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3wisellamas · 5 years

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Because there still aren't enough Deltarune theories: Fun Facts About Cards

So, I was thinking a lot about @pirenja's older post on Jevil and Seam as The Fool and The Magician, the first (or first and last, depending on who you ask) cards of the Tarot major arcana and which usually map to the Jokers in a standard playing card deck.

There's also the MINOR arcana, though -- the plain numbers and suits that make up the rest of a Tarot deck, and look a LOT like a typical 52-card deck. I knew about those, but didn't know those, so I got curious and spent a couple days looking into it, just for funsies.

So, uh...holy shit. The card-based Darkners aren't just playing cards, they're TAROT cards. The characters we know fit almost ridiculously well to their cards, and there were a couple parallels I found particularly interesting. Allow me to infodump, and add in a few extra fun little things that also came up in some card research, and which might have some...interesting implications on the rest of Deltarune. A lot of this is gonna come from Wikipedia, as well as this site.

Just a heads-up, this post is gonna include a lot of theories (some of which may or may not be pure crack) and will be LONG, and much of it will look like this:

...But in a fun way, I promise. ~^

First, let's go over some REALLY brief info about some of the cards we've seen so far in Deltarune. The ties between these guys and Tarot are pretty damn obvious, especially when you look at the four suits:

Diamonds: In Tarot, their equivalent is Pentacles or Coins. These are associated with wealth, business, and physical possessions.

Sounds a lot like the Rudinns and the King of Diamonds, right? I mean, they're so obsessed with their treasure that they sold their beds to have more of it!

Hearts: The Tarot equivalent is the Cups. Associated with emotions and bettering oneself.

Hathys are pretty big on emotion -- they're the ones you keep flirting with in encounters, after all, and the proceeds for Hathy's bake sale go towards their health.

Clubs: The Tarot equivalent is the Wands. This one I had to work a bit to figure out, but it seems to be more associated with social things, passion, and desire/drive.

Clover is definitely a social one, seeing as how they're throwing their birthday party in the castle when you arrive. And they're also VERY passionate about three specific topics, which actually plays into pacifying them!

Spades: Now for some fun. In Tarot, these are Swords, and are most associated with...take a wild guess. Ambition, power, violence, and the military.

Yep. Shall we look a bit closer at the actual cards in the Spades suit, then?

First off, the King of Spades/Swords. The card is LITERALLY called The Warlord, and is associated with force and discipline, ruthlessness, intelligence, and sometimes coldness and abuse in a negative reading. Pretty damn accurate to the King, I gotta say. Not a lot of room for interpretation here.

The other Spade we know of, though? A...little less clear-cut, but still works. Lancer is the Jack of Spades, meaning his Tarot equivalent is the Page/Knave of Swords -- same card, just an older name -- which is indeed all about youth and energy, as well as learning and observing, and keeping cool in danger. However, the card is also called The Spy, and also has a meaning of concealing oneself and keeping secrets.

Hm. Some of that really sounds like Lancer, some...doesn't? Perhaps our boy has an arc and some more character development ahead of him. Or...I'll get back to this. Because there is some interesting theory fuel here once I bring in another point.

Now, for a Spade we DON'T know yet, but that we know very well is coming: The Queen. The Queen of Swords is associated with intelligence, strategy, independence, and...repressed sadness and divorce? Hm.

HM. If the King of Spades is meant to be a Dark World mirror of Asgore, could the Queen end up being a dark mirror of Toriel, out in self-exile? Time will tell. And when we do finally meet the Queen in future chapters, she will very likely be one hell of a big deal, if the Tarot theme holds, so keep the card description in mind for that!

But, we can't stop at the Queen; we're missing a big, major detail. In Tarot decks, and in fact in historical playing card decks in general, there are FOUR face cards of each suit, not just the three we see in a typical deck. At the top are the King and Queen, obviously. At the bottom is the Page or the Knave, as I said up there the equivalent of the modern Jack. And the last one, between the Page and the Queen? The Knight.

No, really. The Knight is a CARD. But, I'm gonna go further than that: We already know someone, specifically a card person, in the Dark World who fits the description of the Knight of Swords/Spades, quite well in fact:

Associated with major, drastic changes -- pretty appropriate for the person who's been jailing kings and opening up dark fountains, huh?

Impulsive, and constantly takes actions without much planning beforehand.

Fanatical and single-minded, obsessively loyal to one thing and one thing only at a time.

Confident, to the point of arrogance. Basically, obsessed with themselves.

Articulate, good with words, and a sweet-talker, able to get what they want through speech and charm alone. Ironically, not often associated with direct action, and can mean cowardice.

Also, a bald-faced liar -- their whole thing is trickery and deceit. They also keep a LOT of secrets, like the Page.

Worth noting, the Knight often replaces the Queen entirely in older decks, and is considered the card right under the King of Spades, as his main servant or advisor.

Notably, according to that Tarot site up there, they are heavily associated with major career changes and promotions.

You figured it out yet?

Oh yeah. Worm knight.

Let's go through some points with both Rouxls Kaard and that card description in mind, if you don't believe me.

Uh, hello? Confident, impulsive, acts without thinking, fanatical, self-centered? The card description may as well be the guy's Wikia bio.

Articulate...well, he tries. Can't fault him for that. (yes you can)

Honestly, aside from that "God. Damn it." moment, can you give me one instance in which his manner of speaking WASN'T overly flowery and fancy, to the point of ridiculousness? That's, like, his most defining trait.

He's a coward, never actually facing you himself until you reach the castle, and instead preferring to vandalize puzzle solutions and throw minions at you.

He seriously butters you up during the entire second shop conversation, and in fact almost constantly from the moment K.Round is defeated for the final time -- he says he's always on the winning side, which at the time is you, and does his best to claim he never truly opposed you at all, that everything was a test, he just wants to help you, etc. The guy even tries to BRIBE you at the very end if you went pacifist, offering Susie a plate of worms for letting him lie about his involvement in your adventure, to boost his own ego.

Did I forget to mention he's pretty much got a lot of the Rudinns and Clover (and a lot of fandom it seems) charmed with his looks and manner of speaking, and wrapped around his finger as well? Because that.

Throughout the game, Rouxls really is nothing more than a big talker and a big liar. Most obviously, the first time you talk to him in his shop he says quite a bit, but does a COMPLETE 180 on ALL OF IT after he's defeated for the final time, suddenly going from praising the King to hating his guts and claiming to be undermining him, from mocking the Fun/$!? Squad to praising them and offering assistance, and from complaining about Lancer to admitting he cares about the kid quite a bit.

Also, consider: His "ultimate puzzle", which he suspiciously refused to show us...

Even if it's not explicitly pointed out as such, Rouxls is King Spade's second in command, the guy serving directly under him in the castle in the absence of the Queen (or any other castle staff besides the guards, for that matter). In very old decks before the Queen was a thing, Knights are in between the Page/Jack and the King and are considered the King's advisor/right hand guy.

Knights also have a lot of very close connections to Pages, both in card games as well as history. A page is literally a knight's very young (age 7-14) apprentice and servant, and stick close to them and learn from them -- similar to Rouxls' lesser dad/son relationship with Lancer! (Also, a thought: medieval knights would often carry lances, supplied by said page!)

During battle, the King calls the Knight "My Knight". This might confirm that the Knight is indeed a member of his own court, the Knight of Spades, and not of another suit. However, from the tone and some of the other things he says throughout the battle, it’s clear that King Spade actually owes allegiance to the Knight, rather than the other way around. Possibly even some fondness for him, from that particular tone. And...I'm not gonna beat around the bush on this. King Spade is totally Rouxls' sugar daddy. The King just up and fires everyone in his castle, and gives this random unqualified prettyboy the next-highest position after himself out of absolutely nowhere? Yeah. No. Even incompetent kings don't just do that. There's something really weird going on there, something about their relationship that screams there’s some shady business going on behind the scenes. Though, potentially, one could also flip the script, seeing the new job as repayment for putting King Spade in power...

One final point, getting a bit away from the card again. In the game, The Knight is supposed to have a close connection with the Dark Fountains, able to “pull them from the Earth” and manipulate their power to bring darkness or whatever, right? When using the Card Castle fountain to go home, Kris and Susie teleport in a massive column of white light, that looks like this:

(Sorry, screenshotting that particular moment is tough...)

Look a little familiar?

Yep, I'm gonna go there. The same goddamn teleport animation. Nowhere else in the game is that particular animation used, even when it kinda should -- for instance, Jevil’s scythes also teleport in vertical columns of light, but those look entirely different!

There's some other things about Rouxls that actually make me super suspicious of the guy, but one that does so even more now, that I really should bring up if I'm claiming him to be The Knight: Remember that last battle against K.Round? When Rouxls brings out his "Control Crowne"? That lets him control anything “disc-shaped”, and (if we take Ralsei's word for it) looks incredibly painful?

...What the actual living FUCK??! Seriously, is no one else IMMENSELY ALARMED by the fact that not only is this crown a thing that exists, but for some goddamn reason it just happens to be in the puzzle guy's possession??

I'm bringing that point up for a pretty big reason, though: Another name for the Diamonds/Pentacles suit is DISKS. If Rouxls wasn't just bluffing (like he does on everything else, admittedly), there's a good chance he might be able to use that crown on Diamond cards as well.

And Rouxls DEFINITELY has a lot of interesting connections to Diamonds himself, beyond that. Rudinns generally seem to be pretty enamored with the guy, and the whole suit is all about money and even represent the Merchant, or if you will, the shopkeeper class. (And if you ask him why he’s selling things to you, he will admit he's raising money, for...some reason.) In a four-color deck, Diamonds are usually represented by the color blue instead of red. Also, Diamonds/Pentacles represent the Earth element, which is where one would find worms and insects. So, he may very well have a close connection to Diamonds, as well as being the Knight of Spades...

I'll get back to that one as well, though, because there's another point I wanna bring into this whole card mess that might complicate things. Because while researching, I found a very, very interesting little bit of trivia about the Joker card...

Second half of this post and a LOT more fun cracktheories under the cut. Yep, you heard me, I'm still only halfway done here!

So. The Jokers, Fool and Magician, former members of the card court, before...something went wrong. You know how Jevil (and presumably Seam, as his only equal) can apparently do anything? Well, while researching Tarot, I also randomly looked into the Jokers and their functions in a couple of other card games, the biggest being Spades, because why not.

In Spades, the Joker card can attach itself to any non-Spade card in the deck to make it count as the equivalent Spade, though still inferior to the real Spade card. In other words, Jokers can turn other cards into Spades.

No, I'm serious. Look for yourself.

This idea I’m mostly just having some fun with here, but if this little bit of trivia happens to come into play in the next few Deltarune chapters, it might have some SERIOUS implications on what we know about the Spades court. In particular, it means we might not be able to take...really, any of the Spades characters we meet at face value (pun not intended, but appropriate).

But you know what? I think we should take a closer look at the Spades we already know, and see if that might already be the case.

The King fits his card description very well, and we actually see the other three kings locked up in a cage, so none of them could have been converted into the King of Spades. So, we can pretty much confirm he's who we think.

But, then there's Lancer. So far, he's the only Jack we've seen -- I know the card characters were originally based on a set of playing card designs by @kanotynes, and that the Jacks in that deck included not only Lancer but also the various minor enemies we see: Rudinn, Hathy, and Clover. But, in the game, those three don't seem to have any royal ties at all, definitely not as princes! So, I think we can confirm that they're not actually the Jacks of other suits in Deltarune.

So, I'm gonna go back to my first Tarot loose end -- the Page of Spades/Swords, Lancer. Remember how I pointed out some pieces of the card's description didn't fully match the kid? The secrets, the concealing of one's true nature?

What if Lancer's not the Jack of Spades at all, but rather another Jack that was converted into a Spade by one of the Jokers for whatever reason? Let's take a quick look at the other Pages, and see if one fits Lancer a bit more, shall we?

The Page of Hearts/Cups: A "sweet-natured child", immature, creative, naive, a bad childhood, and self-centeredness. Not a bad fit for Lancer, gotta admit!

The Page of Diamonds/Pentacles: Planning for and seizing future success and opportunities, loyalty, sometimes associated with fruit trees and harvests (”Delicious little apple” / "Sweet little peach"?), and most importantly, a student, constantly learning just like the Page of Swords. Also not a bad fit, though maybe a little less than the Page of Cups.

Now for the really fun one. The Page of Clubs/Wands: Inspiration, optimism, also creativity and making plans, rushing into things without thinking (appropriate for the Knight's charge...), "a bit of a cheeky charmer or lovable rogue", impatience, laziness, and a big emphasis on "losing yourself". Also, did I mention that Wands represent the fire element?

So, really all three other Pages have elements that fit this kid in different ways, but some of the things about that Page of Clubs are...striking, to say the least. This possibility might be worth keeping in mind when chapter 2 ever gets released!

Now, then, there's also another Spade we know, even if unconfirmed, with no known equivalents in other suits to rule out. Could Rouxls also have been another suit, and got converted into the Knight of Spades?

Remember all those weird connections to the Diamonds suit I pointed out? Well, let's talk about the Knight of Diamonds -- A Red Knight, if you will!

"A young man who is dark of complexion and features." This is an actual quote from Wikipedia.

Defensive -- focus on protecting home and family.

Hard worker, determined, stubborn, finishing what you start.

All about questioning one's work or home life, or where they stand on an issue.

An animal lover.

The "wish card", about making your wishes and dreams come true, via perseverance and ambition.

Also, a negative interpretation is a loser or laziness, expecting results but not putting in the effort.

Not a PERFECT fit, but still an interesting comparison, no? Especially those things about fulfilling your wish, but failing by not putting in the effort required, kinda like how Rouxls is quite proud of becoming the high-ranking and privileged "Duke of Puzzles", but doesn’t actually put together anything other than simple block-pushing puzzles. Another thought that comes up: The control crown(e). If Rouxls was originally a high-ranking Diamond/Disk suit, that fucking thing suddenly makes WAY more sense. (Also, it would make all the Blue Diamond comparisons really funny in hindsight. Just saying.)

Yeah, I know, claiming that Rouxls is the Knight is a big enough deal, and this extra cracktheory about him being a Knight who switched suits is one even I'm admitting it’s crazy, and over-analyzing is just what I do. Who knows if all or any of this will still be plausible by chapter 2. However, worth noting: If Rouxls was originally another suit, and got converted into the "Lesser” Knight of Spades/Swords by one of the Jokers, then there is very likely ANOTHER Knight of Spades/Swords out there, a much more powerful one. Hm...

...Naaaah. Too obvious. And on the same note, if my cracktheory about Lancer being the “lesser” Jack of Spades up there ends up actually being somewhat accurate, then there's also an original one out there somewhere...

...Maybe? If you look at that description up there again, it actually seems to fit Ralsei even better than it fits Lancer -- the things about concealing one's true nature, keeping secrets, intelligence, and analysis suddenly become quite fitting. And didn't Ralsei's original concept art include a reversed spade instead of a heart on the front of his robe?

So, if these are the case, what card is Susie? I'm...admittedly not sure. ^^; I bet someone else can find a card that fits her though, so I'll leave that one open.

Okay, okay, I'm done with the wild theories now. Lastly, I just wanna mention a couple of other interesting, weird card things I found out while researching. Won't go as in-depth with these, but including them because why not:

A lot of people have been theorizing about the idea of Darkners bleeding like humans, and unlike monsters. What if I told you that "bleeding" is an actual card term? When you bleed your cards, you're accidentally exposing your hand to other players out of turn.

Remember when Rouxls called the party "mine amigose"? Kind of an odd line, especially coming from him, but it was actually another card game reference! Also from Spades is the term "Three amigos": A nickname for the Ace, Queen, and King of Spades. Interestingly, the Ace of Swords is all about cutting through lies and exposing the truth. (Maybe that could be a card for Susie in future chapters?)

Hell, there’s just a LOT of card references thrown all over the place. A cute one is when Jevil says “piip piip” during his fight -- like the dots on dice, the individual symbols on number cards are called pips.

Want another fun Tarot card meaning? Take a good look at the Nine of Swords. It's generally considered the worst card you could get, even in a mostly positive reading -- It's literally called The Nightmare, and represents fear, stress, being overwhelmed, grief, doubts, cruelty, etc. Basically, if it's bad, it's in this card, up to and including a complete breakdown. Now, recall another line that seems totally benign at first, courtesy of Jevil: "From now, a nightmare will awaken in your hearts. In the shadow of the Knight's hand..." If I were y'all, I'd make damn sure to WATCH THIS CARD.

Also, "The Knight's hand"...of cards, perhaps? :P Okay, bad joke.

There's sometimes three Jokers in a deck -- a white one in addition to black and red. Just sayin'. Might wanna also keep your eyes open for a third Joker in chapter 2, maybe chilling out with the Queen wherever she is?

#deltarune #delta rune #undertale #spoilers #I guess?#emtheories

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