Summary
It only took more thantwoyears, butElden Ringfans think they’ve finally found the Tarnished’s original maiden right at the start of the game.
Now that Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion has been out for a month, players have started diving deep into the game and unearthing a bunch of its secrets,such as discovering the reason why Torrent is scared of the Abyssal Woods. Whilemost of the discoveries over the past few weeks have been, unsurprisingly, centred around Shadow of the Erdtree, some are even being found in the base game.
Ever since Elden Ring launched, one of the phrases that has become synonymous with it is “maidenless”,which is first said to the player by White Mask Varréwhen they emerge in Limgrave at the start of the game. Our Tarnished wasn’t always that way, though, and fans now think they’ve discovered who their original Finger Maiden was.
Elden Ring Fans Might Have Found The Tarnished’s Original Maiden
For those that don’t know,Finger Maidens are women chosen by the Two Fingers to pair with a Tarnishedwho is attempting to take control of the Elden Ring. This means that every Tarnished has a Finger Maiden, which makes it notable that our protagonist starts the game without one, as proven by all of the “maidenless comments”.
Over on the Elden Ring subreddit, ZenOrganism shared a photo of a maiden’s corpse that can be found right at the start of the game in the Chapel of Anticipation, right before you die and end up in Limgrave. ZenOrganism pointed out that the Finger Maiden seems to have recently perished, leaving behind a solitary message that tells you to go on and become the Elden Lord.
“Though the path be broken and uncertain, claim your place as Elden Lord.”
This encouraging, if depressing, note and the maiden’s seemingly recent death seem to indicate that she was the Tarnished’s original Finger Maiden. Like a lot of lore details in Elden Ring, it’s not outright confirmed in-game, but the evidence does add up to make it seem very likely to be the case.
Elden Ring fans have been trying to figure out the identity of the Tarnished’s Maiden for quite some time.One popular theory is that the Finger Maiden Therolina was the Tarnished’s original Finger Maiden, as she notably doesn’t have a Tarnished and has been turned into a puppet by Seluvis, who alongside Iji and Blaidd, is part of Ranni’s plot.
While those theories suggested that Therolina is the Tarnished’s original maiden and that she was kidnapped and turned into a puppet to rid the protagonist of their maiden, the answer might have been right there in front of us all along. As ever, though, without a concrete confirmation, there’s no harm if you want to stick with the Therolina theory.
