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.

[CourtesyFlush09]

Nice "theories" that totally weren't stolen from popular YouTubers, or anything of that nature.

[Snuffy]

It seems you've made alot of assumptions in order to demonize Marika. Alot of the "definitive lore" found on reddit or in youtube videos are bull and are based on pure speculation that these "MASTERS OF SOULS LORE" make for a profit; it seems like your post drawls from some of these inaccurate and speculative people.

1. As to the fire giants, how do you know they were peaceful? They seem like they could be pretty violent and even have ambitions of conquering the world for themselves.

2. How do we know that the trolls were hooked up to those carts by Marika and that didn't happen after the shattering? We don't. In fact, Marika is busy being crucified to a rune arc in the Erd Tree and has been since the time of the shattering. You seem to not realize that her and the Golden Order are currently at odds and she is essentially kept prisoner as vessel of the elden ring by the Elden Beast and Radagon.

3. It's not really made clear how Marika has betrayed Maliketh. Is the betrayal Marika shattering the Elden Ring? If so, what made her shatter the Elden Ring and wanting to put an end to the Golden Order? or did she betray him by assisting in the theft of the rune of death for the black knife assassins? It's not made clear. The story simply doesn't definitively say.

4. The game says the assassin's are Numens and are of her people but that means they were also Godwyn's people. This hints at Marika being in on the plot but why would she kill her first born son? The lore, yet again, is not definitive enough to make a judgement here. Ranni herself admits to stealing the rune of death and using a black blade to kill herself at the same time of Godwyn's death. That means she herself had to know about the plot. If not, how did she kill her body at the exact time Godwyn's soul was killed? It's pretty clear she was in on the plot but then why do the black knife assassin's attack Ranni and her crew? Again, the game just doesn't give us any answers. Kind of lame. It's entirely possible that Numens betrayed Marika at the behest of Ranni and Marika shattered the elden ring to let Godwyn pass into destined death in both body and soul rather than exist in body alone for eternity; this is just one possible scenario in which Marika wouldn't be acting in evil.

5. No where does it say that Shabiri slandered the trade caravan. In fact, an item in the game suggest the merchants were guilty of the charge of heresy; their violin bows having a whole hand with 5 fingers suggests this to be true and suggests the merchants did actually want to reunite the 2 fingers and the 3 fingers to be whole again as the Great one just as Shabiri desires. In deleted content text, merchant kale claims the heresy charges to be false but this is technically not in the game and also could kale simply be lying? Why do the violin bows of the merchants have a whole hand on the end of them if not to represent the reuniting under the flame of frenzy?

6. She did break them up and we don't know the motivation behind it. We also don't know the motivation behind the banishment. Pretty hard to understand ethically if you don't know the motivating factors. What we do know is that she intended Godfrey and the tarnished to be exiled for the purpose of growing stronger and coming back at one point in the future to reset/clean up the Lands Between. It seems like the tarnished are a mechanism to reset a shattered world that she foresaw; this is said to be the case via Malina's lines in the Churchs but it doesn't explain why Godfrey is fighting against the tarnished rather than alongside us. Overall, if we knew the reason why she shattered the Elden Ring, perhaps we could make a moral judgement, but we do not.

7. Malenia was cursed by the outer god of Rot and seems to be honorable other than that. Doesn't seem to be the fault of Marika or Malenia. I doubt either would choose it.

8. The rune on the door that is keeping it shut is actually that of Radagon; thus it is he (and possibly the Elden Beast) keeping the Erd Tree shut and Marika imprisoned.

Being that the Golden Order and Marika are currently at odds we really don't know who's good and bad in this scenario. We don't know why Marika shattered the ring. We don't know her motivation for banishing the tarnished and Godfrey; perhaps she foresaw the shattering and we're a purposeful mechanism to repair the world. We don't know why though. We know that Radagon and the Golden Orders motives is to prevent the further shattering of Marika but at the same time they also fear the end of their regime so they lock out the tarnished that is wanting to reset or repair the Elden Ring and the world. We really don't know where the Greater Will stands on this unless you assume the Elden Beast is in constant communication with the Greater Will/Two Fingers but that doesn't seem to be the case otherwise you wouldn't be fighting the Elden Beast at the end. It seems like the Elden Beast is simply in auto-defense mode; defend the Elden Ring and defend order at all costs. The game really doesn't give you enough information to judge the ethics of most of the Gods/demigods in the game aside from a select few. The Flame of Frenzy ending is clearly evil as it would mean the destruction of all life and by comparison the Greater Will is atleast somewhat good as he values the life created after the Great One separated; the Frenzy Flame ending is an anti-natalist ideology. The Dung Eater is clearly evil as he wants to spread suffering and disease throughout the world. I consider Volcano Manner evil because they commit acts of murder against the friendliest tarnished in the game that aid you in your boss fights and have aided others before you. I consider Gideon Ofnir evil for his genocide at Albirnac Village and his lying and manipulation of Nepheli Loux. I also consider Mohg and Varre to be evil for obvious reasons. Other than that, it's very hard to make moral judgements on others because there's so much information missing from the plot. There is far more information missing from Elden Ring than the dark souls games. It's very disappointing to me. Hopefully the DLC will be less vague and more forthcoming with definitive information but it seems Fromsoft is moving the opposite direction in regards to the vagueness of the stories so I doubt it.

[MrSoul]

facts