Summary
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtreeintroduces a new area called the Bonny Village, a rural settlement where the Hornsent carried out their ritual of putting Shamans into Living Jars. There’s a lot to unpack here aboutQueen Marika’s historygiven that she was a Shaman, but one detail that slipped by many is the shed snake skin we find nearby.
There are two important blasphemous snakes in the game to mention before we delve any deeper—Rykard fed himself to the God-Devouring Serpent and Messmer was born with the Abyssal Snake consuming him from within. We don’t know why he was cursed, but the shed skin might shed some light on that mystery.
As @breebunn suggests, Rykard’s shed skin would look a lot like the one outside of the Bonny Village, there are even openings for humanoid limbs. But they don’t believe that the skin belongs to Rykard as we know that he fed himself to the God-Devouring Serpent atthe Volcano Manor, not the realm of shadow. Instead, they suggest that it’s from someone else who took part in the “profane ritual”.
This Might Explain Marika’s Betrayal
In the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer, it mentions Marika’s “seduction” and “betrayal”. The assumption is that this refers to when she convinced the Hornsent that she could become a saint, only to claim godhood for herself. But @breebunn puts forward that Marika’s seduction and betrayal was the act of feeding herself to a divine serpent. In statues depicting her likeness, her dress flows like a snake, and many have suggested that the Golden Order is an allegory for Christianity, and so Marika would be Eve in this scenario, seduced by a serpent.
Snakes are a blasphemous image in The Lands Between, even used at the Colosseum by those playing the villains. It’s unclear how that stigma originated (Rykard fed himself to a snakeafterit was already deemed heresy), but perhaps it had something to do with the Eternal Queen.
If this theory is true, then Marika fed herself to a serpent god of some kind but emerged unscathed, not upholding her end of the deal so that she could claim divinity. But because she betrayed the snake by not committing to the ritual fully, the curse was passed down toher son Messmer.It’s an interesting idea, one that could explain why snakes are deemed blasphemous, why Messmer is cursed, and why Rykard’s ritual was particularly heretical.
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.
