Elden Ring and the Big Reveal

 So, I don't worry about spoilers for Souls games because, well, A: I don't know how much I'm going to see and B: the lore is complex and open to interpretation enough that I don't think anything can really "spoil" it.

But, in the interest of people reading who might be a little more spoiler-sensitive, I'm going to do a page break.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

On my second character, the tanky paladin (who is fun, but I'm starting to feel like I'd like to push more of his spellcasting capabilities - maybe get a bit more into Mind so that I can slap down some lightning) I'm shooting for the Age of Order ending involving Brother Corhyn and Goldmask's quests. I actually had to fully re-spec him to get enough intelligence to cast the appropriate spell (burning a Larval Tear to re-spec and another to go back,) which, in fact, is an incantation, not a sorcery, but still only has an intelligence requirement (the "Gold Order" incantations seem to like a balance between int and faith).

Anyway, the big reveal in that quest chain (which is also reflected in, you know, the end of the game) is that Radagon, the current Elden Lord (and consort to Queen Marika, who is the one god in the Lands Between) actually is Marika. When one arrives inside the Erdtree after setting it on fire and retrieving the rune of Death in Farum Azula (I'm currently right before the boss fight there on my first character) you find Marika there, who drops from her strange arc and then transforms into the male, red-haired Radagon, who serves as phase 1 of the final boss.

So, this is a bit nuts: what does it mean that Radagon and Marika are the same person?

We know that Marika had Godfrey as her first consort (and who serves, I believe, as the penultimate boss). Godfrey, originally the barbarian warrior Hoarah Loux, is the progenitor of the Tarnished - his exile created the Tarnished as a people. Marika then took Radagon as her second consort, which was only possible after Radagon left Rennala, the queen of the Carian dynasty and leader of the Academy of Raya Lucaria.

There's a ton of speculation to be had regarding Rennala, who seems to have lost her mind and is obsessed with an amber object she treats like her child (the main motif of Raya Lucaria is the Cuckoo, a bird that infamously tosses the eggs of other birds out of their nests and lays their own in their place, getting other birds to raise their young - making me think very strongly that whatever it is Rennala has, it's definitely not her own progeny).

So, Radagon and Rennala were married, and some of the demigods (including Ranni, who plays a central role in what I think of as the "advanced, true ending" of the game - not that other endings aren't fairly complex as well) are their children.

But what, then, does it mean for Radagon to be Marika, as well as her consort?

As I see it, there are a couple different interpretations.

The first is the "they were always the same person" interpretation. Marika being able to switch between male and female forms is literally demonstrated when the boss fight at the end of the game starts. And we're talking about a god here, so it wouldn't be that crazy that they could use their own male and female aspects to birth demigods on their own.

Indeed, I'm not even sure any of the demigods are, actually, the children of Radagon and Marika - Ranni, and I think Miquella and Malenia, and possibly Rykard, are all Rennala and Radagon's children, whereas I think Godwyn, Morgott, and Mohg are all Godfrey and Marika's (I could totally have this wrong). In that case, it's not even an issue. (Godrick's demigod status and lineage is a little more unclear).

Would Marika's choosing of "Radagon" as her consort then be some attempt to consolidate power? If she is her own Elden Lord, maybe that gives her the ability to rule both in a mystical and a physical way over her realm.

But, there are other possibilities: supposedly, in the trailers for the game, we see Marika breaking the Elden Ring and then Radagon attempting to fix it. Was this, perhaps, just a change of mind? Or is "Queen Marika" a much more complicated thing than an individual person?

So, before we take a big leap, we might entertain the idea that Radagon and Marika weren't always the same person. Instead, we might think that when they married, they also melded their identities. Radagon, prior to this, was some sort of warrior who, among other things, married Rennala initially. We get a bit of that history at the Church of Vows in Liurnia, where there was a union between the houses of the Moon and the Erdtree (though Radagon already being associated with the Erdtree leans more toward "he was always Marika").

But, suppose we take things a step farther:

What if becoming Elden Lord means becoming an aspect of Queen Marika? What if the "marriage" is a melding of personalities?

Ok, but what about Godfrey? Well, perhaps the process is reversible?