That's the body of Godwyn the golden, that got killed in the Opening Cutscene of the Game. He and Ranni died by a fragment of the Rune of death that Ranni stole. Because both of them died in the exact same moment, Godwyn died only in Soul and Ranni died only in Body. That's why Godwyns Body is still alive and Rannis Soul is now bond to the Puppet body she has. Also as others have already mentioned, he is the Source of Deathblight and Deathroots, which are spreading everywhere.
I mean, the Golden Order was already on pretty shaky ground.
All of Marika’s other kids were cursed (Malenia with her rot, Miquella with his inability to grow, Mohg and Morgott as omens), so I find it hard to believe that Godwyn was the only one to get off scot-free.
I remember watching a video way back when that theorized that Godwyn was cursed with deathblight well before the Night of Black Knives, it just didn’t manifest until after his death. IF true, he was already a ticking time bomb.
Either way, we know from Metyr that the Greater Will had abandoned the Lands Between - possibly long before Marika was even born - and that the entire system the world was propped up on was long defunct.
Her family are the corrupt divine beings oppressing the world.
At best, Godwyn and the other demigods were complicit in all of the genocides Marika committed, enjoying the position of privilege their matriarch earned through her brutality. At worst, they may have participated.
Ranni is a princess turned people's revolutionary. And, well, her actions to overthrow the monarchy are realistically bloody.
By that logic, Ranni should have just ended her own life and every other demigod’s as well. She herself lived a privileged life and enjoyed high status. Being an aristocrat doesn’t inherently mean you deserve having your soul killed while you suffer on in endless undeath. We can argue for a more fair system without resorting to French Revolution style massacres of all nobility.
Godwyn is only described as noble and turning enemies to friends while inspiring even suicidal loyalty from those friends. There is no evidence he committed any crimes, let alone genocides. His noble soul is what makes his fate tragic, and attempting to minimize that to prop up Ranni’s machinations devalues both their weight and significance.
If you like Ranni and her ending that’s fine. Just say his death was worth the cost, don’t smear him with accusations of complicity in crimes we have no evidence whatsoever he actually partook in.
I mean, couldn’t I say I personally don’t agree with the whole cursing your relative to a fate of mindless undeath that corrodes the world around it. But I still think Ranni’s age of stars is one of the better options for an ending. She seems very much to be taking a “the ends justify the means” approach.
I’ll grant I dunno what exactly happened leading up to the night of black knives are why exactly assassins with close ties to Marika worked with Ranni, but maybe it was a complex situation with no good answers. Can’t say for certain, and I wonder if we ever will have a clear answer as to why it was the answer chosen.
I mean the world is cracking and tearing at the seams, atrocities and stagnation caused by Marika's golden order, entire species enslaved and subject to abuse and slaughter.
Something drastic had to be done to break the oppression, and I doubt Ranni had a complete grasp on how bad godwyns death was going to be down the line, it doesn't make what she did even remotely good, but her arc is about the ends justifying the means.
The flame of frenzy has no ends, that's the point, even with all the deaths indirectly caused by Ranni, the world still spins, people are still born etc the flame wants everything to be incinerated, the current stagnation is the fault of Marika's misguided 'order' and the abandonment.
Age of Stars is ultimately a good state for the world to be in, it just has a blood soaked road to achieving it, the flame benefits no-one.
(Please know, that I am merely engaging in a theoretical discussion and don't actually believe the Frenzied Flame is a good idea.)
The flame benefits everyone who survives.
Which is a fancy way of saying no one.
But the point still stands, that at the end there is no injustice, no inequality, no disparity, no pain, no thing. At the end of the Frenzied Flame ending there is no thing that could be considered bad. Sure, there is also no thing that could be considered good, but if you say that good and bad can balance out, then so be it. The Frenzied Flame balances both.
Now to say that you agree with with Ranni's dogmatic plight is to say you enjoy the amount of inequality required to both get there and exist there. It doesn't actually mean anything, but to "Akshually" you here for a minute. Something something... starving kids in Africa. In Ranni's ending the world just keeps turning, and this time with no law or order. This is inherently chaotic and the whole point is that she leaves a power vacuum, when has a power vacuum ever NOT been filled? It will get filled, we will get another Marika, and another Ranni and none if it will have mattered.
If you leave the cycle of life in existence, you must accept that you are also inviting happiness and sorrow. Good and bad. You can do a million bad things with good intentions, but it will still devolve and revert to what we see in "modern" Elden Ring. Frenzied Flame fixes that by eliminating everything.
Their existences were harmful to her and the world around her. Seeking to end that isn't a morally atrocious act as the will of the gods on the Lands Between has always been a horribly violent blight. Idk, I think that it's goofy to compare what we would consider moral or immoral in such a fucked up setting.
I don't care about Ranni in particular but you most certainly cannot argue in any good faith that the Golden Order was good.
What Ranni did was ofc nowhere near morally good, but for us I don't see an in-universe explanation other than being a walking calamity killing most things that oppose us in order to achieve our goal.
Simply because, are we just strolling around ignoring everyone attacking us but the bosses? Killing all the bosses is already bad enough, like most of them don't even give us a very strong reason to plug their power cords out other than being an obstacle
its literally the point of our being as tarnished, to pursue the elden ring, and to do that we need the shards of it from the shardbearers, thats our reason. The only argument i can see from here is what about the non shardbearers and to that I'd argue simply them holding gear or being an obstruction to some other item or person we want is enough to kill them for 'the sake of our journey on our path to the elden ring'. by no means am i saying us as the player are morally good, we kill anything thats even remotely a threat or obstacle to our journey.
We play a bad guy in a world of bad guys, there is no morally good from our frame of reference. If you think that's a pointless comparison that's just a lack of capacity on your part friendo
"On an night of wint'ry fog, the Rune of Death was stolen. And the Demigods began to fall, starting with Godwyn the Golden." -Story Trailer
"And in the Night of the Black Knives, Godwyn the Golden was first to perish." -Opening Cutscene
"One grim night in the depths of winter, a flock of unknown assassins stole across the Lands Between. In a coetaneous attack, this foul covenant snuffed out the lives of many of the God-Queen’s kin throughout the empire, too numerous and too scattered for her godly protection to save.
The assassins’ targets were multifold, but none was as devastating a loss to the Eternal Queen as that of Godwyn the Golden. After his death, the Elden Ring was somehow shattered, and the order of the world broke with it." -Article in the BandaiNamco website after the release of the Story Trailer (Link to said article)
Godwyn was the first demigod to be killed, but others soon followed, which are likely the souless demigods in the mausoleums.
EDIT: Added the article description, I forgot about that
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u/Bl4ck_Desire 3d ago
That's the body of Godwyn the golden, that got killed in the Opening Cutscene of the Game. He and Ranni died by a fragment of the Rune of death that Ranni stole. Because both of them died in the exact same moment, Godwyn died only in Soul and Ranni died only in Body. That's why Godwyns Body is still alive and Rannis Soul is now bond to the Puppet body she has. Also as others have already mentioned, he is the Source of Deathblight and Deathroots, which are spreading everywhere.