that day. It was two years ago, during the winter break. You were stumbling through the Helsinki Christmas market, Lando laughing so hard his nose was bright red, holding that stupid deer head like a trophy. He had kissed you right there in the snow, promising that this cabin would be your escape—a place where cameras couldn't follow.

Now, the cabin was just another asset to liquidate, and the deer was just a dusty witness to the end.

He huffed, sinking lower into his hoodie. He looked ridiculous and looked exhausted. But also, annoyingly, he looked cold. He hadn't brought a proper coat because Lando lived life on the edge, and now he has to suffer through it, and clearly, you don’t give a fuck if he freezes for the next 48 hours. His teeth were chattering, a soft click-click-click sound that was chipping away at your resolve.

Don't do it, you told yourself. Do not offer him your scarf. He is a grown man. He is a millionaire. He can buy a scarf factory. But god, he looks like a shivering puppy.

"What about the Nespresso machine?" you asked, trying to distract yourself from the urge to choke him with your scarf.

"You take it," he said quickly.

"But you love that machine. You named it 'Brew-is Hamilton'."

"Yeah, well," he mumbled, picking at a loose thread on the sofa cushion, refusing to meet your eyes. "I don't know how to use the milk frother properly. You were the one who made the good foam. 

"It’s useless to me. It doesn't taste right if... if you don't make the foam."

The next blow. He was basically saying, It’s useless to me without you. This house is just bringing up past memories that you would like buried with the snow.

You looked away, swallowing the lump in your throat. "Fine. I take the machine.”

—————————

Night fell, and the temperature plummeted. The generator gave a final, dying wheeze and cut out, plunging the cabin into darkness save for the dying embers in the fireplace.

"Dinner," you announced, trying to keep your voice steady. You rummaged through the pantry with your phone flashlight. It was a grim selection of non-perishables left over from your last visit. "Okay. We have pickled beets, a jar of sardines... or plain crackers."

"I am not eating a fish from a jar," Lando said from the floor, where he had moved to be closer to the fire. "That is a crime against humanity. That is worse than Oscar’s dry sense of humor."

"It’s that or starvation, Norris."

“Fine…Crackers, please.”

You joined him on the rug, the only warm spot left in the house. You sat shoulder-to-shoulder, not touching, sharing the box of dry crackers and the bottle of expensive red wine that was supposed to be for the 'Closing Sale' toast.

You took a sip, trying to stop your own shivering. The cold was seeping through your socks, biting at your toes. You shifted your legs, tucking them under you, but it didn't help.

Lando paused mid-chew. He didn't turn his head, but his gaze dropped to your socks, tracking the subtle, involuntary tremor of your knees. He knew that fidget. He knew exactly at what temperature you stopped functioning. Without a word, without even looking up from the cracker he was inspecting, Lando reached out.

His hand clamped around your ankle. He tugged your legs straight, then lifted your feet and tucked them securely under his thighs, sandwiching them between the warmth of his legs and the rug.

You froze.

It was muscle memory. A habit from three years of marriage. Your feet were cold; he warmed them. It was a reflex attested through a shared life you once both knew.

You looked down at his hand resting on your shin. The gold wedding band was gone; he’d taken it off for the legal proceedings, but the skin on his ring finger was still pale, a stark of white against his tan. A ghost of the promise he claimed he couldn't keep.

He chewed his cracker, and he paused. The realization hit him a second later that you.

He went rigid, his hand hovering over your shin. But he didn't let go, and you didn't pull away, either. The heat from his legs was seeping into your frozen toes, a painful, wonderful reminder of the intimacy you were throwing away.

"Jesus," he hissed, his hands tightening around your ankles to generate more friction. "Are you actually part of the undead, now? "

"Rich," you mumbled, eyeing the sad, half-eaten cracker in his other hand. "Coming from the man trying to survive a blizzard on a dry biscuit."

But neither of you moved. The air between you was charged, heavy with the scent of woodsmoke and the vanilla perfume you hadn't changed in years.

The fire popped, a loud crack that broke the trance. You looked at the coffee table. The manila envelope was barely visible in the firelight, but its presence felt heavy, suffocating.

"Just sign it, Lando," you said, your voice trembling. You pulled your feet out from under him. The loss of warmth was immediate and brutal. "The pen is right there. It’s been six months of you dodging the lawyers. Just finish it."

Lando flinched. He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. The neon beanie slipped back, revealing messy curls. The mask of the "Cool F1 Driver," the streamer, and the joker dropped completely. He just looked like a boy who was lost.

"I can't," he said quietly.

"Why?" You grabbed the envelope and tossed it toward him. It landed on the rug with a soft slap. "It’s just paper, Norris. You drive at 200 miles per hour, but you can't hold a pen?"

"I opened it, okay! The papers you sent me the first time… I held it over and over again!" he shouted suddenly, his voice cracking, eyes flashing with sudden, wet anger. "I had the pen in my hand! I sat there for hours!"

"Then why didn't you?"

He looked at you, his eyes swimming with tears, his chest heaving.

"Because it felt like signing your name out of my life," he choked out. "Once I put the ink on the paper, I can't undo it. I can fix a bad lap. I can apologize to the team. I can fix a crash… But, I can’t fix this."

He wiped his face aggressively with his sleeve, sniffing loudly.

"I didn't want this," he whispered, the fight draining out of him. "I didn't know how to carry the weight of the title and the weight of your heart at the same time, so I dropped you. I dropped us. I thought if I focused on the car, you’d still be there when I got out, and fuck, Y/N, I was wrong.” He stepped closer, hands twitching as if he wanted to reach for you but was terrified to touch.  “I let you slip through my fingers, lap by lap, race by race. I was so obsessed with the car that I didn't see I was driving our marriage off a cliff. And the worst part? You stayed. You sat in the stands and cheered for me while I was letting you rot in silence. I want to get on my knees and beg you to start over, to tell you I’ll change—but how can I ask you to forgive a man who watched you drown for a year and did nothing but smile for the cameras?" He looked at you dead in the eyes now. “I’m sorry, Y/N, for everything I've done to us. But believe me when I say, Fuck the championship. Fuck the legacy. It’s all just noise. I thought if I won, I’d be enough for you, but all I did was ensure I’ll never be enough again. I let you down in the worst way possible. I left you alone when I was right there beside you. I’d give it back. I swear to God, I’d give every point, every podium, every second of it back if it meant you wouldn't look at me with those dead eyes. Please... just tell me it isn't too late."

The silence that followed his confession was louder than any cheering crowds that had drowned you out during your entire marriage.

Fuck the championship.

Three words. Three words that would have saved you six months ago. If he had said them when you were crying on the bathroom floor in Monaco, or when you were staring at the ceiling in an empty hotel room in Vegas, you would have stayed. You would have fought.

But now? Those words just felt like a eulogy.

You looked at him. The desperation in his eyes was raw and terrifyingly real. This wasn't Lando the Superstar; this was your Lando, stripped down to the bone. He was offering to burn down his empire just to keep you. God, it hurt. It hurt because you believed him. You knew he meant it. He would give every trophy back.

But he couldn't give back the time. He couldn't undo the loneliness.

But the love? The love was always right there between the two of you, terrified and freezing. It hadn't left. That was the cruelest joke of all. You didn't want to leave him because you stopped loving him; you were leaving him because loving him had started to kill you.

But looking at him now, shattered and breathless, the horrific truth finally hit you: He hadn't neglected you because he didn't care. He had neglected you because he thought he had to be a god to be worthy of you.

He was just a boy who had convinced himself that the only way to keep you was to be the best in the world. He had driven himself into the ground, chased every point and every win, not for his ego, but because he was terrified that if he was just Lando, he wouldn't be enough. He had broken your heart trying to protect it with trophies and glory when all you ever wanted was him.

If you walked away now, you weren't just leaving a bad marriage. You were leaving a man who had finally woken up. You were pulling the trigger right when he was ready to lay down his armor.

Is asking for a divorce really the right call?

You made a choice.

You reached over and picked up the thick manila envelope.

Lando flinched, squeezing his eyes shut, turning his head away as if expecting you to force the pen into his hand.

Riiiiiiiiip.

The sound was tearing and loud in the quiet cabin.

Lando’s head snapped up. He stared, mouth slightly open, as you tore the document down the middle, then stacked the halves and tore them again.

"My lawyer is going to kill me," he whispered, staring at the confetti in your hands. "That was the original copy."

"Let him sue us," you said, your voice trembling but firm. You tossed the shredded paper onto the floor. "We’re snowed in. We have at least twenty-four hours before a tow truck can get here. Maybe forty-eight."

You crawled across the small space on the rug and he followed you. You didn't kiss him. It was too soon for that. But he sat next to you, shoulder to shoulder, pressing your side against his.

"We don't sign today," you said softly. "We talk about us, about the schedules, about everything.”

Lando let out a shaky breath, a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. He leaned his head sideways until it rested heavily on your shoulder. His hand found yours in the dark, his fingers tangling with yours, holding on tight.

"Okay," he murmured, the tension finally leaving his body. "We talk."

He paused, sniffing loudly, rubbing his thumb over your knuckles.

"But can we also talk about getting better snacks for this cabin? Because if we get back together, I am banning the sardines."

You let out a wet laugh, leaning your head on top of his neon beanie. “Deal."

—————————

The next morning, the sun rose over a brilliantly white, frozen landscape. The Finnish tow truck driver arrived at 9 AM, shaking his head as he winched the flashy McLaren out of the snowdrift. He walked up to the cabin to get a signature, knocking loudly on the thick timber door.

Nobody answered.

Inside, the fire had long burned out, but the room was warm. Buried under the single faux-fur throw, two figures slept tangled together, limbs knotted in a desperate seek for warmth, surrounded by the torn remnants of a divorce decree scattered like snow. They didn't hear the knock. They were too busy making up for lost time.

Kris and Ralsei are two of the three main playable characters in Deltarune, tasked with working together to fulfil the prophecy and save the world (at what is heavily implied to be at great cost to them all). It’s clear from quite early on that something ties these two characters together in a more profound way than their initial interactions may suggest, with multiple subtle clues that point towards the potential for a compelling and emotional story to be told with them. And yet despite this, their relationship winds up being almost completely glossed over, with the game’s narrative focusing on how other characters interact with them – for instance, the growing rapport and trust between Ralsei and Susie, or Kris’s attempts to reconnect with former childhood friend Noelle.

And for two prominent characters with top billing in a story-driven RPG – and especially considering how their struggles with identity and autonomy mirror each other so well – this seems a little bit odd, doesn’t it?

Indeed, once you start questioning it, you begin to realise that Deltarune appears to be deliberately de-emphasising Kris and Ralsei’s relationship specifically – from making most of the pivotal and emotional scenes between them optional and thus missable, to making the ones that are on the critical story path come across as awkward, emphasising their passivity and indirectness so that very little concrete information comes across to us about how they might feel about each other, and even using game mechanics against us to outright deny the ability to witness some of their conversations, concealing them so completely from us that not even looking directly at the game’s code will reveal them. No other character dynamic suffers from these issues, and perhaps as a consequence, no other character dynamic is portrayed in such an ambiguous to negative light by the fandom at large.

Why is this the case? What is Deltarune trying to say by portraying the relationship between Kris and Ralsei in this way? Is there some facet of their interactions that we have somehow overlooked, that might shed some light on this topic? And can we use these observations to paint a more complete and satisfying picture that integrates well with what we already know? This essay will attempt to answer these questions, and in so doing demonstrate that the relationship developing between these two characters is not only far stronger than we might initially have assumed, but that it serves to reinforce their respective journeys towards their own personhood and autonomy, outside of the structures that shape and guide their lives.

I hope you enjoy.

Part 1: …so that’s why, ok, Kris?

The most obvious place to start looking would be the moments where Ralsei is able to divert the player’s viewpoint towards Susie, leaving both him and Kris entirely alone. There’s at least one of these moments in each chapter, and this conceit is built upon each time it repeats. The first time it happens, in the dungeons of Card Castle, we might not initially think much of it, but by the time chapter 2 rolls around and we’re more aware of the dichotomy between Kris and the player controlling them, we begin to pick up on the possibility that Ralsei has deliberately sent us away to talk with Kris in private – the tell being his line just before Susie rejoins them: “…so that’s why…”, as if wrapping up a long explanation about something.

(Pointedly, players are able to refuse to let Ralsei perform this trick after the first time, but doing this generally does not yield any additional insight than if they allow it – with a notable exception in Chapter 3, which we shall touch upon later.)

Now, the next obvious question is, what are they discussing that would necessitate diverting our attention away from them? Vexingly, despite being four chapters into the game, we still don’t quite know, though it’s commonly speculated that they might be devising a way to permanently free Kris from our control. Tangentially related, it has also been suggested that the Ralsei we’re permitted to see is a charade, a deception to further this potential plan. This, along with the way he seems to act dismissively about certain topics, makes many players suspicious of his motives, and that he might not be who he presents himself as, which could be an explanation for why he is not as popular as other characters who seem more “straightforward” by comparison.

These clandestine conversations have a sense of mystery to them, and are made all the more frustrating and tantalising with the fact that there are absolutely no hints given anywhere about what might have been said and what significance it might hold. Even analysing the game code directly yields no clues – for all intents and purposes, no record of these conversations exist anywhere. And indeed, considering the way that certain secrets in Undertale have been teased but never fully revealed or explained, perhaps that is the entire point. Toby Fox, creator of both Undertale and Deltarune, is well-known for hiding all sorts of secrets everywhere in his games, including in the code and file directories, and yet he also holds information back from his audience, years or even decades after their release. This speaks to an intriguing sentiment; that the mystery IS the point, that as soon as it’s “solved” it loses its magic and intrigue.

It’s possible that these “secret” conversations that Ralsei has with Kris fall into the same bracket as topics like W.D. Gaster and the mysterious Machine in Sans’ garage. And in that light, it almost doesn’t matter what the conversations are about. They could be something as mundane as discussing the weather, or they could be blazing, impassioned rows. Either way, to have them revealed to us diminishes their significance, renders them just another piece of the puzzle that would contribute to “solving” Deltarune.

But even more fundamentally than that, their conversations are not, and may never be revealed to us, because they were never meant for us to see or understand in the first place. For better or for worse, Kris is beholden to the player’s control and oversight throughout the events of their journey, and both Kris and Ralsei are additionally beholden to the machinations of the Prophecy, and potentially those who would use it for their own agendas. However, neither wholly accepts this control passively and without resistance – Kris will twist what the player tells them to say and do, engaging in malicious compliance in order to ensure that they are unable to intervene in their personal life or the plan they are undertaking, while Ralsei does not blindly accept what the Prophecy foretells and resists his fate through whatever effort he can, however meagre. Given these circumstances, it makes sense that both characters, if given an opportunity to divert the attention of these forces away from them, would want to take that chance for a small reprieve from their – indeed, OUR – oversight and control. And as stated above, whatever they might be discussing during those reprieves doesn’t matter nearly so much as the fact that they are hidden from us in the first place, quite deliberately. We cannot know what they talk about, because our not knowing is the point.

And so we come away from this section rebuffed and with very little to go on… it seems that we have gotten no closer to determining what’s up with Kris and Ralsei’s relationship. But we can intuit a possible avenue of enquiry from this which can aid us in determining HOW we should look at their interactions – namely, that we should assume that there’s more to their dynamic than what we are merely shown, and to intuit that there may be hidden significance in their more overt communications which would elude a more surface-level reading of the text.

In other words, we’re gonna have to work for the answers we seek.

Part 2: I guess I like “You-Like” things

I have mentioned before that Kris and Ralsei’s interactions – at least, the ones we’re permitted to see – often come across as stilted, awkward, and understated, certainly by comparison to other character dynamics. And a quick sweep over their shared screen time and shared dialogues shows this to bear out, to an extent. Ralsei is generally remembered as being polite, deferential to an almost pathological degree, quite rigid in his mindset and easy to annoy or fluster – and these traits are dialled up to 10 when he’s talking to Kris. As the game progresses and his friendship with Kris and Susie deepens and matures, we begin to suspect that this is a façade to conceal his true personality… or perhaps more accurately, his true lack of one. And we are vindicated in this mindset as we see Susie work to break down his more curated persona and challenge him to begin developing as his own person.

This dynamic between the two is extremely popular, and it’s clear to see why: both participants contrast each other almost perfectly in terms of temperament, both challenge each other and develop in tandem, and all of their interactions are explicitly laid out in front of the player. And yet, whenever Ralsei interacts with Kris, he seems to regress, almost, settling back into his obsequious and demure role as their passive guide and cheerleader. The contrast is stark, and may contribute to why not many people see the appeal of their onscreen interactions.

The question to consider is, why does Ralsei fall back into these patterns? Is it that Kris doesn’t push back against him like Susie does? Is it that he doesn’t like or trust Kris as much? Or is he just that desperate to please this one person in particular? To most anyone who has done any level of poking around in Deltarune, it quickly becomes apparent that Ralsei appears to be smitten by Kris, and thus it will likely be intuited that he maintains his polite servitude and encouragement as an attempt to please them. But again, though neat and concise, this is merely a surface reading, and we already know thanks to the secret conversations that there’s likely more going on than just this.

This is where we can take another piece of knowledge from the existence of the secret conversations – in order for Ralsei to send us away, he has to already know we exist and are controlling Kris. We can further intuit that he will have realised that any point he’s communicating with Kris, we are observing everything that’s said, and are also in control of Kris’s responses, to a degree. From there, it’s not too far of a leap to surmise that Ralsei does not want us to know that he knows about us – otherwise, why all the secrecy in the first place? Once you consider this, an interesting ambiguity opens up whenever we talk to Ralsei, because… is he responding to Kris, or to us?

The answer is: likely both of us at the same time. There is already plenty of supporting material that strongly implies that Ralsei’s ultimate loyalty is to Kris, but at the same time he cannot be fully open with them without potentially giving something important away – something we’re not supposed to know. Thus, every single interaction becomes a delicate balancing act where he has to try and communicate his intentions to Kris while modulating what he says so as not to arouse too much suspicion in us. It’s reasonable to conclude, based on this train of thought, that Ralsei is under considerable duress during any given encounter with Kris, and must try to be mindful of us at all times – and the best way to do that is to be as unassumingly saccharine and demure as possible.

Of course, he isn’t always capable of keeping up the charade, and will slip up if sufficiently startled by something, such as in Chapter 3 (note the direction he looks):

And this gem not long after the Weird Route is initiated in Chapter 2, when he tries (and fails) to initiate another secret conversation:

But again, these are exceptions that prove the rule – he knows we exist and is doing his best not to draw too much attention to that fact. An inconvenient side-effect of this is that we cannot accurately intuit how exactly he would behave around a Kris that isn’t possessed by us – because by definition we wouldn’t be there to see it. Yet again, it would seem that we have been frustrated in our ambitions… but armed with our new suppositions, it at least gives us an idea of why Ralsei might more readily defer to Kris, and a potential rationale for why he might act so.

And so, we train our focus onto Kris themself. What can we intuit from them?

Part 3: Let’s just chill dude

…not much, as it turns out.

Despite being in direct control of them throughout the majority of the game thus far, the playerbase knows next-to-nothing about Kris as a person – a fact which is made glaringly obvious when we confidently – and incorrectly – proclaim their favourite food to be chocolate:

Indeed, aside from some sweeping generalisations about their proclivity for pranks and general weird and unsettling behaviour, much of Kris’s character is left frustratingly ambiguous to nosy players, and it appears that Kris themself has had a hand in ensuring we could find out as little about them as possible. Take their strangely-sparse side of the bedroom, or their empty locker, or the fact that they keep their prized knife somewhere outside of their standard “inventory”, where we cannot access it.

(It’s almost as if they knew we were coming or something)

So we must rely on their interactions with other characters to glean details about them. We learn a great deal from Noelle and Susie, as Kris’s prompts will become friendlier and less formal when talking with them. Additionally, their conversation partner’s prior knowledge of Kris will inform how they respond, and clue us in on how they are perceived by those people. There’s a silliness to their interactions with Noelle that belies the distance that has yawned between them in recent years, and their almost-psychic ability to anticipate and riff off of Susie’s wackier antics really conveys to the audience how fond they are of her.

But when it comes to interacting with Ralsei, Kris’s prompts seem strangely… flat. Overly-formal and polite, in a way that is much harder for us to read. Compounding this issue, Ralsei does not react to Kris’s tone like other characters do, meaning we cannot even gauge their mood from his reactions to it. Pointedly, the one time that tone comes into the equation, it’s Susie noting about the lack of it in an aside in Chapter 2 (which when we consider our earlier assertion that he’s trying not to draw attention to his knowledge of us, becomes another strangely jarring point of suspicion):

These lack of tone indicators robs us of the ability to make more nuanced calls about Kris’s mood and emotional state, resulting in a general flattening of their tone that could easily be construed as disinterest or discomfort.

(Which leads to an interesting question: is Ralsei unable to pick up on Kris’s tone aside from during moments of great distress, or is he willingly choosing not to react to their tone in his responses to them? Yet another layer of ambiguity to place upon the pile.)

This seeming distance and formality on Kris’s part is particularly confusing when you consider how the two characters might have deeper history than it might initially seem. Speaking to Toriel at the end of chapter 1, she will note that Kris used to wear a pair of plastic red devil’s horns, keeping them for months before they were seemingly lost. Looking at certain of Ralsei’s traits (such as his pink horns) and his apparent affinity and affection for Kris, there seems to be a strong inference that he is the darkner form of those lost horns. Yet if this is true, Kris appears to act like they have no idea who he is, brushing him off with a seemingly terse formality. And this would suggest, on a surface level at least, that Kris indeed does not register who Ralsei is, or that he is entirely unrelated to their long lost horns.

And we would have to settle for this total ambiguity, except for one very intriguing exchange that occurs between them in Chapter 3 – in fact, the very exchange that happens instead of that chapter’s secret conversation. If, instead of choosing to let Kris close their eyes, you instead get them to respond “Let’s just chill dude”, and then offer to talk about “Your face”, you can choose the dialogue option “Seen it before.”

What is interesting about this is not the conversation itself – though it does serve to further differentiate Ralsei from Asriel, however subtly – but the way that prompt is worded. At first glance it appears to be nothing more than a sharp elbow nudge towards players who are familiar with Undertale – “see, we’re aware of how suspiciously similar Ralsei is to Asriel!” – only to be surprised when Kris themself begins to point out the apparently many distinctions between the two – it’s a similar “gotcha” moment as the “chocolate/pie” question earlier. But think about this prompt a little more – if we believe that Kris’s dialogue prompts are a reflection of what they might think to say at any given moment, filtered through our ability to pick one of those responses, then it would suggest that Kris has indeed “seen [Ralsei’s face] before” – and crucially, NOT because of its apparent similarity to Asriel. Ralsei’s face is familiar to Kris, and yet distinct enough for him to register as his own entity, separate from any living(?) Dreemurr.

But how could this be, exactly? Could Kris have encountered Ralsei prior to the game’s events, perhaps in another dark world? It’s possible… but the likeliest explanation here is that Kris has seen Ralsei’s face before because of how formative their experience with the red horned headband was – their desire to be like their adoptive family seemingly so strong that they assigned themself a new name and face to better fit in. It would, at a stroke, explain his similarities to Asriel and the other Dreemurrs, while being distinct enough to be his own person separate from them. It would explain how Kris could so exhaustively describe to Susie the differences between him and Asriel at the beginning of Chapter 4, to the point she finds it exasperating. And the almost-defensive way it comes across, as though it’s highly important to Kris that the two are NOT conflated. Indeed, this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that the question of identity will come up with regards to both Kris and Ralsei, and it is a topic that we shall return to in due course.

But we’re not quite done exploring Kris’s more… unique interactions with Ralsei, and what they might tell us about how they feel about him.

Part 4: Don’t bother, it tastes awful

Kris is known for a good prank – it’s arguably the trait they’re best known for amongst the playerbase (right after enjoying chocolate and hating that skeleton who works at the convenience store). Throughout the game we hear tales told of their exploits against both Noelle and their brother Asriel in their childhood – both so very easy to wind up because of their respective timidity and gentleness. And we see that they are also not above playing a prank on their brand new friend Ralsei, either – who proves a most satisfying mark for an altogether different reason.

I mentioned earlier that, to an observant player, it becomes apparent that Ralsei has quite the crush on Kris, to the point that merely standing near them will make him blush furiously. Of course, many opportunities arise for the player – and likely Kris too – to take advantage of this trait by hugging him at inopportune moments and watching him dissolve into a stammering mess. And, taking the japes one step further, when moving to try a sample of his dummy’s clothes, Kris can instead opt to make it look like they’re kissing the dummy on the cheek, in full view of Ralsei himself. Who reacts… as you’d expect him to.

We do not tell Kris to do this – they perform this action of their own volition. Indeed, as we come to see, they are capable of a surprising amount outside of our influence. Such as in Chapter 4, when we are invited to “Show him compassion”:

…poetry in motion.

Most players would likely see these events as funny non-sequiturs and think no further of them, and perhaps that is indeed all they are. But as you might expect from this essay if you’ve managed to get to this point, we’re going to see if there might be some deeper meaning behind these unorthodox gestures, and the intention behind them.

During our time with Kris, they come across as quiet and aloof, not choosing to interact with others, to the point where it’s considered strange by some when they start doing so. In fact, they can be downright cagey and mistrustful. This marks out their apparent affinity for Susie early on as significant, and indeed once they overcome their differences the two become fast friends. But upon meeting Ralsei in Chapter 1, they don’t seem to entirely trust him, despite his welcoming demeanour and gentle nature.

At this point, both Kris and the player are finding their feet, determining the rules of the world they have found themselves in, and where the outer boundaries lie. Adventurous or mischievous players will spot an opportunity to test the limits of Ralsei’s patience, by disobeying him in the tutorial, or by fighting the enemies they encounter instead of pacifying them as he wants. And yet, instead of admonishing them or losing patience with them, Ralsei will react with understanding and grace – even when the same behaviour from Susie will provoke him to tell her off.

There are many reasons why he could be applying this double-standard – his aforementioned idolisation of Kris, his potential need to keep the player onside, or the possibility that he identifies Susie’s aggression as a much more direct threat to his plan to subvert the prophecy if left unchecked. But regardless of the reason, his gentleness with Kris comes at a time during their life where they are under an enormous amount of external pressure and have very few people they can truly turn to and confide in (see: working with the Roaring Knight for some as-yet-unknown purpose and with a questionable degree of willingness – we shall return to this idea later). While definitely speculative, it’s possible that Ralsei’s positive treatment of them during this time might in fact give them something approaching hope, or at the very least the sense that they are not alone in all this.

This also allows us to view their very first secret conversation in a new light – perhaps Ralsei sends us away to give Kris a chance to talk with someone truly sympathetic to their situation, who will not judge them for their part in events. This could even be the moment that a true friendship begins to form between them, which would be quite fitting for a relationship that has flown under so many people’s radars.

Speculation aside, it’s clear that by the end of Chapter 1, something in Kris has changed. Spurred on by newfound will, they risk their life, and override our control of them, to protect Susie from King’s attack. And by the next day, they have become much more expressive, using different tones of voice to change the meaning of what we tell them to say, and indeed interpreting our instructions to them in ways that allow them to act with a subtle yet meaningful degree of autonomy. While we cannot 100% attribute this to anything Ralsei may have said or done – after all, it’s heavily implied that Susie’s fiery determination to carve her own path has made quite the impression on them – we must keep in mind that what the game shows us isn’t necessarily the entire story, especially at this early stage, and thus we cannot fully rule out Ralsei’s potential influence on Kris here either. Indeed, the two interpretations aren’t mutually exclusive, so perhaps the fairest interpretation is to say that both Susie and Ralsei have an equal effect on Kris here, even if that influence on Ralsei’s side isn’t immediately apparent to us.

Now, we return to Ralsei’s mannequin, our instruction to Kris to “take a bite” of its clothes, and their twisting that instruction to putting their mouth to the dummy’s cheek. On its surface, this seems like just a funny prank to wind Ralsei up, to get him where they know it’ll have the most impact. But I invite you to consider this moment in the wider context of our above analysis, and with regards to Kris’s ability to act outside of our influence. These moments of autonomy are precious, both rare and fleeting, and Kris likely has to choose their moments to exercise this ability carefully. Would they risk this on a simple prank… or could this be a smokescreen for some other purpose?

Pranks are a good way to keep someone at arm's length, not give away too much to them, not allow them to see your vulnerability... but on the flipside, we often prank the people we like, as a way to reaffirm our bonds to those people, and to say things to them that it may not be possible to say out loud, for one reason or another. And remember that the victims of Kris’s childhood pranks, Asriel and Noelle, were two people who they liked and trusted. Would someone like Kris, normally so closed-off and cagey, take the time and energy to prank someone they didn’t like?

So then, if not entirely a prank, what does it mean? Does Kris secretly reciprocate Ralsei’s crush? No, I don’t think so… but perhaps we could see it as a continuation of the secret conversation they had back in Chapter 1, a small gesture of affection to a proxy-version of Ralsei, a quiet and clandestine act of gratitude for his earlier kindness and understanding. A coded message so subtle that maybe even its intended recipient didn’t get it.

A stretch? Possibly. But considering the primary way they appear to communicate is by manipulating our perspective so we can’t eavesdrop, there’s a certain undeniable sense of poetry in the idea of such seemingly-unremarkable gestures carrying greater significance than we can potentially know or understand. As things stand, we cannot know the true nature of Kris’s relationship with Ralsei, and we may never directly attain that understanding through the normal course of play… and this is entirely by design.

We can apply a similar sort of logic when invited to “Show him compassion” in Chapter 4, they dramatically throw themself to the floor next to him, which is a very strange, but undeniably Kris-like way of showing solidarity with the pancaked prince. Thinking about the context in which Ralsei has ended up in this position – prostrated on the floor as a living footstool, crushed by Susie who uses him to reach for a book that opens the way forwards, and then left behind without so much as a “thank you”… it makes you wonder just how much of themselves that Kris sees in him, that they would be motivated to perform such a dramatic gesture as a form of compassion. Certainly, there is the potential significance of both characters being treated like objects or pawns, and being to some extent “de-personed” by the forces that control them in the process, even if that is supposedly what they want for themselves… but again, this is a topic that we shall return to later on.

Now, it is possible that I am reading far too much into these gestures and that there’s no greater meaning or hidden message to them. However, there is a reason why I speculate with such confidence here. Remember at the beginning of the previous section, I brought up the “pie/chocolate” question, and how most players would get it wrong on their first playthrough? It turns out, if you leave the cursor alone, Kris will sneeze, and during that time they will bump the cursor from “chocolate” (the incorrect answer) to “pie” (the correct answer). Here, the context is different (they’re trying to nudge us towards the correct response rather than convey an emotion or message), but this moment does set a precedent of Kris using subtle gestures as a means to indirectly communicate while they are under our control.

Part 5: It’s nice that Ralsei is Ralsei

Of course, no essay dissecting Kris and Ralsei’s relationship would be complete without going over THAT scene. You know, the one where a certain bird takes a swim in the acid river.

The Acid Tunnel (of love) might be the single-most polarising event in the entirety of Deltarune’s normal route. Ostensibly, it’s a fun little swan boat ride that Kris and Ralsei embark upon to distract Queen and Ralsei discusses how nice his friends are and his own burgeoning identity issues, all while schmaltzy carnival music plays in the background. However, owing to a variety of circumstances (Kris only healing 60hp from Ralsei tea, the lowest value for any character excluding their own tea; the early theory that the game would explore and deconstruct “forced/fated romance” tropes; the whole “pseudo-incest” discussion; the idea that Ralsei was more for the player’s convenience than for Kris’s; et cetera), most players actually came away from this scene with a perception of Kris hating or otherwise being uncomfortable with Ralsei’s appearance, mannerisms and his superficial resemblance to a Dreemurr. This perception was not helped by the slightly-discordant tone of the aforementioned schmaltzy music, the somewhat-stilted nature of their conversation, the sense of artifice surrounding the whole event, and of course it being immediately contrasted with Susie and Noelle’s ferris wheel ride, which is universally agreed to be a sweet and heartwarming moment of development for both them and their nascent relationship, filled with dialogue and character moments that feel authentic and organic, in contrast to the more awkward and halting dialogue of Kris and Ralsei’s scene.

But, in light of the revelations surrounding Ralsei in Chapters 3 and 4, I think we might have been hoodwinked yet again, so taken in by the set dressing and the direct contrast to Susie and Noelle’s ferris wheel ride that we only saw the scene in an entirely romance-coded light… either a confirmation that Kris and Ralsei would fall in love, or an utter refutation of the notion of video-game romance/RPG dating tropes.

To illustrate my point, think about these two scenes and whether they would still work if we relocated them to a nondescript corridor in Queen’s mansion, or in the Trash Zone. You’ll quickly realise that while Susie and Noelle’s scene is baked into the setting of the Ferris wheel (they discuss being able to see the whole of cyber city from their vantage point, Susie imagines herself stomping around and causing mayhem, and that revelation endears her to Noelle), Kris and Ralsei’s conversation could happen anywhere and it would not meaningfully affect the emotional resonance and impact… except, of course, to decouple it from this idea that the scene is inherently being set up as a prelude to romance or its refutation.

I think the effect this set-dressing had was to distract from what the conversation being had was really about – the nature of friendship and identity, and how one doesn’t have to conform to a rigid set of rules to be considered a friend, and that you can be liked just for being yourself… whatever form your “self” might end up taking. A topic that we learn is deeply relevant to Ralsei’s situation, but also to Kris’s – someone who doesn’t appear to have a very strong grip on who they are, someone who is bound (both literally by the player and figuratively by the Knight/the Promise they made) to behave in a way that runs counter to what they themself might want – perhaps to the extent that they earnestly believe it IS what they want. For whatever reason, both Kris and Ralsei have been constrained by higher powers that they cannot directly fight back against, and both feel that they must fulfil the duty set out before them… even if it might all end in tragedy and ruin for them.

This is the moment where Ralsei acknowledges it out loud, to Kris – explaining that he thought being a friend was just about being nice until he met Susie and realises he likes her just for who she is, and that he isn’t entirely sure who he is underneath his performance as a kindhearted hero and prince. He’ll also affirm to Kris that “it’s nice that you’re you”, and we have two responses to choose from: silence, here interpreted as “…”, and “It’s nice that Ralsei is Ralsei”. 

(And here we see how the romance-y set dressing of the Acid Tunnel further obscures the significance of this moment, as it turns into what appears to be a loaded choice – say the nice thing and it’s assumed to be interpreted as a tacit approval of a foreshadowed romance, regardless of whether the player wants it to be or not, meanwhile say nothing and Ralsei makes a comment about “liking you-like things”, which can equally be seen as feeding a romance narrative. Thus it can feel like the player is trapped into making a choice they might not want to make, or signing off on a relationship that they do not want to happen, which ultimately distracts from the true significance of what’s being said and Kris’s responses to it, while also turning them off to seeing how the relationship between them develops further.)

The reason I left my analysis of this scene until now is because I wanted to circle around to it having established what we’ve learned from future chapters, alongside what we could reasonably intuit from those discoveries. We are reasonably confident that Kris knows Ralsei is somehow connected to their past, having “seen [his face] before”, and that the best candidate for such a pivotal role would be their old horned headband. With that in mind, combined with the talk of identity and being “you-like”, this specific dialogue choice is interesting and suggests a number of possibilities for what Kris might be thinking at this stage.

On its face, “It’s nice that Ralsei is Ralsei” seems like a simple affirmation or reciprocation of Ralsei’s assertion, but we see how significant it is to him to hear those words, to be told that he is allowed to be himself.

There are wildly different interpretations of what Kris might be thinking here – are they saying that out of a genuine belief in their words? Are they deflecting attention from themself because they don’t believe his words to them? Or could there be a sense of internal turmoil here, as Kris realises that the old toy they used to draw so much comfort from is changing and becoming something – someONE – else, right before their very eyes?

The other dialogue choice, “…”, does not lean specifically towards or away from any one of these interpretations, but rather strengthens the sense that there is some hesitancy or reluctance on Kris’s part, inspired in some way by Ralsei and his words to them. But selecting this option does not result in the disappointment or awkwardness you might initially expect – instead, Ralsei is able to use Kris’s silence as a way to reassure them that, even when they’re quiet and weird, he still likes them for who they are. Either way, Kris appears to come away from this conversation with a new perspective on Ralsei, as well as their respective identities. It’s quite apropos, then, that this is where the second of their secret conversations can take place – likely they would both have a lot to discuss about these newfound thoughts and perspectives, preferably without us looking over their shoulder the whole time.

I’ve mentioned a few times before that the themes of identity and autonomy are important to the characters of Kris and Ralsei – chiefly the way that they attempt to claw agency and a sense of personhood back from the grand machinations that have control over their lives, which we could consider the secret conversations and subtle hints in their interactions different manifestations of that struggle. And this moment is where the second half of that equation begins to manifest – the establishing and negotiation of different identities for themselves as the influence of those machinations begins to wane. And though we see this play out in real time with Ralsei as he reaches out to Kris for approval and reassurance, the way it manifests in Kris towards Ralsei is altogether more subtle, and a lot less straightforward.

Part 6: It’s okay not to smile / Keep smiling

Imagine running into an old friend from school.

The two of you used to be inseparable, always going to each other’s houses, always coming up with entire worlds that only you and they could ever hope to understand.  Imagine how safe you were with them, how understood and cared-for they made you feel. Imagine being able to trust them with anything, when it seemed like your world was collapsing in on itself. Arguments at home… bullying at school… uncertainty about yourself… none of it would matter when you were with that person.

You would remember all of this in a flash, and you know that your childhood friend would be having the exact same recollections. And for a moment, you might wonder; why can’t things go back to how they used to be? Can’t we ever get back to that level of trust and safety? But both of you already know why you can’t – you’ve both been changed by the passing of time. You’re both different people now. You have new friends, new responsibilities, new life circumstances. And however sweet it might seem to fall back into those old, comfortable routines, to turn back the clock and live out the rest of your days in an artificial bliss…

Now, imagine that your old childhood friend used to be a cherished item that you would wear everywhere, that provided you with a stable sense of identity and belonging in a world that was not made for you. Imagine that item could be whatever you needed it to be, assume whatever persona you desired of it, had whatever powers you deemed necessary to protect you when it seemed the whole world was arrayed against you. Even if none of it was real… still, you’d cling to it like a life-preserver.

Imagine if you lost that cherished toy, and years later you fell into a strange world, and came face-to-face with the sentient incarnation of that toy – your toy. Your lifeline. Your safety, your wellbeing, your very identity. Wearing a face you once dreamed up and scribbled onto sugar paper in kindergarten. A face that you know just as well as your brother’s.

You’ve both changed a lot in the intervening years. But… don’t you find yourself wondering… what it might be like… to have that old feeling back? Don’t you think that maybe, all the special attention they lavish onto you, the way they glow with an apprehensive joy when you look at them… don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, that’s what they want too?

To be… part of you, again?

This is the struggle that I imagine Kris might be going through with regards to Ralsei – both in terms of his own growing sense of identity, and their own relative lack of autonomy. This dilemma would likely be brought into much sharper focus once it’s revealed that, far from being an obedient, unquestioning pawn of the Prophecy, Ralsei has been trying to subvert its tragic outcome since the very start of their adventure. I expect that Kris might experience a curious mixture of emotions at seeing their old Dreemurr-sona grow and develop an identity of his own, independent of them – pride, envy, hope, fear…

There are two points in Chapter 4 where we get to see Kris respond to Ralsei’s struggles with his identity. In the first, he reckons with the emergence of his own wants and needs, struggling to reconcile that with what he believes a darkner such as he ought to be – pleasant, comforting, reassuring, obedient, faithful. And in the second, he tries to lapse back into that comforter role he played at the start of their time together, with Susie’s blood stained into the fur of his cheek and the terrible revelation of the Final Prophecy ringing in all of their ears. And the choice of responses that Kris has to both of these situations is interesting, because along with the positive affirmation of his own identity that we might expect, there is also a response that refutes and rejects it:

This feels bizarre to us as players, as we’ve seen with our own eyes how Kris has become more relaxed and casual around Ralsei in Chapter 3. This feels like a needlessly cruel aberration of that trend that comes out of nowhere – and indeed, if we attempt to get Kris to say “Of course not”, they will cough to stop themself from completing the sentence, making it sound like they’re saying “Of course”. It seems that not even Kris wants to say this to him… so why is it an option we can select? Why can we make Kris say these things?

I believe the answer is that they’re afraid. They’re afraid of seeing Ralsei, the object that they had once relied on for their very sense of self, develop his own sense of self entirely separate from theirs. They’re afraid that he might outstrip them, outgrow them, leave them stranded and stagnant… that he might leave them alone again. That if Ralsei, burdened with the crushing weight of absolute knowledge that no amount of hope or determination or action can possibly overturn, can transcend that cruel fate and dare to be his own person, despite the fear and uncertainty, despite the fact that it might not work out… if he can do it, then what does it say about Kris’s seeming inability or unwillingness to even try to challenge the powers that constrain them?

So, maybe there’s a small part of them - a selfish, childish part - that wants to go back to a time when it was simpler. When they knew who they were, and always had a dependable, infallible friend to turn to, who would never complain, never let them down, never judge them, and never challenge them.  Why should a toy, or a coping mechanism, have hopes and fears of its own, when its one and only job is to keep its lightner happy?

The really heartbreaking part of all this is that, if Kris asked him to forgo his personhood for their sake, Ralsei would probably do it in a heartbeat, and without hesitation. And when their situation seems to have hit its absolute nadir, at the conclusion of Chapter 4’s dark world… they would be entirely unable to stop themself from succumbing to this selfish desire.

This is portrayed as the pivotal moment in Kris and Ralsei’s relationship up to this point – the choice that determines whether Kris tells Ralsei to “Keep smiling”, and in so doing dooms him to their servitude and stymies both of their respective character growths… or whether they tell him that he doesn’t need to wear a false smile anymore, that he is allowed to articulate his own emotions, even if they do not serve to mollify those of his friends. It is difficult not to see this moment as a microcosm of how Ralsei’s struggles with his identity can go, and an example of how much power Kris’s words and actions seem to hold over him.

One further thing I would like to note is that, despite this option having no current tangible in-game effect, in Chapter 4’s code we see that selecting “It’s okay not to smile” will add a bonus value onto the amount that the item Ralsei Tea will heal Kris for, adding a flat 40HP to make up a total of 100HP. While the Teas introduced in Chapter 2 have rotted and become useless as early as Chapter 3, which makes the overall validity of this observation questionable, I nonetheless believe that its existence conveys an intent by the developers to show how significant this moment is in the context of Kris and Ralsei’s relationship, even if that significance is not directly conveyed in gameplay up to this point.

Taken together, this moment seems like the most significant point of Kris and Ralsei’s friendship that we as players are permitted to witness, and what is more, the choice is left to us as players, which feels significant, given how little of their dynamic we have the potential to have seen or intuited up to this point. On its surface, this choice seems to be between affirming or denying Ralsei’s nascent personhood, as I outlined above… however, given how little we truly know about their relationship, I would venture it’s more than likely we do not yet possess the full understanding of what this choice actually means. In fact, understanding how closely the themes of identity and autonomy are bound together, it could be reasoned that choosing “Good. Keep smiling” might serve as a wrench the player can throw into their respective efforts to break free and become their own people, by driving an emotional wedge between them so they cannot cooperate as effectively against the forces that control them… which, I should remind you, includes us as players of Deltarune.

Yet if Deltarune is trying to prevent us from fully seeing or understanding Kris and Ralsei’s interactions, then why even give us the choice at all? Why let us see any of it, if we can just skip over it all and be none the wiser?

Part 7: I believe YOUR choices are important

I now must confess something to you. There’s something about this moment – and indeed many of the others I’ve touched upon – that seems to directly contradict my stated aims with this essay, and that is that they are almost entirely initiated by the player, and not Kris or Ralsei.

In many ways, this is fitting, because without the player guiding Kris in very specific ways and choosing very specific prompts, very few of their on-screen, or even off-screen interactions with Ralsei are permitted to even occur. Choosing to hug Ralsei, choosing to “take a bite” of the dummy, choosing “It’s nice that Ralsei is Ralsei”, choosing to “let’s just chill dude”, choosing “Ralsei or bust”, choosing to go up to his room in Chapter 4… these things simply do not happen if the player controlling Kris does not take the time or care to find or initiate them. And in that light, it would perhaps be sensible to conclude that Kris and Ralsei’s relationship is determined in large part by what the player does, as opposed to what its actual participants might decide.

And this would be true… if any of the decisions we make surrounding Kris and Ralsei actually changed anything meaningful. But they don’t. In fact, they serve just the opposite purpose, showing that no matter what we tell Kris to say or do, our choices regarding their personal life do not matter. If you skip literally every other Ralsei-related cutscene and interaction you’re allowed to miss, Kris will still embrace him if you choose “It’s okay not to smile” at the end of Chapter 4. They’d still cough to cover up the bad thing you tried to get them to tell him in his room. They’d still proclaim “Ralsei or bust” to his face to cheer him up. They’d still prank him by pretending to kiss his dummy’s cheek. They would likely choose to say and do those things, regardless of what we might think or how we might try to influence them otherwise.

I am quite confident that this is the developers’ current intention with regards to Kris, and the reason for that has as much to do with what was left out of the game as what was put into it. There is a surprising amount of scrapped and cut content surrounding Kris and Ralsei specifically, and much of it directly addresses the way Kris can react to him… or rather, the way the Player can react to him. You’ll likely know of the cut dialogue from Chapter 1 where players could either lavish Ralsei with excessive adoration or harshly rebuke him:

Or of the scrapped and incomplete Acid Tunnel scene where Ralsei would ask Kris who they were thinking about, with one of the answers correlating to whoever they gave the stuffed toy to earlier on:

(for added humour, if you gave the plush to Ralsei, his resulting dialogue would break and he’d skip straight to the next scene).

On its face, it’s pretty obvious why these were removed from the game – they ran counter to Deltarune’s stated ethos of “your choices don’t matter”, giving the player too much freedom to voice their approval (or indeed, disapproval) of certain characters through Kris, as well as those choices being largely the player directly speaking through Kris, rather than voicing a thought that was formulated by them. But I believe a secondary reason for these changes has specifically to do with Kris’s relationship to Ralsei: not giving the player too much ability to unduly influence it one way or the other, and additionally helping to serve the purpose of obscuring Kris’s true opinion of him from the player, in line with the goal of keeping us in the dark regarding the true nature of their relationship.

This last point may seem like a stretch, but I invite you to consider an alternate scenario with me where the Chapter 1 Ralsei dialogue was kept in. Doubtless it could be made to work with the current arc of events throughout Chapters 2-4 – the negative responses could be used as a way to show Kris realising they were wrong about their initial opinions of him, mellowing to a more casual and friendly register by Chapter 3, while the positive responses would actually be more difficult to integrate into canon, but could perhaps be explained as an idolisation or infatuation that becomes more tempered over time.

In conventional narratives, both of these approaches could work, and produce perfectly satisfying, if somewhat uninspired, emotional arcs for the player to experience through those characters. But Deltarune is no conventional narrative, and it is not afraid to deny its players easy answers to the complex ideas it presents to them. In other words, having Kris display overly-positive or negative opinions of Ralsei in the first chapter of a seven-chapter game would then engender a sense in the player that such choices and opinions would at least be honoured, if not fully catered to, further down the line – an expectation that Deltarune is absolutely not prepared to indulge. Instead, we are merely left to infer – whether correctly or otherwise – how Kris might perceive Ralsei, relying on conjecture, deduction and prediction to justify our positions. Which, aside from anything else, is much more interesting than merely telling us outright, or letting our decisions shape the outcome at this early stage.

Or you could travel to the opposite extreme, and play the entire interaction off as one of Kris’s pranks, a bit of banter that doesn’t mean anything serious. However, this outcome would be even less satisfying, not least because it doesn’t ring true with the little we do know of Kris’s character. The pranks that we know they liked to play were often the more practical variety, rather than through pretending to be enamoured or exasperated with someone through words alone. On top of which, such a response seems very mean-spirited, which again runs counter to the notion that they primarily prank the people they feel comfortable around.

The removal of these choices and dialogue trees was, I believe, part of an effort to curtail the way that the player is allowed to express themselves through Kris, and through that expression end up slipping into the role of “Kris” the playable character, at the expense of the actual Kris that lies buried beneath. Deltarune wants us to be aware that Kris is their own distinct character whose thoughts and feelings are separate from the players, and allowing such emotionally-charged or biased options runs counter to that notion. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the Kris we know saying those things to Ralsei in Chapter 1, even as a prank, or espousing favouritism for a particular character because we made them give a present to that character earlier.

Part 8: Don’t forget, Kris… You promised…

Of course, there is one other factor we haven’t yet discussed in much detail, which is the “promise” that Kris made, their seeming alliance with the Roaring Knight, and how it clashes against the new friends they have made in Susie and Ralsei. Thing is, with Susie it’s pretty easy to tell the effect this has and will have on their friendship – it’s clear that Kris does care very much for her, but even so will elect to keep her in the dark about their involvement – to the point where, if prompted to “say what’s on [their] mind”, they’ll do so while keeping their mouth completely closed.

Straight away, we can understand why this is such a difficult thing for Kris – the Knight is the Enemy, and they’re supposed to be a Hero. To Susie, nothing could be simpler – defeat the enemy in front of you, and you win. But how would she react if she ever discovered that Kris had been working with the Enemy… perhaps from the very beginning? If the way she reacted when Lancer turned against her is any indication, my guess is… not well… though she has surprised us in the past, and could well do so again. Even so, the risk of an explosive fallout is real enough.

By almost direct contrast, it’s quite difficult to know how the same scenario would play out with Ralsei – how would he react knowing that one of his best friends, and perhaps the lightner who gave him purpose, was working to bring about the very fate he and his friends were supposed to be averting? It’s difficult for us to say with any confidence, as we simply do not know enough about him at this point in the game – additionally, with Kris opening a Dark Fountain in their living room, you might have supposed that he would have berated them the same way he did Berdly at the end of Chapter 2… and yet, he never brings it up at all. Which is curious to me, as that seemed to be the one red line he wouldn’t allow the lightners to cross under any circumstance.

Do we chalk this up as another example of Ralsei making exceptions for Kris (who I might remind you he has all the telltale signs of a crush on) that he wouldn’t for others? Perhaps, although all this interpretation really accomplishes is to flatten and caricaturise him as a love-struck hypocrite. And there is a far more coherent explanation for all of this, that reaches across the entire game, and perhaps strikes at the core of his relationship with Kris, and that’s because he already knew they were going to make that fountain. Just as he already knew the prophecy would end in tragedy.

Just as he already knew that Kris has been working with the Knight all along.

This is quite a bold claim, so let me explain my reasoning for why I think this is the case. Firstly, it’s established in Chapter 4 that he Knows the entire text of the prophecy from start to finish, and that he additionally Knows the “rules” of the dark world, which is why he can act as such a reliable guide through it despite his life of inexperience and solitude. We can also infer with some confidence that he is aware of the Player’s involvement in events, as outlined earlier in this essay. Given all of this, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suppose that he could also know about Kris’s involvement with the Knight and the Promise.

But what I think might just be the most convincing point for this interpretation is the dialogue you get when talking to Ralsei after losing to the Roaring Knight at the end of Chapter 3:

This line does not seem all that significant, but consider its ambiguity, and how defeated his tone seems. He doesn’t tell Kris to “go after Susie”, or “be careful”, but “whatever you need to”. And not long after this, we see Kris enter the Shelter of their own accord. The timing, the tone set by Ralsei, the ambiguity in his words… it all seems to point to him knowing that the Plan that the Knight and Kris are following has proceeded entirely heedless of their intervention. He conveys his understanding that Kris must go and play their part, and so he lets them.

But even if this is correct, what, realistically, does it change? I refer you once again to the secret conversations. If we want to speculate on a possible reason why Ralsei might need to talk to Kris alone, without our oversight, this might just be the most compelling of them. Obviously, from a player experience standpoint, it would not do to have the big twist of Kris’s involvement with the Knight spoiled from the very beginning. Additionally, it could be used to explain why Kris does not appear to immediately warm to Ralsei throughout the first two chapters, as if he told them that he knew of their secret, it would not necessarily endear them to him right away. It could be considered a threat, or perhaps some way for him to get leverage over them.

But none of this explains why Ralsei would even attempt to work with Kris as a hero of the Prophecy, if he knew they were simultaneously working against him from the outset. Why treat your saboteur – by all accounts someone who should be your enemy – with such gentleness and respect, when it could wind up becoming your very undoing? I believe this is the simplest question to answer, and that is because that’s just who Ralsei is. He was born with knowledge of a prophecy that spelled doom and disaster for him and his friends – a prophecy that foretold that he must fight with fire alongside a sword and axe wielder – and instead of losing hope or giving into his situation, he chooses to be kind.

Forsaking his own seeming aptitude for destruction in favour of pacifism and healing, a practice he describes as so simple that “anyone can learn it”. By showing compassion and understanding to those that fate deemed their enemies, Ralsei hoped to show that another way is possible, and that “no-one has to die” in order to fulfil the destiny set out before them. And indeed, knowing that in a pacifistic route, both Tenna and Jackenstein survive where they would otherwise have perished, his view becomes vindicated to us, albeit not in the way that he had hoped.

And why should that compassion, that hope, not also be extended to Kris? Someone who is struggling under the enormous weight of the expectations placed upon their shoulders, from all quarters? Someone who is literally caught in the space between hero and villain, playing both sides but being truly part of neither. The Knight and its accomplices demand their fealty to a promise made in haste, accosting them by phone even in the Light… but on the other side of that fulcrum stands Ralsei with a paw gently outstretched, treating them with patience and sympathy and kindness, making no demands but simply being there for them, whatever they decide to do. This is something that even Susie, for all her unquestionable virtues, cannot offer them – a quiet place to figure things out, away from the prying eyes of players and the crushing burden of their obligations.

Ralsei wants to believe it can change… and perhaps, if he is kind enough… he can defy the fate set out for him and his friends.

Closing thoughts: Until we see fate with our own eyes… let’s believe, too.

Of course, all of this is largely speculation – albeit made with as much consideration to what we know as possible. And yet, as I mentioned at the start of this essay, I believe that Deltarune is making its players work in order to bridge the gaps in our knowledge – the gaps left by the secret conversations, the untold shared past, Ralsei’s own impulse to stand out of the way of his friends, and Kris’s disinclination to trust others – not to mention the absurd number of secrets that they keep, both from the other characters in-universe and the players out-of-universe. Because the alternative, if this is false, is that in a game brimming with personality and well-defined characters who interact with each other in a dynamic and believable way, two of its lead characters somehow do not possess that vital spark required to properly connect and bond with each other, and that these moments of connection they share are contrived, forced and somehow “unearned”. And while this could potentially be correct, it would be terribly unsatisfying and a disservice to both of their characters, as well as to the wider story of Deltarune as a whole.