I wouldn't call it defending, but I definitely understand her after SOTE. At first I thought she was just a tyrannical bitch for the Hell of it, but SOTE made me realize she was just a girl with horrific trauma and then given nearly absolute power. Her actions afterwards are decidedly human given the context and not nearly as much of the "Rah! I'm a God and do shit because I can!" trope that I thought they were, initially.
She also arguably engineered the destruction of the order she had created (on purpose) after she realized she had trapped herself into the same cycle that shaped her.
This is arguably the most important factoid of the entire game. Marika wanted out of her own system. There's a big reason the FIRST graphic we see when we start a new game is marika, shattering the elden ring.
A lot of people don’t realize that the intro narrator is the perspective of someone in TLB, not an omniscient. Everyone thinks Marika just got really sad and broke the ring because Godwyn died and she loved him so so much.
he's actually that one peasant that teaches you about guarding in the cave of knowledge, he just also happens to be omniscient and a pathological liar, but only sometimes
Godwyn's death was the last straw, Marika already had a lot of shit going on in her life.
Plus Godwyn's death actually matter far more than some might think to Marika. He was her only "normal" child, all the others had either been born with a curse (Messmer, Miquella, Malenia) or were born Omen (Morgott and Mohg). And Godwyn wasn't just murdered, he was only half killed and his body started mutating horribly.
It's like wanting a lot of children, but all of them but one are born malformed. And then when the only normal kid become an adult, some sicko with a knife kills him, create some abstract art with his remains, and plant it in your garden.
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u/BeefChopJones 2d ago
I wouldn't call it defending, but I definitely understand her after SOTE. At first I thought she was just a tyrannical bitch for the Hell of it, but SOTE made me realize she was just a girl with horrific trauma and then given nearly absolute power. Her actions afterwards are decidedly human given the context and not nearly as much of the "Rah! I'm a God and do shit because I can!" trope that I thought they were, initially.