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Notes -
Adaptation should be understood to be very loose and oversimplified rather than direct, and mixing in some of those other influences, but sure.
The story is the struggle of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that was made from stolen gold, that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of narrative protagonists, until the final cataclysm of the twilight of the gods, which ends with the death of all the gods but also the birth of a new world without them and free of their influence.
The majority of the narrative- but not the final act in which reflects generational change- is a result of the actions of the head of the pantheon of the doomed gods in three main parts. In the first part, the head of the pantheon steals the golden ring by force, and with it is able to establish a mighty fortress, but with the seeds of future ruin hinted at from the start. In the second phase, the pantheon head has spawned a dynasty of godlings, and is known as a manipulator of them and is involved in the death of the golden child, who both does and does not die, even as they set forth a plan for a maiden daughter that will have world-ending ramifications for the era of the gods.
In the third phase, the head of the pantheon has gone from an active figure driving the plot to a manipulator from behind the scenes while the rest of the cast fights and kills eachother over the ring. By the end of their plot, the pantheon head goes from fearing the end of the gods to willing it to be so, advancing the destruction of what they have built, utilizing a plot set in motion an age before. The home of the gods and the world tree surrounding will be burned in the fires of death at the direction of the pantheon-head's maiden daughter, who willingly dies in the same flames, which are themselves of the domain/act of a fire god bound to the head-god's will long ago.
The head of the pantheon in both cases is based on Odin, head of a dynastic pantheon of doomed gods, and who is a shapeshifting trickster god with a penchant for cross dreassing and yet also a war-god who was obsessed with death and the future. Odin sacrificed an eye and was speared to the world tree in a sort of ritualistic suicide in pursuit of the knowledge of runes, in an effort to influence the future. Odin's god-magic allowed them to cure the sick, calm storms, turn weapons against the attackers, make women fall in love, and render dangerous troll women harmless. It even allowed them to take the form of another person, which is just a wee-bit important to the plot of Elden Ring.
Re-emphasizing that this is a very loose reusage of tropes and themes, including adapting Odin beyond the play's presentation of Wotan, Elden Ring borrows from Der Ring Des Nibelungen in terms of-
-The titular magical gold ring, which has world-dominating powers
-The role of the magical gold ring, which is for everyone to fight over
-The nature of the Wotan's taking of the ring by force as a sort of 'original sin'
-The role of Wotan as a dynasty-founding manipulator
-The death of the golden-child of Wotan dynasty, who both does and does not die
-The role of Wotan's children in leading the next world
-The transition of Wotan from advancing the world order to working against it
-The role of Wotan in helping sett claimants against each other even after stepping out of the direct story
-The role of Wotan's daughter in invoking the god-killing/world-tree burning flames of a bound fire-god
-The role of Wotan's daughter in choosing to die through this act
Marika, the god-queen of elden ring, is in turn a derivative of Odin in terms of being-
-A ambitious war god who established a dynasty dominant in their realm by right of conquest, rather than as a creator-god
-A trickster god with transformation powers (the item to transform into other things, Mimic Veil, is also known in-setting as Marika's mischief)
-A manipulator god known to lie / deceive / sacrifice others for their own interest, including their own family
-Magical power sets, including identity projection, gender shenanigans, and the ability to make women fall in love (Marika's rival-queen-turned-wife-by-cross-gender-proxy)
-An obsession with death and the future (Marika's actions to seal away destined death to create an artificial immortality, but also preparing the mechanisms to destroy said system via the fire giant plot)
-An interest in learning more on runes as a means to other things (Odin's goal in sacrificing the eye; Marika's only late-reign motivations is to plumb the depths of the golden order, and the metaphysical research of the late golden-order scholars into the metaphysics which run on runes)
-The imagery and execution of an elaborate ritual suicide scheme that involves losing an eye and being pierced in the side with a spear while being pinned to the world-tree (Marika's end-position in the end-game, which is a result of her scheming and duality-nature not only between herself and Radagon, but themselves and the Elden Ring)
-The role of the suicide-ritual as a means to an end of larger ambitions (Odin's sacrifice was to gain the power of runes and knowledge of other worlds; Marika's purpose is part of an extensive scheme to wound and kill the Elden Beast, which is the Elden Ring, which is also her/Radagon (the alchemic theming playing heavier here), and which ends with Marika functionally replacing the Elden Beast on the deific hierarchy in 'her' endings)
-Said larger ambitions being an effort to defy fate / overcome the inevitable end of the world (Odin fails / arguably only succeeds via progeny who survive ragnerok; Marika's plan in 'her' endings involves her functionally displacing the Elden Beast in the divine hierarchy, by becoming synonymous with the elden ring as the mending rune is applied to her and remaining part of the new world even after her dynasty passes)
Are there differences to this? Sure. It's not a direct adaptation, and not trying to be, and oversimplification and all that.
But compared to the fandom's propensity before the recent DLC to try and shove Elden Ring into a pseudo-christian mythos (because clearly the only parallel to an organized religious institition is the Catholic Church), Elden Ring is positively dripping with north germanic vibes and tropes both in and out of the Ring Cycle.
Isn't that what Ranni's ending is? Someone has to pick up the ring so she does, free from the elder will and takes the power away from the world, to the stars, so that it can no longer influence the world and it can be free.
Kinda / no / not really what I was alluding to.
All of the endings reflect the generational change, death of the gods influence, and the birth of the new world without the old gods influence, but one shaped by the influence of the free hero who serves as the transition. In Gotterdammerung, it's the power of Siegfried and Brunnhilde's redemptive love that breaks the curse and gives the new world a redemptive motif to end the play, but in Elden Ring the nature of the next world is left to the various ending themes / focuses, none of which are love.
As for the characterization of Ranni, disagreement on multiple fronts. Ranni is not a freedom-and-rebellion protagonist.
-Fundamentally, Elden Ring's player-experienced plot is a mystery plot (what happened / why did Marika break the ring), not a rebellion plot. The belief that Marika / Ranni are in some form of rebellion and trying to free the world from the greater will is broader fan theory deriving from failing to recognize the mystery plot, which deliberately structures the internal acts of the games (guided primarily by the accessible lore in difficulty eras) to encourage a belief that Marika (and Ranni's) motivations are in opposition to the Outer Gods, which are introduced as mid-game concepts as part of the forces tearing apart the world. They aren't- Marika's intent to destroy the Elden Ring is later revealed to have been long-premeditated even before her conquests were complete (the exiling of the Tarnished, the fire giant plot to destroy the tree), while Ranni never actually acknowledges any outer god or the Greater Will (who is never categorized as an elder god either, but which players tried to impose due to thinking the 'outer' meant 'from outer space').
-The reason the plot is not a rebellion plot against the Greater Will is that there's fundamentally nothing to rebel against- the Greater Will has no presence or political role / influence, and there is no enforcement scheme on how the Elden Ring is used. The fan theory that Marika and Ranni were in rebellion against it was a fan/cultural dynamic of trying to fill the mystery of the mystery plot, by projecting a western-expectation of a rebellion-against-god plot when there's no indications in game the rebels and god ever interacted or even coexisted.
The Greater Will being an absent god, and having not been present for longer than any of the even deific character cast have been alive, is part of the plot twists to the early game's narrative encouraging the players to doubt the Two Fingers, who claim to be prophets of the Greater Will, and encouraging a conflict-driven understanding of the various gods of the setting. The early game narration/guiding characters implies/claims that the Greater Will wants things to be a certain way, and presents the Two Fingers as beings of influence and insight, but this is a lie. Not only does critical-path lore reveal the Fingers are not and have not been in contact with the Greater Will for who knows how long, to the degree that they attribute multiple actions of Marika to the Greater Will, but the plot twist at the end of Farum Azula is that not only was Marika not the first 'god' of the Ring, but that there is no set order from the ring- Marika meddled with the composition from the start, but the nature of the Ring and Order has evolved considerably from the era of Dragons of pre-history. There is no 'Greater Will approved' order, or pressure to comply with a specific form of the Elden Ring, there is simply a metaphysical order responding to those who press their will.
(In the non-critical path, further lore reveals the Two Fingers weren't even that important. Rather than being important and influential figures in Marika's Religion, with Marika being some intermediary-pope subservient to the Greater Will, it's discoverable that the Two Finger lore is literal heresy, that Marika came to power by beating up their previously recognized Empyrean the Gloam-Eyed Queen (which is to say she was not appointed, she seized by conquest against their previous interests), and that the Greater Will's last action in the setting was in the pre-history. While the early-game Two Fingers try to present Marika as an errant intermediary, Marika's Golden Order was a god-queen cult which treated her as the only relevant god, not a subordinate. The fan theory that the Golden Order made Marika do things she didn't want at the behest of the Greater Will was always a fan theory- she was a genocidal warlord whose character trait was ambition.)
-Ranni is also not in a rebellion quest or reluctantly picking up the ring because she is purposefully advancing her predestined potential as an Empyrean in what amounts to a greek irony of running into the prophesy she seeks to avoid. Ranni's claimed rebellion is both a case of the irony of exact words- her Two Fingers said she was an Empyrean who could succeed Marika, not that she would (just as there were two other candidates of the same generation who could)- but also a dramatic irony that most of the player base missed despite the majority of Ranni's plotline being the unblocking and fulfillment of her fated destiny.
Ranni is initially presented as a youth-novel protagonist fighting for her free will, but her entire supporting cast are subversions of belief in free will. Her mage advisor wants to turn her into a literal puppet, and is part of a court/class conspiracy to seize power from the royal family via mind-control magic. The royal family in question- her mother Rennala- not only came to power via implicit use of mind-control magic, but may have been under the effects herself at Ranni's conception, as Rannala goes from meeting a cosmic entity to a meteoric rise to scholar-queen, to warrior-queen, to suddenly and madly (but explainable via the same sort of betwitching and enchanting effects associated with her rise to power) falling in love with the masculine-form of the god of the Golden Order for a marriage union that produces a prophesy child (Ranni) and other children who play key roles in subverting the golden order. Well before then, though, Ranni's childhood caretaker is a conspiracy theorist who wears the equivalent of tin foil to prevent the absent-god from reading his thoughts while advancing a multi-generational moleman conspiracy initiated by a dead civilization to put Ranni in place for her destiny to usurp the Elden Ring. Ranni's foster-brother/champion, a being of unbreakable loyalty, is falsely accused of being a mind-controlled tool/assassin despite untold thousands of years of Ranni being in a murder-feud with the alleged controller), and is put down in the midst of him stopping an assassination attempt on Ranni's life. Ranni herself is a literal prophesy child of a star-prophesy civilization who advances at the indirect aid of the ambiguous-god-thing of the Moons, which in Elden Ring are actual entities who manipulate fates and who actually intervene in mortal affairs.
Ranni is the culmination of a underground celestial-worshipping dead civilization's plot to seize control of the Elden Ring... a plot she is an active (if maybe not aware) participant of, from her murder of her half-brother and helping instigate the civil war to her character plot's requirement to re-start her destiny by freeing the stars that were unable to advance her destiny.
Ranni isn't a parody or a deconstruction of free will, but she certainly isn't an agent of it either.
-Ranni's era doesn't remove the influence or the problems of the elden ring, she masks it's still-present effect.
Ranni's order is still a metaphysical order of the elden ring, complete with elden lord consort to the ring-vessel-god, and even in it's setup it is explicitly a transitionary (thousand-year) experience, as fitting the elden mythic cycle of gods. While Ranni presents it as preferable- that it would be better if people couldn't see / feel / touch / believe in the order- that's just a different narrative justification to Miquella's pitch for an era of compassion, and it doesn't change that the order is still there. Ranni's order isn't distant as in proximally far away from other people, it's distant in the sense that it's out of touch, invisible and out of reach, until one day it will be again (the 'return' of the voyage, the inevitable metaphysical turning of the eras that is Miyazaki-worldbuilding and Elden Ring backstory). While this is a great thematic parallel to the Greater Will- another absent entity, and a fulfillment of the Elden Ring/golden order's metaphysical mechanics of regression and causality as Ranni aligns / retunrs closer to the state of the Greater Will (regression)- it's just the turning of the cycle.
Ranni's absence also doesn't 'free' the Lands Between either, since the controlling (and malevolent) factors burdening the Lands Between aren't the applied influence of the Ring, but the actors that exist regardless. This is the explicitly controlling entities now elevated by Ranni (the fate-controlling stars and moons), but also the outer gods like the Scarlett Rot and Formless Mother, and also the ambitious sorts of genocidal warlords and would-be tyrants who would try to conquer and dominate and enforce their will. There is no reformation of the human condition by hiding the Elden Ring, because the Elden Ring was not the cause of the human condition. It is still a cycle where a murderous woman claims the power of god and does what she wants, never really indicating an awareness or interest in resolving problems.
Unsurprisingly, the authors of Game of Thrones and Dark Souls did not write a young adult novel protagonist whose love-interest plot would save the setting.
This is all amazing, shame that the game for me was a murderhobo simulator and nothing else. In a way I can see myself and a few friends getting a few beers and discuss after a playthrough (entirely like I did when the Game of Thrones tv show was coming out), but the game seems to not care about delivering it's themes, so I ended up not bothering at all.
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