To me, the creepiest thing about Godwyn's corpse is the reality that it isn't a corpse at all. Since only his soul perished, his body lived on and mutated into a grotesque abomination. It's not a corpse, it's a cancer.
I think this is the best description I’ve heard for Godwyn’s present state to anyone who’s struggling to understand what his specific kind of death really is
Its undead in the truest sense of the term. His body is very much not dead, its just that with whats happened to him and without a soul its hard to describe him as alive in the normal sense either. He's just "Not-dead".
Also, it noteworthy that the corruption from Godwyn's corpse spread *everywhere*. In the boss room of any catacomb, you will see how tree roots protrude from the ground and the wall, dragging the dead remains up as well. In fact, you will notice this throughout the catacomb, but the boss room is where the corruption is most prominent to the point you can see Godwyn's 'eyes' on the twisted roots. Not only that, the corrupted roots can be found on Farum Azula which is floating in the sky, meaning that Godwyn's cancer doesn't give a shit about the laws of physics.
@@iHaveTheDocuments They died to us not knowing they ever had a chance with her. To her, they're nothing more than disposable summons. Truly maidenless behavior smh.
Godwyn's corpse never fails to creep me out. Most living but dead beings in fiction usually have this halfway decay look, but in Godwyn's case, he was morphed into something unnatural you just can't quite describe. Worse, even if he's a corpse and remain still as one, it feels like he knows you're there when you enter his domain.
He probably does. His soul was destroyed, his body is...in a state of undeath that you can't really describe. He probably is a prisoner in his own body, seeing, hearing, smelling everything around him. Maybe he even feels how his body is being deformed. If he can somehow regain movement, he is going to be ultra pissed off at Ranni.
godwyn was like baldur to the capitol, everyone loved him. and he died in this terribly brutal way, with his body turning into this eldritch looking horror
Yeah and Ranni is Loki. A manipulator well-versed in magic and have connection to frost, as well as originating from outsider bloodline (Carian for Ranni, Jotunn for Loki).
Glad someone else noticed it. The scion of the divine lineage, destined to die but dying in a manner which turns the course of fate and signals the end of a golden age.
If anyone recalls the initial cutscene, Godwyn is stabbed in the back of the neck by the Black Knife assassins while two others hold up his arms, and from the positioning of the Camera and the way they all seem to be looking down towards Godwyn, it's safe to assume he's pretty much kept the half kneeling, slumped pose of the moment the Black Knife killed him. (Which looks oddly reminiscent of Marika's pose, the pose she takes that's in the shape of the Rune of Death.)
@@dannysandhu9487 The Elden Ring intro cinematic, not the theatrical trailer for YT, the actual in-game cinematic, the only scene is the drawing of the black knives killing him, I know what you're talking about, it's just not what I was referring to.
I forget if anyone’s mentioned this, but I find it interesting that the Prince of Death is a mermaid. Considering From’s recurring themes of “immortality corrupts” and the Japanese folklore of anyone consuming ningyo flesh being granted a cursed immortal life, this could be one of the reasons why Godwyn’s design became fish-like in his deathly state.
Beyond that, water in many world mythologies is commonly used as a symbol of the unknown or primordial. In Norse myth, the Yggdrasil/World Tree is grown from a body of water called the Urdwell - pronounced the same as "Erd"tree
I think he's not a Mermaid but Half Basilisk. There's a lot of Basilisk in Godwyn Area and if Tarnished got Killed by them the Animation looks like Godwyn's Death Root that binding Him on a Tree. Basilisk always had that weird Connection to Death
There is also the Sanzu River in Japanese Buddhism. Similar to the River Styx of Ancient Greek mythology (which is also referenced in ER with the Tibia Mariner), the dead had to pay a fee to cross the Sanzu and reach the afterlife. As Godwyn is half dead, you could consider him stuck in the mythological watery boundary between life and the afterlife, leading to the development of aquatic features.
Actually. If you remove a person's soul, what makes them human, what are we other than the same dumb little fish that crawled onto land? An interesting explanation for the aquatic motif. With his soul dead, it's like his genes went back to the basics. The stuff that still remains but is usually overwritten, like why all fetuses across species have tails.
I hate deathblight and every enemy who carries it but i gotta admit, the reason why it all happened is pretty interesting. To think Godwyn got reduced from a beloved demigod to a worldwide plague is saddening.
When I finally discovered the roots I was amazed at this wonderfully hidden location. When I first saw his corpse I just sorta stared wondering wtf happened here... the impact of his death is incredibly far reaching. such a great design, truly grotesque
There's something about the Prince of Death that makes it a particularly unsettling take on undeath to me. Maybe it's the subtlety of the concept of it. Normally undead are done in this straightforward "ha, scared you!" kinda way where the more or less physical remains of a dead person are given a melancholy/creepy/hostile disposition. And then they go BLARRGH. Let's look at what happens when we die. Our vitals cease, our brains no longer can function. Our thoughts, memories and identity cease to exist in their own right. What remains are other peoples' memories, and a body that looks like us, but will be going bad shortly so it's better to put it in a box or burn it, and be done with it. Otherwise it will stink up the place before it can be arsed to turn back into dirt.. Well, that's how it went for Godwyn. Except for the fact his body doesn't rot away. It remains, out of sight, and it will slowly creep its way back. But not as an angry zombie, or a vengeful spirit. It'll return as an inexplicable, corrupting entity that doesn't care about you or anything. The design is particularly cruel too. Imagine being a loved one of Godwyn, remembering all his dignity and pride, and then running into this giant clam headed grotesque staring at nothing.
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 What the other 2 said, but also in Miyazaki's games, powerful figures tend to be larger even if there's no rational explanation to it other than their power. For example, in Dark Souls 1, there's these 2 types of knights who are just regular people like you, but as they're particularly highly skilled and strong warriors, they're towering over you.
Whatever this... thing... is. It's even creepier when you consider how Godwyn's soul, his self, is dead. This is a living creature with no mind at the helm to control it. *The lights are on, but no one's home anymore.*
Damn, I feel bad for Godwyn He was a strong noble who is respected by the people, loves by the fellow demigods and now he turned into an amalgamation of horror that his body that was once so pure and golden, now decaying and putrid... I hope we see an ending where we find a cure for the Destined Death and restore his body and soul, he could reward us with something for finally allowing his soul and body to disappear from the Lands Between and finally let him rest in peace
His sould is dead, there is no cure. The only thing we can help him is kill is undead body, it just a empty living vessels which also is the source of everything "living in death".
If Fia is correct in anyway, apparently using the Mending Rune of Death to gain the Duskborn ending will start Godwyn’s “second illustrious life.” Although he likely won’t be the Godwyn that died.
I really wish we got to see more of what Godwyn looked like before the shard of Destined Death turned him into this thing. We only get a couple of brief glimpses of the back of him when the Numen assassins were killing him and a close-up of his eye as death poured out of it, but we never see much of the only demigod to not have any physical abnormalities, and from what we can tell and what we are told, he was very beautiful. A sharp contrast to what he became as the Prince of Death.
Ranni, Rykard, and Radan weren't born with deformities either. Rykard got all jacked up after merging with the serpent and Radan got all busted up fighting Malena. You find find Ranni's original body during her quest line and it looks totally normal. Other than being charred to a crisp.
@@SinHurrWe have a good idea of what the others look like Radahn isn't too far from how he looked Rykard and Radahn are twins Melina is the spitting image of what Ranni used to look like, with a faded red hair color instead of Ranni's original red hair. Godwyn and Miquella are two figures we do not see in their original glory. I do believe in Miquella's dream we will face down Godwyn at the end... After all, the Prince of Death won't allow Miquella to die.
@@Fl0wchartI’m thinking the same thing, Godwyn could (hopefully) be the final boss we fight in the DLC to get Miquellas ending, or his new age or it could very well be a duo boss with both Miquella and Godwyn but I doubt it (the thought just gives me chills lol)
Is it conscious though? Surely it's just a soulless body which still has blood running through its veins. Alive in some technical sense but completely empty
Godwyn lives in death, so his body is still alive, I like to think it that it retains some sort of consciousness because the brain isn't dead and the pure fact that fia can enter its mind within dreams means its conscious enough to dream .
@@CarlNiemiif it helps at all, imagine your body going on complete autopilot, with no input from the person. Just a flesh puppet walking around, not working on what a person would do, but rather what an organism would do. No real personhood remaining, just an organism with one goal: to survive, even in a decaying and mutating state. It’s kind of like an embodiment of a cancer: the cells of a body corrupted, and only out to convert more and spread. And with Fia and dream, think of it less as Godwyn haunting his corpse, and more of a remainder of a hard drive, because someone didn’t scrub it hard enough. There’s still some sort of memories, but they’re not lived in, they’re just remainders of neurons firing, not making anything new or representing the world perceived by a living person. Godwyn the full person would make memories; the corpse of Godwyn would not, instead only harboring the remaining memories in a static and rotting mind. No soul, just leftover stuff that’s mutating in a desperate urge for life. At least, this is how I understand it.
It’s incredibly creepy how even though his corpse is buried under the Erdtree, his influence continues to spread throughout the Lands Between, potentially via the Erdtree’s roots. Throughout the game you can see his Deathroot in various locations, even up in Faram Azula, and those roots even have his eyes open and looking around. Not to mention how even crabs and Basilisks have his eyes on their bodies. Godwyn has become an almost Eldritch abomination. And to think he, one of the kindest Demigods, was assassinated solely to fulfill Ranni’s and Marika’s plans. This guy could have been a really good Elden Lord
Marika had no motive to kill Godwyn, and in fact, the more living demi-gods there were, the better the chances of someone winning in the Shattering would have been, thus resulting in someone to fight the Elden Beast. The Numen are descendants of the Nox of the Eternal City, and Alecto and co. probably thought Marika was a traitor when she sided with the Greater Will.
Godwyn's death was not part of Marika's plan, it's what drove her to the edge and was the catalyst for Marika to kickstart her plan. Also Godwyn is famous for offering an alliance to the dragons but he was a dragon killer and that can easily be explained by politics, the dragons giving them their knowledge and power, making the Golden Order and Leyndell stronger. It's no secret Fortissax and Godwyn were good friends but that could've been developed later. Godwyn was smart above all and that decision benefited everyone. Also his eyes aren't "looking around", they're static and probably non functional
Fun fact: Godwyn's duplicate corpse head hidden under Stormveil bleeds when you hit it. I never tried hitting the whole Godwyn in Deeproot, though. Maybe someone else can report back here and tell us if that one bleeds too. It's an uncomfortable reminder that, while Godwyn's soul died on that night of the Black Knives, his body is still living, corrupting, growing, spreading mindlessly....
Also, if you interact with a blood stain there, you will see how Rogier was incapacitated by *something*. He believes that his condition is likely permanent and asked you to help him investigate the rune of Death. It's later reveal that it was Deathblight which Rogier later succumbed to.
@@korawitbuttramee618 a Black Knife assassin do her backstab on him. Her blade, like the one you can found later or the one Tiche (and Alecto and the rest of Black Knives) can inflict Destined Death.
While looking closely at Elemer's armor, I noticed there are some very bizarre carvings on the bracers and boots that resemble monstrous mermaids. The head looks more like the harpy hags, but they have fish tails just like Godwyn does now. Blew my mind when I saw that, but I have no idea what it could mean, if anything. Just interesting that it's the only other reference to half-fish ppl in the game.
every single person you meet that is affected by death root (rogier and d’s brother) all have a blanket over their legs with death root sprouting out from under and they can’t move, just like how godwyns fish tail is half under his own blue robes, essentially to me this is obviously implying that under the blankets is their own fish tail, corrupted by seeking the prince of death and becoming a vessel of death root and eventually living in death. tho idk how to explain how Ds brother can help you fight tho.
@@crunchysalmons it's possible, but I've used the freecam mod to look under the blankets, and Rogier's legs are impaled with the black deathroot vines, and D seems uninjured, so I think whoever took the hallowbrand he retrieved from him just covered him since he's catatonic. …Maybe the Crucible Knights? Lol.
His lore reminds me of Baldr. A respected god killed by a sinister plot(by Loki) and his death eventually triggers a series of events that leads to the end of the epoch. Given George Martin's influences from myths, also him being a Tolkien enthusiast( also largely influenced by Nordic myths/ Das Rheingold) it is not a too farfetched connection i think
the design is horrific and i love it. made me wonder tho since the center of the divine towers is most likely where the dlc takes place and is also out in the open water, then the dlc might have something to do with godwyn possibly getting controlled/possessed by someone/something, goes wild and eventually creating a whirlpool we could travel to. another possibility with godwyn's body is a new ending that triggers when godwyn's corpse gains sentience (but isnt really godwyn) and asks us if we want to become the lord of the undead
I really hope we get to fight Godwyn in a DLC either in his prince of death form or maybe his alive form through some time travel or memory stuff. He's just such an interesting character.
Wait, so it shows in the scene of Godwyn's Assasination the Black Knives cutting his back. But the scar is here on the front of him, so is that actually his back and his body is that badly morphed? Or just a little mixed up? His head's weird pose would make a little more sense if you imagine it like a head leaning back and contorting to that shape. The odd pose he was left in when Death awakened could also influence his shape. Could also of course be the mangling of Death's roots. But such a prevalent piece of his death and even showcased by the game seems odd to get mixed up like that.
I think it’s safe to say the body constantly twisted, contorted and all together morphed during the Living In Death cycle. No direction, just nature shaping a brand new organism for the first time.
I think he very well could be reversed, intentionally, and his "front" is actually what used to be his back. It would help explain why his head and facial features are upsidedown
@@GuitarGuise that's a good thought. There's also the fact that D cut out the hallowbrand when he found Godwyn and became "Beholder of Death" and somehow got it back to Leyndell. That's why Fia gives us the knife that's rotted by Deathblight: it was used to carve out the wound. Why it doesn't vanish from Ranni's body when we take hers... maybe it's bc her body is dead and burnt..?
It seems like his head is bent backwards, so the part where the tendrils are coming out would be his chin, his chest is facing the erdtree trunk and the scar on his back is where the deathblight spreads from. Although you could probably justify his body being contorted in any direction.
My personal theory is that we'll have a DLC which sends us in the past, during the Black Knife's Night, and we will discover at this moment that Godwyn was slain by... us.
But, unlike bed of chaos, Godwyn is not a boss. People speculate that he's going to be one in the dlc, but nothing will dethrone bed of chaos as the best boss fromsoftware has ever done.
I’m really hoping we get more Godwyn in Deeproot/Fortissax type stuff in a DLC That skybox during the boss fight is incredible Lore wise it’s some of the most interesting stuff to me. Like I wanna know more about Miquella too of course but if a DLC came out that focused on the corpse of Godwyn and shit I would not complain at all
If you are looking for something else to examine: What the hell is under Sorcier Rogier's robe when he is in the Roundtable Hold? D talks about him being affected by Those Who Live in Death and how they become rotted from the inside. And you can see Deathroot growing from Rogier along with flies buzzing around him. I wonder if they made his legs and body look rotten...
idk how they will do it but miquella, godwyn, rkyard (possibly due to the dialogue at the end of his fight), dragonlord placidusax (with all heads attached), and the leader of the godskins the gloam eyed queen will be dlc bosses. Again huge yoga stretches and I’m not sure how they would do it. But I’m sure from soft has something crazy for us in store.
We know certain creatures are able to take on the form of humans (a few ancient dragons are said to have taken human forms to live among people) and that makes me wonder: what if this is Godwyn’s “true” form? Maybe since his soul is dead and his body continues to mutate, he’s beginning to morph back into that original body? After all he is the son of Marika who herself is a Numen and are rumored to have come from another “world”. If you interpret that literally his alien like appearance doesn’t seem all too unusual.
And Marika's name is Polish and means "of the sea." In Irish lore the country was once ruled by supernatural beings called Fomorians who were considered to be semi-aquatic, and the Tuatha de Dannan eventually drove them back into the sea. Numens might be similar. The word "Numen" is also a Latin colloquialism meaning the divine power or spiritual force of an object, place, or phenomenon, indicating that Numen are indeed mystical.
@@elleofmusic Her pose in the opening cutscene and in her statues is also very fluid with a spiral behind her formed by her clothing. It is in stark contrast to Radagon who is all straight lines and hard angles. She even has a bit of a swimmer's pose in the cutscene. To add to what you said about Numen it can also be a reference to the Numenoreans of Tolkien's work: a people blessed with long life and tall stature who lived on an island kingdom until they were corrupted by Sauron and tried to go to war with the divine stewards of their world. The creator god Iluvatar destroyed most of them and their island home and reshaped the world to make it round and set the Undying Lands of the divine apart from Middle Earth. (In other words, the Atlantis of Middle Earth complete with cataclysm caused by hubris.)
Unlikely, there is no indication of numens that have this horrid form, the black knife assasins are numens but they don't look anything close to godwyn's corpse but the fishiness does align with some irish lore using the name numen
@@jakenathanielabad9452 their armor is very scaled in appearance tho. The green/blue tints have a bit of fishiness to them. But if there are any aquatic origins to the Numen, my guess is that it is long, LONG past in their ancestry. Godwyn's connection to what remains of the Crucible via the Greattree roots could simply be drawing out vestigial bits of dna.
Maybe it could have to do with the fact that he is in a lake ?That could explain why he only corrupts crabs and basilisk.Also iirc we never actually see Godwyn's lower body in a cutscene so that could be what he looked like from the beginning.
@@defurnesellier1984 i don't think that Godwyn lower body was that of a fish, it's clear that his body has become more marine-like (clam head and fins on his arms) so it's far more likely that his legs fused together and formed a fish tail.
Godwyn's corpse with his head in the correct position is reminiscent of the Flatwoods Monster, both this and the Ningyo seem to have been inspiration for Godwyn form
What makes you say that the flat woods monster inspired Godwyn? I don't really see the similarities beyond having a flattened head. All other unique features of Godwyn's head and face don't seem inspired by the monster at all
I was familiar with how Flatwoods Monster looks like, but I didn't see it until you pointed it out. Yeah, it's kind of similar, but I doubt it was intentional reference.
I'd like to note that Godwyn might have been inspired by the Norse God Baldr. Baldr was a son of Odin and a God of light. Among of the Æsir, he was the most beloved. But he was killed by Loki when he shot an arrow with mistletoe. This event is believed to be the starting point to Ragnarok. However, after Ragnarok it is said that Baldr will rise once again and rebuild the world. Compare this to Godwyn, a demi-god beloved by his people only be killed, which lead to to shattering of the Elden Ring and the rest of his brethren suffering in some way. Even more interesting is that Fia claims she wants to actually bring Godwyn back, in some way, which pretty much solidifies the correlation between these two
Someone pointed this out in. Zulli video, but his body is twisted in undeath. He got carved and shanked with the Death mark on his back, but the leftovers are on his bloated waterlogged looking belly, and his "face" is twisted almost 90° from the standard orientation. Not to mention, the cutscene showed that he was devoid of claws and had humanoid legs, but his current form is clawed and practically a mythical mermaid. It's like he's become an undead Prion, converting everything he's touching through the Erdtree into an equally glitched out undead mess
apparently, Ranni didn't plan the murder, or at least she didn't without the favor of Marika. her sin was not giving Godwyn a proper death. Godwyn was supposed to be a martyr to offer to destined death, according to a finger reading crone. but Ranni decided to sacrifice her body instead of Godwyn's, while the latter lost his soul.
@Just a guy who needs POWER he didn't make it up, there's one in deeproot that says, "" Feel free to interpret that as you wish though with regards to Ranni.
I wonder if there’s a 2 faced thing going on, if you look at the face at like 1:09 and as if the head is slouched to his right, where the button shape is his mouth and the hair is covering his nose it looks more natural. Just the top of the head is growing some kind of…mushroom thing or something (reminds me of the mushrooms on logs I see around here in fall). Anyways, if you flip your perspective so the strange upward pointed nose that was on the forehead is now in the proper nose position, it looks kinda like a skull. But then the head would be twisted unnaturally and the hair would be wrong.
I think it’d be cool if we get a boss fight with Godwyn in the dlc akin to Ludwig from Bloodborne. His first phase we fight this living corpse with no soul. It’s reckless and violent, thrashing around and spewing out pools of death. Then we enter his second phase, the conscious of Godwyn is somehow reignited. He speaks to us and switch’s to a combination of both death blight moves and golden order incantations/lighting. And of course he’ll have some giant sword he can pull off some flashy moves with.
@@HM4Hill oh i know that folklore, yes its about eating a mermaid and becoming immortal but theres also also another effect is that when devour the mermaids flesh theres a 99% or 99.99% you'll become an immortal looking monster like godwyn while those 0.1% are those lucky ones that just becomes immortal
Godwyn is by far the most harrowing thing Fromsoft has ever made. That thing makes Bloodborne's Eldritch horrors look like carebears. It's even worse when you go into the area and stand next to him, realizing how truly massive he is. And his eyes, god the way they blankly stare makes it so much worse, like they're peering into your very being. I've never been nearly as unsettled looking at anything in my entire life.
The face was always the weirdest thing to me because of how mixed up it became. It's strange we've been looking at his face upside down because of the placement of his nose.
Ppl say his "correct" head position is the one seen in the last seconds of this video, but i dont think thats correct because those eyes seen in other places like the basilisks or the ones growing in the roots have the exact contrary position. You can see what his original head position was thanks to his hair: its comming from inside that shell-like shape. His nose didnt just get flattened; it came all the way to his forehead. That little circle you see in the other side was originally his mouth. I believe his head is mutating in a way he ends up like a quadrupedal animal (like the basilisks), and what you see when looking at him from the front is actually his back: his body is "rotating" so what originally was his back is going to be his new chest. I have my doubts as you can see his spine in this model showing video but that was not originally to be seen in normal circumstances so who knows.
me and my friend argued at length about this and I think more people in the community need to discuss this and find definitive proof. I originally thought the "clam lip" side of his head was Godwyn's mouth because of the nose, but the golden hair coming from the mouth and the spine/pecs difference on the torso are pretty compelling evidence that is not the case. Also, his hands have thumbs showing which way is the front of his torso if the pecs/spine aren't clear enough in the model. I started adopting the idea that the face we see on the crabs/pustule/everything covered in death is "eating" his original head, and that explains the nose being where it is. It's a growth of a clamshell form enveloping his head. The clamshell can also symbolize a crown, like the scales on Rykard do.
Oh hey, just noticed he's frozen in the pose he was in when he died. In the intro you can see two of the assassins are holding him by the arms while a third one drives the knife in from behind
Hmm, a thought: we know Marika was physically part astral horror as a god because she contained the Elden Ring inside herself, which was itself an astral horror as the Elden Beast. That would mean all her children could be part astral horror as well, or at least influenced by one by sharing Marika's body with the Elden Beast. Perhaps without his mortal soul to balance things out, Godwyn's body became more and more eldritch as his otherworldly nature ran rampant. This could also be the reason for Miquella's transformation into a giant Orphan of Kos-like monstrosity in his cocoon, as his human side is being overpowered by his astral self's enhancement by the blood of an Outer God. This could explain the 3 demigod transformations we see, that they are influenced by a different Outer God's influence. Melania's influence by the former god of rot is clear, Miquella becomes a blood-drained corpse under the Formless Mother's influence, and Godwyn displays fishy, sealife elements of the Elden Beast's swimming, acquatic nature.
Miquella became like he is because he fused himself to the Haligtree through a coccoon so that he would grow alongside it, bypassing his curse of being forever a child in body. However while he was still in the long process of transforming his coccoon was snatched from the Haligtree by his Omen half brother, causing the tree to die and miquella to be stuck comatose in a weird in between phase. Then mohg kinda did weird blood stuff to him to try to commune with him and wake him up. So its not the formless mother influencing him directly, its just that Mohg screwed over his plans and the result is he's a weird lanky and wrinkly naked guy who's stuck in a coma inside a broken coccoon.
@@rwberger6 Since we only see Miquella after the influence of Mogh, we have no evidence that his current state is anywhere near what it would have been without Mogh and the Formless Mother's influence. In fact if the humanoid figure formed in the Haligtree roots is (like some suspect) an impression/echo of Miquella from his aging ritual, it seems he wasn't looking too dissimilar from an adult version of the statues we see of him.
Definitely one of the creepiest things I've seen in a Souls game, tbh. I stood a good while in that open area trying to figure out what the fuck I was actually looking at.
I am here again after not getting any closure on the fact that someone just became a massive mutated mermaid monster in the DLC and it just exists in this world
Water is often tied to death. Even Japanese myths have similar stories to the River Styx and other connections between water and afterlife and corruption and death.
It's linked to the concept of stagnation, which apparently belongs to the japanese folklore and it's included in every fromsoft game, including Sekiro. Zullie the Witch posted a video that explains the whole thing more clearly
I think that in a lot of ways Godwyn’s current state is an empathetic reflection of what his death did to Marika. Being undead means that you can’t move on, and by most accounts Marika could never move on after his death. He was probably her favorite child, and beloved by most of the Lands Between, and his death shook her to the point that she shattered the Elden Ring and abandoned the world to ruin. He haunts the land, his face is literally appearing everywhere like the lingering memory of loved one, but instead of appearing as he was in life it’s this horrible, misshapen nightmare. Marika couldn’t keep going after he died, she couldn’t hold on to the good memories she had of him and keep loving the rest of her family, she just became consumed by the horror and confusion of what happened and now Godwyn himself is this horrifying and confusing thing. It’s eating the world from the inside-out, and I think it makes sense that if the god of this world experienced such a traumatic loss that the world she governed would feel the blow as well. I think that’s also probably why her Radagon half at least tried to repair the Elden Ring; it wasn’t his own child who died, it was his stepson, and he probably didn’t feel the loss nearly as hard as Marika did. He was like a spouse desperately trying to rouse his wife from crippling depression and hold the world together, and he just couldn’t find a way to do it.
Funny, he's extremely important to the lore of Elden Ring, but in the same time everything we know about his past is ... ehmm ... he was a cool guy, i guess and got dragon friend
He was the first demigod, he was beloved by (almost) all, he weilded golden lightning incantations, he was the hero of the war against the ancient dragons, and after defeating them he chose to befriend them and make them allies instead of enslaving them like the golden order did to the Giants. Then he got assasinated by the black knives which destroyed his soul while leaving his body an immortal demigod husk. In an effort to forcibly return him to the erdtree (which is what happens in place of normal death in the lands between) they buried him in its roots. But instead of returning to the tree or just existing his body continued to grow into a monstrocity that has fused ith the roots to create deatjroot that spreads his condition to corpses and can infect the living as well. And thats about all we know about Godwyn in the lore.
Might just be me, but he looks very similar to Wormfaces in the cover photo, where you can get a good clear look at this poor monstrosity. Guess it makes sense since the other Death Blight Creatures, Basilisks and Crabs, take on aspects of Godwyn's visage as well.
Could you Maybe do Gransax next? Itd probably be hard to get him out of the terrain but it’d still be super badass to see how big he is compared to everything else
I was about to be relieved that he's no longer in there, before I discovered that if you attempt killing Fia in deeproot depths, this "corpse" will defend her. Godwyn is still in there. His soul might've died, but he's still in there. somehow...
Godwyn's undead corpse gives me the heebie-jeebies. Some undead sickness took over his body and changed it into its current grotesque form. Very disturbing.
If what im seeing is correct, the part that is rendered is supposed to be his back. That part where he was strike with Black Knife, its scar can be seen and from the looks of it, he's already bent backwards. Damn video game. Why are you so scary.
Interesting that it doesn’t have the knife mark on it from when his soul was killed, unlike Ranni’s body atop the tower. Maybe from the amount it has changed? I could have missed it, but I thought that was a strange detail to leave out when everything else is so vivid.
Whenever you use the mimic veil next to Godwyn's corpse, you turn into a dead basilisk. With how his face has been contorted, and it looking like it was actually twisting over to where his head would be in the same type of position the basilisks heads are and the same tail, spindly, webbed legs and eyes, everything really, I wonder if that was maybe Godwyn's true form and died in mid tranformation? Or maybe he's turning into a giant basilisk death god? No idea but, I really hope a dlc touches on it because he clearly doesn't look like that whenever he's shown in the past.
Imagine this coming back to life and flailing around writhing in agony and self disgust and horror while it's screaming and trying to kill you just because you're there seeing it.
Godwyn's death has a similarity to the death of Baldr in Norse mythology. A golden god of life that was loved by all murdered through the tricks of Loki. Baldr was sent to the land of the dead to live in the hall of Hela a giantess/goddess/monster of death. Just as the death of Godwyn would lead to the events of Marika shattering the Elden Ring and The Shattering itself Baldr's death lead to the first step towards Ragnarok with imprisonment of Loki who, when his chains would finally break at Ragnarok. He would lead a host of giants against Asgardr and the Aesir plunging the current order into chaos and ultimately ending it. Yggdrasil (aka Erdtree) would be burnt by Surtr the fire giant (I mean, c'mon) along with everything else. Though a new tree and order eventually arises afterward.
Heres what i dont understand. In all media depicted of Godwyns death, his scar is on the back. Yet his actual corpse shows that it is in the front? I was under the assumption that he corpse was hung such that his back is exposed, but that's clearly a spine hidden behind him. This meant that his face also turned upside down, but his tail fin is also shown to have the backside exposed... Overall, just hard to decipher. Interestingly enough, his transformation is not completely unwarranted, as this would mean that godwyn, like the omen twins, are also touched by the crucible somehow, what with the animal-like traits.
There is a consept tought in genetics that previous genes from the organisms we evolved from are still present but get turned off or modified. This is seen in development when a fetus initially takes on attributes that look more aquatic but genes get turned off or modified during development and later in life. Cancer on the otherhand can override the off switch which is why you can find tumors with teeth etc. Given the soul is dead in godwyn and all that is left is his body, his body can be compared to a tumor.
To me, the creepiest thing about Godwyn's corpse is the reality that it isn't a corpse at all. Since only his soul perished, his body lived on and mutated into a grotesque abomination. It's not a corpse, it's a cancer.
I think this is the best description I’ve heard for Godwyn’s present state to anyone who’s struggling to understand what his specific kind of death really is
Its undead in the truest sense of the term. His body is very much not dead, its just that with whats happened to him and without a soul its hard to describe him as alive in the normal sense either. He's just "Not-dead".
He isn't dead, he Lives In Death.
Bruhh 10/10 analogy
Also, it noteworthy that the corruption from Godwyn's corpse spread *everywhere*. In the boss room of any catacomb, you will see how tree roots protrude from the ground and the wall, dragging the dead remains up as well. In fact, you will notice this throughout the catacomb, but the boss room is where the corruption is most prominent to the point you can see Godwyn's 'eyes' on the twisted roots.
Not only that, the corrupted roots can be found on Farum Azula which is floating in the sky, meaning that Godwyn's cancer doesn't give a shit about the laws of physics.
Fia be like:
"He has an amazing personality tho"
He literally has the personality of a fish, with the looks to go with it 🐟
Fia's simps be like
"We're gonna fight this tarnished together, for Fia"
Still cant believe people simp for Fia.
Like, atleast Ranni doesnt cuck you... I think. I gues she simps for the moon.
@@iHaveTheDocuments They died to us not knowing they ever had a chance with her. To her, they're nothing more than disposable summons. Truly maidenless behavior smh.
Lichdragon fortnite sex: "My Man"
Godwyn's corpse never fails to creep me out. Most living but dead beings in fiction usually have this halfway decay look, but in Godwyn's case, he was morphed into something unnatural you just can't quite describe. Worse, even if he's a corpse and remain still as one, it feels like he knows you're there when you enter his domain.
Morbed into something unnatural*
@@onlystamina5932 you will stop right there.
He probably does.
His soul was destroyed, his body is...in a state of undeath that you can't really describe.
He probably is a prisoner in his own body, seeing, hearing, smelling everything around him.
Maybe he even feels how his body is being deformed.
If he can somehow regain movement, he is going to be ultra pissed off at Ranni.
@@KhepriX regain morbment*
@@weetbix4497 no, bad, go back to your cage.
He suffered the worst fate of them all...
He became a fish.
YOU'RE A SQUID YOU'RE A GOD
The process didn't seem very -effishient- efficient
There's nothing worse than becoming British
Women fear him, men too. No one wants fish covid.
@@filippogrimaldi7228 becoming fr*nch
godwyn was like baldur to the capitol, everyone loved him. and he died in this terribly brutal way, with his body turning into this eldritch looking horror
In which fiction ?
@@rafiabloode2749 Norse
Yeah and Ranni is Loki. A manipulator well-versed in magic and have connection to frost, as well as originating from outsider bloodline (Carian for Ranni, Jotunn for Loki).
Glad someone else noticed it. The scion of the divine lineage, destined to die but dying in a manner which turns the course of fate and signals the end of a golden age.
Of course there are Norse references this game was said to have been using the celtic and norse mythology for building it's world and lore.
If anyone recalls the initial cutscene, Godwyn is stabbed in the back of the neck by the Black Knife assassins while two others hold up his arms, and from the positioning of the Camera and the way they all seem to be looking down towards Godwyn, it's safe to assume he's pretty much kept the half kneeling, slumped pose of the moment the Black Knife killed him. (Which looks oddly reminiscent of Marika's pose, the pose she takes that's in the shape of the Rune of Death.)
Heart braking
Heart accelerating
Holy crap, how did I not notice this? You're clearly on to something!
After they killed him u can see him lying on the floor...
@@dannysandhu9487 The Elden Ring intro cinematic, not the theatrical trailer for YT, the actual in-game cinematic, the only scene is the drawing of the black knives killing him, I know what you're talking about, it's just not what I was referring to.
He still has that same blue cloth on his hips he had on the night of his assassination.
Most OP armor in the game
Even in death he stay Dripped out
@@drexoslek2277 it’s drip or drown and Godwyn was so dripped out he became a fish.
Of course, what else would he wear?
his cloth didnt want to leave so it grew with him 🗿
I forget if anyone’s mentioned this, but I find it interesting that the Prince of Death is a mermaid. Considering From’s recurring themes of “immortality corrupts” and the Japanese folklore of anyone consuming ningyo flesh being granted a cursed immortal life, this could be one of the reasons why Godwyn’s design became fish-like in his deathly state.
Beyond that, water in many world mythologies is commonly used as a symbol of the unknown or primordial. In Norse myth, the Yggdrasil/World Tree is grown from a body of water called the Urdwell - pronounced the same as "Erd"tree
And Tibia mariners invoke Charon crossing river Styx to move dead people to underworld.
I think he's not a Mermaid but Half Basilisk.
There's a lot of Basilisk in Godwyn Area and if Tarnished got Killed by them the Animation looks like Godwyn's Death Root that binding Him on a Tree.
Basilisk always had that weird Connection to Death
There is also the Sanzu River in Japanese Buddhism. Similar to the River Styx of Ancient Greek mythology (which is also referenced in ER with the Tibia Mariner), the dead had to pay a fee to cross the Sanzu and reach the afterlife. As Godwyn is half dead, you could consider him stuck in the mythological watery boundary between life and the afterlife, leading to the development of aquatic features.
the death spewing creatures in this and dark souls are frogs. maybe he's a tadpole of a giant one of those
oh Godwyn... look how they massacred my boy
(smash cut to a dozen Black Knife assassins taking turns stabbing Godwyn)
Ngl he's kinda cute😊
@@SHAW_777Okay Fia, calm down.
that's basically what the Finger Reader crone that is at the deeproot depths said.
He was too good for the world :(
“Reject Godhood, return to fish.” - Godwyn, probably
Return to fishe
feesh*
Good hunter
Actually. If you remove a person's soul, what makes them human, what are we other than the same dumb little fish that crawled onto land? An interesting explanation for the aquatic motif. With his soul dead, it's like his genes went back to the basics. The stuff that still remains but is usually overwritten, like why all fetuses across species have tails.
fibshe*
I hate deathblight and every enemy who carries it but i gotta admit, the reason why it all happened is pretty interesting. To think Godwyn got reduced from a beloved demigod to a worldwide plague is saddening.
"There are fates worse than death"
-godwin probably
"Godwin" Lmfao
@@jarridatkins1312 big W
I'm not even sure if this one's death lmao, it's a straight up not existing anymore, spiritually and physically💀
@@user-be8ip4we3q well he exists physically but not spiritually, that’s why his corpse is still around
@@pathetic2399 that's not him anymore I mean😭
When I finally discovered the roots I was amazed at this wonderfully hidden location.
When I first saw his corpse I just sorta stared wondering wtf happened here... the impact of his death is incredibly far reaching.
such a great design, truly grotesque
There's something about the Prince of Death that makes it a particularly unsettling take on undeath to me. Maybe it's the subtlety of the concept of it. Normally undead are done in this straightforward "ha, scared you!" kinda way where the more or less physical remains of a dead person are given a melancholy/creepy/hostile disposition. And then they go BLARRGH.
Let's look at what happens when we die. Our vitals cease, our brains no longer can function. Our thoughts, memories and identity cease to exist in their own right. What remains are other peoples' memories, and a body that looks like us, but will be going bad shortly so it's better to put it in a box or burn it, and be done with it. Otherwise it will stink up the place before it can be arsed to turn back into dirt.. Well, that's how it went for Godwyn. Except for the fact his body doesn't rot away. It remains, out of sight, and it will slowly creep its way back. But not as an angry zombie, or a vengeful spirit. It'll return as an inexplicable, corrupting entity that doesn't care about you or anything. The design is particularly cruel too. Imagine being a loved one of Godwyn, remembering all his dignity and pride, and then running into this giant clam headed grotesque staring at nothing.
Haven't played the game but why is godywin(Or whatever his name is) much larger then a person?
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 he's a god
@@bigdaddy9807 He's a demigod. He's the son of Godfrey (not a god, but an amazing warrior) and Marika (she's a god).
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 What the other 2 said, but also in Miyazaki's games, powerful figures tend to be larger even if there's no rational explanation to it other than their power. For example, in Dark Souls 1, there's these 2 types of knights who are just regular people like you, but as they're particularly highly skilled and strong warriors, they're towering over you.
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 he is a demi god + his body grew up like a cancer
Whatever this... thing... is. It's even creepier when you consider how Godwyn's soul, his self, is dead. This is a living creature with no mind at the helm to control it.
*The lights are on, but no one's home anymore.*
Damn, I feel bad for Godwyn
He was a strong noble who is respected by the people, loves by the fellow demigods and now he turned into an amalgamation of horror that his body that was once so pure and golden, now decaying and putrid...
I hope we see an ending where we find a cure for the Destined Death and restore his body and soul, he could reward us with something for finally allowing his soul and body to disappear from the Lands Between and finally let him rest in peace
His sould is dead, there is no cure. The only thing we can help him is kill is undead body, it just a empty living vessels which also is the source of everything "living in death".
He sounds like the few demogods that aint assholes
Theres a reason it’s called “Destined Death”. He’s dead for good, least his soul is
If Fia is correct in anyway, apparently using the Mending Rune of Death to gain the Duskborn ending will start Godwyn’s “second illustrious life.” Although he likely won’t be the Godwyn that died.
Or at the very least a way to put his body to complete death.
I really wish we got to see more of what Godwyn looked like before the shard of Destined Death turned him into this thing. We only get a couple of brief glimpses of the back of him when the Numen assassins were killing him and a close-up of his eye as death poured out of it, but we never see much of the only demigod to not have any physical abnormalities, and from what we can tell and what we are told, he was very beautiful. A sharp contrast to what he became as the Prince of Death.
Ranni, Rykard, and Radan weren't born with deformities either. Rykard got all jacked up after merging with the serpent and Radan got all busted up fighting Malena.
You find find Ranni's original body during her quest line and it looks totally normal. Other than being charred to a crisp.
He gives me strong Miquella if he wasn't an eternal child vibes
@@SinHurrWe have a good idea of what the others look like
Radahn isn't too far from how he looked
Rykard and Radahn are twins
Melina is the spitting image of what Ranni used to look like, with a faded red hair color instead of Ranni's original red hair.
Godwyn and Miquella are two figures we do not see in their original glory. I do believe in Miquella's dream we will face down Godwyn at the end... After all, the Prince of Death won't allow Miquella to die.
>without abnormalities
We never see his legs though.
So he might have always been half fish for all we know.
@@Fl0wchartI’m thinking the same thing, Godwyn could (hopefully) be the final boss we fight in the DLC to get Miquellas ending, or his new age or it could very well be a duo boss with both Miquella and Godwyn but I doubt it (the thought just gives me chills lol)
Its even creepier realizing that, that thing is fully alive and conscious, its just not godwyn because his soul died.
Nah there’s nothing conscious in that thing, his body is basically just one giant out of control tumor that never stops growing.
Is it conscious though? Surely it's just a soulless body which still has blood running through its veins. Alive in some technical sense but completely empty
Godwyn lives in death, so his body is still alive, I like to think it that it retains some sort of consciousness because the brain isn't dead and the pure fact that fia can enter its mind within dreams means its conscious enough to dream .
@@CarlNiemiif it helps at all, imagine your body going on complete autopilot, with no input from the person. Just a flesh puppet walking around, not working on what a person would do, but rather what an organism would do. No real personhood remaining, just an organism with one goal: to survive, even in a decaying and mutating state. It’s kind of like an embodiment of a cancer: the cells of a body corrupted, and only out to convert more and spread.
And with Fia and dream, think of it less as Godwyn haunting his corpse, and more of a remainder of a hard drive, because someone didn’t scrub it hard enough. There’s still some sort of memories, but they’re not lived in, they’re just remainders of neurons firing, not making anything new or representing the world perceived by a living person. Godwyn the full person would make memories; the corpse of Godwyn would not, instead only harboring the remaining memories in a static and rotting mind. No soul, just leftover stuff that’s mutating in a desperate urge for life.
At least, this is how I understand it.
@@ricanraikage4297no his soul is gone. Like, dead dead gone.
It’s incredibly creepy how even though his corpse is buried under the Erdtree, his influence continues to spread throughout the Lands Between, potentially via the Erdtree’s roots.
Throughout the game you can see his Deathroot in various locations, even up in Faram Azula, and those roots even have his eyes open and looking around.
Not to mention how even crabs and Basilisks have his eyes on their bodies. Godwyn has become an almost Eldritch abomination. And to think he, one of the kindest Demigods, was assassinated solely to fulfill Ranni’s and Marika’s plans. This guy could have been a really good Elden Lord
Marika had no motive to kill Godwyn, and in fact, the more living demi-gods there were, the better the chances of someone winning in the Shattering would have been, thus resulting in someone to fight the Elden Beast. The Numen are descendants of the Nox of the Eternal City, and Alecto and co. probably thought Marika was a traitor when she sided with the Greater Will.
He's watching us on our journey...
Isn’t his death part of the reason marika lost faith in the greater will and shattered the elden ring?
Yes we all saw the RUclips video just link it next time
Godwyn's death was not part of Marika's plan, it's what drove her to the edge and was the catalyst for Marika to kickstart her plan.
Also Godwyn is famous for offering an alliance to the dragons but he was a dragon killer and that can easily be explained by politics, the dragons giving them their knowledge and power, making the Golden Order and Leyndell stronger. It's no secret Fortissax and Godwyn were good friends but that could've been developed later.
Godwyn was smart above all and that decision benefited everyone.
Also his eyes aren't "looking around", they're static and probably non functional
"Why is this necrophiliac lady entering my mind and bothering my boy Fortissax?" - Godwyn, when he met Fia, probably
Its kind of implied that Fia might actually be Fortissax in human form.
@@rwberger6 Really? I didn't know that
@@makmotv well, Fia literally calls herself "the companion of Godwyn," so yeah it's possible.
@@rwberger6When lmao
Fun fact: Godwyn's duplicate corpse head hidden under Stormveil bleeds when you hit it. I never tried hitting the whole Godwyn in Deeproot, though. Maybe someone else can report back here and tell us if that one bleeds too. It's an uncomfortable reminder that, while Godwyn's soul died on that night of the Black Knives, his body is still living, corrupting, growing, spreading mindlessly....
Also, if you interact with a blood stain there, you will see how Rogier was incapacitated by *something*. He believes that his condition is likely permanent and asked you to help him investigate the rune of Death. It's later reveal that it was Deathblight which Rogier later succumbed to.
Maybe if you hit it with the right weapon? it does something?
this game is only 4 months old, lots yet to uncover
@@korawitbuttramee618 a Black Knife assassin do her backstab on him. Her blade, like the one you can found later or the one Tiche (and Alecto and the rest of Black Knives) can inflict Destined Death.
It doesn't bleed.
Instead of bleeding, Deathblight “needles/roots” stick out to attack you, and Fia has dialogue regarding it.
While looking closely at Elemer's armor, I noticed there are some very bizarre carvings on the bracers and boots that resemble monstrous mermaids. The head looks more like the harpy hags, but they have fish tails just like Godwyn does now. Blew my mind when I saw that, but I have no idea what it could mean, if anything. Just interesting that it's the only other reference to half-fish ppl in the game.
Ain't that the like bone set or something? From the guy who uses the Clinging Bones?
You can actually see carvings in that metal?
@@TheKing-qz9wd elemer is the bell hunter.
@@angrywizard3199
Well that would be even harder for me to see because it looks like garbage plate armor held together by barbed wire.
every single person you meet that is affected by death root (rogier and d’s brother) all have a blanket over their legs with death root sprouting out from under and they can’t move, just like how godwyns fish tail is half under his own blue robes, essentially to me this is obviously implying that under the blankets is their own fish tail, corrupted by seeking the prince of death and becoming a vessel of death root and eventually living in death. tho idk how to explain how Ds brother can help you fight tho.
@@crunchysalmons it's possible, but I've used the freecam mod to look under the blankets, and Rogier's legs are impaled with the black deathroot vines, and D seems uninjured, so I think whoever took the hallowbrand he retrieved from him just covered him since he's catatonic. …Maybe the Crucible Knights? Lol.
His lore reminds me of Baldr. A respected god killed by a sinister plot(by Loki) and his death eventually triggers a series of events that leads to the end of the epoch. Given George Martin's influences from myths, also him being a Tolkien enthusiast( also largely influenced by Nordic myths/ Das Rheingold) it is not a too farfetched connection i think
I came to the same conclusion
Same.
Don’t do Destined Death kids.
"O brother, Lord Brother. Please die a true death"
Destines Death by itself is not the problem. It's not dying completely.
No, it's don't do destined death HALFWAY
the design is horrific and i love it. made me wonder tho since the center of the divine towers is most likely where the dlc takes place and is also out in the open water, then the dlc might have something to do with godwyn possibly getting controlled/possessed by someone/something, goes wild and eventually creating a whirlpool we could travel to.
another possibility with godwyn's body is a new ending that triggers when godwyn's corpse gains sentience (but isnt really godwyn) and asks us if we want to become the lord of the undead
Godwyn isn't in that center area though. He's moreso under Leyndell.
@@g0lddustt29 but what if the body got up and did boss things that eventually leads to the dlc area? man just thinking about it makes me more excited.
I really hope we get to fight Godwyn in a DLC either in his prince of death form or maybe his alive form through some time travel or memory stuff. He's just such an interesting character.
Crazy how he still in the same pose when he was assassinated
That's some next level rigor mortis.
Wait, so it shows in the scene of Godwyn's Assasination the Black Knives cutting his back. But the scar is here on the front of him, so is that actually his back and his body is that badly morphed? Or just a little mixed up? His head's weird pose would make a little more sense if you imagine it like a head leaning back and contorting to that shape. The odd pose he was left in when Death awakened could also influence his shape. Could also of course be the mangling of Death's roots. But such a prevalent piece of his death and even showcased by the game seems odd to get mixed up like that.
Those might not be his wounds, but instead a place where the deathblight exploded out of his corpse.
I think it’s safe to say the body constantly twisted, contorted and all together morphed during the Living In Death cycle.
No direction, just nature shaping a brand new organism for the first time.
I think he very well could be reversed, intentionally, and his "front" is actually what used to be his back. It would help explain why his head and facial features are upsidedown
@@GuitarGuise that's a good thought. There's also the fact that D cut out the hallowbrand when he found Godwyn and became "Beholder of Death" and somehow got it back to Leyndell. That's why Fia gives us the knife that's rotted by Deathblight: it was used to carve out the wound. Why it doesn't vanish from Ranni's body when we take hers... maybe it's bc her body is dead and burnt..?
It seems like his head is bent backwards, so the part where the tendrils are coming out would be his chin, his chest is facing the erdtree trunk and the scar on his back is where the deathblight spreads from. Although you could probably justify his body being contorted in any direction.
It is a shame that Godwyn didn't become a Boss for the Tarnished to fight and grant him True Death.
don't worry
hell come in the DLC and the one who will be truly dying will be us instead :)
My personal theory is that we'll have a DLC which sends us in the past, during the Black Knife's Night, and we will discover at this moment that Godwyn was slain by... us.
He's dead, how tf would be a boss?
@@ShirakiAkarin those who LIVE in Death
@@ShirakiAkarin Soul's gone, not body. Could be animated.
The way he’s contorted by the thorns of death blight is so unnerving yet intriguing
"Why did you steal the Rune of Death from Godwyn?"
"Because he was being shellfish"
Reminds me of bed of chaos
But, unlike bed of chaos, Godwyn is not a boss. People speculate that he's going to be one in the dlc, but nothing will dethrone bed of chaos as the best boss fromsoftware has ever done.
@# r̷-p̷m̷8̷ thanks
I’m really hoping we get more Godwyn in Deeproot/Fortissax type stuff in a DLC
That skybox during the boss fight is incredible
Lore wise it’s some of the most interesting stuff to me. Like I wanna know more about Miquella too of course but if a DLC came out that focused on the corpse of Godwyn and shit I would not complain at all
I love the eyes on his corpse, they look dead but still they stare into your soul
If you are looking for something else to examine: What the hell is under Sorcier Rogier's robe when he is in the Roundtable Hold? D talks about him being affected by Those Who Live in Death and how they become rotted from the inside. And you can see Deathroot growing from Rogier along with flies buzzing around him. I wonder if they made his legs and body look rotten...
idk how they will do it but miquella, godwyn, rkyard (possibly due to the dialogue at the end of his fight), dragonlord placidusax (with all heads attached), and the leader of the godskins the gloam eyed queen will be dlc bosses.
Again huge yoga stretches and I’m not sure how they would do it. But I’m sure from soft has something crazy for us in store.
I'm not sure how they will fit in Melina as a DLC boss unless you have to light the Erdtree to access it.
It's like a reverse evolution - instead of crawling out of the primordial muck he's going back into it.
bro caught a stray just for existing and it doesn’t even end here, he gets turned into a decaying clam-head merman
They stabbed the poor guy so hard he became a fish-clam
I’ve been watching this for 3 hours straight, I still can’t tell what I’m looking at
We know certain creatures are able to take on the form of humans (a few ancient dragons are said to have taken human forms to live among people) and that makes me wonder: what if this is Godwyn’s “true” form? Maybe since his soul is dead and his body continues to mutate, he’s beginning to morph back into that original body?
After all he is the son of Marika who herself is a Numen and are rumored to have come from another “world”. If you interpret that literally his alien like appearance doesn’t seem all too unusual.
And Marika's name is Polish and means "of the sea." In Irish lore the country was once ruled by supernatural beings called Fomorians who were considered to be semi-aquatic, and the Tuatha de Dannan eventually drove them back into the sea. Numens might be similar. The word "Numen" is also a Latin colloquialism meaning the divine power or spiritual force of an object, place, or phenomenon, indicating that Numen are indeed mystical.
@@elleofmusic Her pose in the opening cutscene and in her statues is also very fluid with a spiral behind her formed by her clothing. It is in stark contrast to Radagon who is all straight lines and hard angles. She even has a bit of a swimmer's pose in the cutscene.
To add to what you said about Numen it can also be a reference to the Numenoreans of Tolkien's work: a people blessed with long life and tall stature who lived on an island kingdom until they were corrupted by Sauron and tried to go to war with the divine stewards of their world. The creator god Iluvatar destroyed most of them and their island home and reshaped the world to make it round and set the Undying Lands of the divine apart from Middle Earth. (In other words, the Atlantis of Middle Earth complete with cataclysm caused by hubris.)
Unlikely, there is no indication of numens that have this horrid form, the black knife assasins are numens but they don't look anything close to godwyn's corpse but the fishiness does align with some irish lore using the name numen
@@elleofmusic Tbh at first I thought the name Marika is a feminine version of Malik which means 'king' in Arabic and some Semitic languages.
@@jakenathanielabad9452 their armor is very scaled in appearance tho. The green/blue tints have a bit of fishiness to them. But if there are any aquatic origins to the Numen, my guess is that it is long, LONG past in their ancestry. Godwyn's connection to what remains of the Crucible via the Greattree roots could simply be drawing out vestigial bits of dna.
why does the thumbnail look like he's about to drop the fattest rhymes on us mortals
Why the fish lower body? I wonder if it's an allusion to Lovecraftian horror. In bloodborne it was a huge theme. The horrors from the deep abyss.
Sekiro had a theme where gaining a false, cursed immortality involved turning into a sea creature, too.
Maybe it could have to do with the fact that he is in a lake ?That could explain why he only corrupts crabs and basilisk.Also iirc we never actually see Godwyn's lower body in a cutscene so that could be what he looked like from the beginning.
Crucible stuff
@@defurnesellier1984 i don't think that Godwyn lower body was that of a fish, it's clear that his body has become more marine-like (clam head and fins on his arms) so it's far more likely that his legs fused together and formed a fish tail.
he really clammed up after he was fin-ished.
To think, he started out on such a small _scale_
Can you blame him when he's obviously so far out of his depths?
His *shellfishness* wasn't on *porpoise* 🐚🐬
Godwyn's corpse with his head in the correct position is reminiscent of the Flatwoods Monster, both this and the Ningyo seem to have been inspiration for Godwyn form
What makes you say that the flat woods monster inspired Godwyn? I don't really see the similarities beyond having a flattened head. All other unique features of Godwyn's head and face don't seem inspired by the monster at all
@@GuitarGuise the overall shape of its head specifically the "crown" appendage look somewhat simillar to what the flatwood monster is described to be.
I was familiar with how Flatwoods Monster looks like, but I didn't see it until you pointed it out. Yeah, it's kind of similar, but I doubt it was intentional reference.
I'd like to note that Godwyn might have been inspired by the Norse God Baldr. Baldr was a son of Odin and a God of light. Among of the Æsir, he was the most beloved. But he was killed by Loki when he shot an arrow with mistletoe. This event is believed to be the starting point to Ragnarok. However, after Ragnarok it is said that Baldr will rise once again and rebuild the world.
Compare this to Godwyn, a demi-god beloved by his people only be killed, which lead to to shattering of the Elden Ring and the rest of his brethren suffering in some way.
Even more interesting is that Fia claims she wants to actually bring Godwyn back, in some way, which pretty much solidifies the correlation between these two
His soul is gone but his body still lives on, even without a mind. You can see the chaos through looking at his cold, lost appearance.
Someone pointed this out in. Zulli video, but his body is twisted in undeath. He got carved and shanked with the Death mark on his back, but the leftovers are on his bloated waterlogged looking belly, and his "face" is twisted almost 90° from the standard orientation. Not to mention, the cutscene showed that he was devoid of claws and had humanoid legs, but his current form is clawed and practically a mythical mermaid. It's like he's become an undead Prion, converting everything he's touching through the Erdtree into an equally glitched out undead mess
Why would anyone simp for ranni after seeing what she has done to poor Godwyn
Oh poor Godwyn 😭😟🥺
apparently, Ranni didn't plan the murder, or at least she didn't without the favor of Marika. her sin was not giving Godwyn a proper death. Godwyn was supposed to be a martyr to offer to destined death, according to a finger reading crone. but Ranni decided to sacrifice her body instead of Godwyn's, while the latter lost his soul.
sexy puppet is better than sexy fish, duh.
@Just a guy who needs POWER He made it up though
@Just a guy who needs POWER he didn't make it up, there's one in deeproot that says, ""
Feel free to interpret that as you wish though with regards to Ranni.
i like that it’s the same pose from when he got murdered…arms held in place and head tilted down
I wonder if there’s a 2 faced thing going on, if you look at the face at like 1:09 and as if the head is slouched to his right, where the button shape is his mouth and the hair is covering his nose it looks more natural. Just the top of the head is growing some kind of…mushroom thing or something (reminds me of the mushrooms on logs I see around here in fall).
Anyways, if you flip your perspective so the strange upward pointed nose that was on the forehead is now in the proper nose position, it looks kinda like a skull. But then the head would be twisted unnaturally and the hair would be wrong.
I think it’d be cool if we get a boss fight with Godwyn in the dlc akin to Ludwig from Bloodborne.
His first phase we fight this living corpse with no soul. It’s reckless and violent, thrashing around and spewing out pools of death.
Then we enter his second phase, the conscious of Godwyn is somehow reignited. He speaks to us and switch’s to a combination of both death blight moves and golden order incantations/lighting. And of course he’ll have some giant sword he can pull off some flashy moves with.
Maybe the Outer God related to the whole concept of "False Death", Deathroot, etc., is fish-like? Related to water or the sea perhaps?
I keep wondering the same thing. All I got for now, is the Tibia Mariner.
Zullie the Witch has a video explaining how this design is based off some Japanese fish monster
@@HM4Hill oh i know that folklore, yes its about eating a mermaid and becoming immortal but theres also also another effect is that when devour the mermaids flesh theres a 99% or 99.99% you'll become an immortal looking monster like godwyn while those 0.1% are those lucky ones that just becomes immortal
Godwyn is by far the most harrowing thing Fromsoft has ever made. That thing makes Bloodborne's Eldritch horrors look like carebears.
It's even worse when you go into the area and stand next to him, realizing how truly massive he is. And his eyes, god the way they blankly stare makes it so much worse, like they're peering into your very being. I've never been nearly as unsettled looking at anything in my entire life.
I feel like his corpse is a call back to surreal medieval art and monster design, but brought into grizzly detailed reality
It's like a fish-thing. Something related to the elden beast that it seems to be a kind of alien-sea creature itself.
The first time I saw that THING, I didn't realize that it was Godwyn. His body is so grotesque and unrecognizable, I thought it was some dead monster.
It's even more unsettling when you consider that once upon a time this gross and unnatural monster was Godwyn the Golden.
The face was always the weirdest thing to me because of how mixed up it became. It's strange we've been looking at his face upside down because of the placement of his nose.
Ppl say his "correct" head position is the one seen in the last seconds of this video, but i dont think thats correct because those eyes seen in other places like the basilisks or the ones growing in the roots have the exact contrary position. You can see what his original head position was thanks to his hair: its comming from inside that shell-like shape. His nose didnt just get flattened; it came all the way to his forehead. That little circle you see in the other side was originally his mouth. I believe his head is mutating in a way he ends up like a quadrupedal animal (like the basilisks), and what you see when looking at him from the front is actually his back: his body is "rotating" so what originally was his back is going to be his new chest.
I have my doubts as you can see his spine in this model showing video but that was not originally to be seen in normal circumstances so who knows.
me and my friend argued at length about this and I think more people in the community need to discuss this and find definitive proof. I originally thought the "clam lip" side of his head was Godwyn's mouth because of the nose, but the golden hair coming from the mouth and the spine/pecs difference on the torso are pretty compelling evidence that is not the case. Also, his hands have thumbs showing which way is the front of his torso if the pecs/spine aren't clear enough in the model. I started adopting the idea that the face we see on the crabs/pustule/everything covered in death is "eating" his original head, and that explains the nose being where it is. It's a growth of a clamshell form enveloping his head. The clamshell can also symbolize a crown, like the scales on Rykard do.
This is the ideal male body type. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
Possible DLC stuff
1. Godwyn
2. Fearsome Empyrean, Miquella
3. Gloam eyed queen.
A Miquella DLC would really be cool
It makes sense for an aquatic mammal like that to have it's nostrils higher up to breathe easier
Oh hey, just noticed he's frozen in the pose he was in when he died. In the intro you can see two of the assassins are holding him by the arms while a third one drives the knife in from behind
Did my mans godwyn dirty
Hmm, a thought: we know Marika was physically part astral horror as a god because she contained the Elden Ring inside herself, which was itself an astral horror as the Elden Beast. That would mean all her children could be part astral horror as well, or at least influenced by one by sharing Marika's body with the Elden Beast. Perhaps without his mortal soul to balance things out, Godwyn's body became more and more eldritch as his otherworldly nature ran rampant. This could also be the reason for Miquella's transformation into a giant Orphan of Kos-like monstrosity in his cocoon, as his human side is being overpowered by his astral self's enhancement by the blood of an Outer God.
This could explain the 3 demigod transformations we see, that they are influenced by a different Outer God's influence. Melania's influence by the former god of rot is clear, Miquella becomes a blood-drained corpse under the Formless Mother's influence, and Godwyn displays fishy, sealife elements of the Elden Beast's swimming, acquatic nature.
Wow
They’re literally just inbred. But I like where you’re going with this.
Miquella became like he is because he fused himself to the Haligtree through a coccoon so that he would grow alongside it, bypassing his curse of being forever a child in body. However while he was still in the long process of transforming his coccoon was snatched from the Haligtree by his Omen half brother, causing the tree to die and miquella to be stuck comatose in a weird in between phase. Then mohg kinda did weird blood stuff to him to try to commune with him and wake him up. So its not the formless mother influencing him directly, its just that Mohg screwed over his plans and the result is he's a weird lanky and wrinkly naked guy who's stuck in a coma inside a broken coccoon.
@@rwberger6 Since we only see Miquella after the influence of Mogh, we have no evidence that his current state is anywhere near what it would have been without Mogh and the Formless Mother's influence. In fact if the humanoid figure formed in the Haligtree roots is (like some suspect) an impression/echo of Miquella from his aging ritual, it seems he wasn't looking too dissimilar from an adult version of the statues we see of him.
Definitely one of the creepiest things I've seen in a Souls game, tbh. I stood a good while in that open area trying to figure out what the fuck I was actually looking at.
me too, then i got close enough for the eyes to come into view
The design is so crude but dark.. Miyazaki must have went to his kid and was like "draw God."
Ive been looking at his face upside down the whole time
I am here again after not getting any closure on the fact that someone just became a massive mutated mermaid monster in the DLC and it just exists in this world
I would really enjoy is a time lapse of how his body mutates into malformed being
When I see this, a name comes to my mind: Father Dagon
Imagine going into the nightmares of THIS
This man really turned into a octopus mermaid and dipped
I wonder if Godwyn transforming into a fish/clam monster is related to DS3 and the Deep, never ending ocean and Lovecraftian stuff.
"A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea..." very Fishing Hamlet, too.
Water is often tied to death. Even Japanese myths have similar stories to the River Styx and other connections between water and afterlife and corruption and death.
It's linked to the concept of stagnation, which apparently belongs to the japanese folklore and it's included in every fromsoft game, including Sekiro. Zullie the Witch posted a video that explains the whole thing more clearly
It's just a common theme
How he looks so handsome
Mini Ranni: ...and then he was like 🐟 and I was like 🪦
I think that in a lot of ways Godwyn’s current state is an empathetic reflection of what his death did to Marika. Being undead means that you can’t move on, and by most accounts Marika could never move on after his death. He was probably her favorite child, and beloved by most of the Lands Between, and his death shook her to the point that she shattered the Elden Ring and abandoned the world to ruin. He haunts the land, his face is literally appearing everywhere like the lingering memory of loved one, but instead of appearing as he was in life it’s this horrible, misshapen nightmare. Marika couldn’t keep going after he died, she couldn’t hold on to the good memories she had of him and keep loving the rest of her family, she just became consumed by the horror and confusion of what happened and now Godwyn himself is this horrifying and confusing thing. It’s eating the world from the inside-out, and I think it makes sense that if the god of this world experienced such a traumatic loss that the world she governed would feel the blow as well. I think that’s also probably why her Radagon half at least tried to repair the Elden Ring; it wasn’t his own child who died, it was his stepson, and he probably didn’t feel the loss nearly as hard as Marika did. He was like a spouse desperately trying to rouse his wife from crippling depression and hold the world together, and he just couldn’t find a way to do it.
Funny, he's extremely important to the lore of Elden Ring, but in the same time everything we know about his past is ... ehmm ... he was a cool guy, i guess and got dragon friend
He was the first demigod, he was beloved by (almost) all, he weilded golden lightning incantations, he was the hero of the war against the ancient dragons, and after defeating them he chose to befriend them and make them allies instead of enslaving them like the golden order did to the Giants. Then he got assasinated by the black knives which destroyed his soul while leaving his body an immortal demigod husk. In an effort to forcibly return him to the erdtree (which is what happens in place of normal death in the lands between) they buried him in its roots. But instead of returning to the tree or just existing his body continued to grow into a monstrocity that has fused ith the roots to create deatjroot that spreads his condition to corpses and can infect the living as well.
And thats about all we know about Godwyn in the lore.
Might just be me, but he looks very similar to Wormfaces in the cover photo, where you can get a good clear look at this poor monstrosity. Guess it makes sense since the other Death Blight Creatures, Basilisks and Crabs, take on aspects of Godwyn's visage as well.
Could you Maybe do Gransax next? Itd probably be hard to get him out of the terrain but it’d still be super badass to see how big he is compared to everything else
My man turned into a goddamn mermaid/fungus abomination after death.
I was about to be relieved that he's no longer in there, before I discovered that if you attempt killing Fia in deeproot depths, this "corpse" will defend her. Godwyn is still in there. His soul might've died, but he's still in there. somehow...
Same thing happens when you try attacking D's brother in Nokron. Some NPCs are protected so you wouldn't lock yourself out of a quest.
@@B1aQQ Yes but, FIA is the one that has reaction to it when you try.
"Prince Godwyn is that you?"
First those hermit crab ladies in the Hunter's Nightmare and now Godwyn.
Someone at From Software gets off on ruining mermaids for us.
Heh.
Godwyn's undead corpse gives me the heebie-jeebies. Some undead sickness took over his body and changed it into its current grotesque form. Very disturbing.
everybody talking how bad its to be undead, but godwyn has been unalive for +5000 years
If what im seeing is correct, the part that is rendered is supposed to be his back. That part where he was strike with Black Knife, its scar can be seen and from the looks of it, he's already bent backwards. Damn video game. Why are you so scary.
Interesting that it doesn’t have the knife mark on it from when his soul was killed, unlike Ranni’s body atop the tower. Maybe from the amount it has changed? I could have missed it, but I thought that was a strange detail to leave out when everything else is so vivid.
Did anyone else notice that his bracelets are the same as High Lord Wolnir’s?
Poor dude
Whenever you use the mimic veil next to Godwyn's corpse, you turn into a dead basilisk. With how his face has been contorted, and it looking like it was actually twisting over to where his head would be in the same type of position the basilisks heads are and the same tail, spindly, webbed legs and eyes, everything really, I wonder if that was maybe Godwyn's true form and died in mid tranformation? Or maybe he's turning into a giant basilisk death god? No idea but, I really hope a dlc touches on it because he clearly doesn't look like that whenever he's shown in the past.
Imagine this coming back to life and flailing around writhing in agony and self disgust and horror while it's screaming and trying to kill you just because you're there seeing it.
Godwin face,both in the castle and in the roots of the erdtree still creeps me out to this day,its so terrifying..
Same
The scar is supposed to be on his back, right? So this head is upside down...call the fucking exorcism.
I didn’t even notice that part. That just makes his body even more confusing to look at.
Godwyn's death has a similarity to the death of Baldr in Norse mythology. A golden god of life that was loved by all murdered through the tricks of Loki. Baldr was sent to the land of the dead to live in the hall of Hela a giantess/goddess/monster of death.
Just as the death of Godwyn would lead to the events of Marika shattering the Elden Ring and The Shattering itself Baldr's death lead to the first step towards Ragnarok with imprisonment of Loki who, when his chains would finally break at Ragnarok.
He would lead a host of giants against Asgardr and the Aesir plunging the current order into chaos and ultimately ending it. Yggdrasil (aka Erdtree) would be burnt by Surtr the fire giant (I mean, c'mon) along with everything else. Though a new tree and order eventually arises afterward.
Heres what i dont understand. In all media depicted of Godwyns death, his scar is on the back. Yet his actual corpse shows that it is in the front? I was under the assumption that he corpse was hung such that his back is exposed, but that's clearly a spine hidden behind him. This meant that his face also turned upside down, but his tail fin is also shown to have the backside exposed... Overall, just hard to decipher. Interestingly enough, his transformation is not completely unwarranted, as this would mean that godwyn, like the omen twins, are also touched by the crucible somehow, what with the animal-like traits.
There is a consept tought in genetics that previous genes from the organisms we evolved from are still present but get turned off or modified. This is seen in development when a fetus initially takes on attributes that look more aquatic but genes get turned off or modified during development and later in life. Cancer on the otherhand can override the off switch which is why you can find tumors with teeth etc. Given the soul is dead in godwyn and all that is left is his body, his body can be compared to a tumor.
I always trip out on how godwyns bracelets also grew with him lol
Yeah thats a closed casket funeral for sure
When Godwyn said "bloop, bloop, bloop" really hits hard 😭