It's a Reach, But... Elden Ring and the Story of America

 So, pretty early in Elden Ring, maybe even before it came out, I noticed something: Doesn't "Marika" sound like "America?"

The Souls games are generally thought to be inspired by or based on some fairly heady concepts. Dark Souls, for example, could be read as an allegory for how entropy could lead to the heat death of the universe.

Essentially, physicists think that, after many, many billions of years (like, orders of magnitude more than there have been since the Big Bang,) all energy will ultimately become heat, which is the most disordered form of energy, and that every particle of matter will sort of shake itself apart into a big, kind of undifferentiated mass of nothing in particular. This would simply be a consequence of the fact that there are differences in energy between different parts of the universe - energy is the potential to cause change, essentially, and once all the change has been done, things would settle into a kind of warm stasis.

You can see, then, how the Flame of Disparity, which birthed the Age of Fire, is sort of like the Big Bang, and that the eventual Age of Darkness would be like the Heat Death of the Universe. Gwyn's desire to forestall that eventuality makes sense - he's trying to preserve the world as he knows and loves it (which does also happen to have him at the top,) but Dark Souls III really seems to imply that any attempt to control the growth of entropy is doomed to diminishing returns. Indeed, it's a thing in physics that in order to reduce the entropy of a region, you need to create more entropy than you are reducing elsewhere. The Lords of Cinder were trying to maintain order, but their acts only led to greater chaos.

Now, what about Elden Ring?

As a disclaimer, this is all highly speculative. It's a reach that you might find is based on flimsy logic. But I wanted to get the thematic discussion started, and you have to start somewhere.

First off, we don't really know the extent to which George R. R. Martin was involved in coming up with the world and its stories. I get the impression that it was kind of a consulting gig that was also a boon to the game's marketing, so they played it up. I think he probably sketched out the basics of the world, likely named characters, and perhaps talked about themes and motifs to explore. The presences of so many severed limbs sure seems to be a signature of good old George (also, people have pointed out that there are a lot of G., R., and M. names in the game).

The Souls games have, with the exception of Sekiro, been a kind of Japanese interpretation of Western fantasy. Series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki has said that when he was a kid, he used to read English-language fantasy novels without having a very firm grasp of English, and so he would sort of piece together his own version of the story, taking what clues he could find. As a westerner, I'm highly familiar with the sort of interpretation and appropriation of other culture's tropes and stories, so it's always fascinating to me to see the way other cultures reinterpret stories from my own culture - it gives me insight into how different our versions of other cultures' stories are from the originals. But the presence of Martin in the process here means that this is not entirely a Japanese creation - there's a collaboration between cultures to produce this.

Let's start with that observation about Marika. Marika is, in some ways, the Lord Gwyn of this cosmos. She's the top deity... sort of. She's said to be an embodiment of the Elden Ring, which is a kind of cosmic set of laws that govern the universe, and which was, itself, manifested by something called the Greater Will. The Greater Will may be a true deity, or perhaps more of a universal principle.

Marika is heard of far more than she is ever seen in the game. She's basically an idea made manifest - which is particularly true if she is the embodiment of the Elden Ring. If we are to take the metaphor seriously, Marika represents America as a concept - not precisely a land, not precisely a government, not precisely a people, not precisely a culture, but some kind of intersection of all those things.

And here's the craziest thing:

So, America, as a country, was founded in a different way than previous nations, and that has given us an odd sort of question of identity - we're not a "nation" in the traditional sense of being tied to a particular ethnicity or ancestry (though there have been people who always wanted it to be like that). One of the elements of America that could be said to define the country is, in fact, a written document: the Constitution. It's a code that outlines the structure of American government and the powers and limitations on those powers that define it.

Kind of like the Elden Ring.

See, like the US Constitution, the Elden Ring is a set of laws, though in this case one that takes the form of magical runes. How could Marika break the Elden Ring when she is its very embodiment? The same way that America, as a country, could potentially violate its own Constitution.

One of the somewhat hidden elements in Elden Ring is the vast underground areas - what I refer to as Elden Ring's Underdark (a D&D term for a kind of world beneath the surface in vast caverns with its own cultures and peoples). The people found underground, at least in the Siofra River section, seem to be portrayed as being more in tune with nature - they are said to avoid the use of metal, wielding weapons of bone or wood. They also appear to worship elk- or moose-like ancestor spirits. The Lands Between literally sit on top of their lands.

I wonder, thus, if they are in some way there to represent the Native Americans. I find myself feeling a little uncomfortable making this suggestion, especially as the peoples of Siofra River are depicted as beast-like, horned ogres (or kind of minotaurs?) But it does fit with this model of the story. I don't yet really know what the story is behind these people, but it's a connection that I'm going to keep looking out for.

Now, setting aside my America-themed notions for now, it's also clear to me that there's a combination of Greek and Norse mythology. The Erdtree seems naturally inspired by Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse myth, and depictions of Radagon as a warrior with red hair wielding a big hammer call to mind Thor.

Godfrey, the previous Elden Lord, is shown with a great big lion-spirit always at his back, which is a very clear connection to Herakles (Hercules, as the Romans would call him) from Greek myth.

Indeed, the areas in the Underdark, particularly Siofra River, have a very Classical Greek look to them, with white columns and a kind of Arcadian vibe to the hunting grounds (the starry expanse below ground actually calls to mind another Greek-inspired fantasy setting, namely Theros from Magic the Gathering - a game I believe Miyazaki is a fan of).

Marika spurns Godfrey and takes up Radagon as her second consort. Did the world move on from Greek myth to Norse?

There's a whole lot left to unpack here, and I don't know how extensive the American metaphor is through the game - if it's even intentional at all. But games, especially games like Elden Ring, are art, and art is always open to interpretation.