Elden Ring is an unexpected celebration of womanhood

Over the past few weeks, I have shared my growing interest in all things FromSoftware after experiencing Elden Ring: Nightreign for the first time inspired me to check out Elden Ring.

For years now, I have adeptly dodged all things FromSoftware. Not through lack of interest but just because of my innate fear of failure making even the idea of starting one of its games impossible.

However, my love for lore and narrative somehow overpowered my fear of getting my ass handed to me and I kicked off my journey across the Lands Between.

In the meantime, I have absorbed all there is to know about Bloodborne and the Dark Souls franchise ahead of playing those once I have completed my first Elden Ring run.

Quite literally, FromSoftware games have taken over my life and I can finally see the appeal of suffering with hard bosses for hours on end in order to experience Miyazaki’s worlds in between.

One such boss that players have reported struggling on over the years is none other than Malenia, Blade of Miquella.

Even before I played the game for myself, I knew about this character and her dreaded Waterfowl dance and had seen my fair share of content creators and friends rage at her rage-inducing skillset and multiple phases.

FromSoftware

However, I am not here to talk about Malenia as a boss but rather Malenia as a character, alongside the other female characters that appear throughout the course of Elden Ring.

The idea for this article came after doing my daily research in everything related to Elden Ring in an attempt to understand its lore and worldbuilding as much as possible. It was during this that I stumbled across a handful of articles claiming that the game was sexist and that its female characters showcase FromSoftware’s problems with women.

I could of course go on a rant about how one of FromSoftware’s most beloved games, Bloodborne, is quite literally all about women, pregnancy, and menstruation but that would perhaps be too easy despite these themes seemingly being lost on a lot of players.

Elden Ring is, on the other hand, more subtle in how it portrays femininity and womanhood. However, what any player can see, even without diving into the lore of the game, is that women hold a lot of power in the Lands Between.

Malenia is an example of power in its most primal form. She is an undefeated warrior who has never known defeat. She is unmatched in battle and this is despite being afflicted from scarlet rot since birth, rendering her blind and having to rely on prosthetic limbs.

Despite this, she was made an Empyrean, making her a candidate to ascend as a god and usher in a new age in the Lands Between. Yes, Malenia is physically strong but we can only imagine her mental strength. Not only did she have to live with a disease that was eating her from the inside out but she also had to use mental future to keep the scarlet rot from truly taking over.

Much like Radahn held back the stars, Malenia held back the power that threatened to burst from within her.

However, Elden Ring players have previously marked Malenia as having a “sexist design” due to the form she takes during the second phase of her boss fight in which she strips her armour and allows the rot to take over, leaving her naked except for cascading wings and her prostheses.

In this form, her breasts and vaginas have been decorated with the scarlet rot but despite her nudity and the horrifying realisation that Malenia has finally become the Goddess of Rot, some people still found the time to criticise FromSoftware’s decision to strip her bare during this moment.

FromSoftware

Of course, sexualising women both in real life and in video games has been a problem since the beginning of time and this happens whether the woman is fully dressed or not.

However, nudity is not inherently sexual and is only made sexual by the individual.

In Malenia’s second phase, she has quite literally been reborn from the Scarlet Aeonia and I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a lot of people are fully dressed at the time of their birth. I don’t believe that Malenia was stripped naked as a way to sexualise her, but rather to show all that she has lost and sacrificed in order to be born anew.

To the casual Elden Ring fan, Malenia is a boss, albeit a hard boss, who just so happens to be the sister of Miquella and the one who unleashed scarlet rot across Caelid after her battle with Radahn.

However, she is much more complex. She is a mother, although not in the traditional sense, as her first bloom created Millicent and her sisters who she ultimately disowned. Yes, she is a sister who would sacrifice everything for Miquella, becoming his sword and shield and was ultimately left bereft after he was kidnapped.

She, like every woman, was somebody capable of multitudes and exists beyond a boss fight, and a sexualised one at that.

We cannot talk about Malenia without talking about her other half, Miquella.

As her twin, Miquella was also born with an affliction and this one caused him to maintain eternal youth. Much like his sister, Miquella’s life was dedicated to his other half and he even gave up Golden Order Fundamentalism in order to continue his search for a cure for Malenia’s rot.

Unlike Malenia, Ranni, Marika, the Gloam-Eyed Queen, Miquella is the only male character that we know of who has been made an Empyrean but if we follow the theory that only women are capable of wielding the Elden Ring and men, such as Radagon, are only able to via proxy, what makes Miquella the exception?

To rewind a little, when an Empyrean ascends into godhood, they will be in charge of ushering in a new age and, as a result, they become the vessel for the Elden Ring. However, this comes with a lot of responsibility as, from the moment that they are chosen as Empyreans, they are guided (or groomed as some may say) by the Two Fingers on behalf of the Greater Will.

Essentially, a woman’s body is no longer her own when she becomes an Empyrean, and ultimately a god, and it is her duty to birth a new age, much like some believe it is a woman’s duty to birth a child. As a result of this, characters such as Ranni go to extreme lengths to rid themselves of the role that has been chosen for them, even if that means destroying their body.

FromSoftware

Coincidentally, when players ultimately stumble across Marika who has been crucified within the hollows of the Erdtree, a shard can be seen protruding from her uterus where the Elden Ring resides. Was this shard put there by the Greater Will in response to her betrayal or did she perhaps do it to herself? In an effort to make her womb inhospitable so her body could no longer be used by those more powerful than her.

“I realize it's a reference to the Lance of Longinus that pierced Jesus, but it definitely seems too deliberate a placement to be a coincidence,” Reddit user Alltheheroesaredead said over on r/EldenRingLoreTalk.

“It's also plausible that the spear was self-inflicted. She may have tried to kill herself or make her womb inhospitable in an attempt to free herself from the life of a vessel.”

As for Miquella, he is the exception when it comes to the Empyreans that we know of as he is the only male chosen to ascend to godhood. However, due to his ambiguous gender, links to St. Trina and even his “rebirth”, it would be impossible to not see Miquella as female-coded.

Although Miquella is referred to as a male throughout the events of Elden Ring, he is always presented with a gender-ambiguous appearance, from his soft angelic features to his long, blonde hair. His name is also feminine and throughout the game, players can find multiple links to him and St. Trina, the female saint of sleep.

On the Sword of St. Trina, the description reads as follows:

“St. Trina is an enigmatic figure. Some say she is a comely young girl, others are sure he is a boy. The only certainty is that their appearance was as sudden as their disappearance”.

Sound familiar?

Although it is never confirmed if Miquella and St. Trina are the same person, whether that be one soul split into two like Marika and Radagon, or if St. Trina is merely an aspect of Miquella, it is undeniable that they have a link, especially as St. Trina dies alongside Miquella in Shadow of the Erdtree.

FromSoftware

If Miquella and St. Trina are two halves of a whole, is it not too far-fetched to believe that Miquella was made Empyrean alongside his female candidates because he exhibits the same feminine traits. After all, after his kidnapping, he is found hidden within an egg, cradled between bones which resemble that of a cervix.

Miquella is just another example of femininity in Elden Ring and the many ways that it can manifest itself both in life and in video games.

Believe it or not but women cannot be contained in a one-size-fits-all box. We contain multitudes, we can be contradictory and are capable of the anger that is associated with men.

The women of Elden Ring are complex, morally-ambiguous and, in typical FromSoftware fashion, doomed and yet they still present the audience with all of the aspects that make them formidable in a world that can seek to weaponise them.

From Fia the Deathbed Companion whose job it is to lay with the remains of nobility in order to grant them a second chance at life to Rennala, the once head of house Caria and Queen of the Full Moon who has now been left bereft after the loss of her husband and children, represent all of the ways in which a woman can be presented without falling into all of the sexist and misogynistic tropes.

Yes a woman can be heartbroken, she can also be a warrior, a mother, a sister, a companion, a betrayer, a manipulator, a schemer, a god. She can be one or all of these and that is exactly what FromSoftware has achieved in Elden Ring.