Queen Marika is a MONSTER and let me tell you why.

[Evoxrus XV]

After finishing this game a couple of times and reading/watching some lore videos, I have come down to the indisputable conclusion that Marika the Eternal, the Queen of the Lands Between is a downright monster and an awful person overall. How so? Lets see a list of crimes and atrocities she has incurred:

She genocided the Fire Giants which is a war crime and enslaved its last remaining survivor

Exhibit 1: The Fire Giants. She waged war on the innocent Fire Giants like a ruthless bastard for no reason other that they wielded the flames to harm her precious Erdtree. Thats like invading a country just because it possess nukes for self protection.

She then exterminated every last one of the Fire Giants like the maniac she was. Even though the Golden Order and the Fire Giants were at war, exterminating almost all of them was too far and is a war crime against human rights. She could have left like 5-10 of them to preserve them, or at least take the survivors and indoctrinate them to the Golden Order, but no. She kills every. Last. One. Of. Them. Except one, who she purposely leaves alive to enslave just so he can protect the giant fire jar for his remaining existence, an eternity of enslavery until we come along. This is not the actions of a kind queen.

She enslaved the Trolls after they sided with the Golden Order by betraying the Fire Giants.

Exhibit 2: Furthermore, she is treacherous. On one of the sword memorials you can read how the Trolls turned against their former allies the Fire Giants to side with the Golden Order. After cutting down their former brethren, how did they get rewarded? By enslavement. Having spears pierced through their chests so they can act as horses for carriages, used as cannon fodder and as disposable meat shields for the Golden Order. She betrays those that give themselves to her. Oh yeah, that brings to the next exhibit.

She betrayed Maliketh, her very own shadow and half brother who was devoted to her.

Exhibit 3: Despite Maliketh's pain in the butt boss fight, we have to admit he was a loyal good boi and was noble in his intentions of stopping the spread of Death throughout the land. He served and lived for Marika faithfully, everything he does is for her. But she betrayed him. And how do we know? First if you kill him in the Bestial Sanctum, he will say why does Marika "gull him". Gull means betrayal, so Maliketh knows she betrayed him. Furthermore his remembrance says, "Maliketh was a shadowbound beast given to his Empyrean. Marika's sole need of her shadow was a vessel to lock away Destined Death. Even then, she betrayed him.". She betrayed her own loyal shadow. Imagine if Ranni betrayed Blaidd. If thats not heartless I don't know what is. But that brings us to exhibit 4:

She is most likely responsible for Godwyns death.

Exhibit 4: She initiated the shattering by orchestrating the death of her first son Godwyn. Godwyn, the most beloved child and God in all the Lands Between. The one who befriended the dragons and made an ally of them. The first child of Godfrey and Marika. And she kills him. For what purpose? I don't know. But we do know the Black Knives are Numens. Numens who had close connections to Marikka. And we do know Maliketh said she betrayed somebody. Her awful and devious nature becomes more apparent, this woman is evil to the core.

She buried the Trade Caravan alive.

Exhibit 5: Despite being a "wise" queen, Marika was too stupid, too proud or too paranoid to think there was something wrong when she trusted the words of Shabriri, Shabriri when he slandered the Trade Caravan, saying they will bring the Frenzied Flame upon the world. Instead of figuring what was wrong, she goes along with it and buries the poor Lands Between Trade Caravan underneath the capital. And when it turned out Shabriri lied and had his eyes gouged out what did she do? Did she unearth the Caravan and apologised? No. She left them there to rot. And they summoned the Frenzied Flame anyways. The same Caravan where our beloved Kale came from. And how could she have trusted Shabriri, we met him ourselves and lets say he isn't the most convincing speaker for sure.

Disgusting.

She broke up Rennala and Radagon

Exhibit 6: After Rennala married Radagon who repented after invading her lands, they lived a happy life and had 3 children. So what does Marika do? She sends her 1st husband Godfrey away and then demands Radagon to come back and marry her even though she knew he was married. This left Rennala broken in heart and mind and threw Raya Lucaria in dissaray. And I am sure Radagon loved Rennala, for why would he leave her with a Great Rune, one of the most powerful items in the world? Marika is a home wrecker.

She gave birth to Malenia

Exhibit 7: She gave birth to Malenia. I don't need to say more.

She betrays us, the Tarnished that she called back to the Lands Between.

Exhibit 8: So we all know it was Marika's plan to have the Tarnished return from the Badlands with their grace restored after being banished from the Lands Between. Alright. We do our job, get at least 2 Great Runes, face many hardships, deal with things like Runebears, Royal Revenants, Lobsters and more and prove ourselves to be worth of the Elden Lord like the Two Fingers told us to. We even beat the Veiled King, Morgott, her son to gain an audience at the Erdtree to become Elden Lord. And what do we get? What. Do. We. Get? A wall of thorns blocking us, saying we shall not enter. After all our suffering to become king we get this?! Despicable. Then it turns out to be her plan, for in Gideon's own words near the end of the game he says he found out that Marika's plan was to have us struggle on to eternity. This whole schtik of us coming back and becoming Elden Lord was a lie, she just wanted us to struggle and suffer to become lord as part of her ploy. She didn't actually believe or expected any of us Tarnished to win. But we were her final mistake, an oversight to her overconfidence and pride. We were too enduring, too strong, too persevering, too resilient in the face of adversity. She expected many things. But not us, not our Tarnished. And that is where we put an end to her madness, her cruelty. Her evil.

Conclusion.

All this proves that Marika is a backstabbing, homewrecking, cruel, proud, paranoid, despicable queen whose actions has caused immense suffering to the world. Actions that caused extinctions to a species to causing the very Flame of Frenzy to be summoned into the world. She backstabs her son, trolls that joined her Order and most of all. Us. The Tarnished. She thought she could get away with it, but our Tarnished proves her madness wrong. And how will we repay her acts of cruelty? Through two endings.

1: Ranni's Ending. Throw away Marika for good, let her turn into dust while we push her precious Golden Order away from the world and bring in a new one. One that will let the people of the Lands Between choose their fates for themselves in the face of loneliness and uncertainty. Ranni's ending will remove Marika and her cruel order with one that is less attached but more fair.

2: Let chaos take the world. Let us choose the Flame of Frenzied ending, may Marika's hubris for burying the trade caravan bring the Flame of Frenzied to destroy her and the world, a poetic ending. One often meet her destiny on the road she takes to avoid it. Let this be Marika's destiny.

May Marika pay for her crimes, she and her Order will get whats coming to them.

EDIT: Edited some spelling errors out. Will also add more crimes of Marika to the list if I seem them, so do tell me more crimes of Marika in the thread.

[vamirez]

Originalmente postado por Dr.Abscondus:

Monsters, in a Fromsoft game!? Say it ain't so Joe! Ranni now, a truly treacherous monster.

I actually helped her abscond.

scnr to do that one again ;)

[Holl]

what i ask myself is:
That do the outher gods (greater will, and so) gain from being in this world and influencing it?

[John Titor]

Originalmente postado por Holl:

what i ask myself is:
That do the outher gods (greater will, and so) gain from being in this world and influencing it?

A lifetime supply of free Manburger Helper.

[vamirez]

Originalmente postado por Holl:

what i ask myself is:
That do the outher gods (greater will, and so) gain from being in this world and influencing it?

The Greater Will consumes the souls of the dead that are absorbed into the Erdtree? In addition to that sustenance - power, a dominion, the ability to compete with the other outer gods, stuff like that.

[mpcgannon]

Originalmente postado por The Sylvan Learning Center:

yeah but she's hot

[Holl]

Originalmente postado por vamirez:

Originalmente postado por Holl:

what i ask myself is:
That do the outher gods (greater will, and so) gain from being in this world and influencing it?

The Greater Will consumes the souls of the dead that are absorbed into the Erdtree? In addition to that sustenance - power, a dominion, the ability to compete with the other outer gods, stuff like that.

makes sense

[brynjar]

"EDIT: Edited some spelling errors out. Will also add more crimes of Marika to the list if I seem them, so do tell me more crimes of Marika in the thread."

LOL good read.

And on average lets say she has defeated each player ~ 40 times, so thats 480,000,000 tarnished since game realease - thats a bad ass boss lol.

[Northstrider]

Marika started the Shattering because she had no other options left. She wanted someone to succeed her. But all potential candidates (Ranni, Miquella and Malenia) refused the mantle.

So she had to do something else. She shattered the ring and gave the shards to her children to encourage them to fight for absolute power. So instead of having them enslave themselves to the Greater Will, she wanted them to take the throne by force instead.

Obviously Radahn, Rykard and Ranni were not in for that party as Ranni dumped her rune (probably in Rennala's egg), Rykard sacrified himself to the serpent to eat everything and Radahn used his rune to contain Malenia's rot in Caelid.
In the meantime Mohg was busy worshipping another god, Malenia was spreading her rot everywhere, Miquella was busy growing up and Morgott tried to maintain his fading legacy.
So in the end, the whole Shattering was one giant failed mess that brought nothing but ruin to its inhabitants. So plan B of Marika failed as well.

So Marika couldn't get out of the Greater Will's service by succession nor could she get out by force. With the Lands in ruins, the Greater Will now had to clean up Marika's mess so he called for the Tarnished to do so and lured them with false promises of becoming Elden Lord.

So yeah, this whole story is all about Marika trying to break free and ended up damning everyone in the process. That's what's the Goldmask's conclusion was as well. The Golden Order could have been fantastic if it's Herald wouldn't be just as stupid as anyone else. So he created a mending rune to perfect the Golden Order so that nobody could ever touch or break the ring ever again.

[Sabaithal]

I'm pretty sure the two fingers called the Tarnished back actually. I mean, considering she's near dead, isolated, and unable to even move inside of a locked tree that no one has access to, it wouldn't make sense for her to be the one to call them back.

[vamirez]

Originalmente postado por Northstrider:

Marika started the Shattering because she had no other options left. She wanted someone to succeed her. But all potential candidates (Ranni, Miquella and Malenia) refused the mantle.

So she had to do something else. She shattered the ring and gave the shards to her children to encourage them to fight for absolute power. So instead of having them enslave themselves to the Greater Will, she wanted them to take the throne by force instead.

Obviously Radahn, Rykard and Ranni were not in for that party as Ranni dumped her rune (probably in Rennala's egg), Rykard sacrified himself to the serpent to eat everything and Radahn used his rune to contain Malenia's rot in Caelid.
In the meantime Mohg was busy worshipping another god, Malenia was spreading her rot everywhere, Miquella was busy growing up and Morgott tried to maintain his fading legacy.
So in the end, the whole Shattering was one giant failed mess that brought nothing but ruin to its inhabitants. So plan B of Marika failed as well.

So Marika couldn't get out of the Greater Will's service by succession nor could she get out by force. With the Lands in ruins, the Greater Will now had to clean up Marika's mess so he called for the Tarnished to do so and lured them with false promises of becoming Elden Lord.

So yeah, this whole story is all about Marika trying to break free and ended up damning everyone in the process. That's what's the Goldmask's conclusion was as well. The Golden Order could have been fantastic if it's Herald wouldn't be just as stupid as anyone else. So he created a mending rune to perfect the Golden Order so that nobody could ever touch or break the ring ever again.

Wasn't it the other way around? The Greater Will wanted a successor for Marika, causing her to create those different iterations of children. She realized that she was to be replaced because she was starting to question and rebel, and the Greater Will wanted full control over its "chosen deity" at the top of the Golden Order. At some point she must have found out everything, i.e. that the Greater Will is an "alien" invader that took over the Lands Between, using her as a proxy, and that the great Golden Order was not at all as good as it seemed. This finally culminated in her plan to slay the Elden Beast and get rid of the Greater Will.

The actual shattering of the Elden Ring happened relatively late in the timeline, and upon that Marika was imprisoned by the Greater Will ("she was nowhere to be found"). Then the shattering war (same name) happened - the demigods each tried to get a piece of the rune pie. However, none of them was able to really defeat the others (disaster all around) and replace Marika. The Greater Will was disappointed in them and brought back the Tarnished. Now their task was to punish/slay the demigods, get great runes and become Elden Lord. This is the intro cutscene and is going on for some time before the start of the game.

The Tarnished coming back is part of Marika's plan - Melina tells us in one of the churches in Limgrave that the Tarnished were banished to a foreign land where they would fight and die. And finally they would return. These first Tarnished were the armies of Godfrey who was also banished (note that Hoarah Loux is listed as one of the Tarnished in the intro). The actual plan includes a Tarnished basically becoming Elden Lord, but also taking the Rune of Destined Death from Maliketh and a god-slaying weapon forged by the smith in the Roundtable Hold (that is his task given to him by Marika - he tells us this) into the Erdtree and kill the Elden Beast.

At the point we defeat Morgott, the Greater Will knows this, and closes off the tree with the thorny barrier. But we have Melina and her task to be kindling for the giants' kiln to burn down that barrier.

As for the Goldmask ending - we still kill the Elden Beast, but then create a perfected Golden Order for the world, just without the malevolent Outer God at the top.

[cl656]

Originalmente postado por RyuKazé:

Radagon was her other half so I don't see anything wrong with wanting to be whole again.

She's a monster because she gave birth to Malenia? ??!??

I'd say she was a monster, because she lost one child, and started a war between her remaining children by shattering the ring. She also had a number of children born deformed, and essentially allowed them to be outcasts in society because of it. Like Margit.

[Evoxrus XV]

Originalmente postado por Holl:

what i ask myself is:
That do the outher gods (greater will, and so) gain from being in this world and influencing it?

I mean, who doesn't want control over more land? Its like the mongal empire, more people who serve you the better.

[GoreTiger]

Originalmente postado por vamirez:

Originalmente postado por Evoxrus XV:

Imagine being scared of showing a fake persona gaming profile to the world. Look me, I got my profile open and wide, even the comments are open. I got nothing to hide, even if I got a lot of cringe stuff on my profile that I added when I was 15...

Actually don't look at my steam profile.

Ah, how heartwarming, all these assumptions and my-profile-bs :)

Marika is not a physical queen in that political/mortal sense.

Killing all the giants is not a war crime or anything that fits into modern morals. It's a mythology thing, like the Greek gods killing the Titans. Who were their parents. Also this is the plan/war of the Greater Will, and at that point Marika did not yet fully know/understand what the Greater Will is and what it wants.

Her "betrayal" of Maliketh is part of her plan to kill the Elden Beast and get rid of the Greater Will. It is not a literal betrayal. Also Ranni does kinda betray Blaidd.

And so it goes on. And I think to even put this much energy into it will turn out to be a waste of time. Your further points are filled with polemics, and the last one about the tarnished is flat-out wrong as Marika is not responsible for the thorny barrier, and Gideon is basically afraid of change.

You cannot compare this situation to the Titan wars. The Titans were actively suppressing the world and Chronos was forcing his wife to have children just to eat them. Zeus waged war on the titans in order to both save his brothers and sisters trapped inside their father, and to free the world from the stranglehold the titans had on it.

The fire giants situation is basically just: "Well they haven't attacked us....but they still COULD so I'm gonna strike first".

Also i don't know ER lore much but these clowns are pathetic who come in and just tell OP he's wrong without an explanation. It's like they got bootyrattled that something doesn't fit their own headcannon so they HAVE to make a short post telling someone they're wrong without anything backing it up.

[cl656]

Originalmente postado por Holl:

what i ask myself is:
That do the outher gods (greater will, and so) gain from being in this world and influencing it?

Well, if the Frenzied Flame is a God inspired by the Great Old One Hastur from the Cthulhu mythos, which i'm pretty sure it is with the number of parallels between the two, then the Frenzied Flame is a Sadist that just wants to spread Chaos and Madness, and troll the greater Will. Kind of how like Hastur is a Sadist diety who wants to come into the world to spread chaos and madness while trolling his half brother Cthulhu. Like Hastur, the Frenzied Flame is probably only interested in the world, because it gets aroused by doing what it does, and it just hates the greater will that much.

[vamirez]

Originalmente postado por GoreTiger:

Originalmente postado por vamirez:

Ah, how heartwarming, all these assumptions and my-profile-bs :)

Marika is not a physical queen in that political/mortal sense.

Killing all the giants is not a war crime or anything that fits into modern morals. It's a mythology thing, like the Greek gods killing the Titans. Who were their parents. Also this is the plan/war of the Greater Will, and at that point Marika did not yet fully know/understand what the Greater Will is and what it wants.

Her "betrayal" of Maliketh is part of her plan to kill the Elden Beast and get rid of the Greater Will. It is not a literal betrayal. Also Ranni does kinda betray Blaidd.

And so it goes on. And I think to even put this much energy into it will turn out to be a waste of time. Your further points are filled with polemics, and the last one about the tarnished is flat-out wrong as Marika is not responsible for the thorny barrier, and Gideon is basically afraid of change.

You cannot compare this situation to the Titan wars. The Titans were actively suppressing the world and Chronos was forcing his wife to have children just to eat them. Zeus waged war on the titans in order to both save his brothers and sisters trapped inside their father, and to free the world from the stranglehold the titans had on it.

The fire giants situation is basically just: "Well they haven't attacked us....but they still COULD so I'm gonna strike first".

Also i don't know ER lore much but these clowns are pathetic who come in and just tell OP he's wrong without an explanation. It's like they got bootyrattled that something doesn't fit their own headcannon so they HAVE to make a short post telling someone they're wrong without anything backing it up.

Oh, the GoreTiger returns ^^

I did not say "this is the exact same story as the titans". Killing the primordial giants or some such is a mythological theme.

Also OP is wrong on many points. I first thought he made a satire on purpose. No offense.