What is it that Count Ymir sees in Miquella that condemns him to failure just as the latter's mother, Marika encountered?
One of the strange things about Elden Ring is that, years after my first journey into the Lands Between, I'm not entirely sure whether Marika is a villain or a hero. To be sure, great suffering and pain came from her actions. But I think her intentions were noble.
Death is the wellspring of suffering. Pain evolved to warn us about impending injury and death. Hunger is the fear that we will starve. More complex, emotional pains, such as seeing a friend drift away or breaking up with a romantic partner, is a pain of loss, the loss of what could potentially happen had the relationship remained intact, and the loss of the familiar joys experienced in that relationship.
I believe that one of the greatest philosophical efforts in human history has been reconciling with the existential terror of death. It has led some to believe that death is necessary, and good, even. That it gives a life meaning by constraining it within certain parameters.
To be frank, and not to get super-dark here in what is ultimately the discussion of a video game, I think that this is mainly a coping mechanism, that there is little reason to think of death in any positive way.
Instead, I would say, philosophically, I have two paths to help with this fear: one is the humanistic path, which acknowledges but does not focus on the eventuality of death, instead preferring to live in the here and now, to remain grounded, and to find the joys and value in the people one is surrounded by, and to appreciate all the nuances of human life. The other path is the agnostic path, which believes that our own ignorance as to what death might be like could allow for something wondrous, or at the very least, not an unending nothingness devoid of any meaning or consciousness.
This latter path, I think, is what appeals to me about the Age of Stars ending for the game. My interpretation is that what Ranni seeks to make of the world is one in which the grand ambitions of the divine and powerful are separated from the lives of the people. It will not have the comforts of a divine being presiding over all things, but will also lack a divine tyrant domineering all things. We go into darkness, fear, and loneliness, but these don't inherently mean that what lurks within that darkness is a bad thing.
Still, if Marika's initial plan was to create a world free of death, I don't think that's an ignoble goal.
The problem, I think, is one of perfection.
The antagonists of many a fantasy story are the villains who seek to ultimately fix things. Sauron, the most iconic fantasy villain (even though we never actually see him in the novels - Peter Jackson visualized him as the giant flaming eye, but if I recall the novels correctly, the eye was more metaphorical than something actually visible over the wastes of Mordor), has a surprisingly nuanced backstory. A Maia first drawn into rebellion under Morgoth, Sauron's defeat during that time eventually saw him genuinely penitent, seeking to redeem himself for his collusion with evil.
And yet, Sauron became convinced that he was the only one capable of fixing the world and bringing peace and order. The inability to let go, and to recognize that he was not the right person to do this fixing (fittingly, he was a Maia of crafting,) led him to view any opposition to him as opposition to the salvation of the world, and totally lost perspective, resorting to those old Morgoth tactics and threatening the world with darkness and tyranny.
It's debatable to what degree Radagon and Markia agreed or disagreed in their aims and methods. But I think it's interesting that, as many have pointed out elsewhere, the Rebis-like being that Mairka-Radagon is seems to be a successful (or seemingly successful) Magnum Opus - the ultimate goal of Alchemy, which is both a precursor to modern chemistry and physics but also an esoteric mystic practice. Mystical practices are generally concerned with discovering secret truths about the nature of reality and often using said practices to ascend in some way from the normal human state.
But even if these practices can be helpful as metaphors or frameworks in which to resolve, for example, psychological traumas and neuroses, or as alchemy did, give birth to modern science (I don't know who said it, but someone once said that Isaac Newton wasn't the first physicist, but the last alchemist), they do, by the very nature of seeking to ascend beyond humanity's current state, often tempt people to abandon that grounded, humanistic ethos.
History is rife with examples of people taking some complex philosophical worldview and, in putting it into practice, go on to wage wars and slaughter innocent people. Consider all the religious conflicts even within a given religion, where the basic principles of the faith remain the same, but subtle details give rise to violent conflict.
Ironically, the message of some of the world's most popular religious movements have often had at their cores a message that encourages a humble acceptance of the human condition, and a respect for all others who endure the same challenges - but even the most peace-and-love-oriented philosophy can, under the right circumstances, be used to justify war and hatred.
Which brings us to Miquella.
In the base game, before we got Shadow of the Erdtree, Miquella appeared in many ways to be the most benevolent of the demigods, and of the Empyreans, the one that seemed most fit to succeed Marika as the god of the next age. Was there reason to doubt this? Oh, for sure: chief amongst them being that I don't think any FromSoft game has ever given us anyone with any significant level of power and authority who can be fully trusted.
Still, Miquella seemed to be providing a home for the downtrodden of the Lands Between, such as the Albinaurics, and worked hard to restore Godwyn to true life.
Of course, what we've learned since Shadow of the Erdtree is that some of the assumptions we had were missing key elements: Yes, Mohg appears to have raided the Haligtree and captured Miquella in the midst of his cocoon/tree-womb transformation, taking him to his ruins underground. But it was only in SotE that we discovered that it was Miquella who had "captured" Mohg, laying his mind-control upon the omen and planting this notion of an omen as Elden Lord within Mohg's head, all to ultimately steal Mohg's body so that Radahn could have one free of the Scarlet Rot (well, either that and/or using his omen blood to get into the Lands of Shadow).
There are some strange ironies to Miquella's path to apotheosis - a path that he does actually seem to succeed on, though only briefly (though dear lord, I took my second character into that final boss fight of the DLC and I had forgotten just how brutally difficult it is. I'm a little ashamed that I used a cheese build to take down Simon in Expedition 33, as I wonder which boss would rank higher for me if I beat both the conventional way. At least I got Radahn and Miquella once, so I can stick that feather in my cap).
First off, his choice of consort is an interesting one - he picks the greatest warrior of his demigod siblings (though remember that there is art in the introduction to the game of Morgott evidently kicking Radahn's ass) to usher in his age of peace.
I don't really know what to make of the fact that Miquella is the only male empyrean and chooses a male consort/Elden Lord. While I don't think that gender is arbitrary for the demigods, I also don't know whether Miquella's intention is to actually try to reproduce (indeed, he might have seen his mother's choice to have children as a flaw in her plan). I'm also disinclined to read too much into the fact that his chosen consort is a relative, as this isn't exactly unheard of among gods (the Olympians were certainly in-bred).
But I think the stranger thing is this: Miquella removes elements of himself during his pilgrimage through the Lands of Shadow, discarding parts of his body, yes, but also parts of his personality, and even St. Trina, his own Radagon-like other self.
While we don't have a great timeline on how long Miquella has been in the Lands of Shadow by the time we get there (my usual bet is that if something happened, it happened long before we ever started our game) but there is some reason to believe that he's not right there up in Enir-Elim when we get to the Shadowlands, because it's not until we're approaching the Shadow Keep (which some have suggested might actually be Helphen's Steeple, the central keep of the land of the dead, re-branded and repurposed by Messmer during his campaign against the Hornsent) that we hear the resonating shattering of Miquella's Great Rune. Given that we find the remains of the rune below the Scadutree, and get it off of the Scadutree Avatar, we might guess that it was shattered either within that arena or that it was discarded there from above, at the Shadow Keep. At the moment of that shattering, was Miquella there to do the breaking of the rune?
Each demigod's Great Rune ties into their nature in some way, and we've always known that Miquella was capable of magically charming people. The many NPCs that we travel the Lands of Shadow with are all under this magical compulsion when we start, but when the rune shatters, the camaraderie immediately collapses - for some. Actually, it's interesting that some people remain loyal to Miquella, including Dain, Freyja, and of course Needle Knight Leda. It's after this point at which Sir Ansbach makes it clear: that Miquella's power of compulsion is the most terrifying weapon he's ever witnessed, and even fell to it after he tried to free his lord Mohg from the same.
But let's examine that irony:
Miquella's journey to godhood involves a casting-off of many of the things that make him who he is. The first several Miquella Crosses we find say things like "here I cast off a part of my flesh" or "here I cast off my arm sinister" (in this case, I think we should take this literally as his left arm - there's another that says he casts off his arm dexter, meaning right arm). This physical dismemberment is certainly strange, but in the context of someone ascending to godhood, it doesn't actually seem all that crazy to try to transcend his physical form.
But, particularly when we get to the southern reaches of the Cerulean Coast, we find that he has discarded his "doubt and vacillation." These, of course, are not physical elements (at least we don't think they are,) and suggests that he has fully committed to what he needs to do. That being said, it's interesting that there was such doubt and vacillation, and that he needed to make some effort to keep those feelings from preventing him from doing what he needs to do to achieve his goal.
Deeper, within the Stone Coffin Fissure, we find that he has discarded his love.
And here, I think we need to slam the brakes. How does Miquella expect to bring about an age of compassion if he has removed from himself the emotion most closely tied to compassion?
Well, we could read this not as his capacity for love, but "his love" as referring to a person, namely St. Trina, the way that one refers to someone special, such as a romantic partner or one's child (or pets) as "my love."
And yet, in this realm of gods and demigods and saints, the person of St. Trina could also represent, truly, his love in the broader sense.
The point is, there's an irony to the way that Miquella conducts himself. His Great Rune, which gave him the unassailable power to enchant others to adore him, is broken while we are in the Land of Shadows. I assume (though to be fair, it's possible that there's some other explanation) that he's the one who breaks it, as part of his divestment tour before entering the Divine Gate.
And yet, when we actually face Miquella, he has the ability to, much as he did to Ansbach in their initial battle, artfully steal the heart of the player, giving us an alternate loss condition to "You Died" that says "Heart Stolen." (Here, there might be a bit of gameplay/story separation, unless the light of grace also purges this enchantment upon us - in theory, this fate seems like it could give Miquella his permanent victory). But if his Great Rune is shattered, how can he do this anymore?
I don't really have an answer for that, other than that perhaps he rebuilt a new version of that rune as part of his apotheosis.
Again, though, his end goal might be a noble one - to create a world of peace and compassion. I wonder if his choice of Radahn as consort is even, perhaps, a test to that vision - that if he can make the greatest warrior of the demigods to serve the cause of eternal peace, it will show the ultimate feasibility of bringing peace to the world.
As is often the case, NPCs can play a mirror role to the demigods. Needle-Knight Leda is our first guide into the Land of Shadow, and takes on an unofficial leadership position within the Miquella fan club (aka most of the NPCs we meet in the Shadow Lands). But the moment that Miquella's rune is shattered, Leda reveals her true nature: that of a psychopathic zealot, obsessed with rooting out and slaying anyone who isn't sufficiently committed to Miquella's cause. Leda asks the Tarnished for accusations of disloyalty, but even if you don't suggest anyone, she'll eventually decide to go after people.
How is Leda, one who is so dedicated to this demigod that represent peace and compassion, so vindictive and bloodthirsty?
Well, it's because her zealotry is maximalist. When you're convinced your cause is perfectly good and that any other cause must therefore be evil, you seek further and further purification.
It's almost as if Leda is looking for someone to purge before she actually has any reason to believe that anyone has actually been disloyal to Miquella. And here, we see another pattern repeated in real-world religion. In less religiously-tolerant times, there were instances of people being put to death merely for raising the possibility that their faith was shaken. Extreme political movements will sometimes force members to repeat and propagate clear falsehoods in order to prove their loyalty to the movement, and the trajectory seems to be to ever-tighten the borders of acceptable deviation.
And this is the peril of a maximalist, perfectionist vision for the world. If the philosophy requires some flawless, perfected ideal, it will inevitably begin to exclude more and more people who cannot fit into that mold.
Both Marika and Miquella sought absolute victories. Marika wished for endless abundant life free from death. Miquella wished for endless peace and compassion without conflict.
Marika's order backfired - removing death, removing the ending of things, meant that the very things she wanted to end persisted, such as Those Who Live in Death. Miquella doesn't have much of a chance to actually rule over things, but one imagines that if he had succeeded, the endless pursuit of perfect virtue under his order would have wound up purging anyone left, perhaps leaving only Leda, who might get the idea that even her god had failed to live up to her standards.
Peace isn't so appealing when it's the peace of a lifeless world.
The solution, then, would seem to be one in which imperfection is embraced, where we accept that future conflicts might arise, that there will continue to be suffering and pain, but where we hold these things all loosely. Bizarrely, perhaps the Age of Fracture is actually the best ending to the game.
Ranni's Age of Stars could mean something very different and new, and I think that her intention to be a distant and non-interventionist god could give us something like that acceptance of all the imperfections of reality. On the other hand, if we take this too extremely far, we could run into the same issues. Direct domination by a divine sovereign does not seem like it has worked out very well in the world of Elden Ring. But total absence of any kind of guidance might also lead to problems, where others might attempt to replicate an idealized past of the Golden Order or other previous eras, forgetting the lessons that led to the Age of Stars.
Even the focus on the grounded, here-and-now humanity must not be pursued to a maximalist degree - to do so would be to deny the human impulse to wonder and imagine the possibilities of how things might be different. Cutting out that desire of ascension would be just as erroneous an exclusion as Marika's removal of the Rune of Death.
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