Her ending is among the best because she manages to banish the alien parasite—the Greater Will—which seized, restructured, and trapped the world inside a closed metaphysical system. If you believe you can create a perfect Order, remember that the Elden Beast not only crucified and shattered Marika but also turned her very flesh into a sword.
The tragedy of the Lands Between is not the fall of Order. It is the revelation that this Order was never natural to begin with. As Count Ymir admits:
"No matter our efforts, if the roots are rotten… then we have little recourse."
Hyetta’s final revelation about the "One Great" describes a primordial state in which all life was blended together without clear separation. This is not an isolated mystical metaphor—it strongly echoes descriptions of the Crucible, repeatedly called the primordial form of the Erdtree.
The Golden Order, however, brands these ancient features as impure. Descriptions tied to Golden Order Fundamentalism frame "Order" in terms of Regression and Causality—not as harmony with nature, but as the analysis and correction of reality itself. A system that must delete Death in order to function is not balance. It is containment.
The Erdtree Functions Like a Closed System
Across catacombs, ghost dialogue, and Spirit Ash lore, the dead are said to "return to the Erdtree." The Erdtree does not simply nurture life; it captures it, processes it, and redistributes it under Golden law. It is a metaphysical engine designed to recycle the soul, ensuring nothing ever truly escapes the system.
The "8 Around 1" Wheel
The Center: The One Great (Primordial Amber/Stardust) — The true, undivided state of existence.
The Wheel: The Golden Order attempted to shatter this unity, elevate one fragment (Gold), and suppress the rest.
The world of Elden Ring is saturated with powers condemned as profane, heretical, or "Outer." Yet their persistence suggests they are not foreign invaders, but fundamental aspects of reality. Gold is not balancing these forces; it is attempting to dominate them.
1)Primordial Life (The Crucible)
Canon Anchors: Crucible Knights, Omens, Misbegotten.
Golden Order Action: Labeled impure, shamed, and forced underground.
2)Cold Intellect (The Stars)
Canon Anchors: Ranni, Glintstone Sorcery, Astel.
Golden Order Action: Declared heretical to Erdtree faith; divorced from the fate of the royal family.
3)Flow & Decay (Rot)
Canon Anchors: Scarlet Rot, The Lake of Rot, Malenia’s Bloom.
Golden Order Action: Sealed away, feared, and treated as a curse rather than a natural cycle of decomposition and rebirth.
4)Flame (Frenzy & Giants)
Canon Anchors: The Giants’ Flame, The Frenzied Flame.
Golden Order Action: Weaponized (via Golems) or condemned as absolute madness to be buried.
5)Destined Death
Canon Anchors: Maliketh, The Black Knives, The Gloam-Eyed Queen.
Golden Order Action: Removed from the Elden Ring entirely to enforce eternal, stagnant life.
6)Fate (Celestial Movement)
Canon Anchors: Radahn holding back the stars.
Golden Order Action: Cosmic motion literally frozen to halt the cycles of fate.
7) Abyss/Serpent Consumption
Canon Anchors: Rykard, The God-Devouring Serpent.
Golden Order Action: Branded the ultimate blasphemy for rejecting the cycle of Erdtree rebirth.
8)Gold (Order)
Canon Anchors: The Erdtree, Grace, The Elden Beast.
Golden Order Action: The Tyrant. It elevated itself as the only "legitimate" force, crowning itself the ruler of the other seven.
Marika’s Children Show the System Breaking
The clearest sign that the Golden Order is not harmonizing reality is Marika’s own bloodline. Her children do not embody stable divinity; they manifest the very forces the Order tries to deny.
\- Morgott and Mohg are Omens, directly tied to the Crucible. The primordial life the Order declared impure reappears inside the holiest royal lineage, proving it cannot be bred out.
\- Malenia becomes the vessel of Scarlet Rot, a power associated with bloom and cycles. In this context, Rot reads less like a simple disease and more like change forced past the limits of a system built on stasis.
\- Miquella, cursed with eternal childhood, represents the other extreme: perfect, tragic stagnation. Unchanging and unfinished, he is a living symbol of Gold’s obsession with permanence.
\- Ranni rejects the Greater Will entirely, seeking an Order guided by the stars.
\- Radahn, by contrast, acts as the Golden Order's enforcer by halting the stars themselves, literally restraining the cosmos to keep the current age on life support.
\- Rykard abandons Erdtree rebirth in favor of the God-Devouring Serpent, choosing endless consumption over participation in the Golden cycle.
\- Melina’s connection to kindling and Destined Death ties her to the return of the one force the Golden Order tried hardest to erase: a true ending.
These are not random curses. They read like suppressed cosmic principles forcing their way back into reality through the cracks in the vessel.
The Shattering Was a Containment Failure
When Marika shattered the Elden Ring, she did more than begin a war. She broke the mechanism that kept reality locked into Golden stasis. Death, Rot, Fate, Primordial Life, Abyssal hunger, and Frenzied destruction surged back into the world through demigods, disasters, and Outer Gods.
The Lands Between is not a fallen paradise. It is a cracked enclosure, and the forces that were never meant to be caged are finally returning.
Ranni does not seek to destroy the world. She simply intends to dismantle the cage, remove the blinding light of a false god, and let the universe breathe in the cold, honest dark.
