#theory synopsis

Radagon is a brain-rotted warrior like Radahn, and Marika has misplaced blind faith in someone else (the Tarnished / Miquella) to deliver a cure like Malenia.

Marika is shattered and "crucified" in the Erdtree like Miquella is disassembled and "crucified" in the Shadowlands. Radagon is unable to let go of an illusory ideal of paradise like Morgott.

Radagon is nihil inside like Mohg and obsessed with golden lineage like Godrick.

Radagon has a complex of thoughts about the role of mothers like Messmer and imposes them upon Rennala.

Two main themes being: 1) Pop stars singing shallow music synthesized in a lab to go viral and drive people into a frenzy - selling the concept of love and other things that people feel themselves lacking (i.e. the beast plague), and 2) The tendency for young women to be scouted for their voice and looks and "dolled up" to sing music written and produced by men and for men. (I.e. The Doll, who wears the same dress as the Winter Lantern enemies which sing discordantly).

....And then I have one conversation with a buddy about "Phantom of the Opera" and learn about "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974). Where a composer has his vocal chords broken and signs a contract in blood to sell his soul to have his music sung by one specific woman, and that woman sells her own soul for the chance to be a singer. And the "devil" in this case is a record producer who sold his soul for immortal youth, and has a surveillance obsession.

And there's a pretty clear entry point. For how stated Berserk fan Hidetaka Miyazaki might have come to be taking inspiration from the Phantom of the Paradise for Bloodborne. (This was one of those cases where Kentaro Miura did confirm the inspiration, also).

And while I do still want to talk about the lyrics of Phantom of the Opera and the gorgeous set design of the 2004 movie in relation to Elden Ring and the Souls games, this has been a nice detour.

"I was not myself last night In the morning light I could see the change was showing Like a child who was always poor Reaching out for more, I could feel the hunger growing

And as I lost control, I swore I'd sell my soul for… One love, who would sing my song (who would sing my song) And fill this emptiness inside me One love, who would sing my song (who would sing my song) And lay beside me while we'd…

Dream a bit of style (Dream) dream a bunch of friends Dream each others smile And dream it never ends"

Faust by "Winslow Leech" (Phantom of the Paradise)

...Also I mentioned the song "Maria" by Blondie back when I wrote those first Bloodborne analyses in December 2024. Blondie being an example of a genre-blurring art rock band with ambitions to make weird and sometimes introspective art that didn't always work, but other times created something with that je ne sais quoi factor. "Rapture" especially is an example of this.

Anyways, I was listening through a lot of music at the time for a playlist project, and didn't really spend much time listening to the No Exit album. After now going for +12 hours on repeat: can confirm that "Maria" is an earworm of a song.

"I've seen this thing before In my best friend and the boy next door Fool for love and fool on fire Won't come in from the rain She's oceans running down the drain Blue as ice and desire Don't you wanna make her? Ooh, don't you wanna take her home? Maria, you've gotta see her Go insane and out of your mind Regina, ave Maria A million and one candle lights Ooh, don't you wanna break her? Ooh, don't you wanna take her home?"

Like, St. Trina and Miquella being the same being was an intriguing part of their character. People theory crafted about this for 2 years. And then Miquella abandoned the sweet dream of St. Trina after Mohg's bloody nightmare was forced upon him, but Thiollier still believed. Thiollier's attachment to St. Trina is so strong that he rejects Miquella at her request. And if not for that request, Thiollier would linger forever in the velvety dream of lost potential - shut off from the rest of what the Shadowlands has to offer.

The mechanics of Elden Ring do not allow the character of Miquella to live up to the theorizing. The archetypical role of Miquella is the idealist whose dream is crushed by reality, which could already be seen by the ominous way that the bloody cocoon was staged in the base game. A game can only be coded to do so much, and with Elden Ring there is no such thing as a post-game utopia where you get to hang out with all of your NPC buddies and rebuild civilization. Your options are to either quit the game world or start another loop. Adding pacifism functionality is beyond the scope of the Lands Between, even as a DLC.

It's a game where you fight and kill enemies, which is why Ansbach is the other NPC invited to that last fight. They are two extremes of a spectrum. Thiollier embodies the point of view of rejecting the game version of Miquella and making your own "fix-it" alternative universe through imagined narrative content. Ansbach embodies the point of view of rejecting the mechanical content that FromSoftware has crafted and instead prolonging the experience of the game in other ways - such as finding the PVP of the Bloody Fingers more engaging and balanced than repeating the boss fights.

Ainsel River

Melina. It's a near anagram. Substitute a "s" for the "m" to make the name "Selina". Which like the name Selena may allude to the Greek moon goddess Selene or Σελήνη (pronounced seh-LEH-neh).

"Sel" is also apparently the Turkish and Romanian word for "torrent" in the sense of a flood.

Ainsel alludes to the story of a curious fairy girl who had her foot accidentally burned by a human boy when playing with fire late at night. Because she gave her name as "Me Aan Sel" ("My own self"), and the boy responded in kind with the name "Just my own self", when her mother called down the chimney to ask who hurt her, her response made it sound like it was her own fault and an arm reached down the chimney to snatch her away and frightened the boy to go to sleep on time for fear of future encounters with the fae.

Melina is some kind of supernatural being in the way she appears and disappears, and also she has been burned before.

Yorshka in DS3 has the same voice actor as Melina, and she's a dragon person.

What if dragons are river spirits like in the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away (and also I assume broader Japanese mythology).

A witch stealing parts of names to control people is also part of Spirited Away. Drastic changes due to erasing entire kanji, like "Chihiro" becoming "Sen". Or more simple like the buried river "Kohaku" becoming "Haku".

Melina is comically implied to be draconic in the Road to the Erdtree manga where she likes to eat the Land Octopus (Wyrms are found fighting with and/or being fed with octopi. And the Octopi themselves feed on blood).

"sel" is French for salt. Na is half of a salt. Cl is the other half.

"Chlorine" derives from χλωρός (khlōrós, "pale green"), compare to "Clotho" which begins with a "Cl" though derived from from Κλωθώ (Klotho). Only superficially they are the same from the abbreviation of the chemical element. There's also "Chelone" which is "Χελώνη" (Khelṓnē) in Greek.

I believe there is also a character named "Chloanne" in Dark Souls 2? I don't know much about her.

Examining Clotho anyways. She's the maiden of the Three Fates. Of whom the eldest Atropos delivers Destined Death. Like Melina. As the "Three Sisters" is another name for the fates (most notably in the Orion's belt constellation), there is corroboration for this allusion. The three fates also seem to be conflated with the triple goddess of the moon in this instance (maiden, mother, crone or crescent moon, full moon, new moon).

Sodium burns yellow in the same hue as the Frenzied Flame. There is an optical illusion that can be made where "black flame" appears when burning sodium under a sodium lamp.

Conclusion (?): The reason why the "Gloam Eyed Queen" is not given a name is because by fae rules names have power. In fantasy stories, if you know a character's name you can usually puzzle out something about their character arcs or abilities with enough effort because writers have a tendency to like allusion. Melina is Melina while her left eye is sealed because it obscures her name and her true nature from being fully known. Like how "Me Ain Sel" or "Ainsel" is not a name - it's faerie word games.

Thinking about how most of them seem to represent a merged or dual-identity creature, especially on the main path:

Divine Beast Dancing Lion - two men operate the puppet

Rellana - two handed fighting with fire and magic and also twin moons

Messmer - double-headed snake accompanying man who contains a large serpent

Romina - scorpion and centipede melded together

Promised Consort Radahn - Lord Radahn and God Miquella acting in tandem

And then the variations on this duality with the other bosses:

Gaius - man with no legs has tamed a beast to compensate for his lack

Putrescent Knight - the skeleton (with too many bones) emerges from the horse

Midra - A foreign object was forced inside his body and the man suffers to resist it. A new entity is born when the man embraces the foreign object as a weapon.

Metyr - Stitched together flesh golem of a creature, with many fingers grafted together and contorting. The creatures she births are nonsensical hands with pre-severed stumps (i.e. severed from a larger giant) which seems to indicate that she is more like a container that has been stuffed with them. Her hands have 4-fingers each and if you look carefully you can see it's actually two sets of two fingers with a seam between that spirals up her arms.

Scadutree Avatar - as the name says: it's an avatar. The will of the Scadutree being piloted in a separate body. You can't land direct hits on the Scadutree but you can persist on defeating it's series of avatars until it yields.

Hewg in the Round Table Hold has been charged with creating a weapon capable of slaying a god. For our purposes that god is Marika, but the Round Table Hold as we know it is an echo of the past - there was once a previous god who Marika needed slain before herself. The Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones are the "hidden treasure of Farum Azula" and the "stone lightly twists time, allowing the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god". The Rune of Death also is kept in Farum Azula by Maliketh. I think that Hewg did make his god-slaying weapon a long time ago - harvesting components from Farum Azula when it was still attached to the mainland - and then Farum Azula, the Rune/story of the Fell God's Death, and the knowledge of how to use the Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones were all cut out of the Lands Between.