Summary
For most,Radahn returninginElden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtreewas a complete surprise. Many assumed that it was merely fan service because of how popular he was in the base game, but there’s a lot of evidence mounting that the two have been connected since even before the original network test in 2022.
It’s revealed in the DLC that Malenia whispered , “Miquella awaits thee, o promised Consort” when she attacked Radahn in Caelid, but some believe this was a retcon.
As broken down by YouTuber and dataminer Sekiro Dubi, cut content fromElden Ringpertaining to Miquella, St. Trina, and Guilbert, the Redeemer hints to a connection between the two that predates the expansion by several years.
Merchant Kalé, who we find in the Church of Elleh by theTree Sentinelright at the start of the game, originally had a quest tied directly to Miquella. The merchant’s Grand Caravan had completely disappeared and Kalé would have enlisted us to help find it, but we would discover that they had been carted off below Leyndell Royal Capital and slaughtered for worshipping the Frenzied Flame. We can still find their corpses on the way to the Three Fingers in the release build.
Part ofKalé’s questlineinvolved St Trina’s Crystal Ball, which would have been used to collect Dream Mist to help ease the Merchants' minds. The item’s description tells us that St. Trina was the one who taught and sung the lullaby to the Merchants (which again, we can hear in the release build), even if they were consumed by the Frenzied Flame. This connects the Merchants directly to St. Trina, the discarded half of Miquella.
How Miquella And The Merchants Tie Into Radahn’s Story
Guilbert, who was completely axed from the game and who never resurfaced in the DLC, defends the Merchants if you should hunt them down. Think of him as the opposite of the Bell Bearing Hunters. And his master would have been none other thanStarscourge Radahn
FromSoftware even recorded all of Guilbert’s dialogue.
So, we have Merchants under the protection of St. Trina, Miquella’s other half, who are also defended by a servant of Radahn. And as the expansion reveals, Miquella didn’t cast off St. Trina until after they entered the realm of shadow, so it appears as though the two shared similar goals long before Radahn became Miquella’s consort.
It’s hardly a stretch then to say that the two were intended to be at least tangentially connected in the base game before St. Trina and Miquella’s content was cut to be saved and fleshed out further upon in the DLC.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
WHERE TO PLAY
Shadow of the Erdtree is the first and only DLC expansion for FromSoftware’s groundbreaking Elden Ring. It takes players to a whole new region, the Land of Shadow, where a new story awaits the Tarnished.
