Admittedly, this thought only just occurred to me and I'm intending to write it down before I forget it, so this might be loose and it might be short.
The Frenzied Flame is an oddity in Elden Ring. It's clearly a horrifying force, and the basis for the one real "bad" ending that makes it pretty explicit how horrible it is (even the Dung Eater one you could argue is just kind of returning the Hornsent values to the world, so not everyone would hate it).
And yet, there's seemingly little interaction that the Flame has with the conflicts between the demigods. Even our manner of purging the Flame from ourselves to both save Melina and not destroy the world, Miquella's Needle, was designed, it would seem, initially to deal with the Scarlet Rot instead.
Thus, Midra's appearance in Shadow of the Erdtree is intriguing.
And I wonder if it is actually the reason for the whole conflict in the first place.
Let's talk flowers and Shaman.
The Shaman village, hidden behind the Shadow Keep and requiring finding some secret passages, is one of the most important locations in all of Elden Ring. It's Queen Marika's birthplace. We know that it was the site of a terrible atrocity, as the goddess returned here and created a minor erdtree despite the fact that there was no one left within to heal with the spell. The genocidal purging of the Hornsent, sending Messmer to burn Belurat to the ground and slaughter the locals (we encounter very few living hornsent - most are specters instead) was almost certainly motivated by what the Hornsent did to Marika's people, stuffing them into jars in the hopes of creating "saints."
Personally, I'm inclined to think that Marika was actually the product of the Hornsent actually succeeding - it wasn't just revenge for her sisters and mothers (are there male shaman? I'll get to that) but for her own treatment as well.
Now, why were the Hornsent doing this?
Well, the Hornsent believe that signs of the crucible - extra limbs or especially beast-like horns - are signs of a connection to divinity (there's a whole other post to look at the Crucible Knights and Godfrey and how they connect to Marika and why she might have chosen him as her first Elden Lord). The Shaman, while capable of melding with other beings, were not naturally inclined toward such physical expressions.
But I don't think that's why the Hornsent came after them.
Listening to ghosts in Bonny Village and some of the Gaols where the Shaman women were stuffed into jars, the Hornsent seemed to think that the Shaman were guilty of some terrible sin. They might have felt that the stuffing of these women into jars and mixing them with the flesh of others might have been some kind of alternate route to Crucible-like appendages, which in their eyes would make them more virtuous.
But why were they so convinced that the Shaman were in need of such punishment?
The Shaman Village is one of the prettier locations in the game. While standing right up next to the Scadutree where its fragments are collected makes the divine holy glow almost feel sickly (and it is the shadow of the Erdtree, so this makes sense), the natural beauty of the village is notable, especially, for all the colorful flowers that grow there. One could imagine that before it was in the Land of Shadow, and before its people were taken, it might have been one of the most idyllic places in the Lands Between (sidenote: yes, it's interesting to consider whether it has a connection to Dominula, the Windmill Village, but that's a whole tangent I can't afford to go on right now).
Presumably, there was a time when the Shamans lived at peace in this central part of the Lands Between. And they might not have been confined to just that one village.
In Midra's Manse, there are two paintings that are actually illusory walls that one needs to pass through to progress. Both will be relevant here.
The first one, which you must pass through right after finding the first Site of Grace right inside the building (it's actually a very compact dungeon, as Midra is just upstairs from the main hall, but requires going through the entire Manse to get to him,) depicts the Manse in what must have been happier times. Not only is the building in bright sunlight, but the Abyssal Woods don't look nearly as spooky - they, in fact, are filled with colorful wildflowers. Just like the Shaman Village.
(Another tangent: I have no idea what connection to make between the Abyssal Woods and Messmer's Abyssal Serpent.)
Therefore, I'm inclined to think that Midra was of the same culture as Marika (hell, they even both have M-names). I've stated before that I thought it possible that Midra was actually Marika's father. While the evidence for that theory is little more than a gut-feeling on my part, I think there's a logical route to arrive there.
Still, let's just remember this: the flowers in the painting of Midra's Manse in better times is why I'm inclined to think that this was a site of the Shaman culture (not entirely sure if it's also Numen - we didn't really get much Nox/Numen stuff in Shadow of the Erdtree, though the giant stone coffins in the Cerulean Coast and Great Fissue bear some investigation - another tangent). Midra's lack of horns, but his status as a noble of some sort, would seem to exclude him from being Hornsent. So let's assume that he was an important figure in Marika's home culture.
Now, of course, we know that Midra is associated with the Frenzied Flame. Much as we do if we get that ending, upon giving in to the flame, Midra's head is removed and replaced with a blazing Frenzied Flame.
Prior to this, however, Midra was horribly tortured. The Hornsent sent inquisitors after him, who burned all the books in the Manse and then impaled Midra with a nasty, barbed, branched blade (one that, in a strange way, kind of gives him a horn).
Why was he tortured?
Well, the Hornsent are quite particular about the preservation and reverence they had toward spirits. While Marika wanted a world in which people lived on not just in spirit, but in body too, the Hornsent are happy to have all their ghostly gravestones and ghostly people around them (I'm not ready to connect them directly to the Deathbird stuff, which might have been slightly its own separate thing). The thing is, the Frenzied Flame doesn't just burn physical matter. The reason Torrent won't come with you into the Abyssal Woods is that, normally, if he's killed, he can just be summoned again. As a spirit, he's basically immortal. But the Frenzied Flame is the one thing that could destroy him. Indeed, if we get the Frenzied Flame ending (and meet the Three Fingers before Melina would burn herself at the Forge of the Giants,) we see Melina pick up the smoldering remains of the whistle-ring we summon Torrent with, and she holds it as it fully burns to ash. Presumably, Torrent is consumed in this ending (making it for sure the bad ending, because Torrent is a good boy).
The Hornsent Inquisitors thus would have zero tolerance for the Flame of Frenzy.
So, how did it arrive at Midra's Manse in the first place?
The answer, I think, is Nanaya. We can find her body at the Manse, but we also see her in the portrait of Midra (the second aforementioned painting) standing behind him. Three big things of note about her in that painting:
First, she has the twin braids we see associated with the Shaman women. Marika cut one of hers and left it there in memory of those who raised her, along with the Grandmother (whose body, or maybe statue, is in the village's biggest tree... kind of like Marika will be in the Erdtree) but prior to this, it seems that women would have two braids. This, along with the bright flowers, really reinforces to me the idea that Nanaya was part of the Shaman culture.
Second, she is holding her belly. It's a classic pose in portraiture to imply that a woman is pregnant. Given that she's posing with Midra, that would suggest that he is the father.
Third, and most damningly, she's got a weird, smug half-smile. And we've seen that before: on the talisman Shabriri's Woe. Shabriri, of course, is a figure associated with the Frenzied Flame, and one that we know is capable of possessing dead bodies. (Shabriri is a term from Jewish folklore, as a kind of malevolent spirit associated with blindness. I also wonder if they also took another monster from Jewish folklore, a dybbuk, which, depending on the story, can be a possessing spirit.)
While on its own, this half-smile would be a bit of a stretch, the fact that we're dealing with the Frenzied Flame makes me about 99% convinced that Nanaya was possessed by Shabriri while pregnant (yet another tangent: the connection between Shabriri, Hyetta - who is also a possessing spirit, though not as obviously malevolent and maybe not even aware that she is one - and Daedicar, who has a "woe" talisman just like Shabriri. Hell, it's possible that Nanaya is actually another dybbuk-like spirit, and that woman had a different name).
Nanaya's corpse holds a torch that is made from the spinal chord of a man who failed to become a Lord of Frenzy, so it seems very likely that Midra was her second attempt.
And, just like the Wandering Merchants held below Leyndell's sewers, the attempt to punish and contain the Frenzied Flame actually wound up bringing it about - the Merchants were buried alive and fell into despair, calling forth the Three Fingers, while Midra endured his torturous punishment by the Hornsent for countless ages until we witness him finally give up and give in.
(Another tangent: there are scientific themes in Elden Ring, and I wonder if the Frenzied Flame is kind of just entropy? Attempts to reduce entropy within a system will create more of it outside the system, and it's the principle that eventually leads to the heat-death of the universe, where everything is just one big warm, undifferentiated mass. Entropy also feels like the central idea in Dark Souls as well, so, you know.)
Ok, but we're not quite done.
We have this sequence of events: Nanaya gets possessed by Shabriri, introduces the Frenzied Flame to Midra's Manse, the Hornsent come to contain this greatest of blasphemies and torture the one who they consider responsible (maybe even by Nanaya's design) until the Flame basically incubates within him.
This, then, is the sinfulness that the Hornsent wish to punish/correct amongst the Shaman women. They stick them in jars, melding their flesh with others to create a "saint," and then either Marika is the lone survivor, or, I think maybe more likely, is actually subjected to the same horror, but unlike all the others, she actually does become a "saint," or... perhaps in other terms, an empyrean?
Sufficiently cleansed according to the Hornsent, they bring her to Enir-Elim to allow her to ascend to godhood (and given that a number of items in the Lands of Shadow refer to multiple gods, maybe this wasn't such an unprecedented thing - they had access to the Gates of Divinity, so maybe anyone worthy was allowed to pass through and achieve apotheosis,) thinking they'd "fixed her" and that she'd subscribe to their worldview.
Then, with the acquired divine power, Marika brings down all hell upon the people who raised her to godhood in vengeance for what was done to her people - though likely not until after she'd consolidated her power (possibly long after, assuming that Messmer was the child of her and Radagon - though given that Radagon was part of her, I could also believe that Messmer was actually born a contemporary of Godfrey, Morgott and Mohg, as a bastard child while she was still married to Godfrey. Perhaps that's one of the reasons he's hidden away in the Lands of Shadow?)
Now, there's one final piece:
The Frenzied Flame is said to melt all things down in a way that will ultimately combine them. Hyetta says that the One Great is what existed before the Greater Will made a mistake. If the Greater Will's mistake was the separation of things into disparate pieces (kind of the Big Bang of Elden Ring - again, some similar themes with Dark Souls) the Frenzied Flame is a force that pushes all things back together to become this One Great once again (likewise, Elden Ring has a ton of alchemy imagery and themes, and the separation and recombination of things is a big part of that as well).
And isn't it interesting that the Shaman can so easily combine their flesh with others'?
See, one of the things I've always found interesting is how the Frenzied Flame and the Grace of Gold are the two most "yellow"-associated forces in Elden Ring. Gold, of course, is really just a kind of shiny, metallic yellow. What if that's not a coincidence? What if these two aren't, when you get right down to it, actually fully separate forces?
There are even craftable stone items that mirror one another - I can't recall their names off the top of my head, but one is like a "Frenzystone" while another is a "Sunstone" or "Warmstone." And they look damned similar.
So: if Nanaya and Midra had a child, who is it?
Again, I'm inclined to think it's Marika. Hell, even the fact that she leaves her braid with "the grandmother" and not her mother might be because her mother isn't actually there (sure, the Grandmother might have just been the village matriarch, but maybe it's literal) because Nanaya was back at Midra's Manse, maybe already dead at the hands of the Inquisitors.
Oh, hold on: one thing I missed:
The journal page we find in Midra's Manse suggests that he might have been touched by one of the "Aged Untouchables," who force you into that stealth section. So, sure, the Flame might not have directly entered him via Nanaya, but why were they there in the first place? And, in fact, Midra does, according to the journal, seem to have successfully parried one (something I still haven't pulled off) so he might not have actually been "infected" at all, but it was enough for the Hornsent to go after him.
The thing is:
If the Frenzied Flame is incubated by suffering - essentially, the longer someone suffers, and the more they try to endure before they give in to despair, the greater the power of the Frenzied Flame - what if, and this is a really big supposition:
What if Marika's reign was engineered by Shabriri?
I mean, look, a woman goes in with the intention of creating a world without death, of endless bounty and life, and it winds up throwing the world into utter chaos - a chaos that will breed despair in all the dark corners of hopelessness across the Lands Between.
(EDIT: Ooh! One last thing: When Midra yanks his head off as the boss fight begins in earnest, he strikes a pose, holding his arms out in... yep, Marika's rune shape!)
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