"The Greater Will does not care what form Order takes" it's a being of pure Order and Order itself is not inherently good. Especially when it's stated that it'll embrace any goal the hero has as long as the end result is Order
As I've said before to people who think Order=Good, fascism is very much a manifestation of Order and the Final Solution was a very Orderly process. Order is simply a form of restriction on the endless potential of Chaos to a manageable level and that is all the Greater Will cares about. Whether the Elden Lord is like Jesus or like Hitler doesn't matter so long as they keep things running the way the GW wants them to.
Exactly why certain great runes can still be recovered despite being affected by other outer gods like Mohg’s and Malenia’s, neither of those outer gods oppose order they just have their own brand of it
@@ravendelacour1917 I would argue that fascism is the opposite of order. While fascist often claim to be the law and order guys, there are no laws restricting the people in power. If the grandson of an oligarch wants your business, he get's your business. If Putin wants you dead, you are killed. There are no laws restricting the people in power. As such, authoritarian states are, ironically, chaotic in nature.
Pretty much, it's a primordial eldric being that simple desires a structure for the world it governs. What form that structure actually takes it matters not. As long as there is some form of structure. Some form or order. You could stretch that even to the principle of Chaos as well. After all despite, being in direct opposition to Order, being able to describe something as chaotic or volatile is to describe its own Structural behavior. It's own Order within Chaos. The only one who actively tries to avoid falling under its demand of any structure, any Order, is Ranni, whose solution is to cut out this being that governs the universal nature of Order itself. An Order without the supreme deity of Order and its various influence. Herself included. Whether you think that can work? Eh, the player will never know.
Thanks to the DLC, we know why Marika was so harsh on the omen. It was _personal_ . Every time she sees a horned omen, she gets flashbacks of her people getting stuffed in jars. One has to wonder whether Marika mellowed her position on the omen or someone else persuaded her to just jail them under Leyndell, because Marika's actions in the Shadowlands definitely point to her choosing genocide over tolerance
Godfrey, he was the chief of the Crucible Knights and a Crucible believer before is wedding to Queen Marika. She would have end every Omen if possible, but Godfrey made her change her mind about it. So she banished them In the sewer.
@@Sandwich-5-sand And the one uncursed one, she merked herself. I think her intentions were that she knew her favorite son, an empyrean, would likely be the one to ascend after her. She knows what St Trina knows, that godhood is a prison. She would rather have ended Godwyn than allow him to suffer that fate, plus it opened the path for Ranni to succeed.
The lore of the crucible knights and their place in the erdtree order (before the golden order) is evidence that at one point the omen were accepted by the greater will and/or marika.
the fact that the Greater Will empowers Dung Eater to try turn everyone into an omen also reinforces that it doesn't care about how the Omen are treated
@@platypipope328 they might be mixing up the erdtree and the greater will. because the erdtree absolutely feeds on corpses. the greater will probably just IS and doesn't feed on anything.
@@platypipope328 The Greater Will sent the Elden Beast to the lands between. The Elden Beast, the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree (L and R being Romanized as the same in Japanese) are all linked together. Erdtree burial, Miquella watering the Haligtree with his blood, and newest DLC trailer (though not confirmed) suggests that the Erdtree is sustained by blood and death and quite possibly souls.
we should also note that it's entirely possible that the golden order _never intended to absorb the sorcerors._ it is possible that radagon, after his attempts to crush them failed, decided to play the long-con on rennalla and bring her down through more subtle means. something else to note is that the greater will seems to be an entity of three things: order, light and shadow. keep in mind, spells to cast darkness are given to confessors directly from their local two fingers to assassinate tarnished. the greater will also sends "baleful shadows" after ranni during her quest, and can "shadow-bind" beasts and beastmen to it's champions. but at the same time, nearly every fundamentalist spell is a brilliant golden light, and do everything from shielding to healing to forming a cutting blade. the greater will may be order, but it operates through light and shadow, carrot and stick.
From what little we learned from the SotE story trailer, Rennala wouldn't have been the first time Marika/Radagon achieved some greater goal through "seduction and betrayal". I suppose we will learn more very soon.
There was a theory that was Radagon, who placed the impenetrable thorns in the entrance of the Erdtree. And the Evidence Is his symbol. And his character analysis.
Its pretty clear to me that it was radagon, since both marika and the greater will seem to have decided that the golden order had to be replaced by something else, but radagon is the most zealous believer in the golden order specifically, which is why he turned on marika and mend the elden ring exactly as it was. It would make sense that he would try to remain as elden lord and for marika to remain as god so that the golden order can persist even in its regressive state
@@MonoFlax On the one hand, yes, he certainly didn't want to be displaced from his position. Good or bad, being Elden Lord and almost a god is not something everyone would give up. On the other hand, in truth his whole character shows him to be the furthest thing from a zealot, although he nevertheless remains faithful to the Golden Order. Think about it: He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war and in doing so integrated int magic into the Order. He himself, as his amulet says, studied everything possible and, from the Japanese description of his greatsword of the Golden Order, was linked to the law of fundamentalism in its original key, scientific scholars who, not surprisingly, used Intelligence and Faith in their spells. The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight, but if you looks carefully, the darkness that fills him is the same from which the Elden Beast takes shape. In fact in the original language, the Bossfight name is "Radagon, Golden Order", not "Of the Golden Order." And the Beast is the embodiment of the Golden Order. In that case, the Beast is using his body as a shield and a puppet before turning him into a sword and fight itself. Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells? About Marika and GW, if they was both ok to destroy the ER; why punish her and not let her finish the job? More probably she is gone crazy for her dead son and decided to crush the world because she could. Power corrupts, i'm right?
@@themaniae4803 Just gonna give some of my own opinions on some of yours, because I think pretty differently about a few things in the game: The Golden Order makes our real world image of "zealotry" not fully apply. Radagon is a Golden Order Fundamentalist, but the Golden Order is fundamentally based on being an umbrella religion. It was created by Marika to be as utilitarian to her purposes as possible, her removing the Rune of Death and declaring blind faith alone is not enough is what founded it. That's why you get weird contradictions in TGO like Crucible Knights serving under it, it's hypocrisy done because the Crucible Knights were better allies than enemies. So, Radagon _is_ a zealot, just a very well informed and educated zealot, as opposed to an uneducated zealot like Corhyn who denies the cynical nature of his religion. Taking the utilitarian path of marrying Rennala is actually peak Golden Order practice. I don't think it's suspicious that Radagon doesn't use INT magic. He also doesn't use the advanced weapon techniques he presumably knows as a champion of the arena, because he only has a hammer. In the same way, he doesn't use sorceries because he doesn't have a staff. Using his miracles is plenty because they're designed to exploit his INT and FAI at the same time. Elden Beast is not the embodiment of The Golden Order, Elden Beast is a vassal of The Greater Will, that's an important distinction. The Golden Order is just one iteration of Greater Will worship. IMO this mostly discredits the idea The Greater Will wanted the Elden Ring replaced, because Elden Beast tries to kill you regardless of your motivations for coming. The Two Fingers _thinks_ The Greater Will needs the Ring fixed, but the Two Fingers is oblivious on a lot of stuff. Personally, I believe The Greater Will simply wants to reproduce/grow _(the erdtrees in the beast's boss fights hinting at erdtrees spread across other planets)_ and having the native population worship it is just to aid that. But once Marika broke the ring and wounded the beast, it just wants to be shut off so nothing else can hurt it anymore, it doesn't need to let anyone in to risk even more. Radagon obeys, because he truly believes The Greater Will is the source of everything good in the world. It's definitely not because he _wants_ to maintain his current condition, he and Marika are in a state of constant torture within an inch of their lives as divine punishment, it's in spite of that his faith holds firm. While Marika's reasons for The Shattering are deliberately the most mysterious part of the game, I can say it's more likely than not that it wasn't grief, and in actual fact *she probably orchestrated her own son's assassination.* -Getting a piece of Maliketh's Black Blade must have been very difficult, but could be easily explained if it was an inside job. -The Black Knives are all Numen women much like Marika, very clearly intended to hint Marika may have known them. -Black Knives are hiding out all over the place laying low after the crime, and one is right outside Marika's bedroom. Either she is there to kill Marika, _(without backup??)_ OR she had reason to believe this might be safe harbour for her, much like how other Black Knives tried to reach Miquella's famous haven for the shunned. Marika being a coconspirator is the only way the second explanation makes sense. -While Ranni claims full responsibility for the plot, _she had no reason to kill Godwyn specifically_ and doesn't offer one, she could've killed any demigod. The best motive for Godwyn's death is probably that he was allied with the dragons. Him being dead before the Shattering is why the dragons aren't a unified threat, mostly scattered to the winds. Marika's speech at the battleground seem to indicate she wanted her children to fight over the Elden Ring's pieces after shattering it. Whatever her reason for The Shattering itself, Godwyn's death is why it ended up a protracted civil war rather than it being over in a few days.
@@themaniae4803 "He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war" political marriage to neuter potential or active rivals is evidence *in favor* of being zealous in his fundamentalism. It's following this marriage that the greatest sorceress in the history of the lands is left a heartbroken shell of a woman that is ousted from authority by those she once rose to lead through competence and strength. He was *way* too ready and willing to cast such trivial shit as "love" and "marriage" aside to return to service to the Golden Order. "Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells?" I'll assume the she was a typo in this line and just point out he's not using only Faith based incantations. The fundamentalist incantations *require* intelligence to use. He's using both faith and intelligence to defend the Erdtree. "The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight" is just literally missing stuff explicitly stated in the game. He is on multiple occasions deemed a champion, if not *the greatest* champion of the Golden Order. Radagon is an aspect of Marika though, the part still devoted to the Greater Will. The part that desperately attempts to mend the ring and keep intruders away.
It’s important to realize that there are quite a few translation issues. Nothing absolutely horrible, just some things that create misunderstandings. Such as the “abandonment” by the greater will. In the original text, apparently it was saying that the greater will gave up on the demigods only, not the world as a whole.
@@steel2572 In that case, I wasn’t referring to the differences, I was just pointing out something that was clearly said. And perhaps that’s true, but I don’t think we should just cast that aside, especially when the other point, about the first cutscene mistranslation still stands.
Something to consider: The Golden Order is *not* the Order of the Greater Will. As you implied in your video and several comments have already said- the Greater Will is literally the pure essence of Order. It doesn't care what shape that order takes, as long as it's consistent and is obeyed. The Golden Order was built by Radagon, after the forced marriage between himself and Marika (I still cant tell if they were two entities fused, or if they were always one being). Marika defied the greater Will after she plucked the rune of death from the Elden Ring and hid it within Gurranc, thus thwarting Death. To repair this, Radagon created the Golden Order, which is the hyper rigid order that exists even until the time of the game. (Represented in the elden ring by the lattice pattern). The GW didnt care that the death rune was missing once the golden order was implemented because it was a new order. At least some ruleset was being followed. Edit: now that we know some things, we know that Marika created the Golden Order, but in her defiance of the Greater Will, it essentially gave the keys to a more obediant hound - Radagon.
Also the Elden Ring existed long before the time of Marika and the Golden Order, e.g. Placidusax used to be Elden Lord to a different god, presumably also sanctioned by the Greater Will. Likely the Crucible was also once "the Order", it is only despised now by those upholding the "new" Order.
I hate to say it but you seemed to have missed out on some lore for the Greater Will as its influence has been in the Lands Between well before the Golden Order and has been around since the age of dragons. It has had many trees that have existed with the Cricible being the one before the Erdtree it isnt against it. We also dont actually know if ot wanted the Omen or Demihumans killed of if that was purly Marika own biases
Crucible and Erdtree are the same, just a little change of colors and functions (Maybe we see the actual scene in the DLC trailer when Marika do something with that gian red-erdtree door thing) If you mean the Great Tree, that's like Morgott that have 2 names and 3 titles. Damn you Martin. But for the rest, yes, Greater Will have her influence since Dragon age and, very very probably looking at her character, Marika did all the shit we saw during Golden Order age.
well, more like the erdtree was planted in the crucible and consumed it. and no, i think they're referring to the elden beast arena, which shows dozens of erdtrees far away. it's unclear what that actually means though.
@@Yal_Rathol Maybe a way to say there are other erdtrees over the universe? Or... just Miyazaki doing one of his famous reference to himself, like Bloodborne. About Crucible, maybe, just maybe, we can see the scene of changing during Dlc Trailer, but everytime a description talks about it, is called Primordial Erdtree or something similar, never Consumed, Corrupted or other. Even because, in japanese Erdtree, 黄金樹, means literally just Golden Tree. It's high probably during age of Duskborn or Age of Blessed curse, when the tree is dark/silver, it will have a new name again, but is still the same tree. Maybe the crucible was more... dirty and with life exploding from it. We'll see in 11 days i hope cvcvc
I like it how, the carians. Who were the only ones who were equally just as strong if not, even stronger than the golden order. Were pretty much the only other power in the lands between to have actually survived the test of time. Whereas so many other cultures were just straight up genocided, it shows just what it would have took to actually get the golden order to give up in the end... And even then, the golden order still won. With their leader being basically brainwashed by ragdon undoing all of caria over the ages...
i LOVE how you guide us trough your essay and make us think while listening to the dialogues to developp our own opinion before explaining more ! Excellent work !
That would be sick, I'd love to hear his insights on things like the themes of Earthbound, like loss of innocence or its portrayal of modern life in the USA
The way the Golden Order's actions are conflated with the Greater Will's just seems wrong, since the Elden Ring have existed way before the Golden Order. If the GW wanted to some "orderly" empire, it could have done it through the Ancient Dragons. We know that Placidusax was an Elden Lord of his time. Farum Azula has an Elden Ring depiction in it's main building. An Order Existed before the Golden Order, there were other vessel's and other candidates to inherit the ER. The GW doesn't "hates" the omen or misbigotten, it probably cares about them as much as it cares about the average human, so not that much. The treatment of Crucible related beings in the current age is explained by the Crucible talismans. (In short they simply represent the old times and people resent that.) The game pretty much states the the Crucible turned into the Erdtree and the Crucible incantations are Erdtree incantations just to back this claim up. So I don't think the GW had an issue with the Crucible. It is probably responsible for it's creation, through sendeing the Golden Star and the Elden Beast According to the Three Fingers the GW is responsible for the existence of life. And we see what happens when we destroy the ER, all life is gone, melted away into chaos.
I agree, persecution of crucible beings is purely a Golden order thing. They represent an age that was (probably) filled with a lot misfortunate and slaughter as Marika established the Golden Order by forming the Erdtree from the Primordial crucible. Beings from that time are snuffed out as they are a reminder that Marika's established rule isn't as harmonious as it would like to believe it is. The resentment evolved to bigotry, and so they are deemed impure. Greater will has no bias against beings for arbitrary physical appearances. Fair to say that's purely dictated by the ruling body in whatever age is taking place. As long as there's order, the Elden ring's vessel can rule however they want. If the Greater will was absolutely against the crucible, then the dungeater ending wouldn't be possible. All future generations are to be born as omen in that ending, and yet we are still made Elden Lord.
Your synopsis of the lore on this game has brought more clarity than anything else I have digested in any medium about this subject. I just started my first NG+ and I love to listen to your videos on the series as I play through during my free time. It makes me feel like a kid again. Thanks. (Subscribed)
It's not trying to create anything. It's simply a representation of reality itself, and the many forms that it takes. It's not a villain any more than our own reality is.
This has been the best lore video on the Golden Order I’ve seen so far. Honestly it’s no wonder Marika turned her back on the Golden Order. “Secret incantation of Queen Marika. Only the kindness of gold, without Order.” That is what Marika wanted to give, healing. Kindness without Order. She wanted to use all that power purely to heal, but she wasn’t allowed to do so by the Greater Will or couldn’t overcome her own past trauma. Even when the intent is kindness Order might just become something wicked.
Hey man, in the future, you could make a video analyzing the recurring themes in all the games, such as the obsession with maintaining power and avoiding the end at all costs, as seen in Sekiro, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. There are many other recurring and very interesting themes.
You know, just a day ago I had a long and involved discussion of the metaphysics of Elden Ring, and at the end it came about that this person was absolutely convinced that the Greater Will was entirely irrelevant. That the power of the Elden Ring was sent to the Lands Between and from there determined by the peoples of the Lands Between with the Greater Will doing little to nothing of consequence. Drove me crazy.
One important thing to notice is that empires are kind or diplomatic only to those who fight back. The mages of Raya Lucaria or the dragons are only accepted after they reached an stalemate with the Golden Order. The misbegotten, the albunarics, the merchants and all the other opressed factions of the land betweens couldn't or decided not to fight back and that's why the empire crushed them. I believe that this is a reflection of real life too, the bully is going to bully unless you stop them.
Note that when the Tarnished defeats the Elden Beast, we get nothing directly from it, but instead we get items pertaining to both Marika and Radagon: Marika's Hammer and Sacred Relic Sword. Yet, when the Elden Beast is defeated, both the Elden Beast and Radagon are the ones who are destroyed, leaving behind the broken body of Marika.
I always interpretted the Fingers going silent not as not them realizing the Will had abandoned them, but as the point where it basically gives up. They made one last gamble, but never considered that Marika could become so powerful as to turn the Erdtree and Elden Beast against them. The Greater Will is too inflexible in its thinking and teachings to be able to handle a rogue god of its own making and basically gives up, never once considering the system itself is the problem. Which is basically what lead to the entire last portion of the game: we literally burn down the entire system the Greater Will put in place, smash through Marika's final protectors, amd rip the Elden Ring from her body to establish a new Order.
Exepct that everything we see of the Greater Will actually shows it being very flexible as it has been apart of mutiple orders that have wanted different things. Allowed the rise of mutiple different races like the dragons, Crucible knights, Omens before Marika time. Even the gane endings shows this as it will accept mutiple different healing runes to restore the Eldin Ring like making the deathless part of it or even the Dungeaters rune whitch would create more Omen and other crused lifeforms.
@@4wheal if one goes for a modern judeo Christian style view, the golden will may not even be directly involved, works in mysterious way. So is the evil of golden order being the result of golden will, or people who ascribed things to the golden will it never asked for.
@@brendenhawley2225Or is it the will of Marika, the god who created and rules the Golden Order? The Golden Order dose not worship the Greater Will they acknowledge its existence but they only worship Marika as the one ture god.
I have a theory way back that Marika is just a representative of a true God which is the Greater Will. And when the GW arrived in The Lands Between it found out that it is already inhabited by other Gods such as the Frenzied Flame or whatever god The Crucible has. That is why it ended up warring with Marika at its helm and Godfrey as commander of its host: to drive off or eliminate other Gods in TLB. Also, what if the Gloam Eyed Queen ascended to godhood but not for the GW but for another God? Maybe something like a Death God or God of Disorder?
What if the GW doesn’t actually necessarily have a will of its own or at least not like how we’d think. What if it’s more akin to the primeval current? Just a massive source of cosmic power and Marika figured out a way to tap into that power and manipulate it and harness it in a way that allowed her to establish her own order but she can’t completely control it and shit starts going back and she realizes that she messed up and is just trying to undo what she did. She made the two fingers and they are actually convening with her and not the GW which is why the thorns block the path. Those are Radagon thorns. He’s in partial control and Marika realizes she’s slowly becoming him or he’s slowly gaining more control which is why she impales herself through the womb and locks herself in the erdtree and only releases herself (and Radagon) when someone finally burns the erdtree to get in and comes to become Elden Lord. She knew the thorns were there but had no control over them which is why she never told the two fingers that. She knew you’d set the erdtree on fire using your maiden or yourself possibly so there was no reason to tell the fingers. The GW is just a source of power for her that she gave a name to and made an object of worship to give herself a basis for having power and being the controller of the Elden Ring and being Queen. Much like how many religions and cultures throughout history have used their gods to control the populace or give themselves a basis to rule over others.
To the question of what Marika discovered about the Golden Order that caused her rebellion--I don't think she necessarily found anything. My version of the story would be that she knowingly committed all of these evil acts for a promise of something greater, like there would be some reward, destiny, light at the end of the tunnel that would justify it all. But when she explored the mysteries of the Golden Order she found nothing. Nothing satisfying, at least. It's not that the thing had some evil, terrible, secret agenda, it was just not the perfection she hoped and believed that it was. She felt lied to and destroyed it out of spite, or as a way to prevent future atrocities.
I like to see the Greater Will as a Lovecraftian being. It isn’t a noble or all powerful god. Just an alien being outside of our true understanding that imposes its will on everything it sees as below it
That one guy's questline in the cathedral in the dlc puts more perspective behind the Greater Will and how or even why it seems they abandoned the lands between.
As someone who never played or seen or knows anything about elden ring, this was an enjoyable watch! Your essays are always so well written and you have a great delivery. With that being said, if you ever took an interest in Uncharted and made and essay about it, I would weep tears of joy. I’m looking forward to more!
I thoroughly enjoyed this video Brett! Towards the end you say its "unfocused" but i dont really think it was. More than one concept? Sure but to me you wove them together really well.
Marikia is described quite often as mischievous, but also dissolutioned with the "order" she established. Likely she wanted to put the rightness of that order to the test against other individuals with other views and goals. With no order rising from their conflict the tarnished were called back as a last resort, something merika knew would happen. If her order and her children failed then it's not so surprising the GW would abandon the lot of them and try to wipe the board clean.
It seems to me that the inflexibility and injustice of the Golden Order is often a result of people confusing order with its mere aesthetic appearance. An Omen or Misbegotten seems disorderly because they don't fit in _optically._ But that's a subjective, arbitrary judgment, and arbitrariness itself is opposed to actual order. So the servants of the Golden Order are often undermining what they claim to stand for by enforcing its aesthetic appearance.
The Fingers look like fingers but people are way too literal when they think they are actual fingers. From a Lovecraftian perspective they are something we do not understand so can only describe them in terms we know.
Wouldn't take what he said as fact as he seemd to have had some gaps in his own knowledge like not knowing the Crucible was created by the Greater Will and it predates the Golden Order and has been linked to mutiple different orders in the history of the land between
@@4wheal I have yet to find *anything* stating the Greater Will *created* the crucible. And he does know it predates the golden order lol it has to predate the golden order for the establishment of the golden order to supplant it.
@@kylegonewild How about the fact that the Crucible Knight set and other pices of lore call the Crucible the primordial form of the Erdtree. Erdtree incantations are also said to be the same as the Crucible, and you can see their symbols share many similarities. Hell, even the enemies of the Greater will talk about how it created life in the lands between, and the Crucible was where all life was mixed together.
Like with the other video, Either you have a really wrong reading of the lore or you are purposefully dismissing the text and dialogue that directly contradicts what you want the story in Elden Ring to be rather than what it is. The Greater Will is directly stated to have created life and souls in the setting (by shattering the One Great), The GW and a former version of the Elden Ring was worshipped by the Dragons and their Beastmen worshippers long before Marika and her followers came around. The Greater Will seems to be more tied to Life even more so than Order since while the Elden Ring and the Elden Beast are said to be the concept of order, the Crucible and the Erdtree in it's previous state, state that it was filled with rampant amount of life energy which caused animal like growths on people (like the Omen and Misbegotten). Also it seems that it's more likely that Marika alone was behind the genocides and wars, since according to the items related to the Omen, Misbegotten and crucible state that they used to be worshipped/viewed as holy until Marika created the Golden Order by taking the rune of death (which was originally part of the Elden Ring) and sealing it. The Greater Will is also not worshipped by most the followers of the Golden Order, in fact Corrhyn treats the Two Finger prayerbook as something heretical. There are other issues but I'll just point out these ones.
The whole 'consort' part being needed alongside their 'god' is sounding less like a simple marriage and more like a ritual of sorts. Especially since it's possible to have children by/with yourself somehow, and same sex consorts are seemingly not off the table 🤔 The DLC only adds to these thoughts
If Miquella is who some people think he is, and what he may represent, then I’d LOVE a post-DLC “villain” deconstruction of Young Miquella. That’s IF he ends up leaning towards that side. He’d be such an interesting villain, depending on the revelations of the DLC, but - personally - I’d love for Kind Miquella to remain Kind😅
I live my life on youtube by two simple rules. When I see a FatBrett vid, I click. When I see a Elden Ring lore vid, I click. These vids are at the nexus of my existence.
I think Marika, like many of us when faced with leaders like corporate heads, was faced with the cold reality that The Greater Will was basically done with her and didn't have a real attachment to her at all. Before the Emperions of the Shattering War, people, like SmoughTown, have suspected that there was another and Marika ultimately put them down. But imagine; the entity you've dedicated your life to, fought so many wars for, just up and decided to replace you without explanation. Take everything from you that you worked and sacrificed for and built up. Just to give it to some other person. What must that have felt like?
I think the story parallels the western word extremely well. We have deep seeded fears and doubts about all of the institutions that have guided us, and cling to order. Our faith has been split many times historically and we yearn for guidance. Yet, there is a simultaneous feeling that there have been honest efforts to control the chaos. To make order, and that those best attempts are only attempts. There is a brewing feeling that really even the experts don't know what to do, which is causing ruptures in essential epistomology as we can see along the major political divide (contention over objective reality). The fear is about the nature of the very problem that society is trying to solve and intense disagreements over what taht problem actually is. It is absolutely perfect to say that Elden Ring is a parallel and a mirror.
One thing I would like to bring up is the distinction between actions of the Greater Will and actions of Marika justified as being of the Greater Will. The Greater Will is not racist toward omens and anything Crucible, Marika is and uses the Greater Will as her justification just like a pastor would the Bible. I believe that the Greater Will has simply allowed Marika to act of her own accord using its power, and the only time it intervenes is when she directly interferes with its order AKA shattering its order made manifest in the Elden Ring. That said, I do believe the writers wish for us to believe much of what is given to us on a first playthrough, as these games typically start to become more and more deceitful the more you delve into them, such as the propaganda of the Chosen Undead prophecy in Dark Souls 1. Initially we are probably intended to believe the Golden Order is a good system with some holes that need patching, but over time we come to realize it may not be worth redeeming in the first place and should probably be scrapped entirely. This is what Marika realized herself, I believe, and is why she decided to initiate the Shattering against her other self’s wishes as Radagon sought to mend what she saw as a hopeless order.
I love this game because I feel like I’m playing through our own worldwide history in a fantasy video game world it’s mind blowing how many connections you can make with our own religions in real life.
The Greater Will seems to be basically the very definition of Lawful Neutral. As long as things are in order, it could care less about the morality of the details.
the thing with the omens that is also interesting. the golden order was "flexible" enough to incorporate the strongest of the crucible, the crucible knights. but the omens and misbegoten that have horns which were an old time sign of divinity from the crucible are shunned. the golden order is fine with taking in warriors and the strong it can not destroy but will root out symbols and people that oppose it. which is why their alliance with lucaria feels less benevolent and more just cost/gain analysis emperialism
the DLC throws a lot of what we know about the greater will in the garbage Spoilers for the DLC: you fight Metyr, mother of fingers from which all two fingers come, and she is the only one capable of communion with the greater will, all of her progeny isn't including the one at the roundtable hold and the one Ranni kills. Metyr like the elden beast came from stars. So outside of the Elden Beast she is the only one capable of understanding what the greater will wants
I feel like this doesn't change much. Since Metyr is also not communicating with the Greater Will, she is just winging it. So like, there is just a middle man now
I believe the Greater Will itself is not the villain, but the shadow it casts. The DLC trailer implied that when Gold arose, Shadow was born. And I believe this selection of beings that are being shunned are buried because they do know and remember Marika's and to some extend - Messmer's purge which paved the way. It seems to be pretty clear that Messmer is the wielder of shadow and Marika tried to bury everything that even remotely connects to Messmer's purge. Which also happens to include the Omen, Misbegotten and other creatures.
29:50 I feel it should be pointed out that those who live in death actively attack living things that get to close to them or their graveyards. They are in fact hurting people and causing problems.
Excellent video looking at the Golden Order in broad strokes from a slightly different perspective. I think a lot of people deep in the lore often forget what it's like to just be a player, reading through item descriptions as we find them and piecing together this view of the world from a completely uninformed standpoint. I love how you focus on what the writers would want us to see, what they're trying to tell us with how and when information is given to the player, and actually call out that it's something we should be doing with media, especially media as deep as this. I'm going on a lore binge following the DLC's release and I can't wait to see how it's implications affect and strengthen theories we've already considered and challenge others. The depth and bredth of these games never ceases to amaze me.
FattoBretto, Please please play Pathologic (Classic HD, Ideally). Your tastes are basically like mine (minus my crippling addiction to grand strategy games). I'm 100% certain you'll love Pathologic. It's a game that stays with even after you put the controller down. And if anyone can properly explain the themes of Pathologic's story, it's you.
The breaking point is seen in Michelangelo's Sistine chapel As the creator god extends his hand Two fingers outstretch to Adam Three fingers point back to the creator Signifying to go back to the creator Wipe the world and start over
Order does not equal good. Those not exactly human-like omens or other beast folk-were not always shunned. The Greater Will's end goal must be _absolute_ order, where everything falls into one mold. This is suggested by the Law of Regression, which states that everything wants to return to their roots, and eventually everything can trace its lineage back to one thing. Order will always start off as safety, move on to tyranny, and end at obliteration. Marika knew. Marika rebelled.
Only part that confused me was the friendly turtle wearing a priest hat. That is straight up not in the game, it’s a friendly dog wearing a priest hat.
Honestly, you can argue that the Greater Will is fairly benovolent compared with the other Outer Gods: the Formless Mother desires a kingdom of blood, the Frenzied Flame wants to burn away everything to nothing...in a way, the Greater Will can be seen as the ideal choice to many. But the more you look, the more the illusion shatters and marrs. It's proved time and again that the Golden Order went to war with and wiped out or subdue anything remotely different (the Fire Giants, the Omen/Crucible, and looking at the DLC footage, everything in the Land of Shadow) until the Erdtree and the order dominated all. Marika was hardly a beovolent ruler, and the fact that her second husband was Radagon - an aspect of herself given physical form - makes it clear that the Golden Order wanted her under it's thumb (ha) entirely after everything she'd done to tear down the old powers. Marika shattering the Elden Ring was a rare moment of defiance against the Golden Order, that ended with her crucified and imprisoned inside the Erdtree. But the Greater Will apparently still things that the Lands Between is worth keeping control of, as it asks the Tarnished to rebuild the Elden Ring and start a new order. But of course, it might be better to find a new fate for the lands. And the various Erdtrees you can see in the Elden Beast arena implys that the Greater Will has already taken control of plenty of other lands, so why would it care if this one is taken out of its hands?
The thing is you are confusing the Golden Order actions for what the Greater Will wants even through we are never said this is ture. What we do know is that it has existed and had influence in the Lands between since the age lf the dragons and has seen mutiple orders fall and rise Marika is sinple the newist. Hell the second DLC trailer seems to show Marika taking the Eldin ring from another god and then creating her order with her frist move being killing the subjects of the last one
The problem is, is said in the Intro that she abandoned the Lands Between. The "Holy mission" Tarnished are doing during the game, until Radagon's block, is not so different from the Holy mission of Undeads during Dark Souls. Even Fingers, those who are certain of our holy journey, are shocked when Erdtree blocks us. They could take years to have an answer from the GW, maybe never. Why ignore them if she's actively using us for her own goal? About her benevolence, are we sure that all we see is not all Marika's fault and Gw just said: "Ok bruh, just don't shatter my Elden Ring"? After all, we see Marika do something on Dlc trailer and create Gold and Shadow.
First time playing i got an uneasy feeling about the gloden order and the greater will. Well turns out my Uneasiness was true there is no greater will and well queen Marca was a vile yet tortured soul. Thats why i love rannis ending she let the lands between go and let them live there lifes rather then control them.
14:20 The Greater Will doesn't really want to kill Marikas children, we're just supposed to get two great runes to progress towards the erdtree (for whatever reason) and the ones fighting each other are doing so because of personal quarrels. We have to make a sharper distinction between Greater Will and Golden Order and in regards to Marika, should look on why that order is supposed to be golden. Ranni is revealing to us at some point that the order she envisions will be "an order not of gold but of the moon and the stars and the chill night". I am not even sure if this is even defying the greater will as much as it is defying the golden order. As for the golden order, Melina recites Marika at some point: "My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken.". This for me suggests that the golden order is mainly an allegory to classism and mostly cares for its vassals to "rise above". This is also, in some way, supported by the ending structures. There's basically 3 endings - Age of Stars, Age of Frenzy and Age of [Golden] Order, whereas depending on how we fix the Elden Ring, the Order ending is always the same with only slight differences. The Frenzy ending is the complete opposite and important to highlight. We learn from Hyetta that the flame of frenzy seeks to return to the "Great One" by melting everything away and sinking the world into chaos. Melina seems to be okay aiding us in whatever way we want to restore the Elden Ring but warns us of Frenzy. In the DLC we also learn that cultures before the Golden Order deemed Frenzy heretical. Frenzy seems to be the enemy of the Greater Will - not only the Golden Order - and that's because Frenzy is the anti-thesis to any kind of existence in general. This is, in my understanding, an analogy to entropy. This is a huge and complex topic, but one result of the thermodynamic concept of entropy is called heat death, which is one possibility of how our REAL WORLD universe is going to die some day. This means that energy is in an equilibrium across the universe, basically making everything (a great) one and the same in every place. Entropy is also sometimes refered to as chaos (or a measurement of chaos if you will) and everything that lives - or exists, in that matter - is somewhat fighting entropy by ordering energy into different layers like atoms, molecules, proteins and life, avoiding dissolution into nothingness.
I find it alarming for myself that when I see ‘order’, I immediately equate it with ‘good, moral’; but ‘order’ is neither good nor bad. It just is… like the number line; 1,2,3,4… it’s just numbers in the order of smallest to largest .
i think this was a spectacular video brett, i love all the interesting ideas you had about the themes and the writers' intentions, but you missed one crucial piece of the puzzle. the greater will only cares about order, it doesn't care what form that order takes. there have been many civilisations with their own gods and elden lords, with many of those existing in the age of the crucible (which is likely the previous form of the elden ring or erdtree) or including races like the omens without persecution. the golden order is just one of many civilisations that have arisen, and marika as the bearer of the ring was free to make her order however she wanted which is why she was able to remove the rune of death and seal it away. the enslavement of the misbegotten, mistreatment of demi-humans and persecution of the omens are all purely products of marika's order, they have nothing to do with the greater will they're just how marika chose to establish order. my headcannon is that marika realised order wasn't worth the suffering she'd caused and that's why she shattered the elden ring in a desperate attempt to force the change she'd resisted, but regardless once the ring was broken the greater will wasn't opposed to the shattering war as long as a new leader arose and fixed the order. they also weren't the ones to call the tarnished, marika did that when she destroyed the ring they were effectively her backup plan if her children were incapable of fixing things. but they were happy to accept a tarnished as elden lord and fine with the tarnished altering the elden ring because they literally don't care, all they want is for someone to be god, someone to be elden lord and for some kind of order to be established. that order can be kind and peaceful, brutal and warlike, or suffocating with slavery and persecution, the greater will is above all of that they don't care. radagon also isn't an ally of the greater will, he's a golden order fundamentalist who vigorously believes that the specific version of order he/marika established is perfect, and he's the one who bars us from the erdtree in a desperate attempt to cling to what remains of his idea of order. and the only reason why the elden beast fights us at the end is to test us, as godfrey says a crown is warranted by strength, and if with all those great runes and our immortality we weren't capable of defeating the elden beast then we weren't worthy to be elden lord. so while your ideas were all great a lot of what you said was more to do with marika than the greater will
I once thought "The Golden Order" referred to an institution, like a knightly or holy order. Turns out, it was less that and more a philosophy or way of life. I wonder if there was less confusion regarding that in the Japanese script.
This one comes to give sage wisdom, there are an infinite amount of Gods but The Goddess of Life Amaterasu and her father the God of Creation Izanagi both care for all of you.
In my opinion, the greater will is the idea of perfection. First of all, it's in the names. The "greater will". The "golden order". If you think about the golden order, think of golden more like a description of value rather than a color, when put into this context it is more like. The perfect order. And if you think about how every worshipper constantly thinks about what the "golden order" is, or what the will of the "greater will" is, it oddly sounds like what they're thinking of what perfection, or a good society should be. That and how the elden ring affects reality itself just seems a bit more on the nose, in essence, the "greater will" is a being that constantly ponders what perfection is, and with the use of the elden rings, seeks to make said perfection. The influence of the "greater will" also makes their followers question it as well, causing chaos and major reforms until that perfection is found. The great irony of this is that this perfection will never be found, and thus the "greater will" will never obtain balance as it is constantly thinking of the idea of perfection, but such a thing does not exist, so all is constantly changing, instead causing chaos instead of perfection.
As someone who has never played Elden Ring (not enough time or money to play, but I'm still interested in the lore) hearing "The Two Fingers", I thought, 'what a clever name for two members'. Then, they turned out to actually be fingers. 😵
I hate how many commenters are stating their lore theories as if they're canon fact. Did y'all not here the part where FatBrett said we're detectives, investigating? All we have are theories and ideas. Stop trying to cement your fanfiction in stone, say it's a theory and look at the evidence we have instead of pretending you're Miyazaki and know exactly what's going on.
"The Greater Will does not care what form Order takes" it's a being of pure Order and Order itself is not inherently good. Especially when it's stated that it'll embrace any goal the hero has as long as the end result is Order
As I've said before to people who think Order=Good, fascism is very much a manifestation of Order and the Final Solution was a very Orderly process. Order is simply a form of restriction on the endless potential of Chaos to a manageable level and that is all the Greater Will cares about. Whether the Elden Lord is like Jesus or like Hitler doesn't matter so long as they keep things running the way the GW wants them to.
Makes sense that the golden orders number one enemy is the frenzied flame(chaos) the opposite of the golden order literaly
Exactly why certain great runes can still be recovered despite being affected by other outer gods like Mohg’s and Malenia’s, neither of those outer gods oppose order they just have their own brand of it
@@ravendelacour1917 I would argue that fascism is the opposite of order. While fascist often claim to be the law and order guys, there are no laws restricting the people in power. If the grandson of an oligarch wants your business, he get's your business. If Putin wants you dead, you are killed. There are no laws restricting the people in power. As such, authoritarian states are, ironically, chaotic in nature.
Pretty much, it's a primordial eldric being that simple desires a structure for the world it governs. What form that structure actually takes it matters not. As long as there is some form of structure. Some form or order.
You could stretch that even to the principle of Chaos as well. After all despite, being in direct opposition to Order, being able to describe something as chaotic or volatile is to describe its own Structural behavior. It's own Order within Chaos.
The only one who actively tries to avoid falling under its demand of any structure, any Order, is Ranni, whose solution is to cut out this being that governs the universal nature of Order itself. An Order without the supreme deity of Order and its various influence. Herself included.
Whether you think that can work? Eh, the player will never know.
If only Goldmask had more to say. We would know alot more.
...
Agreed
"T"
Yes
Why not
He said plenty, you just don't speak finger wagging.
...
Thanks to the DLC, we know why Marika was so harsh on the omen. It was _personal_ . Every time she sees a horned omen, she gets flashbacks of her people getting stuffed in jars. One has to wonder whether Marika mellowed her position on the omen or someone else persuaded her to just jail them under Leyndell, because Marika's actions in the Shadowlands definitely point to her choosing genocide over tolerance
That she’d do it to her own kids even. 🙂 mother of the year award, everybody
@@KellyBurke-ty3hxall of her kids except one got cursed, probably because of her sins. Just being a good mother. Hand her that award already
Godfrey, he was the chief of the Crucible Knights and a Crucible believer before is wedding to Queen Marika. She would have end every Omen if possible, but Godfrey made her change her mind about it. So she banished them In the sewer.
@@Sandwich-5-sand And the one uncursed one, she merked herself. I think her intentions were that she knew her favorite son, an empyrean, would likely be the one to ascend after her. She knows what St Trina knows, that godhood is a prison. She would rather have ended Godwyn than allow him to suffer that fate, plus it opened the path for Ranni to succeed.
yeah no better than men
acting like a judge but putting the personal grudge
The lore of the crucible knights and their place in the erdtree order (before the golden order) is evidence that at one point the omen were accepted by the greater will and/or marika.
the fact that the Greater Will empowers Dung Eater to try turn everyone into an omen also reinforces that it doesn't care about how the Omen are treated
@platypipope328 i dont think the greater will really cares at all so long as it is feed souls and bodies.
@@vasylpark2149 the greater will doesn't feed on souls, what?
@@platypipope328 they might be mixing up the erdtree and the greater will.
because the erdtree absolutely feeds on corpses. the greater will probably just IS and doesn't feed on anything.
@@platypipope328 The Greater Will sent the Elden Beast to the lands between. The Elden Beast, the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree (L and R being Romanized as the same in Japanese) are all linked together. Erdtree burial, Miquella watering the Haligtree with his blood, and newest DLC trailer (though not confirmed) suggests that the Erdtree is sustained by blood and death and quite possibly souls.
we should also note that it's entirely possible that the golden order _never intended to absorb the sorcerors._
it is possible that radagon, after his attempts to crush them failed, decided to play the long-con on rennalla and bring her down through more subtle means.
something else to note is that the greater will seems to be an entity of three things: order, light and shadow.
keep in mind, spells to cast darkness are given to confessors directly from their local two fingers to assassinate tarnished. the greater will also sends "baleful shadows" after ranni during her quest, and can "shadow-bind" beasts and beastmen to it's champions. but at the same time, nearly every fundamentalist spell is a brilliant golden light, and do everything from shielding to healing to forming a cutting blade.
the greater will may be order, but it operates through light and shadow, carrot and stick.
From what little we learned from the SotE story trailer, Rennala wouldn't have been the first time Marika/Radagon achieved some greater goal through "seduction and betrayal". I suppose we will learn more very soon.
@@Ascarion1234 something like 30 hours for me to get the DLC.
i expect few answers and more questions.
All light creates shadow
@@Yal_Rathol SO... what do you think now?
@@darkunor6687 about what specifically?
There was a theory that was Radagon, who placed the impenetrable thorns in the entrance of the Erdtree.
And the Evidence Is his symbol.
And his character analysis.
He's not a fanatic, but at the same time he didn't wanted some Tarnished to take his place, even in his actual... puppet condition. Poor boy.
Its pretty clear to me that it was radagon, since both marika and the greater will seem to have decided that the golden order had to be replaced by something else, but radagon is the most zealous believer in the golden order specifically, which is why he turned on marika and mend the elden ring exactly as it was. It would make sense that he would try to remain as elden lord and for marika to remain as god so that the golden order can persist even in its regressive state
@@MonoFlax On the one hand, yes, he certainly didn't want to be displaced from his position. Good or bad, being Elden Lord and almost a god is not something everyone would give up.
On the other hand, in truth his whole character shows him to be the furthest thing from a zealot, although he nevertheless remains faithful to the Golden Order.
Think about it: He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war and in doing so integrated int magic into the Order. He himself, as his amulet says, studied everything possible and, from the Japanese description of his greatsword of the Golden Order, was linked to the law of fundamentalism in its original key, scientific scholars who, not surprisingly, used Intelligence and Faith in their spells.
The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight, but if you looks carefully, the darkness that fills him is the same from which the Elden Beast takes shape. In fact in the original language, the Bossfight name is "Radagon, Golden Order", not "Of the Golden Order." And the Beast is the embodiment of the Golden Order. In that case, the Beast is using his body as a shield and a puppet before turning him into a sword and fight itself.
Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells?
About Marika and GW, if they was both ok to destroy the ER; why punish her and not let her finish the job? More probably she is gone crazy for her dead son and decided to crush the world because she could. Power corrupts, i'm right?
@@themaniae4803 Just gonna give some of my own opinions on some of yours, because I think pretty differently about a few things in the game:
The Golden Order makes our real world image of "zealotry" not fully apply. Radagon is a Golden Order Fundamentalist, but the Golden Order is fundamentally based on being an umbrella religion. It was created by Marika to be as utilitarian to her purposes as possible, her removing the Rune of Death and declaring blind faith alone is not enough is what founded it.
That's why you get weird contradictions in TGO like Crucible Knights serving under it, it's hypocrisy done because the Crucible Knights were better allies than enemies. So, Radagon _is_ a zealot, just a very well informed and educated zealot, as opposed to an uneducated zealot like Corhyn who denies the cynical nature of his religion. Taking the utilitarian path of marrying Rennala is actually peak Golden Order practice.
I don't think it's suspicious that Radagon doesn't use INT magic. He also doesn't use the advanced weapon techniques he presumably knows as a champion of the arena, because he only has a hammer. In the same way, he doesn't use sorceries because he doesn't have a staff. Using his miracles is plenty because they're designed to exploit his INT and FAI at the same time.
Elden Beast is not the embodiment of The Golden Order, Elden Beast is a vassal of The Greater Will, that's an important distinction. The Golden Order is just one iteration of Greater Will worship. IMO this mostly discredits the idea The Greater Will wanted the Elden Ring replaced, because Elden Beast tries to kill you regardless of your motivations for coming. The Two Fingers _thinks_ The Greater Will needs the Ring fixed, but the Two Fingers is oblivious on a lot of stuff.
Personally, I believe The Greater Will simply wants to reproduce/grow _(the erdtrees in the beast's boss fights hinting at erdtrees spread across other planets)_ and having the native population worship it is just to aid that. But once Marika broke the ring and wounded the beast, it just wants to be shut off so nothing else can hurt it anymore, it doesn't need to let anyone in to risk even more. Radagon obeys, because he truly believes The Greater Will is the source of everything good in the world. It's definitely not because he _wants_ to maintain his current condition, he and Marika are in a state of constant torture within an inch of their lives as divine punishment, it's in spite of that his faith holds firm.
While Marika's reasons for The Shattering are deliberately the most mysterious part of the game, I can say it's more likely than not that it wasn't grief, and in actual fact *she probably orchestrated her own son's assassination.*
-Getting a piece of Maliketh's Black Blade must have been very difficult, but could be easily explained if it was an inside job.
-The Black Knives are all Numen women much like Marika, very clearly intended to hint Marika may have known them.
-Black Knives are hiding out all over the place laying low after the crime, and one is right outside Marika's bedroom. Either she is there to kill Marika, _(without backup??)_ OR she had reason to believe this might be safe harbour for her, much like how other Black Knives tried to reach Miquella's famous haven for the shunned. Marika being a coconspirator is the only way the second explanation makes sense.
-While Ranni claims full responsibility for the plot, _she had no reason to kill Godwyn specifically_ and doesn't offer one, she could've killed any demigod. The best motive for Godwyn's death is probably that he was allied with the dragons. Him being dead before the Shattering is why the dragons aren't a unified threat, mostly scattered to the winds. Marika's speech at the battleground seem to indicate she wanted her children to fight over the Elden Ring's pieces after shattering it. Whatever her reason for The Shattering itself, Godwyn's death is why it ended up a protracted civil war rather than it being over in a few days.
@@themaniae4803 "He resolved the Liurnian war with dialogue and a marriage instead of war" political marriage to neuter potential or active rivals is evidence *in favor* of being zealous in his fundamentalism. It's following this marriage that the greatest sorceress in the history of the lands is left a heartbroken shell of a woman that is ousted from authority by those she once rose to lead through competence and strength. He was *way* too ready and willing to cast such trivial shit as "love" and "marriage" aside to return to service to the Golden Order. "Think of it. If that was the real Radagon, why does she use only Faith when we know he's a champion even in Int spells?" I'll assume the she was a typo in this line and just point out he's not using only Faith based incantations. The fundamentalist incantations *require* intelligence to use. He's using both faith and intelligence to defend the Erdtree.
"The only time we see him as a defender of the Golden Order is his boss fight" is just literally missing stuff explicitly stated in the game. He is on multiple occasions deemed a champion, if not *the greatest* champion of the Golden Order. Radagon is an aspect of Marika though, the part still devoted to the Greater Will. The part that desperately attempts to mend the ring and keep intruders away.
It’s important to realize that there are quite a few translation issues. Nothing absolutely horrible, just some things that create misunderstandings. Such as the “abandonment” by the greater will. In the original text, apparently it was saying that the greater will gave up on the demigods only, not the world as a whole.
It’s even said in the translation by the finger reader that the greater will has not abandoned the lands between.
@@Wolf_Dominic Pretty sure it says the same thing in english. Its covered in this video. The two fingers are not a reliable source
@@steel2572 In that case, I wasn’t referring to the differences, I was just pointing out something that was clearly said. And perhaps that’s true, but I don’t think we should just cast that aside, especially when the other point, about the first cutscene mistranslation still stands.
Something to consider: The Golden Order is *not* the Order of the Greater Will. As you implied in your video and several comments have already said- the Greater Will is literally the pure essence of Order. It doesn't care what shape that order takes, as long as it's consistent and is obeyed.
The Golden Order was built by Radagon, after the forced marriage between himself and Marika (I still cant tell if they were two entities fused, or if they were always one being).
Marika defied the greater Will after she plucked the rune of death from the Elden Ring and hid it within Gurranc, thus thwarting Death. To repair this, Radagon created the Golden Order, which is the hyper rigid order that exists even until the time of the game. (Represented in the elden ring by the lattice pattern). The GW didnt care that the death rune was missing once the golden order was implemented because it was a new order. At least some ruleset was being followed.
Edit: now that we know some things, we know that Marika created the Golden Order, but in her defiance of the Greater Will, it essentially gave the keys to a more obediant hound - Radagon.
Radagon was probably a warrior forced to fuse with Marika since he indeed used to have a past and also has autonomy to an extent.
Also the Elden Ring existed long before the time of Marika and the Golden Order, e.g. Placidusax used to be Elden Lord to a different god, presumably also sanctioned by the Greater Will. Likely the Crucible was also once "the Order", it is only despised now by those upholding the "new" Order.
I hate to say it but you seemed to have missed out on some lore for the Greater Will as its influence has been in the Lands Between well before the Golden Order and has been around since the age of dragons.
It has had many trees that have existed with the Cricible being the one before the Erdtree it isnt against it. We also dont actually know if ot wanted the Omen or Demihumans killed of if that was purly Marika own biases
Crucible and Erdtree are the same, just a little change of colors and functions (Maybe we see the actual scene in the DLC trailer when Marika do something with that gian red-erdtree door thing) If you mean the Great Tree, that's like Morgott that have 2 names and 3 titles. Damn you Martin.
But for the rest, yes, Greater Will have her influence since Dragon age and, very very probably looking at her character, Marika did all the shit we saw during Golden Order age.
well, more like the erdtree was planted in the crucible and consumed it.
and no, i think they're referring to the elden beast arena, which shows dozens of erdtrees far away. it's unclear what that actually means though.
@@Yal_Rathol Maybe a way to say there are other erdtrees over the universe? Or... just Miyazaki doing one of his famous reference to himself, like Bloodborne. About Crucible, maybe, just maybe, we can see the scene of changing during Dlc Trailer, but everytime a description talks about it, is called Primordial Erdtree or something similar, never Consumed, Corrupted or other. Even because, in japanese Erdtree, 黄金樹, means literally just Golden Tree. It's high probably during age of Duskborn or Age of Blessed curse, when the tree is dark/silver, it will have a new name again, but is still the same tree. Maybe the crucible was more... dirty and with life exploding from it. We'll see in 11 days i hope cvcvc
5:19 This line is so bizarre that I spent a full 2 minute rewinding the video 10-30 seconds back to be sure I heard this correctly.
I like it how, the carians. Who were the only ones who were equally just as strong if not, even stronger than the golden order.
Were pretty much the only other power in the lands between to have actually survived the test of time. Whereas so many other cultures were just straight up genocided, it shows just what it would have took to actually get the golden order to give up in the end...
And even then, the golden order still won. With their leader being basically brainwashed by ragdon undoing all of caria over the ages...
i LOVE how you guide us trough your essay and make us think while listening to the dialogues to developp our own opinion before explaining more ! Excellent work !
Hell yeah! 😊
Love listening to your thoughts. One day I might request you to cover the Mother series but that's.... A bit huge
Bigger than Eden Ring?
That would be sick, I'd love to hear his insights on things like the themes of Earthbound, like loss of innocence or its portrayal of modern life in the USA
The way the Golden Order's actions are conflated with the Greater Will's just seems wrong, since the Elden Ring have existed way before the Golden Order. If the GW wanted to some "orderly" empire, it could have done it through the Ancient Dragons.
We know that Placidusax was an Elden Lord of his time.
Farum Azula has an Elden Ring depiction in it's main building.
An Order Existed before the Golden Order, there were other vessel's and other candidates to inherit the ER.
The GW doesn't "hates" the omen or misbigotten, it probably cares about them as much as it cares about the average human, so not that much. The treatment of Crucible related beings in the current age is explained by the Crucible talismans. (In short they simply represent the old times and people resent that.)
The game pretty much states the the Crucible turned into the Erdtree and the Crucible incantations are Erdtree incantations just to back this claim up.
So I don't think the GW had an issue with the Crucible. It is probably responsible for it's creation, through sendeing the Golden Star and the Elden Beast
According to the Three Fingers the GW is responsible for the existence of life. And we see what happens when we destroy the ER, all life is gone, melted away into chaos.
I agree, persecution of crucible beings is purely a Golden order thing. They represent an age that was (probably) filled with a lot misfortunate and slaughter as Marika established the Golden Order by forming the Erdtree from the Primordial crucible. Beings from that time are snuffed out as they are a reminder that Marika's established rule isn't as harmonious as it would like to believe it is. The resentment evolved to bigotry, and so they are deemed impure.
Greater will has no bias against beings for arbitrary physical appearances. Fair to say that's purely dictated by the ruling body in whatever age is taking place. As long as there's order, the Elden ring's vessel can rule however they want. If the Greater will was absolutely against the crucible, then the dungeater ending wouldn't be possible. All future generations are to be born as omen in that ending, and yet we are still made Elden Lord.
Your synopsis of the lore on this game has brought more clarity than anything else I have digested in any medium about this subject. I just started my first NG+ and I love to listen to your videos on the series as I play through during my free time. It makes me feel like a kid again. Thanks. (Subscribed)
It's not trying to create anything. It's simply a representation of reality itself, and the many forms that it takes. It's not a villain any more than our own reality is.
You should've waited until the DLC released as some important info around the fingers was revealed by it, like major major stuff.
This has been the best lore video on the Golden Order I’ve seen so far.
Honestly it’s no wonder Marika turned her back on the Golden Order.
“Secret incantation of Queen Marika.
Only the kindness of gold, without Order.”
That is what Marika wanted to give, healing.
Kindness without Order.
She wanted to use all that power purely to heal, but she wasn’t allowed to do so by the Greater Will or couldn’t overcome her own past trauma.
Even when the intent is kindness Order might just become something wicked.
Hey man, in the future, you could make a video analyzing the recurring themes in all the games, such as the obsession with maintaining power and avoiding the end at all costs, as seen in Sekiro, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. There are many other recurring and very interesting themes.
You know, just a day ago I had a long and involved discussion of the metaphysics of Elden Ring, and at the end it came about that this person was absolutely convinced that the Greater Will was entirely irrelevant. That the power of the Elden Ring was sent to the Lands Between and from there determined by the peoples of the Lands Between with the Greater Will doing little to nothing of consequence. Drove me crazy.
Lol kinda funny how the dlc literally confirms that.
One important thing to notice is that empires are kind or diplomatic only to those who fight back. The mages of Raya Lucaria or the dragons are only accepted after they reached an stalemate with the Golden Order. The misbegotten, the albunarics, the merchants and all the other opressed factions of the land betweens couldn't or decided not to fight back and that's why the empire crushed them. I believe that this is a reflection of real life too, the bully is going to bully unless you stop them.
Note that when the Tarnished defeats the Elden Beast, we get nothing directly from it, but instead we get items pertaining to both Marika and Radagon: Marika's Hammer and Sacred Relic Sword.
Yet, when the Elden Beast is defeated, both the Elden Beast and Radagon are the ones who are destroyed, leaving behind the broken body of Marika.
I always interpretted the Fingers going silent not as not them realizing the Will had abandoned them, but as the point where it basically gives up. They made one last gamble, but never considered that Marika could become so powerful as to turn the Erdtree and Elden Beast against them. The Greater Will is too inflexible in its thinking and teachings to be able to handle a rogue god of its own making and basically gives up, never once considering the system itself is the problem. Which is basically what lead to the entire last portion of the game: we literally burn down the entire system the Greater Will put in place, smash through Marika's final protectors, amd rip the Elden Ring from her body to establish a new Order.
Exepct that everything we see of the Greater Will actually shows it being very flexible as it has been apart of mutiple orders that have wanted different things.
Allowed the rise of mutiple different races like the dragons, Crucible knights, Omens before Marika time.
Even the gane endings shows this as it will accept mutiple different healing runes to restore the Eldin Ring like making the deathless part of it or even the Dungeaters rune whitch would create more Omen and other crused lifeforms.
@@4wheal if one goes for a modern judeo Christian style view, the golden will may not even be directly involved, works in mysterious way.
So is the evil of golden order being the result of golden will, or people who ascribed things to the golden will it never asked for.
@@brendenhawley2225Or is it the will of Marika, the god who created and rules the Golden Order?
The Golden Order dose not worship the Greater Will they acknowledge its existence but they only worship Marika as the one ture god.
I have a theory way back that Marika is just a representative of a true God which is the Greater Will. And when the GW arrived in The Lands Between it found out that it is already inhabited by other Gods such as the Frenzied Flame or whatever god The Crucible has. That is why it ended up warring with Marika at its helm and Godfrey as commander of its host: to drive off or eliminate other Gods in TLB. Also, what if the Gloam Eyed Queen ascended to godhood but not for the GW but for another God? Maybe something like a Death God or God of Disorder?
With the dlc out we can say for sure that the two fingers were rouge and simply makign shit up😂 nice prediction
What if the GW doesn’t actually necessarily have a will of its own or at least not like how we’d think. What if it’s more akin to the primeval current? Just a massive source of cosmic power and Marika figured out a way to tap into that power and manipulate it and harness it in a way that allowed her to establish her own order but she can’t completely control it and shit starts going back and she realizes that she messed up and is just trying to undo what she did. She made the two fingers and they are actually convening with her and not the GW which is why the thorns block the path. Those are Radagon thorns. He’s in partial control and Marika realizes she’s slowly becoming him or he’s slowly gaining more control which is why she impales herself through the womb and locks herself in the erdtree and only releases herself (and Radagon) when someone finally burns the erdtree to get in and comes to become Elden Lord. She knew the thorns were there but had no control over them which is why she never told the two fingers that. She knew you’d set the erdtree on fire using your maiden or yourself possibly so there was no reason to tell the fingers. The GW is just a source of power for her that she gave a name to and made an object of worship to give herself a basis for having power and being the controller of the Elden Ring and being Queen. Much like how many religions and cultures throughout history have used their gods to control the populace or give themselves a basis to rule over others.
I remember hearing the greater will abandoned us, then i hear granny enia say nah. Messed with my head the entire play through
This title would also work for a deep dive into Dennis Reynolds.
To the question of what Marika discovered about the Golden Order that caused her rebellion--I don't think she necessarily found anything. My version of the story would be that she knowingly committed all of these evil acts for a promise of something greater, like there would be some reward, destiny, light at the end of the tunnel that would justify it all. But when she explored the mysteries of the Golden Order she found nothing. Nothing satisfying, at least. It's not that the thing had some evil, terrible, secret agenda, it was just not the perfection she hoped and believed that it was. She felt lied to and destroyed it out of spite, or as a way to prevent future atrocities.
I like to see the Greater Will as a Lovecraftian being. It isn’t a noble or all powerful god. Just an alien being outside of our true understanding that imposes its will on everything it sees as below it
That one guy's questline in the cathedral in the dlc puts more perspective behind the Greater Will and how or even why it seems they abandoned the lands between.
Ahhh yes perfect timing for my lunch break
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the golden order vs the greater will but it’s still a well thought out video
50:32 Sir! that is a dog with a pope hat
Man I feel like I get college level education from you every time I watch one of your vids...
Great job, and I look forward to what you have in store!
This vid did not age well with the DLC.
As someone who never played or seen or knows anything about elden ring, this was an enjoyable watch! Your essays are always so well written and you have a great delivery.
With that being said, if you ever took an interest in Uncharted and made and essay about it, I would weep tears of joy.
I’m looking forward to more!
Love your videos!
Man I'm a welder you can't be making me question my existence through the video.
Fatbrett you should analyze Xenoblade 3 Moebius.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video Brett! Towards the end you say its "unfocused" but i dont really think it was. More than one concept? Sure but to me you wove them together really well.
Marikia is described quite often as mischievous, but also dissolutioned with the "order" she established.
Likely she wanted to put the rightness of that order to the test against other individuals with other views and goals.
With no order rising from their conflict the tarnished were called back as a last resort, something merika knew would happen.
If her order and her children failed then it's not so surprising the GW would abandon the lot of them and try to wipe the board clean.
The Erdtree was sealed because of Radagon, it's his rune that blocks your path, he doesn't want you to become Elden Lord.
"The greater will is not some benevolent god of justice, peace, and diplomacy."
No, but Miquella is.
It seems to me that the inflexibility and injustice of the Golden Order is often a result of people confusing order with its mere aesthetic appearance. An Omen or Misbegotten seems disorderly because they don't fit in _optically._ But that's a subjective, arbitrary judgment, and arbitrariness itself is opposed to actual order. So the servants of the Golden Order are often undermining what they claim to stand for by enforcing its aesthetic appearance.
Thanks for covering Elden Ring, your video rocks!!
The Fingers look like fingers but people are way too literal when they think they are actual fingers. From a Lovecraftian perspective they are something we do not understand so can only describe them in terms we know.
Best overview yet! Thanks for helping to plug up a few gaps in the knowledge.
Wouldn't take what he said as fact as he seemd to have had some gaps in his own knowledge like not knowing the Crucible was created by the Greater Will and it predates the Golden Order and has been linked to mutiple different orders in the history of the land between
@@4wheal I have yet to find *anything* stating the Greater Will *created* the crucible. And he does know it predates the golden order lol it has to predate the golden order for the establishment of the golden order to supplant it.
@@kylegonewild How about the fact that the Crucible Knight set and other pices of lore call the Crucible the primordial form of the Erdtree.
Erdtree incantations are also said to be the same as the Crucible, and you can see their symbols share many similarities.
Hell, even the enemies of the Greater will talk about how it created life in the lands between, and the Crucible was where all life was mixed together.
24:57 I think that actually is a pretty fitting Judeo-Christian view of divinity.
I go so lost in these deconstructions I almost forgot to subscribe!
Like with the other video, Either you have a really wrong reading of the lore or you are purposefully dismissing the text and dialogue that directly contradicts what you want the story in Elden Ring to be rather than what it is. The Greater Will is directly stated to have created life and souls in the setting (by shattering the One Great), The GW and a former version of the Elden Ring was worshipped by the Dragons and their Beastmen worshippers long before Marika and her followers came around.
The Greater Will seems to be more tied to Life even more so than Order since while the Elden Ring and the Elden Beast are said to be the concept of order, the Crucible and the Erdtree in it's previous state, state that it was filled with rampant amount of life energy which caused animal like growths on people (like the Omen and Misbegotten).
Also it seems that it's more likely that Marika alone was behind the genocides and wars, since according to the items related to the Omen, Misbegotten and crucible state that they used to be worshipped/viewed as holy until Marika created the Golden Order by taking the rune of death (which was originally part of the Elden Ring) and sealing it.
The Greater Will is also not worshipped by most the followers of the Golden Order, in fact Corrhyn treats the Two Finger prayerbook as something heretical.
There are other issues but I'll just point out these ones.
The whole 'consort' part being needed alongside their 'god' is sounding less like a simple marriage and more like a ritual of sorts. Especially since it's possible to have children by/with yourself somehow, and same sex consorts are seemingly not off the table 🤔
The DLC only adds to these thoughts
Also, with the meaning of hands. The word 'man' is roughly translated as 'hand' or ' made by hand'
Manufacture, manuscript, manicure.
If Miquella is who some people think he is, and what he may represent, then I’d LOVE a post-DLC “villain” deconstruction of Young Miquella. That’s IF he ends up leaning towards that side. He’d be such an interesting villain, depending on the revelations of the DLC, but - personally - I’d love for Kind Miquella to remain Kind😅
I live my life on youtube by two simple rules. When I see a FatBrett vid, I click. When I see a Elden Ring lore vid, I click. These vids are at the nexus of my existence.
I think Marika, like many of us when faced with leaders like corporate heads, was faced with the cold reality that The Greater Will was basically done with her and didn't have a real attachment to her at all. Before the Emperions of the Shattering War, people, like SmoughTown, have suspected that there was another and Marika ultimately put them down.
But imagine; the entity you've dedicated your life to, fought so many wars for, just up and decided to replace you without explanation. Take everything from you that you worked and sacrificed for and built up. Just to give it to some other person. What must that have felt like?
I think the story parallels the western word extremely well. We have deep seeded fears and doubts about all of the institutions that have guided us, and cling to order. Our faith has been split many times historically and we yearn for guidance. Yet, there is a simultaneous feeling that there have been honest efforts to control the chaos. To make order, and that those best attempts are only attempts. There is a brewing feeling that really even the experts don't know what to do, which is causing ruptures in essential epistomology as we can see along the major political divide (contention over objective reality). The fear is about the nature of the very problem that society is trying to solve and intense disagreements over what taht problem actually is.
It is absolutely perfect to say that Elden Ring is a parallel and a mirror.
One thing I would like to bring up is the distinction between actions of the Greater Will and actions of Marika justified as being of the Greater Will. The Greater Will is not racist toward omens and anything Crucible, Marika is and uses the Greater Will as her justification just like a pastor would the Bible. I believe that the Greater Will has simply allowed Marika to act of her own accord using its power, and the only time it intervenes is when she directly interferes with its order AKA shattering its order made manifest in the Elden Ring.
That said, I do believe the writers wish for us to believe much of what is given to us on a first playthrough, as these games typically start to become more and more deceitful the more you delve into them, such as the propaganda of the Chosen Undead prophecy in Dark Souls 1. Initially we are probably intended to believe the Golden Order is a good system with some holes that need patching, but over time we come to realize it may not be worth redeeming in the first place and should probably be scrapped entirely. This is what Marika realized herself, I believe, and is why she decided to initiate the Shattering against her other self’s wishes as Radagon sought to mend what she saw as a hopeless order.
A “moon” is a month, not a day, so thousands or tens of thousands of moons would be at a minimum several hundred years and potentially thousand.
50:34 Brett, that’s a dog
oMg TaKE mY Le EpIc UpDoOt FoR cRiNgE "mEmE"
It's interesting comic back to this after learning more from the DLC.
The second you explained the “cosmic horror” part, I just heard the main theme of Bloodborne.
I love this game because I feel like I’m playing through our own worldwide history in a fantasy video game world it’s mind blowing how many connections you can make with our own religions in real life.
The Greater Will seems to be basically the very definition of Lawful Neutral. As long as things are in order, it could care less about the morality of the details.
Better give us a video on the DLC and then later how it gets along with the main lore :3
the thing with the omens that is also interesting. the golden order was "flexible" enough to incorporate the strongest of the crucible, the crucible knights. but the omens and misbegoten that have horns which were an old time sign of divinity from the crucible are shunned. the golden order is fine with taking in warriors and the strong it can not destroy but will root out symbols and people that oppose it. which is why their alliance with lucaria feels less benevolent and more just cost/gain analysis emperialism
This aged like milk
the DLC throws a lot of what we know about the greater will in the garbage
Spoilers for the DLC:
you fight Metyr, mother of fingers from which all two fingers come, and she is the only one capable of communion with the greater will, all of her progeny isn't including the one at the roundtable hold and the one Ranni kills. Metyr like the elden beast came from stars. So outside of the Elden Beast she is the only one capable of understanding what the greater will wants
I feel like this doesn't change much. Since Metyr is also not communicating with the Greater Will, she is just winging it. So like, there is just a middle man now
I believe the Greater Will itself is not the villain, but the shadow it casts. The DLC trailer implied that when Gold arose, Shadow was born. And I believe this selection of beings that are being shunned are buried because they do know and remember Marika's and to some extend - Messmer's purge which paved the way. It seems to be pretty clear that Messmer is the wielder of shadow and Marika tried to bury everything that even remotely connects to Messmer's purge. Which also happens to include the Omen, Misbegotten and other creatures.
Good video, these are the type of analysis that are worth watching
SPOILER ALERT!! The Greater Will and the Primeval Current are the same thing
29:50 I feel it should be pointed out that those who live in death actively attack living things that get to close to them or their graveyards. They are in fact hurting people and causing problems.
Excellent video looking at the Golden Order in broad strokes from a slightly different perspective. I think a lot of people deep in the lore often forget what it's like to just be a player, reading through item descriptions as we find them and piecing together this view of the world from a completely uninformed standpoint. I love how you focus on what the writers would want us to see, what they're trying to tell us with how and when information is given to the player, and actually call out that it's something we should be doing with media, especially media as deep as this.
I'm going on a lore binge following the DLC's release and I can't wait to see how it's implications affect and strengthen theories we've already considered and challenge others. The depth and bredth of these games never ceases to amaze me.
FattoBretto, Please please play Pathologic (Classic HD, Ideally).
Your tastes are basically like mine (minus my crippling addiction to grand strategy games). I'm 100% certain you'll love Pathologic. It's a game that stays with even after you put the controller down. And if anyone can properly explain the themes of Pathologic's story, it's you.
The breaking point is seen in Michelangelo's Sistine chapel
As the creator god extends his hand
Two fingers outstretch to Adam
Three fingers point back to the creator
Signifying to go back to the creator
Wipe the world and start over
Order does not equal good. Those not exactly human-like omens or other beast folk-were not always shunned. The Greater Will's end goal must be _absolute_ order, where everything falls into one mold. This is suggested by the Law of Regression, which states that everything wants to return to their roots, and eventually everything can trace its lineage back to one thing. Order will always start off as safety, move on to tyranny, and end at obliteration. Marika knew. Marika rebelled.
Dude your channel is amazing!
Love this. Observation of the story
The greater will is Miyazaki's version of "what if aliens invaded during a DnD campaign?"
The Crucible wasn't before the Erdtree- it's the primordial form of it. Life came with the Crucible and it evolved to the Erdtree
Only part that confused me was the friendly turtle wearing a priest hat. That is straight up not in the game, it’s a friendly dog wearing a priest hat.
Apart from the sanitation, medicine, public safety, wine, roads and the aqueduct, what has the Golden Order ever done for us!?
Honestly, you can argue that the Greater Will is fairly benovolent compared with the other Outer Gods: the Formless Mother desires a kingdom of blood, the Frenzied Flame wants to burn away everything to nothing...in a way, the Greater Will can be seen as the ideal choice to many.
But the more you look, the more the illusion shatters and marrs. It's proved time and again that the Golden Order went to war with and wiped out or subdue anything remotely different (the Fire Giants, the Omen/Crucible, and looking at the DLC footage, everything in the Land of Shadow) until the Erdtree and the order dominated all. Marika was hardly a beovolent ruler, and the fact that her second husband was Radagon - an aspect of herself given physical form - makes it clear that the Golden Order wanted her under it's thumb (ha) entirely after everything she'd done to tear down the old powers. Marika shattering the Elden Ring was a rare moment of defiance against the Golden Order, that ended with her crucified and imprisoned inside the Erdtree.
But the Greater Will apparently still things that the Lands Between is worth keeping control of, as it asks the Tarnished to rebuild the Elden Ring and start a new order. But of course, it might be better to find a new fate for the lands. And the various Erdtrees you can see in the Elden Beast arena implys that the Greater Will has already taken control of plenty of other lands, so why would it care if this one is taken out of its hands?
The thing is you are confusing the Golden Order actions for what the Greater Will wants even through we are never said this is ture.
What we do know is that it has existed and had influence in the Lands between since the age lf the dragons and has seen mutiple orders fall and rise Marika is sinple the newist.
Hell the second DLC trailer seems to show Marika taking the Eldin ring from another god and then creating her order with her frist move being killing the subjects of the last one
The problem is, is said in the Intro that she abandoned the Lands Between. The "Holy mission" Tarnished are doing during the game, until Radagon's block, is not so different from the Holy mission of Undeads during Dark Souls. Even Fingers, those who are certain of our holy journey, are shocked when Erdtree blocks us. They could take years to have an answer from the GW, maybe never. Why ignore them if she's actively using us for her own goal?
About her benevolence, are we sure that all we see is not all Marika's fault and Gw just said: "Ok bruh, just don't shatter my Elden Ring"? After all, we see Marika do something on Dlc trailer and create Gold and Shadow.
First time playing i got an uneasy feeling about the gloden order and the greater will. Well turns out my Uneasiness was true there is no greater will and well queen Marca was a vile yet tortured soul. Thats why i love rannis ending she let the lands between go and let them live there lifes rather then control them.
14:20 The Greater Will doesn't really want to kill Marikas children, we're just supposed to get two great runes to progress towards the erdtree (for whatever reason) and the ones fighting each other are doing so because of personal quarrels.
We have to make a sharper distinction between Greater Will and Golden Order and in regards to Marika, should look on why that order is supposed to be golden. Ranni is revealing to us at some point that the order she envisions will be "an order not of gold but of the moon and the stars and the chill night". I am not even sure if this is even defying the greater will as much as it is defying the golden order. As for the golden order, Melina recites Marika at some point: "My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken.". This for me suggests that the golden order is mainly an allegory to classism and mostly cares for its vassals to "rise above".
This is also, in some way, supported by the ending structures. There's basically 3 endings - Age of Stars, Age of Frenzy and Age of [Golden] Order, whereas depending on how we fix the Elden Ring, the Order ending is always the same with only slight differences.
The Frenzy ending is the complete opposite and important to highlight. We learn from Hyetta that the flame of frenzy seeks to return to the "Great One" by melting everything away and sinking the world into chaos. Melina seems to be okay aiding us in whatever way we want to restore the Elden Ring but warns us of Frenzy. In the DLC we also learn that cultures before the Golden Order deemed Frenzy heretical. Frenzy seems to be the enemy of the Greater Will - not only the Golden Order - and that's because Frenzy is the anti-thesis to any kind of existence in general.
This is, in my understanding, an analogy to entropy. This is a huge and complex topic, but one result of the thermodynamic concept of entropy is called heat death, which is one possibility of how our REAL WORLD universe is going to die some day. This means that energy is in an equilibrium across the universe, basically making everything (a great) one and the same in every place. Entropy is also sometimes refered to as chaos (or a measurement of chaos if you will) and everything that lives - or exists, in that matter - is somewhat fighting entropy by ordering energy into different layers like atoms, molecules, proteins and life, avoiding dissolution into nothingness.
Great Video !
I find it alarming for myself that when I see ‘order’, I immediately equate it with ‘good, moral’; but ‘order’ is neither good nor bad. It just is… like the number line; 1,2,3,4… it’s just numbers in the order of smallest to largest .
What a fascinating perspective!!
i think this was a spectacular video brett, i love all the interesting ideas you had about the themes and the writers' intentions, but you missed one crucial piece of the puzzle. the greater will only cares about order, it doesn't care what form that order takes. there have been many civilisations with their own gods and elden lords, with many of those existing in the age of the crucible (which is likely the previous form of the elden ring or erdtree) or including races like the omens without persecution. the golden order is just one of many civilisations that have arisen, and marika as the bearer of the ring was free to make her order however she wanted which is why she was able to remove the rune of death and seal it away. the enslavement of the misbegotten, mistreatment of demi-humans and persecution of the omens are all purely products of marika's order, they have nothing to do with the greater will they're just how marika chose to establish order. my headcannon is that marika realised order wasn't worth the suffering she'd caused and that's why she shattered the elden ring in a desperate attempt to force the change she'd resisted, but regardless once the ring was broken the greater will wasn't opposed to the shattering war as long as a new leader arose and fixed the order. they also weren't the ones to call the tarnished, marika did that when she destroyed the ring they were effectively her backup plan if her children were incapable of fixing things. but they were happy to accept a tarnished as elden lord and fine with the tarnished altering the elden ring because they literally don't care, all they want is for someone to be god, someone to be elden lord and for some kind of order to be established. that order can be kind and peaceful, brutal and warlike, or suffocating with slavery and persecution, the greater will is above all of that they don't care. radagon also isn't an ally of the greater will, he's a golden order fundamentalist who vigorously believes that the specific version of order he/marika established is perfect, and he's the one who bars us from the erdtree in a desperate attempt to cling to what remains of his idea of order. and the only reason why the elden beast fights us at the end is to test us, as godfrey says a crown is warranted by strength, and if with all those great runes and our immortality we weren't capable of defeating the elden beast then we weren't worthy to be elden lord. so while your ideas were all great a lot of what you said was more to do with marika than the greater will
Holy crap friend, I saw that you have 99 of each remembrance, is that legit or mods? Also I love your videos, totally my jam!
The greater will reminds of the alien from Anhilation. It isn’t evil, just a force of order/transformation
It’s like The Greater Will uses vessels to house the Elden Ring similar to house Ra in Stargate used the human as a host…
You hear that guys? A Deconstruction of Ranni is coming soon!! I can't wait!
I once thought "The Golden Order" referred to an institution, like a knightly or holy order. Turns out, it was less that and more a philosophy or way of life.
I wonder if there was less confusion regarding that in the Japanese script.
10:13 Because its a mistranslation.
The Greater Will is actually stated to have abandoned the demigods/shardbearers.
This one comes to give sage wisdom, there are an infinite amount of Gods but The Goddess of Life Amaterasu and her father the God of Creation Izanagi both care for all of you.
In my opinion, the greater will is the idea of perfection.
First of all, it's in the names.
The "greater will".
The "golden order".
If you think about the golden order, think of golden more like a description of value rather than a color, when put into this context it is more like.
The perfect order.
And if you think about how every worshipper constantly thinks about what the "golden order" is, or what the will of the "greater will" is, it oddly sounds like what they're thinking of what perfection, or a good society should be.
That and how the elden ring affects reality itself just seems a bit more on the nose, in essence, the "greater will" is a being that constantly ponders what perfection is, and with the use of the elden rings, seeks to make said perfection.
The influence of the "greater will" also makes their followers question it as well, causing chaos and major reforms until that perfection is found.
The great irony of this is that this perfection will never be found, and thus the "greater will" will never obtain balance as it is constantly thinking of the idea of perfection, but such a thing does not exist, so all is constantly changing, instead causing chaos instead of perfection.
As someone who has never played Elden Ring (not enough time or money to play, but I'm still interested in the lore) hearing "The Two Fingers", I thought, 'what a clever name for two members'. Then, they turned out to actually be fingers. 😵
I hate how many commenters are stating their lore theories as if they're canon fact. Did y'all not here the part where FatBrett said we're detectives, investigating? All we have are theories and ideas. Stop trying to cement your fanfiction in stone, say it's a theory and look at the evidence we have instead of pretending you're Miyazaki and know exactly what's going on.
Yo BigBoiBrett should analyze some Blood Omens lore. Alot of nuance in those stories.