u/GodArtex

Since people have really been liking my theories as of late I'll try and bring my big one back. This is tagged as lore Headcannon, cuz whenever I post something under theory it just gets stuck under head Cannon anyways, but I'm going to try and provide as much evidence from in the game as possible.

HOWEVER. I am terrible at putting my thoughts into structured sentences that make sense. So I'm going to start by bullet pointing my thought process and I'm going to let you guys do the thinking. (XD) I'll still attempt to get my put together thoughts at the bottom. *GOOD LUCK*

• the first and most important thing we have to note is: RED is the holiest color in Elden ring. The Red of gold was slowly bled out into Marika's gold then into Miquella's White Gold as the influence of the crucible waned.

• RED is associated heavily with DEATH, As the rune of Death itself is Red, it imbues the white "blackflame" into red destined death, pale blue ghostflame into a true purple ghostflame. SCARLET ROT is ALSO a Divine Aspect, like death, which shares in the Red coloration and is meant to represent "the cycle of Death and rebirth put into practice"

• The dragons were considered the holiest creatures in the first age because their bodies consisted of bright golden scales before they petrified to gravelstone and they wielded red lightning, but we know that the dragons used to live between Caelid and the jagged peak area, which has a consistently Red sky. So between the red sky and the red lightning they undoubtedly looked more like the bloody gold of the Crucible knights of Godfrey, than for example the orange gold of the tree sentinels or the little bit of orange gold we see left on placidusax's body

• this is likely the time frame that was considered the era of the Sun, Faram Azula was likely the "seat of the sun" considering how many gigantic golden dragons inhabited it it probably shone like eight supernovas

• the sun era ended when an eclipse happened bringing about an era of death and night, but when Miquella and his followers tried to harness the power of the eclipsed Sun it did not work

• the Moons, Astel, Fallingstar beasts, and Onyx/Alabaster Lords are all still "under jurisdiction" of the Greater Will

• long ago the first ever Carian princess looked up at the night sky and saw the moon as divinity equal to the stars (The Sun) who then went on to become the first Carian queen, a queen powerful enough to force her beliefs into being accepted by the academy.

• the wolf is the symbol of the carian royal covenant meant to represent the "Moon's pride" (or to put it another way, being blessed with a wolf represents being chosen by the moon.) while simultaneously being the symbol of the empyrean associated with shadowbound beasts like Blaidd & **Maliketh (**or to put it differently, when the greater will has acknowledged you it sends you a shadowbound beast - a wolf)

• There are MANY Great-trees in the lands between, likely all the same tree (look up Pando the Aspen grove) but the Tree of Death was called the Helphen and has Red grace guidance instead of gold grace

• Ghostflame sorceries are not purely intellectual they require a mixture of faith and intelligence and are supposed to be purple, showing a mix of blue spirit vapor and destined death

• frost is a Divine Aspect that likely derives from the Rune of death, as the only way to harness the status effect in primordial times was through Ghostflame hexes

• A LUNAR ECLIPSE happens when the planet we are inhabiting blocks out the Sun and we are left with nothing but a BLOOD MOON. What color is a blood moon? RED.

If you were to describe an eclipsed Moon, how would you describe it? As a warm bright ball of light in the sky like normal? No. The moon becomes shaded, Dark, COLD...

If the golden sun is gone and the only light is that of the Blood Moon, would the light of Grace not become red?

• Ranni learned sorcery from a mysterious Carian woman who knew more about the "O****ccult Moon" then the current Carian Queen, a woman who told her to fear the Moon, as if it were sentient and dangerous, a woman who depending on how you translate it is either REALLY old or extremely disfigured like Freddy Krueger (burns all over)

• Ranni modeled her doll on Renna's appearance not her own. Renna's face looks IDENTICAL to Melina's. Melina is the inheritor of Destined Death, so either a child of, or the reincarnation of the Queen. Who wields a type of holy reminiscent of omen bairn's vengeful spirits, blight flame or the hornsent's watchful spirits

• Renna (and her disciple) is the only person in history aside from the warriors of zamor to use frost sorceries and we NEVER find out how they developed it, but it's assumedly much later in history since they were in conflict with the fire giants, NOT the original Giants. They potentially knew Renna or maybe the frost moon was visible from mountaintops once upon a time.

So I guess to try and put it all into perspective as succinctly as possible, the age of the sun ended because of an eclipse & an age of death began. It would make sense to me if that Eclipse was a lunar eclipse because it would have created a blood moon. It would then also make sense that the very first Carian Princess saw said blood moon and realized holy shit the Moon is equivalent to the sun and the dragons and all these other Divine entities, because it is ALSO imbued with the red of divinity.

This led to the start of the godslaying cult under the influence of the blood moon and the outer god of death (a serpentine God, as snakes in game are depicted as immortal ever assimilating entities instead of being creatures of evolution like everything else in the lands between) the beginning of the Carian Royal covenant as the first Empyrean to be granted a shadowbound beast, (statue in Maliketh's boss room) which eventually led to the rise of the ENIR-ELIM hornsent cult hell bent on creating a chimera demigod to usurp the old order. After all who likes festivals where the men get all their skin peeled off? Being thrown into a kiln when it's your time to go? Your soul being harvested for use by deathbirds? or if you're devout then forcefully becoming a priest who lives in death, in the wings of the deathbirds?

Once she was defeated at the hands of Maliketh and the regiment of black knights we see with Messmer in the shadowlands, the Rune of death was taken from her, it was then sealed away and removed from reality meaning that nobody could die true deaths anymore. Which means the queen could not die a true death. Her fire was taken from her body and sealed in her sword. Leaving her with nothing but her sorcery. But like I stated before ghost flame requires faith and intelligence. If you've been killed, your holy attribute taken and your God fled, you likely wouldn't have faith anymore. So if she doesn't have her holy attribute, she doesn't have her fire, and she can't use ghost flame sorceries, what is the one and only aspect of her power that that leaves her with? FROST. She wasn't able to die a true death, it never even states that they killed her in the fight, it just states that she was defeated. So she either left and lived on as the snowy crone, or was resurrected through erdtree burial as the snowy crone. But it doesn't really make sense for her to be resurrected as Renna (a heretic) by erdtree burial. It makes more sense for Renna to be her original form, and Melina is either the Erdtree burial resurrected version of her serving the Erdtree, OR, Melina is her and Radagon's daughter from when she was still a godlike entity, and Marika killed her on accident while she was still in the womb, trying to ascend to godhood herself.

If sealing the Rune of death took the red out of blackflame & the red out of ghostflame hexes, then I think it would be fair to say that if there was a moon that represented death it's red hue would also be gone. Leaving nothing behind but a cold dark occult Moon only visible when the light is at its absolute weakest. (The problem with that being the higher you go in the lands between the brighter it gets, unlike reality. That's why when you go places like Faram Azula & Enir-Elim it's perpetual daylight. Because you're getting closer to the celestial realm) And that all of its health drain or whatever ability it had is gone and it only has the frost effect now.