Elden Ring and its FromSoft forebears are not generally up-front with story. In a discussion with my best friend, who is not a fan of these games (he's attempted Bloodborne and Elden Ring, and while he got a little farther into the latter, he decided they were not for him, which is fair) we came to the conclusion that if we separate Story from Lore, Elden Ring and its ilk have perhaps thin stories (though not none) but tremendously rich lore.
For that reason, I think this might be more accurately a "lore" trailer. But it does have some intriguing elements.
Our first shot is visceral - we see a hand (possibly Miquella's?) grasping at what appears to be a handful of golden-blonde hairs from some sticky, bloody mass of flesh. A narrator speak of "the beginning," and a seduction and betrayal.
Blonde hair is, of course, linked to Marika. And hair color does seem important, because not all of Marika' children have it. Among the demigods (including those born from Radagon and Renalla) only Godwyn and Miquella have this golden hair. I find this curious. Godwyn's full brothers Mohg and Morgott were born Omens, and thus don't (I believe) have this blonde hair. Meanwhile, all the children of Radagon - both his with Renalla and his with Marika - have his signature red hair, except, it would seem, Miquella.
Radagon's red hair is, of course, a source of shame and/or consternation, as it would seem to link him with the hated fire giants (though whether this implies a direct descent from them, which is unlikely if Radagon was always just the male aspect of Marika, or if it's a curse brought on by his treatment of them, which is also somewhat tricky as Radagon doesn't really show up in the stories until the Liurnian Wars, is up for debate).
Anyway, we know that Godwyn was only one of many demigods to be slain in the Night of Black Knives, which includes those interred in the Wandering Mausoleums. Could this pile of dead bodies all be Marika's children? Is the golden hair perhaps taken from one of her "pure" offspring?
Continuing, the figure (again, likely but not unquestionably Miquella) steps through a giant gateway made of piled flesh (honestly getting Diablo vibes here) holds the hairs up, which seem to elongate and transform into the bent arc shape that is Marika's Great Rune (if this figure serves as the vertical line in it).
We're told of "an affair from which gold arose," continuing this idea of the seduction and betrayal. So, now, what affair might this be?
Well, of course, "affair" can simply mean some kind of sequence of events, but it also means more specifically a romantic/sexual liaison, often implying some act of infidelity. Marika, of course, has had multiple husbands, and Radagon's abandoning of Renalla in favor of Marika could be seen as some kind of affair (though weirder if Radagon was always Marika in the first place - in that case was she cheating on Godfrey with Renalla?)
The thing is, if it's an affair from which gold was born, that seems like it would come before all of this - Marika's reign, I think, was always "The Golden Order," though I could be wrong. I know that Radagon has come to represent the sort of prime proponent of the fundamentalist, kind of cerebral and scholarly version of the Golden Order that moves farther into the abstract, but I believe that even when Godfrey was Elden Lord, the regime was already called that.
Thus, it seems more likely that the birth of gold was the apotheosis of Marika - which makes sense given we've been told that the Land of Shadow is where she ascended to godhood. But is this affair just being used in the same way as the expression "current affairs?" Or is it some other act of infidelity?
The birth of gold also creates shadow - which is a pretty classic "light and darkness cannot exist without the other" idea.
We then move on to descriptions of a War Unseen, which has been left out of bards' songs and history books. The war is left out of history because it was a "purge without grace or honor." The use of grace here is interesting given how grace is a nearly tangible thing in the world of Elden Ring, with clear an practicable uses (and visual cues, like having gold in your eyes).
We see those marching wicker-man-like constructs that we've seen in other trailers, which seem to share some symbology with the Dung Eater's armor (the anthropomorphic sun, along with omen horns) which sure is curious. Messmer is seen overlooking the burning of some city and vast legion of soldiers, with a heavy, heavy implication that Messmer is the one who waged this war.
And we see the lion/dragon dancer attacking Messmer - presumably it's some kind of champion of the target of this purge, but we can also presume that Messmer emerged victorious from this confrontation.
In fact, the next shot seems to show a number of these dancers (which seem to be two or three people fighting in coordination) impaled on spears - presumably a cruel form of execution for intimidation's sake. And all of this is happening directly beneath the shadow tree, whose dripping golden sap also, you know, looks very much like Marika's rune.
And, in classic FromSoft seeming non sequitur, the narrator goes on to say "and so Kindly Miquella would abandon everything," showcasing several expressions of what is presumably Miquella's Great Rune.
Let's talk about this Great Rune. Mot of the Great Runes seem kind of... messy in various ways. They are, after all, made up of smaller characters to form the general shapes, and then you have what seems to be a bloom of rot in Malenia's, or the coil of a serpent in Rykard's. Even the "uncorrupted" Great Runes look a bit like micrography. But Miquella's looks like just pure lines forming the shape, which I find curious.
Miquella is said to have abandoned his "golden flesh," his "blinding strength," both over an image of classically golden demigod Miquella, but then cuts to a picture of purple-lit, falling St. Trina when it mentions "even his fate."
The narrator then uses the first person, saying "we are not deterred," saying "we choose to follow," and inviting the player (presumably) to walk with them. We see several NPCs gathered by one of Miquella's runes, then title screen.
So...
I'm not sure if there's a ton of new information here. Naturally I'm sure the YouTube community will find fifty details I didn't here.
My overall sense here is that the most obvious reading of what we're getting is that Messmer, at some point, led a kind of black ops wetworks to purge some faction within the Land of Shadow. The war is covered up because, while the acts performed were atrocious (literally) it still furthered the aims of the Golden Order.
The omen horns on the Lion Dancers might imply that this might have been some faction aligned with the earlier version of the Order, perhaps in the Crucible Era, when Omens were seen as blessings rather than curses. Messmer seems to be employing these giant iron wicker-man constructs, and their omen-horn decorations and the sun imagery that is so tied to the Dung Eater's armor might imply that the Dung Eater (or whomever he killed his armor for) might have been part of this purge. Naturally we see Omenkillers in the main game, who use omen horns on their weapons and masks as part of a grim intimidation tactic. I wonder if the Dung Eater armor was maybe from some earlier generation of genocidal hunters. The fact that Dung Eater wants to curse everyone into becoming Omens could even be some kind of weird mental rebellion - what if he was trained and conditioned to become a remorseless killer in order to serve Messmer's purge, but on some level he knew how wrong it all was, and concluded that the only way to make things right was to spread the Omen condition to everyone?
I do feel like these games always make you entertain really strange ideas, like "hey, maybe that psychopathic torturer and serial killer who wants the world to be consumed with endless despair is actually the good guy!"
Actually, now I want to get a better look at the armor Messmer's legion's wear.
Eh, upon closer inspection the armor looks more Roman in design. Still, I think the theory has legs.
Ultimately, I think the best we can do for now is to identify the elements at play here:
Messmer connects us to serpents (and through them probably the gladiators), dragon knights, and possibly Melina. We've got some of Dung Eater's symbology. We've got Miquella, and some images that relate to St. Trina. We've got omen horns and the notion of more animalistic figures.
I guess the really big question in all of this is: why Miquella? Why is he journeying here, and what might we find by following him? Is he truly as benevolent as his reputation holds him to be? What does it mean for him to have shed his flesh, his strength, and his fate?
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