Significance of the Empress' Hand

An often-overlooked puzzle solution may hold the key to understanding this game's endings.

Major spoilers follow. Do not read unless you have finished the game and are familiar with what happens in all four endings.

This is also really long.

Introduction

I was originally going to make this a discussion post, but a guide allows me to create a much better structure and also prevents it from being lost in the sauce of other posts.

There is a great deal of discussion and theorycrafting concerning how the various endings of this game fit together. Though it is near-unanimous that all four do canonically occur, there is no consensus on what order they happen in and, if any of them do permanently break the cycle the characters are stuck in, which one of them it is.

I believe this disagreement only exists because almost everyone misses out a key clue - the Empress' Hand - that pretty much explicitly spells out how these endings fit together. It's rather surprising to me that it isn't much bigger in the conversation around the endings (in my own experience, I've never seen anyone but me mention it) because, once you make the connection, it's not really that cryptic and becomes very obvious.

There is of course still a lot of room for interpretation on why these endings occur in the order they do. I will offer my own conjecture at the end, which certainly is not anything concrete and is just my opinion, but I do believe that the sequence of events is utterly beyond doubt when we take into account what is often dismissed as a mere puzzle solution.

Why does the Empress' Hand matter?

Before getting into how the Empress' Hand spells out the endings, it is worth mentioning a few key reasons why it is significant and why we should take it seriously.

It so closely parallels the endings

The most important and most obvious reason is that the four days described in the Empress' Hand note, and the rings associated with each day, all either very closely or exactly match the four endings. This cannot be passed off as mere coincidence. Noticing the similarity was my starting point, where I then realised the other connections. I will get into what these parallels actually are in the next section.

It is in Nowhere

As Signalis progresses, it steadily becomes less tied to reality and a lot more symbolic in nature, and deeper meanings creep in to many otherwise innocuous details of the world. I believe this principle should most strongly be applied to Nowhere, the place that is the most corrupted and distorted, the least like what reality should be. A lot of the early puzzles can be easily dismissed as "just puzzles" - things that merely add gameplay content - but in Nowhere, we should assume that a puzzle means more than its surface level logic challenge.

Ariane and the Empress are strongly connected

It is widely accepted (for reasons I won't go into here - I leave that explanation to others who can do it better than me) that the weird world of Signalis is caused by the extremely powerful bioresonance of Ariane. Her sleeping mind shapes the world Elster struggles through - Ariane is subconsciously remaking the physical world in the image of her dreams and nightmares, and though she's not necessarily the only dreamer doing this, she's certainly the most dominant one.

On its own, this already somewhat points towards the Empress potentially being a symbol of Ariane, albeit weakly. As the unwitting creator of this world, she can be said to be like its Empress, though she has next to no control over how it functions. However, this is further strengthened by Ariane's numerous connections to the Empress.

Ariane and the Empress have far too many similarities to be passed off as mere coincidence; they are both the only people shown with white hair, they are both extraordinarily bioresonant, and Ariane herself is greatly interested in Imperial history and culture (a dangerous thing in the Eusan Nation). It's even possible, as one theory goes (which I won't go into detail on here), that Ariane is the latest in a line of reincarnations that either started with or included the Empress. There is also some vague suggestion that the Yeongs may be relatives of the Imperial dynasty, which would explain the family's Imperial sympathies (though this theory is on rather shaky footing).

Another connection that may have already caught the eye of those who look more closely is that the image of the Empress on the wall bears a strong resemblance to the ghost of Ariane seen in the Artifact ending.

Even if Ariane is not descended from the Empress, a reincarnation of her, or otherwise related to her (I believe she is, but this is not certain), all the other parallels are obviously drawing a connection between the two figures, so it is pretty safe to assume that an appearance of the Empress in Nowhere is a symbolic metaphor for Ariane.

Prophetic Perfect Tense

Although the text of the Empress' Hand note is written in past tense, this does not necessarily mean it is actually talking about the past, or at least only talking about the past (it may not be actually talking about the real life of the Empress at all, but I doubt this). Given that Signalis makes Biblical references several times (especially to the Book of Revelation), I think it likely that the Empress' Hand makes use of a literary technique employed throughout the Bible, known as Prophetic Perfect Tense.

For those not aware, Prophetic Perfect Tense is the act of describing a future event that is so utterly certain to happen that you reinforce its certainty by writing about it in the past tense as if it has already occurred. This occurs in both the Old and New Testament, but is most famously associated with the Book of Revelation. The other references to scripture in the game make it entirely fair to interpret such a strange and seemingly prophetic note as using Prophetic Perfect Tense rather than past tense.

The Days

The text of the Empress' Hand note reads as follows:

On the first day she was crowned
On the longest day nothing was done
On the next day she was wed
On the last day she took her life

Three of the four days also have rings associated with them, which will also be taken into account when explaining how they match one of the four endings.

In this section I am just noting the parallels between the endings and their corresponding day and ring. Why these endings lead into each other is in the realm of conjecture and opinion.

Day 1 - Memory

On the first day she was crowned

Admittedly we are starting with where the link is the least clear, but the connection is still too strong to be dismissed as coincidence. The first day corresponds to the Memory ending.

The Memory ending resolves nothing, preserves the status quo, and perpetuates the cycle. We could even consider it the "default" ending, considering that the corpse Elster salvages after the fake ending is very clearly from the Memory ending. In my view it seems like this ending happens several times before anything changes, given that Elster loots it in every loop.

As I mentioned before, Ariane being the creator of the world you're in and being so strongly associated with the Empress means that it is quite safe to connect the symbols of monarchy to her. Perpetuating the cycle is "crowning" Ariane as the continued master of this pseudo-reality.

I think it's highly likely that the cycle began in the first place because something like the Memory ending occurred (so truly "crowning" Ariane), with the original Elster finding herself unable to end Ariane's suffering because radiation poisoning had given her amnesia. This may be why it's called Memory, as it's a repetition of what started it all - the ending's internal name of Circle could also mean the same thing. This is pure speculation though.

The ring for this day, the regent's ring, sheds more light on the connection. Its inscription reads "this too shall pass", which can have two meanings. It could mean that this is just one step in a repeating cycle, it shall pass without anything changing - but it could also be hinting that this cycle is not infinite and can end someday, but not now.

Day 2 - Leave

On the longest day nothing was done

The second day corresponds to the Leave ending. This parallel is the most straightforward; this is the one ending where you do not meet or interact with Ariane in any way, and Elster dies alone. As such, nothing is done.

The "longest day" part I believe is not relevant to this theory; it is part of solving the puzzle and working out the sequence. It may also be a core part of a potential double meaning to the Empress' Hand as described in this discussion post. I don't agree with all of this poster's conclusions but their analysis of the Empress' Hand corresponding to the journey of Ariane and Elster is - like with many other things - too close to be mere coincidence.

It being the "longest day" may lead one to draw a connection to the Promise ending, which is weighted towards a longer playtime, but I don't believe this is the case because it doesn't make any sense (keeping the promise and killing Ariane is very clearly not doing nothing), and the fourth day matches the Promise ending instead.

Alternatively, "longest day" may mean that this one takes place multiple times and in fact happens more than the Memory ending; this theory is pretty credible but I don't believe it is true for reasons I'll get into in the section on my interpretation.

Day 3 - Artifact

On the next day she was wed

The third day corresponds to the secret Artifact/Lily ending. I think it's fairly self-evident why this connects to the idea of being wed, I don't need to belabour the point. Searching for keys of Sacrifice, Love and Eternity to have a chance to be with the one you love sounds a lot like a pledge to be together forever, even if not literal marriage vows. It is the only ending where Elster gets to be with Ariane again, even if she is only a ghost.

Day 4 - Promise

On the last day she took her life

The last day corresponds to the Promise ending. A first reading of this implies suicide, but that's not actually what the words say. She and Her here can be two different people - that is, Elster and Ariane. The Promise ending is not just the only ending where Ariane dies, it's where Elster kills Ariane; she took her life.

A weaker but still potentially valid interpretation of this is that the "she" remains consistent as being the Empress, and "her" here is Elster. The Promise ending, while primarily being Elster killing Ariane, can also be described as Ariane killing Elster, both metaphorically (breaking her heart by making her kill the one she loves) and literally (if you believe that the Promise ending breaks the cycle, this finally lets Elster permanently die).

The Promise ending coming here is also reinforced by the wedding ring of the previous day, inscribed with "Till death do us part" (as a silly tangential nitpick, this is grammatically wrong, the shortened form of "until" is "til" with one L). This may have no deeper meaning beyond it just being the phrase used in marriage, but making the effort to include and emphasise this suggests to me that whichever ending is the last one results in death.

Breaking the Cycle?

So, the Empress' Hand gives a pretty clear order of events. Memory, Leave, Artifact, then Promise. Does this confirm that the Promise ending is really the final one that breaks the cycle?

Unfortunately, no.

While the note does confirm that the Promise ending comes last in the chain of events, and therefore if the cycle does break then it must be in this ending, there is no suggestion here that the looping stops.

The ambiguity comes in with the ring associated with the final day and the Promise ending; the serpent ring. It is shaped into an ouroboros, a serpent devouring itself, a symbol of infinity. I believe that the presence of this symbol on the final day leads to three possible interpretations of equal validity.

Interpretation 1: The Cycle is Broken

The ouroboros being so closely associated with death means that the Promise ending is the death of the cycle. The death of the one responsible for it in the first place breaks the cycle and puts an end to the suffering. Ariane, who sits above the individual loops and now sees all as a result of the ritual in the Artifact ending, knows this and this is why she thanks Elster for killing her.

Interpretation 2: The Cycle is Finite

The ouroboros being on the last day means that the sequence continues to loop, but not forever. As the regent's ring says, this too shall pass. Specifically, the sequence goes around six times before finally ending, suggested by the fact that there are six Elsters in the Artifact ending and presumably six rituals that had to be completed to somehow enable the Promise ending to actually "work". The Rule of Six is too omnipresent to be mere coincidence, after all.

The one we see in-game may be the last of the six, effectively making this the same as interpretation 1 from our perspective, but we know that this has already happened five times off-screen.

Interpretation 3: The Cycle is Infinite

While it's nice to think Ariane's death ends the suffering, there's no evidence this is actually the case. The ouroboros on the last day signals that this cycle has no end, there is no way to break it. The sequence goes on forever; the Promise ending resets things to the beginning instead of ending them. If it can ever truly stop, it is only when reality becomes so corrupted by looping so many times that everything ceases to function entirely.

The one saving grace for the characters in this interpretation is that the sequence resetting after the Promise ending appears to leave everyone with no memory of the previous iteration - including Ariane, as she goes back to not remembering who Elster is in the Memory ending. Everyone will suffer forever, but will not realise it. Only Adler, the sole person stuck in the cycle who can remember previous loops, potentially does not forget each time.

My Interpretation

This part is based more on my opinion than on concrete information we see in-game, and draws from more sources than just the Empress' Hand, with a lot of speculation to fill in the large gaps. Feel free to skip if you are not interested in that.

I'll say the most important part upfront - I believe the sequence ends and the cycle breaks with the Promise ending, and not just because the alternative makes me sad (though it does). While it's theoretically possible that it just resets rather than ending when Ariane is killed, it's astronomically more likely that the death of the person causing the cycle... actually results in the death of the person causing the cycle. Without the bioresonance to perpetuate it, time flows normally again - but this doesn't mean the horrors die with her, they're still lurking around.

I believe this is further bolstered by the inscription on the regent's ring, "this too shall pass", which is an otherwise bizarre thing to put on it if the cycle doesn't end. The "till death do us part" on the wedding ring matters here too - though you could argue the "parting" here refers to resetting and losing memory, I think it's far more likely it refers to being parted from the hell they suffer in. There is also of course the Dreamer note, which outright states that the only escape from this prison is death.

Nothing in the game explicitly confirms that the cycle breaks with the Promise ending, all we have are clues, but there's a lot more clues for it breaking rather than continuing. Despite their insistence that there is no true final ending, I think it's pretty obvious the devs want us to come to this conclusion, they're just not saying it outright to not undermine their method of storytelling.

What follows is my conjecture for why the endings link together in the way they do. To me, this is the most plausible explanation.

Memory

As mentioned earlier, I think it's likely that something like the Memory ending began this whole mess in the first place, and I think it's likely that this one occurs multiple times before the others. There are also obviously a lot of failed attempts that never got here, based on just how many Elster corpses we see.

Leave

Then, something changes. For some reason, Elster cannot bring herself to see Ariane. Perhaps this is because she is in conflict with herself, unable to reconcile her resurfacing Gestalt memories and personality with "Elster". Perhaps it is because she somehow realises what has happened before and believes it's worthless to try again, and she wants to save herself the pain. Whatever the reason, this is a serious deviation.

I mentioned previously that this being referred to as the "longest day" means it is possible that this one occurred many times, more times than the Memory ending. Though this is pretty credible given that it's backed up by in-game words, my interpretation is that the Leave ending is a deviation that allows the other endings to take place, in which case it would only happen once.

Artifact

Given just how meta this ending is - how you cannot play it unless you've beaten the game before and know the game's secrets - I think it's certain that this ending represents Elster either knowing or directly remembering what happened in the previous endings. This ending just cannot happen unless Elster knows some specific things about what is to come, if not necessarily everything. This was brought about by the Leave ending, either because it was a deviation that messed with the cycle or, as a more mechanistic explanation, because Elster got to "the end" but didn't die right next to the source of the bioresonance.

The Artifact ending does not break the cycle, but allows for it to be broken next time. The ritual - whatever the hell it is - is complete, with six Elsters giving six offerings, completing the Rule of Six that pervades the entire game. The sheer frequency of the number six could be Ariane's attempt to try and get Elster to understand this.

(I'm also partial to the idea that this ritual was actually performed over six different lifetimes/incarnations to be completed now, a theory I won't get into here as it's not directly relevant but I think is very compelling.)

There's more to this too - the cutscene of this ending makes reference to the Book of Revelation. While the term "apocalypse" in English colloquially means annihilation and the end of everything, what it actually means is unravelling. Revelation is so named because it's revealing a previously unknowable truth, after all - it is a book of esoteric prophecies.

The completion of the ritual in the Artifact ending, therefore, represents the cycle unravelling and the truth being revealed - to Ariane, to Elster, and to you, the player. "The mystery of this god is finished", German text proclaims. Ariane can finally remember the promise as fervently as Elster does.

Elster dancing with Ariane's ghost could represent many different things. It is, for certain, a ghost and not really her - the ingame model is literally labelled as a ghost - so it's clear that the two are not really reunited. In my view, this represents Elster desperately trying to hold on to Ariane's memory before she dives into hell one last time to finish it all, meanwhile the text telling Elster to "REMEMBER OUR PROMISE" is Ariane begging Elster to stop deluding herself with memories and end the suffering. The Red Eye still watches from above, very clearly not coming to an end.

This brings two possible different meanings to Falke's assertion that "she'll never dance with us again". The first and simpler explanation is that she is right, because the Ariane that Elster dances with is not the real Ariane but rather a memory of her. The second explanation, the one I believe, is that proving Falke wrong and dancing with Ariane is another element of breaking the cycle.

Promise

And so Elster fights the hardest she's ever fought to see the promise fulfilled. She reaches Ariane one last time, kills her, and ends the cycle. I've already been over my thoughts on why I think this actually ends the cycle, but I want to add something additional here about Falke.

Falke states that both of you are incomplete before your fight, and upon her defeat, with her dying breaths, she says you have become one. This is generally agreed upon to mean that Falke's memories of Elster, which have been seeping into her because of Ariane's bioresonance, have been somehow released by her death and absorbed back into their rightful owner.

I believe that Elster becoming whole and fully returning to her original persona - the one that was with Ariane and loved her - is a prerequisite for the cycle breaking, which notably does not happen in the Artifact ending as you never kill Falke there. The Artifact ending is a false and temporary happiness, dancing with a ghost that is not the real Ariane, because Elster is not the real Elster. I believe that only the true Elster, who has completely taken on the memories of loving Ariane rather than just having a vague idea of a promise, is capable of breaking the cycle and capable of killing Ariane to end the pain.

The Alternate Theory

All this raises one last question. If the Empress' Hand foretells the sequence of the endings, why is the secret ending the third ending? Surely it'd make a lot more sense for the secret ending, the hardest one that nobody even knew existed for a good while after release, to be the final step that breaks the cycle?

This can lead to the alternate theory of what the Empress' Hand means (this is the part where I undermine everything I just spent ages writing). I think this theory is quite weak myself, but it's still worth mentioning, and - crucially - it ends in the same way, with Artifact followed by Promise. I'll be a lot more brief this time around.

• Day 1: Being crowned refers to the cycle beginning and/or being perpetuated by the Memory ending.
  
  
• Day 2: Nothing happening refers to all three of the basic endings continuously repeating with no real effect. Even the Promise ending does not do anything here. In this alternate theory, the "longest day" is actually relevant because Elster spends the most amount of time in this phase, doing pointless loops.
  
  
• Day 3: As before, being wed refers to the Artifact ending. Rather than making the Promise ending possible, in this alternate theory the ritual in the Artifact ending makes the Promise ending actually do something - that is, kill Ariane permanently. The German text in the game quoting Revelation, that those who seek death shall not find it, is a possible reference to the Promise ending not working before this point.
  
  
• Day 4: Now that Ariane is able to truly die as the ritual is complete, the Promise ending either breaks the cycle or resets back to the beginning (the former being much more likely).

This alternate theory admittedly feels a bit dumb to me. It relies on a certain degree of make-believe that isn't supported by what we see in the game; performing the Artifact ending doesn't change anything about the Promise ending on-screen, and this theory requires that we just pretend that it does. This feels more like we are twisting the endings to fit in with the text of the Empress' Hand rather than connecting the parallels.

The Alternate to the Alternate

But if this attempt to work in the secret nature of Artifact doesn't make a lot of sense, how can we reconcile it with what's clearly laid out in the Empress' Hand? The only plausible explanation I can come up with is more meta and chiefly relies on the in-game descriptions of the Key of Eternity.

Are you still looking for answers where there are only questions?
There's nothing but heartbreak at the end.

This is pretty heavily implied not to be a message for Elster but for you, the player. That first part is obvious - the Artifact ending will not answer everything for you, suggesting that this ending doesn't actually resolve things by itself.

The second part, though, I believe is more relevant. This path only leads to heartbreak, not just for Elster and Ariane, but for you, because you spent so much effort on getting this ending which is just a part of the puzzle and isn't even the final piece.

It's heartbreak at the end of this ending, so much toil just for a brief dance with a memory, but I believe also references the fact that the Promise ending comes after; the heartbreak of the two lovers finally recognising each other and immediately dying as a result.

To put it in plainer English, this seems to me like the devs admitting outright that they realise it might be frustrating for a player to spend so much effort on an ending that doesn't deliver a resolution by itself and is just part of an unfinishable puzzle. Perhaps that was the entire point.

Conclusion

This ended up being far longer than I initially thought it would be, but I had to get all my thoughts down and explain why I'm so absolutely certain this little corner of Nowhere explains the fate of our star-crossed lovers. In fact, going through the process of writing this and seeing the ideas laid out on the screen helped me realise what my thoughts on this actually are, and my mind slightly changed a few times while doing it.

As I said previously, there's still a lot of room for interpretation, with many hidden details that we can only guess at and will probably never be fully cleared up (and never should be, for the game would lose its magic otherwise). It still doesn't definitively answer the question of what the true ending is, a question the devs have insisted has no answer. It gives us some very important clues, but these only get us maddeningly close to some kind of truth without actually revealing it.

And, of course, this is just one part of the many layers to this game's story. There's still a lot more to this horrible yet enthralling world rose-engine have created, there's far more questions and not enough answers.

It's just a shame the inventory management is so annoying.

[LuckySiren]

I would like to respectfully note that the devs mentioned on Twitter that there is no one true ending. Whatever resonates with us the most is the ending for us. Just as you said that the Artifact ending is a brief respite from the reality of needing to end Ariane's suffering, I too believe that is the case. For me, Promise is the ending that ends the suffering of Ariane and everyone else affected by her bioresonance, including Elster. I believe that this love story, while it ends in heartbreak, is one that truly embodies 'till death do us part.'

[A Wild Rose]

*both your main and alternate as well are true (or can be true)

Continuing on my comment below: Either of these can be final for us as a player in seeking a different resolution.

And I don't mean in a pretentious "none of this would happen if you don't play" but rather that the only true end to their torment is us finding necessary satisfaction in either end, or just broadly, whatever that may look like.

I think just simply to how the game itself acknowledges the breakdown of reality that it isn't out of the realm of possibility from the devs that the empress's hand is both in-story, and meta-narratively important, and acknowledges both Elster and her player.

[A Wild Rose]

1000 characters is entirely not enough to say what I'm thinking, but I think both your main interpretation and your alternate as well, with just the change that the alternate ought refer to the player's experience to and through the Artifact ending. Day 1 is the first loop, necessary to even allow Artifact to happen, but also for the player to know (crown) Elster and Ariane and their roles. Day 2 is the several loops it takes to get all the clues from Artifact traditionally. Day 3 is Artifact and the fact that it isn't a happy ending or a complete one necessarily, and day 4 is when the player finally lets them both go, unable to alter the loops or the tragedy. Where I think Promise is final to Elster and Ariane, it is us choosing we're satisfied, or unable to keep hunting, that is our promise. Ariane kills Elster if we think of just what Elster goes through and her own deaths, and Elster kills Ariane if she fulfills the promise.

[чмо ♥♥♥♥♥♥]

Very beautiful interpretation, I have not studied much other people's opinions on this matter, but I doubt that there can be anything more beautiful than this complete story of two lovers.
I am very sad for Ariana's fate, but the end of this story in addition to sadness still gives a small piece of happiness that Ariana's pain and suffering was able to be shared by LSTR, although she is not a real human, but a person who is inside the shell was able to feel Ariana's memories and after everything that would be on the spaceship and finally understand Ariana's feelings LSTR fall in love with her for real and she rember the promise... T_T

[archnephilic]

Awesome read wow

[woahwoah]

through my first play through, i got the feeling that the empress' hand puzzle was going to be a crucial puzzle that was going to explain many of the confusions surrounding the endings...

i found your theories to be really interesting and enjoyable to read and I honestly found them to be very believable and well thought out.

the significance of the rule of six constantly portrayed especially within the artifact ending where the 6 Elster's surrounds the weird cube and the message of only having 6 inventory slots within the beginning of the story made so much sense when connecting it to the serpent ring and the regent ring.

and this dude Anzer in your replies acting disappointed didn't really seem to even read the entirety of your analysis. it's kinda clear since claimed you to call Elster a "ghost" within the artifact ending though you clearly stated the ghost to be 𝘈𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘦... it was off putting cause he seemed to belittle your theories.

loved reading through!

[qawal]

I really love how there are comments who love your theory but respectfully disagree because they saw the story unfold from a perspective that's closer to their chest.

Signalis is just that type of game, and it's this cascade of interpretations that keep the story worthy of retelling.

This was a nice read, thanks for putting this together :)

[Nanahuatzin]

People like me. Kinda stupid in the whole "getting the big picture" department thrive on other people dusting off clues I might overlooked. I hardly play any games of this type, so to read about someone's fervent and through theories on the game really does scratch an itch in my brain. Thanks again for this interpretation!

[Nanahuatzin]

person below this comment is a smarmy jerk.

I was too stupid/didn't really get it the first time around. This does help with my understanding of the game, even if I still don't really WANT to get it.

[Moonlight]

It might seem like a cop out meta trope to tie it to the player's fault for playing the game and causing their prolonged suffering but as with most things in life, hindsight is 20/20.
It has that "wow" factor only after the first time you experience and haven't been born yesterday.
Witch's House MV does a similar thing where the only way to win is to not play the game at all.