#its still there just reframed to allow malenia's narrative to be a bit more self-sufficient

[blades-of-miquella]

the new tumblr editor is fucking awful so i’m reposting this one old tumblr style

i had a whole thing typed out about being malenia's consort and realized you kind of meant it as a joke sdjhfs but i will say i think her cut dialogue is pretty clear that she's evaluating the tarnished based on their relationship with miquella, rather than herself, especially as miquella in the ending basically treating the tarnished as his consort anyways.

finlay as one of malenia's knight commanders reminds me of the hero winning the favor of the valkyrie more than anything else, this trial earning her the coveted erdtree burial(!):

[...] who in an unimaginable act of heroism carried the slumbering demigod Malenia all the way back to the Haligtree. She managed the feat alone, fending off all manner of foes along the way.

particularly of note is the reference of the sleeping valkyrie here. of course you could argue this isn't representative of any relationship at all, but i think it draws certain comparisons to mythological feats of heroism anyways.

miquella does indeed still have that rebirth motif, it's true; it's the natural consequence of rewriting a character so late in development. to segue here a bit, the twin princes underwent a very similar radical rewrite of their characters, where some core details were maintained but the tie they had to the abyss was completely pulled out of their character. even then, they still have ties to it, via the pilgrims, for example, or their own boss data...

a lot of the "rebirth" stuff is related (at least now) to his eternal youth though. the haligtree in particular is kind of a metaphor for miquella in that way - a young immature tree that forcibly had its growth stunted (and then it died) because of the influence of mohg, unable to mature into its intended form... his potential rebirth, the exiting of the cocoon, would be a rebirth as the maturation of himself and the realization of his godhood, rather than specifically paying service to the idea of rebirth the same way malenia and the cycle of rot does (as new life through death)

#this is my thesis on how finlay/malenia is the most romantic ship in elden ring. thank you for coming to my ted talk #elden ring #elden ring lore #i guess you could see it as #is the pupa the rebirth of the caterpillar? / is the adult the rebirth of the child? #because that's the imagery it's playing off of anyways #its still there just reframed to allow malenia's narrative to be a bit more self-sufficient #and allow miquella to have a bit more of his own narrative in turn #it's something ds3's twins kind of missed the mark on and i feel like a lot of the dev changes here were in service of iterating on #that issue