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miirshroom · 1 year ago

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An Elden Ring Word String Theory

I was thinking a bit about the anagrams of the name "Radagon". As it turns out "a dragon" is far from the only functional anagram that can be spun from this short 7-letter name. And on the one hand I understand the perspective that asks: why? Why make one name an anagram and no others? Or are words meaningless and we should look for anagrams in all Elden Ring names now? This would certainly contradict everything else I've found regarding how character and place names are selected for the sum total meaning of their syllables and translations, that leaves little room for more secret scrambled meanings. But here is an actual argument in favour of the anagrams of Radagon:

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

One name split into meaningful anagrams is I think the only instance that FromSoft/GRRM would really need to bring into focus some parallels to a certain other story that called attention to a single plot important anagram. And it was in the name of the main villain of the book series. That and the way that both Radagon and Voldemort split their souls into 7 or so pieces (i.e. Great Runes) and were trying to become immortal. But a deep dive into the way that psychological alchemy can reinforce a toxic worldview dissociated from reality deserves a separate post. This one is about anagrams.

The Literary Tradition of Anagrams

Regarding Voldemort specifically, I did a search to confirm that I am correct that there is only the one anagram name, and the answer is - yes and no. If there is any other name that JKR cared to make an anagram of she only did so unofficially and using the English language. Fans have apparently found some odd plot coincidences buried in names from the mountains of sludge of possible anagrams - so who knows. Regardless, there is a self evident thing about making a declarative statement into an anagram rather than simply a scrambled name - it doesn't work across multiple languages. Which is awkward when the anagram features in a dramatic moment of the book. And so I did behold a list of Voldemort anagrams, with a few selections as below:

Tom Elvis Jedusor = Je suis Voldemort

Tom Sorvolo Ryddle = Soy Lord Voldemort

Tom Vorlost Riddle = Ist Lord Voldemort

Anton Morvol Hert = Archon Voldemort

Romeo G. Detlev Jr. = jeg er Voldemort

Marten Asmodom Vilijn = Mijn naam is Voldemort

Tom Gus Mervolo Dolder = Ego Sum Lord Voldemort

It's a strange solution to a manufactured problem. "Vol de Mort" has meaning - it is from French and translates to "flight of death". So paradoxically the "pseudonym" of the name cannot be compromised and seems to be what was selected first. The rest of the name exists in service of "Voldemort" - you can tease meaning from the name-shaped word of "Marvolo" but wasn't there an easier solution? What about "Tom V Rolde"? With that you get a whole middle initial to work with - maybe "Vincentius" or something. Perhaps "Thomas Vincent Enigma Rold" is also opaque enough with "Rold" passed off as a portmanteau of red-gold that suits the alchemy theme (that's a speculation on how Elden Ring uses it for the "Rold Lift Medallion"). There is a long literary history of authors using anagrams, and it is rare to find that they use filler words like the addition of "I am Lord". I imagine because they do things the logical way around for cause and effect and start with a mundane name that is then scrambled into the fake name. When we say that JK Rowling was never a very good writer, short-sighted anagram planning is just a drop in the bucket next to her regressive social politics, British colonial view of all countries outside of her home, and racial stereotyping word association used in the selection of other character names.

Often, but not always, anagrams are used for comedy - as in the way that Lemony Snicket uses anagrams - or a means of having a legally distinct name from some source material used as inspiration - think Da Vinci Code's "Teabing" being an anagram of "Baigent" - the man who popularized the psuedo-history that was then used for the thriller novel. Or else it's used in a fantasy and/or multicultural setting where exotic sounding nonsense names just blend into the other odd names - like "Dandelo" ("Odd Lane") the psychic emotion-stealing vampire who appears in the last volume of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. And then again in Gulliver’s Travels, where “Tribnia” and “Langden” (Britain and England, respectively) are mentioned in passing in the section of the story dedicated to the voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan. Although there is something off about a name that is used by no person in the real world, few people will pause in the middle of reading to search and find that all results point to the fictional character (or even expect to find anything when placed beside sich an obvious fake name as “Glubbdubdrib”), so no drama is sacrificed. That's suspension of disbelief at work.

A Case for the Anagrams of Radagon

All this to say that there are writers out there who like to play with anagrams. And I think that perhaps the writers of Elden Ring took that concept to an extreme. In the examples above and most others it is one meaningful English language anagram extracted per name. In contrast, I'm currently at a count of 24 different anagrams of Radagon that are all consistent with other information from FromSoft’s body of work. Because I have been playing the FromSoft word games with other character names and I am not satisfied with just considering modern English. Archaic words, other languages, even abbreviations are on the table as far as I'm concerned. There are three that seem to me particularly strong evidence that "Radagon" is indeed a name with a multitude of anagrams that were spun out into characters and meaning throughout the history of the Lands Between: "D Aragon", "A Narog D" and "Gor Adan".

The first came about when I was browsing through the history of alchemy and witch hunts. The Dominican priest (i.e. "D") Nicholas Eymericus is best known for being the Inquisitor General of Aragon and for writing the Directorium Inquisitorum (1376) an instructional guide for identifying and prosecuting heresies including witchcraft. And here can be extracted another previously known facet of Radagon - as an Inquisitor who went out to hunt the witch Queen of Raya Lucaria. I see an immediate connection here to D, Hunter of Death, who has long been suspected of hinting at something about the dual nature of Radagon and Marika due their description along with D, Beholder of Death of being a single being in two bodies. And both have the very odd decision to be introduced as an initial rather than by name. In particular, D Hunter is on a mission to hunt down unnatural creatures. D Beholder directly calls Fia a "rotten witch". The idea of an Order of witch hunters is elevated from subtext to text with witch-hunter Jerren in his pursuit of the witch Sellen. And there's the symbolism in the hammer wielded by Radagon - another major text of the witch hunts was the Malleus Maleficarum (1486) or "The Hammer of Witches". Which itself has a direct line of connection in Recusant Henricus near the Limgrave Colosseum who drops the Hammer Talisman - Henricus Institor is the latinized name of the churchman and Inquisitor who wrote that book. It was swiftly denounced as heresy by the Church for its cruelty, but escaped containment and became well known after widely spreading among the people and secular courts.

And as for “A Narog D” that is a word string that seems meaningless at first glance, but I see it as the complement to Aragon D. Its significance came up while I was looking into Tolkein’s histories regarding the linguistic connections of Gelmir and Faroth. Contemporary with the War of the Silmarils, the Narog river passed through the area called “Taur-en-Faroth” or “the Hills of the Hunters” from its upstream origin point at the Pools of Ivrin. Also found in this area was the hidden underground city of Nargothrond, which was originally constructed by petty dwarves, then occupied by elves, and then turned to a dragon lair after its fall. And then sank into the ocean along with the rest of the continent at the end of the pre-history. So with the context of an underground city rendered inaccessible by time and the Narog river, “a Narog D” would be D, Beholder of Death, who is found in Elden Ring at the underground city of Nokron.

If there’s one name that I would give special attention it is "Adan Gor". Firstly the obvious: Adan is a Spanish variant of "Adam" - presumably with connotations of "Adam and Eve" - and "Gor" is a dialect version of "God", with well known uses including Moby Dick ("And, by Gor, none of you has de right to dat whale"). To get biblical for a moment it evokes the thought of the first Man Adam created in the image of God. The character “Adan, Thief of Fire” also incorporates the image of Prometheus bringing fire to humanity, having in his possession the Flame of the Fell God, which appears like the 3D orb of the sun. A merging of religious connotations on multiple levels, with a hint of the scientific in how the orb is reminiscent of the modern images that we can obtain of the sun and its corona. Element 61, Promethium, was so named at around the time that humankind first demonstrated the terrible power of the nuclear bomb. Radagon also rearranges to “and a Gor” - further emphasizing that Radagon was made in the image of a Creator and rose to be a “god” in his own right, in some fashion.

And that's neat, but "gor" is a versatile word and I think that it can be squeezed for more understanding of the nature of how Radagon modifies the conceptual Adam. In the German Ore Mountains dialect, "gor" means "refined" in the sense of metal or "cooked/ready for consumption" in terms of food. In Old Norse and Faroese it means "the old portion of food brought from the stomachs of ruminants to be chewed a second time". In Middle Welsh it means "over" or "next to". From Irish there are several along the lines of "to hatch, to heat, to burn, to inflame, to incubate, to brood". In Rohyngia it means "upwards" and in Slovene it means "do". Altogether, Radagon is not the base form of the first man, but one that has been grown and reiterated and improved upon over time. In German "gor" can mean "has agitated" or "has seethed". Seethewater Cave is found at the base of Mt. Gelmir filled with mushrooms and pests and deliberately sealed with two stonesword keys. What is sealed in this cave are items connected to the scarlet rot with which Radagon’s daughter Malenia is afflicted.

But there are still more meanings and I am going to go through every single one from Wiktionary. From Azerbaijani and North Kurdish there are "the grave/the afterlife". Radagon is man made in the image of his Creator, but what he is created for is to watch over an afterlife - hence the strong theming of death and graves in the Lands Between (and in Dark Souls and Bloodborne games as well, as will be apparent in the next paragraph - consider this a warning for spoilers ahead). In Old English "gor" means "dung" or "feces" and in Middle English "muck" or poetically a "weapon with a sharp point" like sword or spear, or the act of piercing with this weapon. Radagon is made in the image of his Creator that was a terrible god rooted in violent bullshit. This theming comes through strong in the Dungeater and Golden Tinged Excrement. And for a George RR Martin tie-in - see his novelette “Sandkings” which is a microcosm of this exact scenario. In Carribean Hindustani "gor" means "foot". How often is it a joke that Miyazaki loves rendering bare feet? In Armoured Core V the legs parts are named after mountains - characterized by solid foundations. In Elden Ring there is an interplay between various demigods who attempt to compensate for their failing feet. Feet are associated with deep roots and origins and agency and willpower.

For Welsh "gor" is a mutation of the word "cor" meaning "dwarf", "pygmy", "little urchin", "spider", "shrew". And this may perhaps be a hint to just how long FromSoft has known that they would be making a villain named Radagon. Because these can point directly to the oddly named Furtive Pygmy (a diminutive bald man who rather resembles Elden Ring's statues of man cultivating a single golden shoot from a tangle of sunflowers). Even a nod to "Patches the Spider" as he appears in Bloodborne, where Patches himself has been something of a multiverse traveler in FromSoft games dating back to Armored Core: For Answer (2008) and may even be a deliberate callback to a character from Shadow Tower Abyss (2003), and has himself been speculated to be a form of the pygmy. FromSoft has tended to work economically like this - if they find something deep in the catalog that they can call back to they will use it. In the anagram breakdown section below I can point directly to Kings Field (1994) as providing inspiration that was pulled all the way forwards to Elden Ring.

In Basque "gor" means "deaf". This synergizes well with the long-run running theme in FromSoft games that ringing bells allow communication with the past. It can even be seen in the title of the game - the Elden Ring. Because what is a man to do who is deaf and cannot hear the ringing? He must work through proxies - and the inherent drawbacks this has for communication. This theme of deafness comes into focus in Bloodborne with Ludwig the Accursed - who according to Occam's Razor is most likely named for Ludwig van Beethoven. It is from Ludwig that the FromSoft staple of the Moonlight Sword is received, and one of Beethoven's best known works is the Moonlight Sonata dedicated in 1802. Famously, from his late 20's and onwards - shortly after writing the Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven gradually lost his hearing and developed tinnitus (persistent illusory ringing), until he could no longer hear voices or music by 1812, but continued to compose even while on the edge of being totally deaf. An odd environmental occurrence early in the Old Hunters DLC is when a snail person drops from the sky, just before the whirligig saw pickup. The inner ear has the spiral shape of a snail shell. Bloodborne is more dense with bells than any other FromSoft game - I would hazard a guess that part of the madness of the Hunters is that they develop tone deafness and become unable to distinguish between the various beckons of bells that call them to hunt monsters and the ones that call to hunt fellow hunters.

And here's one more thought to shelve and see if it makes an appearance. There is at least one proper and complete name that I have extracted as an anagram: Gordana. It is a feminine Cyrillic name from the areas in and around present day Serbia and North Macedonia and from the word "gȏrd" meaning "proud". In the 300's BCE - at roughly the same time that Alexander the Great was active - present day Serbia was at the southern limit of the lands occupied by the Celts. Before the area was conquered by the Romans. It interests me that this name ends in the suffix "na". There is a quite large subset of names in Elden Ring with that suffix. And afterall, “burning the Erdtree is the first cardinal sin” which in the Catholic tradition is: pride.

Elden Ring and a Theory of Word Strings

And it can be said that this is all a matter of confirmation bias and that I am selecting meanings. Which is true. But I did spend a significant amount of time doing the research into the intersection of language, history and science that led to these conclusions. At risk of explaining badly (see acollierastro for an actual physicist's explanation), I think the point is that it's like String Theory of physics, but applied to word strings.

If I were to show an English speaker who has never engaged with Elden Ring a list of 400 anagrams ranging from "a dragon" to "a ag dr no" then there is a preference to latch on to the immediately identifiable word strings and dismiss the rest. It is only after experiencing the game and the many linguistic frameworks that it encompasses that the possibility for other significant word strings is revealed. To my understanding, string "theory" of physics is more of a validation tool for completing elegant math on already known parameters and outcomes. String theory is not predictive - and similarly the majority of word strings generated are likely meaningless. And so the 'Word String Theory of Anagrams' is - in the case of this one trickster character themed around mimicry - perhaps only useful as a way to validate character traits and connections that are otherwise intentionally obfuscated.

To tie the topic back to the contents of the game itself there is indeed a game item which alludes to String Theory, hiding in plain sight. In one of my previous posts I discussed the symbolism behind the Cracked Pot item with regards to physics Crackpots. Well, "String Theory" has generally proved to be an unsuccessful model of physics, such that anyone currently still taking it seriously as a "theory" rather than a mathematical tool might be described as a crackpot. The Roped Pot items in Elden Ring are not crafted with pot + contents + rope as one might expect, but instead with an item called string. String leaving behind it a trail of crackpottery.

String

Boasting no special qualities, this is merely a goodly length of string. Material used for crafting items. Often carried by demi-humans. Used to make certain items easier to use.

In fact, strings have always had a central importance in Elden Ring. The trailer for the original game showed fine strands of golden light strings trailing from Marika's Hammer, and DLC trailer has provided a recent reminder of the significance of "strings" in the narrative with the golden strands being manipulated by the central figure.

And words also have a power for those who are faithful. The Cipher Pata is a weapon retrieved from the Round Table Hold and is comprised of a string of words written in golden light.

Cipher Pata

One of the weapons originating from the Two Fingers. A formless sequence of ciphers comprise its blade, and as such no shield can repel it. Deals holy damage.

The furtive inscription appears to hang in the air; the language of light spoken by the Two Fingers.

Another significant component of this Theory of Word Strings is that it is also a multi-verse theory. Notice how I did not limit to just Elden Ring in the previous section discussing anagrams of Adan Gor. This is also tied directly back to the real-world reference point - providing a framework for the existence of multiverses was one of the things that people found exciting about String Theory.

Radagon Anagrams Examined

The first 3 anagrams were presented in such a way as to tie in directly with named characters in Elden Ring. Consider that a validation check or proof of concept. The remainder of these are used as launching points to discuss whatever concepts that I feel match most closely in Elden Ring and other FromSoftware games.

Several of these were previously covered in another post, but I browsed through a second time and enough more to add that for the sake of presentation I think that it's worth keeping the whole set in the text of this post.

"rand oga" - "rand" and "oga" are both Old English/proto-Germanic meaning altogether "on the edge of terror". As blacksmith Hewg says of Marika (who is Radagon): "The sheer terror of her…". In the deep FromSoft history, there was once a minor miner NPC character in King's Field (1994) called "Rand Ferrer" whose name means "on the edge of a blacksmith". Blacksmiths are creators, and have been explicitly equated in FromSoft games as the “Hands of God” at least dating back to Demon’s Souls, where blacksmiths Boldwin and Ed drop the fist weapons of this name.

"a dog ran" "a god ran" - the dog part is self explanatory as Radagon is described as a leal hound and here we see that Radagon was a dog god who fled - to borrow the language of Placidusax’ fled god. And there is a specific dog god who fits surprisingly well - Xolotl. From Aztec mythology, Xolotl is the dark personification of the planet Venus, which is the “gold star” in Japan. Also a god of fire (“heavenly fire”) and lighting, twins, monsters, misfortune, death, sickness, and deformities. The later half of that description fits well to the afflictions of Morgott/Mohg and Miquella/Malenia. Common depiction of Xolotl is as a dog headed man, sometimes with a blade in his mouth to symbolize death. This is echoed in the knife-dog design of the wolves of Radagon, but also the design of Gurranq. I am not certain if it is hearsay that Gurranq will place his blade in mouth when executing the Ground Rupture attack with both hands, but I do know that the Cinquedea dagger can be found after platforming below the Bestial Sanctum in Caelid and the item is sitting conspicuously posed in the open jaws of a broken beast pillar that has been knocked to the ground. Another feature of Xolotl depictions is to show him with empty eyesockets in acknowledgement of the time that Xolotl wept so much at the sacrifice of the gods required to start the motion of the newly created sun that his eyes fell out of their sockets. Every depiction of Radagon shows him with empty voids in the place of eyes, and this also extends to the depiction of 5 of the 6 stone imp masks obtainable in game - which are themselves evocative of the Aztec style of stone carving. Similar to the Norse god Loki (who I believe has many other parallels to Radagon), Xolotl is also characterized as a shapeshifter, and with his shapeshifting extends even further to becoming plants as well as animals. Conflating Radagon and Gurranq/Maliketh is something that I take for granted - after all Maliketh is the shadow of Marika and Marika is Radagon.

"Ra Dagon" - "Ra" Egyptian god of the sun and "Dagon" the principal deity of the ancient Middle Euphrates region. Also the Lovecraftian Dagon fish god thing. There is a dense mythology around the sun throughout FromSoft’s games and only the faintest hint of Egyptian mythology in places such as Oceiros (Osiris) the Consumed King of Dark Souls 3, the eye of Horus used as emblem for the LYNX pilot Joshua O’Brien in Armored Core 4, and the appearance of scarabs in Elden Ring. I am guessing that this is so that it is hinted but not immediately obvious that characters with their eye of Ra open - the left side eye, from perspective of onlooker - have a close connection to the sun and characters with their eye of Horus open - the right side eye - have a close connection to the moon. The Euphrates region is referenced directly in Elden Ring with the copy of the Imago Mundi at the feet of the bearded tree man statues found in underground areas. And then there is the Fishing Hamlet in Bloodborne which seems a nod to the Lovecraftian story of “Shadow over Innsmouth” in which the inhabitants are worshipers of Dagon - in this case with Kos taking the place of Dagon. Unpacking intent here will likely lead to circular logic, but a broad guess is that Dark Souls as a series examines the eclipsed sun in tandem with Bloodborne examining the eclipsed moon.

"naga d'or" - "naga" is Hindu meaning "a member of a race of spirits recognized in Hinduism and Buddhism that have mingled superhuman and serpent qualities, are genii of waters and rain, and live in a subaqueous kingdom", and "d'or" is French meaning "of gold". There is a particular snarl with the Naga, as with all living religions, that it is rather disrespectful to invoke them by name as a beast to be slain in a fantasy context. But there are still many ways to use the aesthetic without the name, such as in the case of Mytha the Baneful Queen from Dark Souls 2 - a silver serpent-woman perhaps as counterpart to an absent gold king. After looking beyond the specific hinduism lens, an example of a being with mingled superhuman and serpent qualities can be found in the story of Eglė the Queen of Grass Snakes who lends her name to the Temple of Eiglay. Eglė herself was no serpent, but her husband was King of the Grass Snakes and could transform back and forth between man and watersnake. In the abstract, the Elden Beast seems to exist in a plane of endless water and is a creature of the Golden Elden Ring. Though it is also tempting to guess that this might be a DLC payoff one.

"Ra Gonad" - Ra is god of all of the sky (and earth and underworld), not just the sun. Venus was born of the testicles of Uranus - god of the sky - thrown into the sea. The second phase of Malenia's fight is styled as an allusion to Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". So technically this one can work with Radagon as a link between his own father - the old god of the sky and/or sun - and his daughter Malenia.

"Agro DNA" - from the slang term "agro" meaning "aggressive". Perhaps that Radagon has an aggressive nature in his genes. He is something of a Beast.

"And Agro" - as in "Radagon and Agro" - the name of the horse from the Shadow of the Colossus (2005). Elden Ring similarly has the player form an attachment to horse. Notably, The Shadow of the Colossus was directly cited as an inspiration for Elden Ring. Perhaps even a response to it - that game is focused on preserving the life of a deceased maiden at all costs and has an inevitable grim conclusion at the end. In contrast Elden Ring lets the player choose wrong 5 out of 6 times, but there is still the 6th more hopeful choice once you learn to read developer intent - a choice that will try to break the cycle by moving past everything that has come before. Also, Elden Ring has 15 Remembrance Bosses in base game, which stops one short of the 16 Colossi that leads to that inevitable conclusion in SotC.

"Argo DNA" - Argo was the ship sailed by Jason to find the Golden Fleece. Note the golden sheep in the Altus Plateau area of Elden Ring. It is also the name of a gigantic constellation that was split into three parts in the modern day - thus Radagon's lineage is found in the stars. Afterall "It is said that long ago, the Greater Will sent a golden star bearing a beast into the Lands Between, which would later become the Elden Ring".

"Ag Ra don" "Ag adorn" - "Ag" is chemical short form for Silver, so "Ra dressed in silver", I suppose. One might recall that "Radagon" seems not to have been needed as an entity until going to Liurnia to confront a house of the moon (traditionally associated with silver). Also "Ag" derives from the French "Argent" and another major use of French that I've noted is in the name of "Seluvis" forming "se lu vis" meaning (probably with broken grammar) "To read one's own face".

edit: Perhaps donned silver in the sense of coated arms in the silver of skill to work memory stone. This being drawn from the Realm of the Elderlings.

"Argon AD" - "In the Year of our Lord, 18" - Argon was isolated in 1894 by William Ramsay ("Will I Am, Ram Say" - see Golden fleece above). It is element 18 on the periodic table and has a lavender/violet glow when placed in an electrical field, evocative of the visual used for gravity magic. Notable event in the year 18: "Winter – Germanicus Caesar arrives in Syria, as new commander-in-chief for the Roman East." I'm going to pull on Gideon Ofnir for this one, as he is partly named for the Germanic god Odin and also the visual of his intro screen echoes the opening of the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar: "lend me your ears, I come to bury Caesar". Much of Radagon’s concern in Liurnia seems to have been involved with refining the purple gravity magic, judging by the scholars who use in Rennala’s fight, the Alabaster Lord on the grounds, the hands using it at Caria Manor, and Radahn’s overall skill set. As mentioned in a previous post about Loki, it makes sense for Gideon to have also been around at the time.

"ad argon" - "Ad" is a Latin modifier as in the case of "ad absurdum" or "to the point of absurdity" and etc (much like this post!). "Argon" is a Greek word meaning "lazy" or "inactive". Overall perhaps stretches to "to the point of stagnation"

"Argon Da" - Argon is an obscure semi-canon character in Tolkein's Legendarium but his father is King Fingolfin who is known for wielding an icy sword called "Ringil" that he used to cut Morgoth's foot and cause him to be lamed (many characters in Elden Ring with this condition). In Elden Ring, the icy blade called the “Frozen Needle” is found in the Kingsrealm Ruins. Ringil is also the name of a mountain stream in the area called "Taur-en-Faroth" which was already discussed above, but an added note here would be that Fort Faroth is where Radagon's soreseals is found.

"A Angrod" - Another Tolkein reference - Angrod is the Sindarin form of “Angaráto” meaning “champion”. Thus “A Angrod” means “O Champion!”. The character Angrod belongs to the “Golden House of Finarfin” and is nephew of the previously mentioned Fingolfin. Radagon first appeared as a Champion of the Golden Order.

"A Do Rang" - FromSoft has a recurring thing about bells. "do" is a syllable used in the Solmization music scale: do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti. After "ti" the scale wraps back to "do" again for a full octave. So the "do" rings at the beginning and end, at the start and at the eighth note. Perhaps hints to Radagon's involvement with the 4 Belfries and the Mausoleum bells in Liurnia, at the eighth era corresponding to the octave. And it is an open question as to how many characters may have meaning embedded in their names relating to the musical scales. Dolorus could easily also correspond to the eighth. Farum to the fourth. Miquella to the 3rd and 10th.

"a DGN aro" - DGN is an representation of the Egyptian word meaning "dwarf" or "pygmy". "Aro" is Spanish for "ring". A pygmy ring. This one actually brings more to mind the Ringed City DS3 DLC, since that game also teases the Egyptian connection with Oceiros ("Osiris"). And the Ringed City being euphemistic of the City of Gold (the alchemical symbol for gold is a ring) that Spanish Conquistadors tried to find in the Americas.

"Aaron G-D" - Specifically Aaron Kosminski - a man who was one of many suspected of being Jack the Ripper, though never formally convicted. He suffered from aural hallucinations and was committed to a psychiatric facility for a separate event. I learned of these recently through the video "The Enduring Mystery of Jack the Ripper" by LEMMiNO. Three connections here to Bloodborne: 1) One of the questions of the Ripper was "does he or does he not have medical knowledge?", which suits the medical theme of Bloodborne presented by Charred Thermos. 2) Aural hallucinations. I find this to be a theme in Bloodborne where the various types of bells are representative of tinnitus (relating to Ludwig van Beethoven being afflicted with this - see "Adan gor" above). 3) Kos. Kosm-. Kosminski. In Yiddish "Kos" means "goblet" or "cup", and may have been an occupational name for someone who makes glasses or cups. Minski has meaning of "from Minsk" which is a city in present day Belarus. The Nemiga river that flows through Minsk was buried in the early 1900's (diverted through underground pipe culverts), and its name means in Lithuanian "the river that never sleeps". As for the "G-D" this aligns with one of the abbreviations of God commonly used in Jewish print, but keeping on the aural theme these are also musical notes.

"Rán goad" - Rán is a Norse goddess and personification of the sea. Her name has come up a few times in FromSoft's body of work ranging from Ciaran ("who is Rán?") to Ranni ("Rán not/Rán two"). A goad is an English word meaning "long pointed stick used to prod animals (typically cattle)", or a Scots word for "god", or Swedish for "had tricked someone to a place and then beat up or murdered them". Taking Ranni as a manifestation of Rán, this could allude to Radagon manipulating Ranni into the state of mind where she would want to carry out the dual assassination of Godwyn and herself. Note that Ciaran's Gold Tracer blade resembles the Blade of Calling that is held by Melina (with minor differences at the hilt), who herself is noted to have similarities to the Black Knife Assassins. It could simultaneously refer to a much older event that was alluded to with the cut mimic tear quest. In the abstract, the previous "Rán" was tricked into shedding her aspect of water and adopting the persona of a fire giant - a form of ego death or murder of self to appease a god of fire.

"a grand O" - oh Elden Ring

"a dragon" - I think that the Elden Beast is a fine example of a dragon. The dragon is also a symbol of the never-ending cycle of alchemy, as both prime materia and the end product. The dragon is endlessly splitting into brother and sister parts and recombining into the divine hermaphrodite - so says Carl Jung in CW12 "Psychology and Alchemy". And the connection that I make personally is that the red-haired Rand al'Thor as ‘The Dragon Reborn' is the main character of the Wheel of Time books (1990-2013), whose name means "on the edge of a god" because that's really just his whole character arc in a few words. What does it mean to be “The Dragon” in the Wheel of Time? This is revealed quite early, but in the kind of offhand way that only makes sense in hindsight: "The land is one with the Dragon, and he is one with the land". The Dragon is the amnesiac avatar of the Creator (in this case, the author) experiencing his own Creation. When the Dragon suffers the landscape physically undergoes a Breaking and years of chaotic weather patterns - but when he achieves balance he has the Deus Ex Machina power to cause improbable good fortune wherever he goes. The last obstacle at that point is to confront the Shadow that has been the source of the suffering - see Jung again. One of the two most significant supporting characters is a blacksmith named for the god Perun - another hammer wielding god that stands a lateral shift to the side of Thor. Although Thor may wield a hammer to protect or destroy, he is not known for craftsmanship - thus requiring another aspect in the blacksmith who completes acts of creation. There may be only one author avatar elevated above the rest, but all characters that an author creates are splinters of their own thoughts. See also above usage of “Rand Ferrer'' - my guess is that this is one of the deepest literary influences for everything that FromSoftware has ever produced.

Conclusions

I believe that the name of “Radagon” and only that one name is intentionally used as a cornerstone around which much of the worldbuilding was completed. For multiple games leading up to and including Elden Ring. I believe this because it is more interesting than the belief that all of these incredibly specific coincidences are unplanned. Radagon is the villain after all, and symbolic of all of the faults of the Lands Between. If there is one thing that anagrams are good for, it is generating fantastic nonsense, as in the supposed case of "Naga d'or" or "Argo DNA". It's a shortcut to creating a surprise twist ending. It might be said that FromSoft/GRRM went hard into making a web of cause and effect to justify the twist when working backwards with the knowledge of hindsight - but in the worst case I can see this being used as a crutch. Perhaps as a prompt generator by an author who isn't sure what to do with a character and uses anagrams to inject "noise" into an otherwise formulaic story. Rather than having considered psychologically motivated reasons for their actions, it would be a way to get a character to do something unexpected to generate drama. It strips away causality and meaning for the sake of "originality".

Unfortunately, words and literature are messier and more ambiguous than the mathematical models we use to describe the physical properties of the real world. I can suspect that at least some of the worldbuilding of Elden Ring was influenced by selecting anagram word strings and spinning meaning from them, but it is still is not an explanatory theory of everything. The flaw of string theory is that it cannot make predictions and cannot be proved. As much as FromSoft may pretend that Elden Ring exists in a parallel universe to all other game franchises that they have created in the spirit of the parallel worlds predicted by string theory (and I know that this is by no means a popular theory in the fandoms), that too is a lie. There is only one universe - the real world in which a videogame company creates fantastical worlds “from software”. Which is probably why the closest I've gotten to actually piecing together the FromSoft metanarrative is by consulting my absurd spreadsheet that lists the initial release date of basically every game made by FromSoft and tracks information and trends for each date - zodiacs, tarot, moon phase, etc.

The year 2007 corresponds to tarot #7 - The Chariot - which represents "overcoming challenges and gaining victory through maintaining control of your surroundings". In a move never seen before or since, the only two original IP's that FromSoft released in the year 2007 were word puzzle games called Nanpure VOW and Iraroji VOW. And since this is the year after the release of Armored Core 4 - for which I find the "Lynx" AC's to be referenced in the "Loux" of Hoarah Loux and thus correlated with Godfrey's rise to Elden Lord - the year of word games is perfectly positioned for the origin of 'Radagon' as an entity riddled with anagrams.

#elden ring #media analysis #fromsoftware metanarrative #this post does not support JK Rowling but for the sake of the arguments made (that Elden Ring is one-upping her on purpose) it was necessar #tbh I feel like the multiverse anagram thing is kindof like cryptography where the keyword for the encoding is “RADAGON”#I wonder if I should have mentioned Kryptos - I watched another video by LEMMiNO about that recently after writing most of this post

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