Queen Marika
Hark, traveler, for thou askest of the greatest enigma of all. The shadow of all our sorrow is the woman—nay, the god—thou speakest of.
The Eternal Queen
She is Queen Marika the Eternal, the vessel of the Elden Ring and the monarch who established the Golden Order. Everything in the Lands Between, from the nature of death to the light of Grace, stems from the laws she established.
Before she was Queen, she was Marika of the Numen, a race hailing from outside the Lands Between. She was chosen by the Greater Will—an Outer God—to be its chosen emissary. After the war with the giants and the defeat of the ancient dragons, she ascended the throne and ruled with Godfrey, the First Elden Lord, by her side.
She is the bedrock of our world, yet she is now a figure of agonizing contradiction.
The Great Betrayals
Marika's reign was not simply one of glory; it was one of constant, terrible decisions that ultimately broke the world.
The Removal of Death: She commissioned her shadow, Maliketh, to remove the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring. By this single act, she made the demigods immortal and ensured that the souls of her subjects would return to the Erdtree for rebirth. This was the Golden Order’s gift—but also its great lie, trapping us all in a cycle without true end.
The Exile of Godfrey: Once the wars were won and the conquest was complete, she stripped her husband, Godfrey, of his Grace, and exiled him and his followers—the first Tarnished—from the Lands Between. She told them to go, fight, and die, only to return one day when the time was right.
The Shattering: Most crucial of all, when her beloved son, Godwyn the Golden, was murdered in soul by the stolen Rune of Death, Marika's faith was shattered. In either grief or fury, she took the sacred hammer and smashed the Elden Ring. This act tore the laws of the world apart, creating the Great Runes and sparking the destructive war known as the Shattering.
The Two Halves
The deepest secret of Marika is that she is not one being, but two. She and Radagon of the Golden Order are the same entity.
Radagon was a champion of the Golden Order, a brilliant sorcerer who was Marika's second consort after Godfrey's exile. Yet, the lore suggests they are two sides of a single coin:
"Marika and Radagon were one."
It is believed that when Marika shattered the Ring, Radagon immediately sought to repair it, demonstrating the deep conflict at the core of the god of the Lands Between. The duality of her being—the glorious Queen and the shattered warrior—is the ultimate source of the world's misery.
She is now imprisoned within the broken Erdtree, crucified by thorns, a deity who destroyed her own domain. What she sought to achieve, only the Greater Will and the echoes in the roots can tell.