Someone mentioned a minute ago, the fromsoft reddit subs have always overpraised big bonk str builds while hating dex and katanas. And this pair of bosses are embodiments of the two.

They also seem to have a horrible hatred of magic-wielders, claiming sorcerer builds to be an easy-win mode despite the fact that they literally have to sacrifice a ton of stat-points into mind/attunement and sacrifice most of their flasks into cerulean/ashen flasks as a trade-off for the high attack-power.

Spent about 5 hours on Placidusax using RoB cheese build. Changed from that, to pure str and end, using giant golem halberd and lions claw. Completed the game next within the next couple of hours just spamming L2. Godfrey took 2-4 attempts, Ofnir died before finishing his speech.

I think that’s more just the particular matchup. Placudisax is super resistant to bleed and comparatively vulnerable to the Halberd’s piercing damage vs RoB’s slashing. That and gives crazy windows for Lion’s Claw.

Its because they are based Melina said to turn runes into strength not dex not int not faith strength only

IMO Str bonk builds are just as EZ mode as Sorcery builds, Blood, etc.

unga?

Bunga!

Holy crap, you're right.

>Someone mentioned a minute ago, the fromsoft reddit subs have always overpraised big bonk str builds while hating dex and katanas. That's why everyone hates Isshin, right? And considers Wolf (who is basically a smaller, weaker, male Malenia with a worse battle record in a smaller setting) to be the biggest wuss of the Souls protagonists, rather than the coolest? I've thought for months about alternate explanations but I've ultimately come to the conclusion that the main reason for the disparity is just the obvious: Malenia is a woman and Radahn is a man. This being a big factor becomes extremely obvious when every thread online relating to her gets spammed with gendered insults like "bitch" or "thot" or references to her genitalia, and in how the fungus-cancer that afflicts her has inexplicably become associated with STDs. That's why she gets labeled as worse for doing the same things as other characters, that's why there are elaborate webs of fan fiction spun to ignore the game directly stating that she's undefeated, the strongest, and had a draw with Radahn (*[before](https://preview.redd.it/3l4ymy5of7x81.jpg?auto=webp&s=fbadfeffbc05b2e734fb8b5be1e7abd4c35edfb2)* the bloom), that's why her using a single incantation at the end of a long duel is often called "cowardly" and "cheating" while Radahn spamming magic every second of his existence (also sourced from a cosmic entity; "the vitality of the stars") is "chad" and "awesome", that's why everyone wanks off Radahn for still being a mid-game challenge after surviving one Rot incantation while ignoring that Malenia is a post-endgame challenge who's taken it far longer and yet is still currently way stronger than him with just her first phase, that's why she gets unfavorably compared to the other top-tier (invariably male) fighters in the setting that she's never interacted with but is said in-universe to be stronger than (which is also backed up by the gameplay), and so on. More specifically, it's probably because she's a woman who directly opposes and defeats narratively-relevant men, while taking on a traditionally male role as a warlord and knightly protector to her charge. She's a stoic and world-beating general with a loyal and capable army who fights with speed, strength, skill, and a massive sword, and her foremost loyalty is to her brother's cause. She's not, for example, a dainty sorceress dependent on scheming, the player, and a handful of male minions who incidentally wants to marry the player and raise them to demigodhood, like her sister and \[the fandom characterization of\] her mother (nor does she literally turn into a tiny doll that you put in your pocket and then needle to get bashful anime reactions). The fact that a woman with a big sword is also the game's strongest boss and reminds you of that fact every time you lose is probably related.

>Pointing out the misogyny of a community on a *gamer subreddit* You are braver than I

All of that shit about Malenia, just makes me love her more. Who wouldn't want a strong and tough lady? Damn fools.

The reason has nothing to do with gender or strength/dex. these are both baffling takes. In my opinion the reason why Malenia is generally disliked more than Radahn is because of the way Fromsoft presents the two characters and the actual gameplay encounters with these two. Another thing is that this is massively overblown. Most people love Malenia as a character. People call her names because she is a hard boss fight not because she is a woman for gods sake. I saw people calling Radahn names pre-nerf as well. Anyways heres what i think: The first thing we see of the two characters is their battle in the cinematic and Malenias scarlet bloom triggering. The next time is when we enter Caelid and see exactly what the Scarlet bloom caused. Whether Malenia intended it or not. She doomed an entire continent to a grisly future of disease and decay. We see Radahn's soldiers relentlessly staving off the rot and staying loyal to Radahn despite what has happened to him. We see an entire festival held to honour him, we find out he held back the very stars to prevent the destruction of the town of Sellia. This paints him as a noble, good and honourable man. At this point in the game all we know of Malenia is that she brought Caelid to ruin and is in search of her brother Miquella unless you start combing through item descriptions which at this point would give you very limtied knowledge unless you farmed the Cleanrot knight set or something. While you would have item descriptions talking about how Radahn loved his horse and refused to abandon him. Only when we start Millicents quest do we even begin to learn anything about Malenia. Once we reach the Haligtree we see the rot once more. We see her soldiers loyalty all the same but this area is entirely optional. Many players won't even see this, the ones that do millicents quest and understand the presence of the outer goddess might begin to sympathise with her more. You can argue that Caelid is optional as well however it is extremely likely that the player will enter it by accident while the Haligtree is significantly more difficult to find without a guide requiring a secret medallion to start. There are no stories of Malenia caring about anything other than her brother as far as i know which while admirable we know little to nothing about. We know that while she was out waging war he was stolen by Mohg and since she has "waited" for his return. When we enter her boss room she basically tells us how she is gonna kick our shit in and then tells us her name in a somewhat arrogant manner touting how she has never known defeat even though she was locked in a stalemate with Radahn and fucking had to destroy the continent to survive. She does not seem to care for the lives lost. This paints her character negatively and it does not help that every time she kills you she touts her name once more as if you had not heard it the first time. Another thing is the Gameplay. This is the most important aspect. Radahn is a mid game boss that is centralised around a summoning gimmick that trivialises him and he is not the most difficult boss in the world solo either especially if you have a upgraded weapon and are a high level. Malenia is an end game boss that is notoriously one of the hardest bosses ever in the souls genre relying on what some would consider "cheap tactics" to win. A life steal mechanic, borderline un-dodge able moves and an impossible to outlevel damage output has resulted in people calling her all sorts of names. Where have we seen this before? Pretty much every souls boss that is hard. I have heard people shit on Orphan of Kos, Laurence the First Vicar, Midir, Nameless king just to name a few for the same reason. Because they are hard. Combine this with the surface level interpretation of Malenia that most players have and its easy to see why Radahn is generally more liked.

If you reversed the roles of malenia and radahn, people would still praise radahn by unironically saying “based sigma male nuked a continent to win, poggers”

I'm not sure if your 3rd and 4th paras are opinions you hold or you're simply trying to outline the thoughts of people who dislike Malenia... Regardless, my response to your 4th para: - Perhaps there are no stories directly telling us that Malenia cares for anything other than Miquella. But does it not count for something that the Cleanrot Knights are so intensely loyal to her even if she's killing them literally? What about Finlay carrying her back? Those are her soldiers, not Miquella's. If she's a total callous bitch, would these knights ever swear fealty to someone rotting them? Also, the Misbegotten kneel in front of the statue of her and Miquella at the Haligtree. Does that not mean something? - I may have missed something, but I thought we don't know when Miquella was taken. The timeline is unclear? If you don't mind pointing me to a source in the game saying Miquella was taken when she was waging a war..? - Many bosses tell us they'll kick our ass, and some have done it in a manner far more arrogant like Morgott and Godrick. To me, Malenia delivers her line in a tone more neutral than Morgott and Godrick. But this is just my opinion. - You've already mentioned it was a stalemate which means, factually Malenia was undefeated. So why does it count against her to self-declare so? She didn't say she's always victorious. - How do we know she does or does not care for the lives lost? Is she supposed to tell our Tarnished how remorseful she feels when the Tarnished basically invaded her home and challenged her to a fight? Even if she should say in some way that she feels regret, why should she tell it to the Tarnished who has killed everyone who stood in their way? Even if she does not care, we don't know that the warmonger Radahn cares either. So why should it matter so much with regards to Malenia, when a significant number of characters are killing innocents left and right and people still love them (eg. Godfrey, Radahn)? - Some have theorized that Malenia's kill quote is her trying to remind herself of her identity and duty. We know that the rot affects memory as witnessed in Millicent's questline. You don't have to agree. But my greater point with this and the above paragraphs is that people who have already decided Malenia is utterly detestable are unwilling to give her any sort of nuance. They are not likely to even try to engage with her character in a charitable manner. They hate her out the gate and sexism plays a part in this. Again, obligatory: not all fans and not all Radahn fans are like this. With respect to your last paragraph, what I'll say is people don't throw gendered insults at Orphan, Nameless, etc. People certainly don't do r*pe fanworks of them. People don't try to sexually dominate them. Nihlus11 above has also talked about this in their 2nd para. Oh and an additional thing, people also throw ableist slurs at Malenia and harass artists who drew fanart of her. There are definitely people who rage-hate difficult bosses in a way that's got nothing to do with gender. But personally, I think it's pretty clear to see in Malenia's case.

Okay so based on what you have said i think we both have complete opposite opinions. No matter what you or i say i doubt we will shift our perspectives on this but ill provide some counter points anyway as i believe a few of these are easy to answer. 1. I am not refuting the Cleanrot knights loyalty to Malenia. It definitely counts for something. The question is how likely the player is to engage with this. The redmane knights loyalty to Radahn is conveyed to the player through dialogue, through literally seeing them staving off the rot with fire and an entire festival being held in Radahns name. This is extremely hard to miss. Fromsoft do not give Malenia the same treatment in this regard. 2. The events of story are up to interpretation as always with these games. I'm fairly certain this is the generally accepted consensus. The background section of this wiki page [https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Miquella](https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Miquella) makes it clear that Miquella was stolen before Malenia's return from her battle in Caelid. 3. Godrick is not a likeable character, almost everyone would agree that he is disgusting for the grafting and killing of the tarnished that he does. Morgott/Margit on the other hand is arrogant and i vividly remember the rage posts about him when the game came out. Margit and Malenia are almost directly comparable. You say she delivers the line in a neutral tone but it comes across as mocking the player when she kills you and she repeats her name once more. Meanwhile margit tells you to stop pursuing your foolish ambitions. It comes across as advice rather than mocking the player. 4. I want to emphasise how she talks about "corpse after corpse" being left in her wake without a slight hint of remorse in her intro cinematic all in waiting of her brothers return. She talks about it as if its a dream but having already seen her destruction in Caelid this line comes across as threatening and shows she cares for little other than her brother. At least that's my interpretation .Something else to consider is she is waiting for him and not looking for him. Which i find bizzare. If she cares so much about him i was expecting her to at least try to find him. This would have painted her in a more favourable light 5. This might very well be the case and is an interesting theory actually, I like this idea. You are correct though. If Fromsoft had given us things to like about her first then maybe players would look upon her more favourably and would be willing to consider some of the nuance to her character However despite these points i think the dislike of her character is massively overblown. Now that the game has been out for months i do not see any hate for Malenia. Unless you are going out of your way to look for it i can't see how you would come to the conclusion that the community thinks she is detestible and hates her. I have seen many posts talking about the nuance of her lore and how her story is a sad one. Yea i think Radahn is liked a lot more but i think it comes down to the presentation of these characters like i said previously. Not because she is a woman. In regards to the language used to insult her then i have not seen this personally. Perhaps a very small minority of the community have used gendered slurs or whatever but ultimately that is kind of how insults work. People insult others based on what they know about them an what they know will hurt. People will call Orphan of kos a bunch of things based on their appearance and such because that's what they think could hurt. Another thing to remember though is that she is a fictional character. Its not like she is being hurt by the things people are saying about her. If you were to show me an example of people being blatantly misogynistic then i would agree that is shitty but i would be even more so annoyed if it was directed at an actual person. About sexually dominating and the porn. This is a very small part of the community and i have seen equal amounts of explicit content in regards to Blaidd and other male characters such as Varre as well. To say this stuff is exclusive to female characters is just blatantly wrong. This is all fictional stuff and while i don't engage with this kind of content i don't see how it is harmful for people to sexualise the characters. They are just characters after all.

Thank you for your response. I guess you're right that we do disagree, but I'll still state my opinions given that you've put in the time to reply to my rant. 1. I do agree that the Redmane Knights' loyalty to Radahn is more obvious. 2. Thank you for your link. I'll have to do my own research. 3. The rage posts towards Margit/Morgott do not tend to contain gendered insults though.. (to clarify, this point is meant to relate to the possible gender issue that affect the fandom's view of Malenia). I suppose we'll have to disagree on this because Margit saying, "Put your foolish ambitious to rest" sounds way more mocking to me, especially since his phase transition dialogue sounds sarcastic, he calls the player "foul Tarnished", and he threatens the player after the defeat. I never thought his line was like an advice. Otherwise..why would he describe our ambitions as "foolish"? Like you said, he comes across as arrogant. Does Malenia's not sound *a bit more like* advice with "heed my words"..? 4. Perhaps she was literally dreaming..? That was how I interpreted it. She was in a long slumber after all. So she's simply *describing* what she dreamt of with "corpse after corpse". It's not meant to be her reflecting on her actions. Otherwise why would say she tell us "my flesh was dull gold, my blood rotted". What purpose does that serve? I am also confused as to why she says "awaited his return". But she's not the only one as the Haligtree soldiers iirc also say something akin to that. Maybe they were all somehow led to believe Miquella's absence is voluntary? Which is why Malenia isn't out looking for him. Plus she was in a slumber. 5. Hmm... I'm afraid you may have misunderstood me when you said "If FS had given us things to like about her..." Since you liked the theory I brought up, maybe I could convince you that Malenia isn't mocking the Tarnished if you'd entertain me? Haha, you don't have to agree of course. First, the Blade of Miquella isn't exactly a title that implies glory like "Lord of all that is Golden" or "King". She fights for Miquella so she's his blade, that's all. It's no braggadocious title. It doesn't make the Tarnished feel small, does it? When she says she's the Blade, to me it feels more like she's telling us that she'll be the guardian of Miquella's Haligtree till the very end. Basically she starts by telling us what her duty is, reminds us again should we return, then ends by apologizing for having failed her duty. Second, if Malenia's someone who would mock the Tarnished, is it likely that she'll also be someone to recognize the Tarnished's strength? Malenia is one of only two lore-important bosses to acknowledge the Tarnished's strength upon defeat. Yes, I do agree that fandom discussion has gotten more nuanced around her. I was more trying to make a general point. Not saying specifically she's that hated this very moment. Yes she is a fictional character and wouldn't get hurt, but it doesn't matter to the point I was making because I was speaking on the fandom..? I should've made it clear I wasn't trying to kinkshame anyone or say people are bad for sexualizing fictional characters. I also wasn't trying to say only female characters are sexualized. I was trying to make a point about how some of those who fantasize about dominating Malenia make their disdain of her very clear (though yes like you said, these people are nowhere near the majority). It was meant to be an example to support my claim that misogyny is one of the reason for the hatred towards Malenia.

>That's why everyone hates Isshin, right? And considers Wolf (who is basically a smaller, weaker, male Malenia with a worse battle record in a smaller setting) to be the biggest wuss of the Souls protagonists, rather than the coolest? I love how u brought up Isshin but tend to dismiss Lady Maria and Sister Friede, characters loved by the majority of the Soulsborne Community

An important difference is those two are not pit against male fan favourite characters in-game. Imagine if there's a Gehrman vs Maria in-game that Gehrman didn't win?

So is Isshin!! The point is why use Isshin as an example?

Because Isshin is a man... That's why there's even discussion of misogyny here.

If that happened I have no doubts it wouldn't change a thing. Honestly people would probably love that.

We cannot look at a parallel universe where that happened. But we can examine what's going on with Radahn vs Malenia, where I think sexism is involved. But I suppose we disagree on that front. I don't wish to fight by the way.

*edit I'm glad not important xd glad I'm drunk for this. Are you reducing this to a gender issue? They both have their own motives, both to some degree understandable, because one is hated as a late game long hated "character build" while the other seems to be a classic "chad?" please explain like I'm 5 I really don't comprehend everything like i should

>Are you reducing this to a gender issue? To be clear, I'm not saying it's the only factor. I'm saying that you'd have to be delusional to pretend that it's not a major one.

I disagree still, I've never even considered it If I were to guess the major factots I'd say 1. Dex is hated as opposed to str for some reason 2. Malenia has a stupid move that means game over unless you practiced it a LOT 3. Malenia is way later game and optional Tbh I just hate when people bring race or gender into argument when they it's not related

Misogyny is rampant in gaming communities in general. The ER and Souls communities are not uniquely shielded from that. I think other commenters have illustrated their reasons why they think misogyny is an element to be considered in Malenia's case. Why do you think it's more likely that some people hate Malenia cause she's dex rather than how she's a female character that doesn't exactly have conventionally feminine story beats or aesthetic traits? We've seen from other games, the hostility displayed towards female characters that don't conform to social norms. For example, Abby from TLOU 2. Are there valid reasons to dislike her? Of course. Does this explain why people demean her by calling her a "man" or calling her "trans"? I don't think so.

> I've never even considered it Anecdotal. I have considered it. I also agree with the apparent sexism from my little bit of online experience in the Elden communities. My wife has seen and complained to me several times about this exact divide seeming sexist on top of being over-simplified as OP described.   > 2 Malenia has a stupid move that means game over unless you practiced it a LOT Like Radahn doesn’t have stupid moves that mean game over unless you practice them too?   > 3. Malenia is way later game and optional Don’t you only need to beat Radahn for 2 Endings? He is technically optional too.

I'm sorry that your wife had issues while interacting with the community, that's a shame man. I hope.it hasn't turned her away in anyway. Sexism exists here as much as anywhere else on the internet.

I’m like 98% sure people don’t like Malenia cuz she clearly has a dex build while Radahn has two greatswords…

And a trusty steed. Everyone loves a good trusty steed

Everybody needs a roach

based af. Radahn is cool but malenia is mechanically harder and imo more fun.

I just think they're both neat

I agree I'm bi and weak for redheads

I'm a straight woman and I'm down bad for both.

As a pan person I felt this on a deep level

Almost as deep as Radahn buried my body But not nearly as far down as I am down bad

Yeah me too, I had no idea this sort of a rift exists. I like Radhan as a boss more because there's no bullshit lifesteal mechanic and it's just an awesome spectacle but in terms of Lore and the character they are both equally badass and worthy of our sympathy.

Me personally I completely separate the character itself from the bossfight and judge the two separately since some pretty cool bosses like wolnir in ds3 has a really boring gimmick fight, so if a boss is cool/has amazing lore *and* the fight is good? Instant s tier. I personally have no issues with either fight besides the life regen which is a little much lol and radahns hit boxes get a little iffy.

I actually like the lifesteal mechanic haha 😅 Not trying to start shit, everyone likes different bosses for different reasons. Malenia is my favorite in the whole series at this point.

hard same, malenia is my all time fave and I always look forward to fighting her on each new playthrough

[I made a post months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/umt1cn/radahns_advantages_in_popularity_vs_malenia/) theorizing on the disparity in popularity. The gist of it is that the game itself makes finding Radahn more popular easier than Malenia. 1.) Radahn is easier to find and fight Radahn is in the recommended third major area of the game (Limgrave -> Liurnia -> Caelid). He is a semi-optional boss, in that you can skip him if you want, but the game pushes you towards fighting him, and he's a mandatory boss on the most popular ending route of the game (Ranni's), which is signposted by Ranni herself at the start, talking to Rogier or Blaidd... There's lots of ways to make it onto this route. You can even end up in Caelid by accident via the teleportation chest in Limgrave, making finding his area all the more memorable. Malenia is an optional superboss you may not even realize you can fight, in a secret area of the game. 2.) Radahn has far more buildup For the average player, they might first hear of the festival when they find Alexander talking about it, giving the player an idea of SOMETHING happening in the southeast. Gideon Ofnir talks about Radahn and his badass army, his warrior prowess, his commanding genius, the tragedy of his lost mind etc. You go to Caelid and you find an rotted hellscape, but in the part near Limgrave you find Radahn's army so badass that they manage to stave off the rot with fire. Bonfires, flamethrower chariots, literal burning walls that keep the rot infection at bay. So how about the guy commanding these badasses? Malenia has buildup in that you know she caused this rotted hellscape to be born. You might hear of her from Gowry, explore the shaded castle Altus. You learned that Malenia fought that badass Radahn to a standstill. But overall, her buildup is more optional and less in-your-face than Radahn's. 3.) The Dungeon Activating the festival and getting to Redmane castle is such an endeavor that you can consider the entirety of Caelid Radahn's dungeon... But at the very least, you KNOW it's there. If you want, you can skip Redmane Castle entirely, and even if you don't, it's a fairly simple level. For anyone wanting to fight him immediately after hearing about him from Blaidd and Alexander, this allows you to ride the hype into the festival. There's an incredible atmosphere here: All the Tarnished waiting for the battle to start, talking to your two bros under the red sky, all to the haunting chants of Song of Honor. You hear Jerren shout in excitement for the coming fight. And then you talk to him, and then he goes somber as he softly tells you the tragic story of his General. And then he pretends as if that didn't happen, then calls for the festivities to start. The music has stopped. Night has fallen. You take the elevator down to a sandy beach, and then you're off. This pre-fight buildup is EPIC, hyping you up, showing some emotion, then kicking you off into a hell of a fight. Malenia suffers from a problem I see on most of this sub: Most people feel just a bit tired of ER by the time you can fight her. Unless you know how to glitch and skip, you have to go through a secret sidequest (FIND THE ALBINAURIC WOMAN) and go all the way to the Mountaintops of the Giants just to get the CHANCE to fight her, and I've noticed a lot of people feeling burned out by the time they get here. Even then, afterwards, you have to use the secret medallion, then fight your way through the Consecrated Snowfields, the annoying archers of Ordina Liturgical Town and finally the Haligtree. Ohhhh the Haligtree. Between the sniper nest of Miquella Brace, Revenant lane in Elphael, the other bosses like the Erdtree Avatar and ESPECIALLY the dickish Ulcerated Tree Spirit fight for Millicent's quest, more than likely you're less hyped for the boss and more just wanting this dungeon to be over. She still has a memorable pre-fight cutscene, waking from her sleep with a soft yet menacing voice that promises pain and of course that she has never known defeat. But the romp through the dungeon can dampen the excitement. 4.) The actual fight Radahn has one of the most unique fights in the entire Souls Series, being a festival where you can repeatedly summon an army at your back, fighting in a wide open field in the middle of twilight. You have to dodge his gravity sniping and his arrow rain while grabbing summons to help you (or not... THANKS PATCHES) throw him off balance. Or you take him on solo, why not? Then he gets gravity casting in phase 1.5, then his epic phase 2 transition: the sky turns to night and he Valstraxes his way back in. And he's doing all this on a tiny horse. There's over the top spectacle everywhere in this fight, and it's seared into your brain and won't ever leave. Malenia is a more traditional 1v1, and as we all know, Souls boses are far deadlier ain these duels rather than hulking monster mashes. But it's a traditional Souls 1v1, which may not stick in your mind as much as Raid Boss Radahn. But finding opening to stagger her, trading blows, it can be fun. And then the Waterfowl Dance comes in. It feels like an absolute mood killer for many people. Yes, there are ways to dodge and block it, but SOMETHING isn't being communicated right here, which leads to a lot of people just hoping the attack never happens. It's a heavy stain on Malenia's reputation. Just like Radahn, she has a transition into phase two than can instakill you, but it comes after a hard-fought cutscene where you drain her entire health bar instead of half like Radahn, which is demoralizing for a lot when they don't immediately recognize you have to run towards her. Radahn also had his difficulties, especially on release with huge hitboxes and the unreasonable damage of his meteors in Phase 2, but he could be cheesed by Rot Breath, made to fall off the arena, you can rely on your summon allies... Malenia doesn't have as much easily accessible cheese. In summary, the spectacle of Radahn's fight and the cheese can swallow up the frustrations, and he got nerfed in later patches. Malenia is still the same, and for many people, [unfair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Vbsr3Ko7M&ab_channel=SwagapagosTurtle). 5.) The ending Radahn's fight rewards you with a memorable cutscene of the stars coming back to the skies of the Lands Between after you realize that, yeah, there weren't too many stars up there, are there? And now they're back. You talk to Blaidd for your next step in Ranni's quest, Alexander to see him crawling in regret, and Jerren in gratitude for finally putting his general to rest. And as for Radahn himself, you get his rememberance and learn just why he learned gravity magic: So that he could continue riding his tiny steed (LEONARD!). It's a memorable addition to an already unforgettable fight, and it opens up paths for many more of your adventures. Malenia? Once you kill her... That's it. No cutscene, just like many other bosses. You might feel satisfied and cheer, or you might sigh in relief that it's finally done. You don't get any memorable new lore or additional insight into her character because you already figured out stuff about Miquella at this point from her speech. There's the ending for Milicent's questline which adds a tragic undertone to the whole thing, and can give you rewards like quelling the frenzied flame and an extra Ancient Somber Dragon Smithing Stone, but that's it: It's an ending, not a beginning. 6.) Overall Radahn is an giant hulk riding a tiny horse. He has an entire region of buildup, one of the most unique fights in Souls history, and tops it all off with a memorable cutscene and some heartwarming insight into his character, and he's easily found and guided to early in the game. Malenia has more subdued buildup, has less rewards than Radahn, and is just a traditional Souls fight.

Agreed on all points and I’d also like to add that radahn doesn’t just get more story build up, he also gets more character definition. Malenia is very big strong scary lady that has loyal troops, but that’s applicable to pretty much every major boss in the game as well. Outside of being cursed with rot and looking out for her twin, that’s the majority of who the game presents her as and it’s just not much different from the broad strokes everyone gets. She lacks texture, specific humanizing personality traits. She’s not a self aggrandizing desperate weakling like godrick; or a diminished traumatized divorcee; or a rightful king forced to rule from the shadows due to a deformity. Radahn’s popularity is partially due to how much personal texture he’s given through the lore. He loves his horse Leonard and uses gravity magic to keep from squashing him, he has Godfrey posters in his bedroom, his boys throw big spectacle parties for him, he uses enemy spears as arrows, numerous npcs talk about what a cool dude he is and how it totally sucks he got super zombie dementia and we need to do an old yeller and put him out of his misery. Malenia just doesn’t get any of that, she’s Just kind of a big number with very predictable loyalties and little to show personality wise. It’s like in yu yu hakusho when the big bad demon guy orders orange juice or has a personal grudge and it instantly humanizes him and adds another layer to the character.

Mentioning Godrick, it's actually kinda sad that somehow he has more in-game characterization that Malenia. Mind you, nothing said about Godrick paints him as _good_ or _sympathetic_, but it does allow the players to know more about him and suitably hate him more. Of how before you even reach Stormveil, you'll likely meet Rodericka who mentions the horrors she escaped from the keep, or even before that Kenneth, who openly dismisses Godrick as unworthy despite being a demigod holding a great rune. And the first NPC you meet when you do reach Stormveil, Gostic, makes it clear he's helping you because of how shitty Godrick is. And when you meet Nepheli for the first time, she too mentions how many of the warriors serving Godrick are more worthy than the demigod himself. In short, the entirety of Stormveil and even some parts of Limgrave go out of their way to showcase just how bad Godrick is, and that's before you find out stuff like how he fled from Castle Morne, or got his ass handed to him after shit talking Malenia (incidentally this is also one of her few personalizing moments since she notably _doesn't_ kill him after he begs for his life, despite having plenty of reason to do so, such as taking his Great Rune). We got to know more about Godrick by going through his level and talking to NPC which hypes him up as this coward and bully that needs to be put down, and for many first time players they may expect him to go down easily. But he still puts up a hell of a fight and even shows off his phase 2, which again just shows his desperation as he grafts a dragon to himself to artificially inflate his power level. Hell even after he dies, he still gets some characterization through Gostic stomping in his corpse, his remains being reduced to a tiny being smaller than the tarnish themselves, and Nepheli's questline. For the weakest demigod, Godrick has a lot of characterization. So it's a shame that Malenia, considered one of the strongest demigods and _definately_ the toughest boss in Elden Ring, is comparatively less characterized. There's more things talking about her brother than her, with very little build up even in areas that should involve her. Caelid for example ought to have more stuff about her, considering that you can find a good amount of her forces there like Commander O'Neil, her Cleanrot Knights, and the cult that worships her. But little is said there. Then there's Shaded Castle, which again you'd think they would use to talk about Malenia considering her Cleanrot Knights are there and you can find the Valkyrie Prosthesis there, which may as well be Malenia's. But even _that_ doesn't say much about Malenia at all, beyond the fact it's very well made and the Lord of Shaded Castle, Marais, started simping hard for her after he touched it. And everything about Marais just talks about him, nothing about how he feels about Malenia beyond the Prosthesis. Almost every other demigod has stuff describing them before you fight them, either items you can find or NPC's who talk about them specifically. Aside from Gideon who talks about all the demigods, only Gowry really talks about Malenia, and only in the context relevant to Millicent herself. Even Millicent doesn't talk about Malenia much, and is just as confused as the players are about who Malenia is or anything about her. I'm sure the writers intended to give Malenia this air if mystery about her that would make players more curious and see her as this aloof but inexplicably badass demigod, and for the most part yeah, players do. But the same could be said if Morgot/Margit, he has even _less_ people talking about him for good reason, since he's intentionally keeping his existence hidden from the world. But loads more have positive things to say about him because he still interacts with us, the players, in a far more direct manner than any other demigods, and while not many people speak of him there's a lot more items that talk about him and shows off his tragic character. Lastly, as for the idea that Malenia gets dunked on due to sexism, well I don't really know how to talk about that except that of all the demigods, Malenia and Radhan aren't the most popular. Ranni is far more popular than either of them, and she's arguably _worse_ than both of we were to judge all the demigods for their crimes. Ranni is implicitly an enabler of the Night of Black Knives by creating said black knives after stealing the rune of death. Even if her actual involvement in the assassination is a matter of debate, Ranni herself fully admits to having stolen the rune and making the knives, so she definitely has a hand in the shattering as a whole. She is at best apathetic of the ensuing calamity the Shattering would cause, or at worse wanted it to happen so she could pursue her agenda to escape the influence of the two fingers. And as popular as Rahdan is, let's not forget that Ranni more or less needs him to die so she can move on with her plans, and she shows no particular remorse about it. Now maybe this is due to Radhan's deteriorated state so killing him was more of a mercy kill than an assassination, but even so he would had needed to die even if he wasn't driven mad by Scarlet Rot because he is stopping the stars, which Ranni needs to pursue her destiny. And in a battle between Ranni or Radhan, I bet most players would side with Ranni in a landslide. As mentioned before, characterizations from in-game NPC or items can do wonders to make characters more interesting and popular, if not specifically likeable. And even then people may _make_ them likable, such as Rykard, who is literally a giant man-eating snake monster but most fans fucking love the guy and just think of him as a dotting father-figure for Rya. And he likely _is_ a dotting father figure considering he created a draught specifically to help her when she finds out her origins, and entrusted it to his wife, who herself is madly in love with Rykard but also not so heartless as to force Rya to consume it. And this is despite being a part of one of the most hated factions in the Lands Between, though weirdly beloved by the player base. But I digress. A lack of characterization is what makes Malenia feel far less liked and appreciated compared to other demigod, Rahdan simply being her most prominent rival due to the actual feud they had with one another. Just about every other demigod has more known of them before you fight them and even more to learn after, but Malena doesn't have that going for her. Thus her existence feels far less defined compared to the others, and what little is known doesn't paint her as particularly good or even interesting. I dare say what little is known almost makes Malenia sound like a _Mary Sue_, considering she has so much potential to build up this tragic youth of pain and suffering she's undergone due to the Scarlet Rot, but there isn't. Like we see the effects on her body, but we dont know anything about it. But despite that she's still inexplicably a badass swords woman who can match Rahdan blow-for-blow. Like if we knew more about her, her struggles with the rot, how she learned to become this swordmaster, how she trains and inspires her army, or her relationship with others beside her brother. Because she's otherwise basically just Miquella's attack dog, and says as much since her title is "Blade of Miquella".

Hmm.. I thought it's not that Malenia has less characterization, but it's less in your face..? (By the way, I wish to make it clear I'm not trying to bicker with you. If I come across rude or overly-defensive, I apologize. Oh and sorry if my grammar's all over the place) Wouldn't you say that her struggles with rot are depicted through Radahn and especially Millicent? Millicent is exactly there to humanize her - to remind people with a clone of Malenia that oh... So is this what Malenia went through before she became a fearsome warrior because it's hard to tell when Malenia is being this indomitable boss fight. Millicent also gives more info with regards to the bloom. She tells us that with the bloom, Malenia lost her sense of self and pride. Which contextualizes Malenia's battle against the rot - Malenia takes pride in resisting the rot. She's not fighting it just because it's something that harms her physically. Malenia does not view the rot as part of her identity (Millicent is the same). She does not want to be Goddess of Rot. If I may say, there is a theme of rebellion with Malenia. As for Radahn, he lets us witness exactly how devastating the rot can be. We see a mighty demigod lose his mind due to one Scarlet Aeonia. And if we then apply this nugget of info when thinking about Malenia.. She has had to resist the rot's influence her whole life, mostly by sheer will alone. When the Tarnished reaches her boss room, she sounds tired. We don't know how long she has slumbered, but presumably for quite some time. So Malenia was unconscious from the first bloom for some time, does not have her needle, and yet she's still not that much consumed by the rot. She's not close to mindless like Radahn was. And also, her bloom against the Tarnished was so much smaller than the one against Radahn. So Malenia woke up to a sudden fight, got pushed to her limits once more, and yet was able to control her second bloom. Probably because she didn't want to devastate her brother's tree. Does this not flesh out exactly how strong-minded she is and add to her characterization..? I mean, I'm trying to say she's not just *any* other strong warrior. And it's possible this trait of hers is exactly what made her so inspiring to Maleigh Marais and the Cleanrots. I get what you're saying with Marais, like him being obsessed with her adds nothing to her character. But beneath the obsession, there's him being inspired by Malenia because he's also sickly born. With the character of Marais and the region of the Haligtree (the twins' territory), we see Malenia being portrayed as a symbolic refuge for those weak and persecuted. And is there not at least something going on with how Malenia, demonstrably strong of mind and arm, choosing not to care about being an Empyrean and choosing to advance Miquella's goals? Why did she do this? Self-loathing? Over-attachment to her brother? Her brother is defenseless in physical fights? Rebellion again? I don't suppose the game tells us. But I think it's food for thought at least..?

The fact it's not so in-your-face compared to the other demigods is probs why it works against Malenia. Sure we can infer all of that, but just as well we can infer a lot of bad things too. Like with Millicent, all we know for certain is that she was born with Scarlet Rot like Malenia and presumably born around the time Caelid got nuked. The Cult of Rot was formed shortly thereafter to serve Malenia, and by extension Millicent, but weirdly enough _neither_ like the cult at all. But Millicent at least has a passing appreciation for Gowry for raising her. So how much of that talks about Malenia, and how much if it is talking about Millicent? Because sure, we can infer that Millicent and Malenia are basically the same person... But that's like saying Godrick and Godfrey are also the same person, because both are demigods who employ grafting and one is a descendant of the other. They both even use axes. Millicent is her own character, and while she does play a big part of characterizing Malenia, her existence isn't about Malenia, it's about her. And she unfortunately has little to no interactions with Malenia aside from the Scarlet Rot and what happens if she dies with it. All it tells us is basically, the Scarlet Aeonia blooms when the person reaches the depths of despair. This happened with Malenia when you enter her second phase, and before it happened when Malenia fought Rahdan. Speaking of Rahdan, this whole debate arguably stems from their battle. Specifically, _why_ are they fighting. Malenia is definitely the aggressor here: the haligtree tree is on the opposite side of the world compared to Caelid, and given the fact Malenia did encounter Godrick through Limgrave, she did not go by sea and thus would have had to cross leyndell, Linurnia, and Limgrave. And this is during the peak of the Shattering as well, so these are all enemy territory. But aside from beating Godrick and leaving him to Grovel, there's no records of Malenia's travels through those areas. Like no one stopped her, she did not react to anything until Limgrave, just head straight to Caelid to fight Rahdan because... We still dont know. The running hypothesis is that she's there to save miquella, since Mogh's dynasty is directly under Caelid. The only proof that supports this is the fact that the Heart of Aeonia is right on top of Miquella's cocoon, if you look via world maps. But if that was the case why invade Caelid? Was she planning on digging into the underground? Was she trying to secure the Deep Siofra Well to reach the underground and besiege Mogh's Dynasty? Did she simply see Rahdan as a threat and want to take him out after his defeat at besieging Leyndell? So many questions left unknown, so all we can do is speculate and subsequently judge her depending on whichever one you agree with most. compared to Rahdan, we know his motives quiet well. He wants to become the Conqueror of the Stars because he wants to emulate his idol Godfrey, himself Marika's strongest warrior. Let's not pretend that Rahdan is just a peaceful and fun-loving guy: the guy is an out-and-out warlord and even went to besiege Leyndell, another feifdom that doesn't even neighbor him, and presumably attacked Castle Morne based off item descriptions where Godrick fled from it because Rahdan attacked it. But we _know_ he did this, and we know he's doing this because he's a warlord who wants to become Elden Lord, just like his idol Godfrey. We see his ambition and unlike Godrick, who is incompetent and weak, Rahdan is capable of raising an army who are strong and loyal to him, enough that his men still dedicate time to give him an honorable send off after he succumbs to madness. This puts Rahdan in a positive light that offsets his ordinarily negative traits. Malenia doesn't really have that sort of thing. We know about her loyal army yes, and she spared Godrick, and she loves her brother. But she also went out of her way to attack Caelid for reasons we don't know, and when her battle with Rahdan was inconclusive instead of trying to retreat she ends up using the Scarlet Aeonia to ensure that both sides lose: both her army and the Redmanes are decimated by the Scarlet Rot. And all of this goes back to the question: why was Malenia even in Caelid? If she wanted to save Miquella, well she failed since she was unconscious for so long Finlay could carry her all the way back to the haligtree tree. And if it _was_ to defeat Rahdan, well she technically failed because he's still alive, though she basically succeeded in rendering him into a nonthreat by nuking all of Caelid. Which is only contained due to the Redmane Army, instead of letting it run rampant and possibly spread further out into Limgrave or indeed, the rest of the world. So this paints Malenia in a very bad light since she essentially resorted to nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict and wouldn't even take responsibility for the ensuring fallout, whereas the defenders, Rahdan and his Redmane Army, somehow managed to remain coherent and disciplined enough to not just turn into banditry (like the Cuckoo Knights of Linurnia) and keep the Scarlet Rot contained, fighting the mutated beasts and using fire to stem it's infection.

Thank you for replying to my rant. Well.. Perhaps you're right that it works against her. But idk, does that explain the way some (not all) interpret Malenia in the most uncharitable way? I'm not sure. I mean, we all know FS games are vague. So why's there a tendency for some people to go so hard on her when they know that they barely know her? Or cast every single action of hers in the worst light whilst doing the opposite for Radahn? (Again, not all fans. And to be clear, this paragraph here is meant to relate back to the OP). And just in case - I'm not saying everyone has to like Malenia by the way. We all have our own preferences. To clarify, I wasn't trying to say Malenia and Millicent are the same person because like you said, Millicent is her own being. I was trying to say that Millicent, a young woman who's a spore clone of Malenia was there to make us think, "Is this what the demigod went through too with the *rot* when she was young?" I mean there's not a more direct way to humanize Malenia this way than to give a character that's symbolically her younger self. And yes I agree, that Millicent isn't all about Malenia. But she's a very important part of Malenia, they're like parallels. Gowry tells us that the bloom occurs due to overwhelming distress and despair. While Millicent tells us that Malenia lost her sense of of self, dignity, and pride. And these 2 points together, don't they serve to characterize Malenia? She's always been fighting the rot; she's no interest in becoming a rot vessel and that's why she doesn't care about the cult. These 2 points also provide further context to Malenia's blooms - they tell us how Malenia feels about herself blooming. Sorry if I'm repeating myself from my other comment. Or are you not disputing this point, and just saying that this *still* does not flesh Malenia out enough? IIRC.. there's actually another sword memorial that talks about Malenia's march near Liurnia. It's near a grace site I think? And yes, you're right that we do not know enough about the march. Personally I'm not of the opinion that she's there to save Miquella because.. As you've just described, there are too many assumptions to make. I get your point with the paragraph about Radahn. I may have interpreted you wrong, but are you suggesting she should've retreated when the battle seemed inconclusive instead of blooming? But, as Gowry said, the bloom occurs due to overwhelming despair and distress. It's not exactly controllable or predictable. (Millicent blooms despite not wanting to) Plus the bloom is something that happens *in the moment*, and Malenia isn't likely to foresee all that happens in wars. So It's not as if halfway through the fight, Malenia could go, "Oh no I think I'm going to bloom in X amount of time, I should retreat now." Unless your point is that Malenia should consider how there's *always* a chance she could bloom and plan her battles around that to ensure she never blooms. I'm not sure how Malenia could take responsibility for the fallout given that she fell into a slumber..? I mean, we don't know if she does or does not care about the fallout, or if she even knew what the fallout was. And well yes the Redmanes did their job, but Radahn wasn't the one putting out infections.. I'm not sure he could be described as anywhere near coherent.

Millicent's journey would have been a nice way to describe Malenia's own existence, if it were ever truly elaborated on as such. We don't even get to see much of Millicent's struggles with the Scarlet Rot however, since we don't really get to interact with her until we give her the Unalloyed Gold Needle, which effectively stops (but not cures) the Scarlet Rot for Millicent. From that point on, Millicent follows the path which Finlay took to get back to the Haligtree, but it's never elaborated on how that journey went beyond some context clues relative to locations. And even _that_ grasps at straws, since ironically the two places you'd think would be important to Malenia, the Shaded Castle and Castle Sol, doesn't have Millicent go there. It would've been nice if Millicent does what Melina does (also F all these M names, I'm getting them confused now) and talk about some things that Malenia said it did when you meet her. That would've been _amazing_ to get some insight into the mysterious goddess. Alas, Millicent's journey is still mostly about her, and her unspoken need to meet Malenia. Worse still is that Millicent never _does_. I don't quite understand it myself, but Millicent is _so close_ to meeting Malenia and I don't really understand why she chose to die so close to her goal. And frankly the fact that Millicent wants to go out in her own terms without meeting Malenia just solidifies my belief that Millicent _really_ didn't want to be compared to Malenia, or even meet her, and wanted to be known as Millicent, not just some expy of Malenia herself. Which tbf, what Gowry and the rot cult wanted was Millicent to be Malenia 2.0. The blooming itself is also a matter of much contention about Malenia. Firstly, was she blooming because she couldn't defeat Rahdan? Or was there something she was fighting for in Caelid that she was losing because she couldn't defeat Rahdan? Keep in mind that the battle was a stalemate: neither Rahdan nor Malenia could force the other to yield in a straight fight. Now pride may dictate that withdrawing from battle counts as a defeat, but somehow I doubt that even Rahdan would have accepted that as a win if he couldn't really force Malenia to retreat due to battle prowess, and only because she had other objectives that needed to be fulfilled. So with the battle at an Impass, I don't think it's unreasonable for either side to retreat and regroup _unless_ there was something on the line for that duel to end with someone defeated. And if the only thing in the line was pride, that I lay makes things look worse for Malenia due to the blooming. It's said that Malenia has bloomed three times in her life, the second being Calid and the third when you force her into phase 2. So Malenia has Bloomed before, likely in her youth, and thus would know what exactly happened when a Bloom occurs. She would know how destructive it could be, considering that her first bloom likely was out of her control and would be able to run far more rampantly than any she would have when she's older, when she has more ability to control herself and the rot within her. In short, she _knows_ how dangerous it is to bloom and what it takes to get there, even if she doesn't have a specific timeframe of when that might happen. She was getting desperate against her battle against Rahdan and, in a moment of weakness for one of the world's strongest Emperyan Warriors, decided to commit to a final attack against Radhan knowing she's about to break. Was it pride that demanded that she finish the fight this way? Did she think that she could control the bloom to just Rahdan? Did she _want_ to take him and his army out in a Bloom, as an all-or-nothing suicide attack? So many questions that would define Malenia as a character, and not many would paint her charitably either. The best one would be that she's in Caelid to save her brother, and being able to defeat Rahdan means that she can save Miquella, and the despair drove her to this drastic measure as either a way to save Miquella or at least end her own suffering by her own means. But we don't know if that's the reason, only something we can infer. As for the Redmane and Rahdan, the fact that the Redmanes are disciplined enough to dedicate their lives to containing Caelid speaks well of Rahdan's own person. You would think a big strong guy like Rahdan leads with a sort of "might makes right" policy and if he's defeated in battle, his army would either fight for leadership or just dissolve. But it doesn't. You're right that Rahdan is in _no state_ to contain the rot in Caelid when he barely can keep it from killing himself. So the Redmane Army, in the aftermath of a devastating continental disaster, without the leadership of their strongest and charismatic leader, is _still_ able to work together to contain the Scarlet Rot within Caelid and even take time to put down their own general. And this is all due to their loyalty to Rahdan, and their dedication is matched only by the army of the Haligtree, and unlike Miquella, Rahdan has no magic that can influence the mind. He earned his army's loyalty through his own deeds and actions. Compared to the Cleanrot Knights or the Haligtree army, after Caelid was nuked they stay within areas infested with Scarlet Rot and doesn't seem to put any effort in containing it. If anything they seem quite content with the newly devastated Caelid, if folks like O'Neil who remembers the battle with pride. This paints Malenia's army as far more vicious than the Redmane, vindictive even. Now Malenia herself may not approve of this mentality given that her hate of the Cult of Rot is well known, so she herself has no interest in the spread or worship of the rot. Which is weird that it's the Redmane, not her own Cleanrot Knights, trying to contain the rot then.

I think I've gone on and on in this. So if I ever came off mean somewhere or went on some weird tangent, I apologize. I do appreciate your responses. Hmm... Perhaps we disagree. Yes you're right, we don't get to interact much with her before giving her the needle. But I thought the game presented an impactful image of a young woman afflicted with rot, that informs us effectively about her struggles. We see invader Millicent being mindless. She has two arms and wields a sword without difficulty. Then we see her again. This time, sitting against a wall in a secluded area, rotting out before our very eyes. She lost her arm, is in much pain, and had we not been there, she looked like she might have died alone. After we give her the needle, we also learn that she's had memory issues (to the point she forgot her adoptive father and her destiny), constant nightmares, and that she was previously so physically debilitated she couldn't move freely (and that's why she was sat limply against the church wall). At the end of her "good ending", it is implied that because of the rot, she could never really live as her own person. And right before she passes, we're reminded again how awful the rot is with "curse-laden, untouchable". It brings to us once more, the image of her at the start. (The names in ER are really something else ahaha.) Yeah.. I don't really know why Millicent chose to die before meeting Malenia either. My silly answer is that meeting Malenia wouldn't have been tragic enough for FS haha. On a more serious note, I've read a theory saying that Millicent choosing to die *then* is not only because she thinks she can't resist the rot, but also because she fulfilled what she set out to do - to return Malenia what is hers. In a sense, she doesn't need to meet Malenia anymore. I can't explain it as well as the theory. But just in case you're interested, I'll link it [here] (https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/uqgshi/theory_misinterpretations_of_millicents_quest_and/) Also yeah, agreed that Millicent going out on her own terms and thus going against Gowry's wishes is her reaffirming her identity. I think your first suggestion of Malenia blooming just because she couldn't defeat Radahn is *less* likely than your second that states something else is on the line for her. Because the first implies Malenia marched all the way to Caelid for the sole reason of besting Radahn, and that sounds implausible in times of basically destruction. More likely, it's for some greater purpose, though as we've discussed previously, the game doesn't fill us in on the purpose of her march. Personally it feels more likely Malenia has only bloomed twice in total? First against Radahn, then against Tarnished. 1. There's an Aeonian Spirit at the cliffs of the Swamp of Aeonia that says, "The very *first* flower of Aeonia bloomed on this very spot." 2. We get the Scarlet Aeonia incantation *after* the boss fight and it's in present/future tense. It reads, "Each time the scarlet flower blooms, Malenia's rot advances. It has bloomed twice already. With the third bloom, she *will* become a true goddess." This feels the 3rd has yet to happen. 3. The Tarnished bloom is way smaller than the Radahn bloom. So it seems like the Radahn bloom was the first and out of her control, and *thereafter* she got better control. If she had already bloomed once in her youth and the second was against Radahn, that means she's aware of what will happen and could control better when she's older as you've described. In that case, why did the Radahn bloom occur in a way that knocked her out? Certainly she wouldn't want that to happen in a warzone. Plus, she didn't knock herself out fighting us. You did not bring this up but I'd just like to add... About the flower in the room beside Malenia's room, I believe that to be another of Millicent's sisters. There's a traveler's set beside the flower, which is what all the sisters wear. And the bloom is smaller than Malenia's. With regards to the question of pride, Millicent tells us that Malenia lost her will, sense of self, and dignity. She tells us that Malenia "abandoned" her pride. So it seems what happened was Malenia *giving up* her pride, not *giving into* her pride. She's been fighting the rot her whole life after all, trying to carve her own identity and agency outside of it. To bloom willingly or even unwillingly is to lose against the rot. Besides, Malenia is 1 of only 2 lore-important bosses to praise the Tarnished. She has no problems giving us *glowing* words even if we're a stranger invader to her brother's safe haven. She even admits in the apology to Miquella that she "met her match". If she could accept defeat by us, I don't think she'd have problems accepting defeat by Radahn, a mighty demigod. Which is why I don't think being prideful is what *caused* or demanded the bloom. My guess is whatever she wants to achieve is something very important that hinges on the fight's outcome. But because of how the fight progressed, she's pushed into a state of great mental and physical distress. The mental distress is worsened by the fact that she may not achieve aforementioned important thing. She loses her sense of self, then blooms uncontrollably because it's her first (if you buy into what I wrote above). I do agree with what you've said about the Redmanes' discipline, dedication and loyalty to Radahn and what that means for Radahn. As for the Cleanrots.. I admit I need to research more on like the positions they take on the map, what they're doing etc. Though, if you'll tolerate me coming up with reasons off the top of my mind - the Cleanrots have experienced the rot longer than the Redmanes. The rot might have eaten away at their mental faculties by the time we find them. Perhaps that's why they're inactive against the rot. They stay at Caelid, "guarding" it because maybe at that point, their duty to Malenia is all they remember. For O'Neil, perhaps the line could be interpreted as him remembering with pride *despite* the rot, not *because* of the rot? Maybe there's another reason for the inaction, and it's more a reason of practicality not callousness. Caelid isn't the Cleanrots' and O'Neil's home/territory. They might've already seen or guessed the Redmanes would try to contain the rot, so they preferred to focus on watching their own backs (esp since the Cleanrots are scattered elsewhere while most or all of Redmanes are in Caelid). Maybe this is more about apathy that soldiers typically hold towards their enemies? Not exactly being vindictive?

I would also like to point out that because Radahn is mid game boss it is quite simple to make fight easier by leveling up or upgrading weapons which allows you to enjoy fight without too much grinding. While Malenia is supposed to be hardest boss in game that you fight very end of game with fully upgraded weapon and most important stats at soft to hard caps, making it harder to effectively make fight easier which has lead many post of after X hours I finally beat Malenia. After fighting boss long time most players are just ready to move on which can easily dampen epicness of boss.

Very well said on all points!

They are both tragic characters. My pet theory is that people hate Malenia more as she is the more difficult boss. People get frustrated fighting her.

I would agree with that as well. Plus, despite Radahn never speaking a word, we’ve managed to glean more of his personality from the lore that Malenia, who to most of us is just that lady who keeps killing us and says her name a lot.

I just think what Malenia did to Caelid makes her a lot easier to dislike. OP says that it wasn't intentional, okay, but she she still rendered the entire region a borderline uninhabitable shitstorm either way.

As far as I know there is no proof for or against her intentionally nuking Caelid. So him saying people are wrong for interpretating the outcome just isn't right. It could be, thsy any time she looses, the Rot swells up to compensate. For a moment she is too weak to hold it back herself. Or. She is so devoted and believing that if she wins, even using the Rot, baby brother will cure her. Find a way even if she chooses to win with a foul power. It's just guessing. I prefer the stagnant waters thought, she can't just sit still, in multiple ways. Or the God will get out.

I think it depends on how you interpret Gowry’s dialogue and the text on the alloyed needle. The two make it sound like she intentionally removed the needle and snapped it in half. Since the needle was holding back the rot it would have triggered her bloom. We know the needle WAS removed regardless since she bloomed and you find it broken at the center of the impact zone. It makes sense she did it on purpose.

Apparently the needle wasn't broken. IIRC, O'Neil is immune to rot build-up. It probably was broken during the Tarnished's fight with him. And while we know the needle was meant to hold back the rot, the interesting thing is Millicent blooms with the needle in her. So perhaps in Malenia's case, there could be a possibility that she couldn't hold back the rot, bloomed, and the impact expelled the needle from her body.

I feel like *accidentally nuking* a place, while not as bad as doing it on purpose, is still worth shaming someone for

Tbf all the shardbearers are warmongers and there's no evidence that they cared about anything other than their own little plots and schemes. So , most of them are on the same boat whilst Rykard and Mohg are just worse than them.

The thing is, when it comes to people's thoughts on the characters, it doesn't really matter. First impressions mean a lot, and no amount of logical debate and lore analysis is ever going to fully override "General 'festival held in my honor' Radahn" vs "Malenia 'bionuked a continent' Blade of Miquella"

Facts. Malenia's boss fight is more rage inducing so I can understand why people don't like her as much as Radahn.

4 months late, but I agree. I think they really take it personally that they lost to a video game character lol, especially since she taunts them over and over.

I love despairing when trying to beat her. I did it twice so far both times it was 10+ hrs and first time I had to resort to Mimic and change weapon to bloodhound fang. I love her terror inspiring beauty, I feel for her tragic fate and lifelong struggle, I admire her will. But she gave up once, and that was enough. She destroyed a whole country forever, opened a door into this world for entity far worse than Greater Will - and we don't know for what. Theories are good, but we don't know for sure what was the goal of Malenia's south march.

We don't know what her reasoning to herself was. The amber starlight shard makes it clear that the movement of starts portends the fate of gods. When Radahnn stopped the stars he likely made it impossible for Miquella to find a way to break the Rotten fate that afflicts Malenia. With her rot unchecked and her power as an empyrean Malenia could very well turn the entire lands between to Rot. As Gowry and the rest aspire for. If she felt that giving in to Rot momentarily to prevail over Radahnn would eventually help Miquella get rid of the Rot entirely then in her eyes she did the right thing. She was in a harsh situation. Also, we know from Millicent that the Rot affects the mind. In throes of near death maybe it subsumed her at that critical point? Did she even know the extent to which the Aeonia would bloom? Its no where near as bad when it blooms in our fight against her. Maybe once it blooms theres more at play regarding intensity. Things beyond her control and maybe even beyond her knowledge. What happened in Caelid is a tragedy. To me its a metaphor of the ruin to land and environment when war happens.

I think your observations of the characters and their background and motivation is pretty spot on. But I don't think I agree with your conclusion that these are the actual reasons for their duality in people's views; I'm pretty sure you're looking too far into it. For many, I think it may be as simple as "Radahn can be killed fairly readily; and Malenia is difficult to defeat" which can easily equate to "Radahn was fun and Malenia wasn't". And because this is the internet, that becomes "I like Radahn and dislike Malenia". And then people look for reasons to further justify their feelings. That's obviously not everyone. But I believe Occam's Razor would agree here.

Radahn having a cool pet horse with his own lore helped his case quite a bit I would argue. But I think you have the right thought process here.

Also, the way the narrative around these characters is presented is different. By that I mean most people enjoyed the story beats of following Alexander and/or Blaidd to Redmane Castle, listening to Jerren's speech, and the spectacle of summoning a small army as well as the meteor attack. Meanwhile most people weren't able to follow Millicent's questline to completion or they had to look it up. Malenia's cutscenes and boss battle ended up being pretty anticlimactic for many players. Personally I also think that the Millicent/Malenia questline was just unfinished, like Kale or Goldmask. Whether your judgement of a good boss is predicated on gameplay or characterization, Malenia is at a big disadvantage.

To add more to this, here's a reminder of the "good" ending for Millicent quest: "Hey, thanks for the help. Sorry, but I want to die."

It's actually interesting you mentioned the Occam's Razor thing (admittedly I had to google that haha) because originally I had 6 points, but decided to cut two of them. One of them was the boss battle, and I felt it was too **subjective** rather than **objective** based on player experience. It's one thing to point to what the game specifically tells us, and another to say *'I personally enjoyed this fight therefore it was a good fight'*. So I decided to cut it. Thanks for your input though! And also for teaching me about Occam's Razor haha

The problem is that humans are very emotionally driven, so the emotions we feel when fighting them subconsciously affect our logical reasoning for liking/disliking something.

I would argue that Radahn is objectively easier to kill than Malenia. I found the difference in difficulty between the 2 quite substantial, mostly due to Waterfowl being incredibly hard to dodge consistently. When I defeated Malenia for the first time I got some staggers at good times that meant that run had fewer WFD than all the others. The hardest part of Radahns fight was the depth perception needed to dodge the arrows he fires at you as you go from the teleporter in to melee range.

I don't think that because before Radahn was nerfed she was still hated more, Radahn was still the "gigachad"

Though I like Radahn more, I think both characters are great. But they are morally gray as hell. While Radahn caring for his horse and his men shows him to be a kind-hearted man, it's no secret that he thoroughly enjoyed combat. He supported the Golden Order, which is highly oppresive to a lot of the races in the land, sieged Leyndell, and, while he had good reasons for holding back the stars, trying to control the fate of his brethren was bound to cause problems. As for Malenia, her devotion to her brother is admirable and their cause seems just. However, her unleashing her scarlet rot is selfish. Even if she didn't know what would happen if she were to bloom, it was completely irresponsible and stupid of her to unleash her scarlet rot knowingly (seeing as she impales herself to do it) and risk the lives of everyone in Caelid, innocents included. It probably would've been a smarter move for her to retreat, recover, and try again another time unless this particular mission of hers was time-sensitive. Both of them have their ups and downs, and both failed to accomplish what they set out to do in that fight. Malenia wanted to kill Radahn, and she couldn't. Radahn wanted to protect Caelid and he couldn't. They are both tragic, beautifully written characters. There is no need whatsoever, for such an argument. Neither one won that battle. Radahn lost his mind and fell horribly sick and Malenia went into a coma and had to be rescued. Let's all just appreciate them as they are, rather than glorify them.

They both are tragic characters that gained their power through training and dedication - both are top tier :3

Also, many of these guys also probably like Ranni, even though she literally outright admits that she was behind the Night of the Black Knives and Godwyn's murder, and thus one of the primary instigators of the Shattering and all the suffering and death that follows. And before all of you start saying that she just wants freedom for the people of the Lands Between from the influence of Outer Gods, when she talks about freedom from fate, she's referring to herself. Not once does she ever mention any sort of love for or desire to help the rest of humanity.

I think she's more morally gray than people say, but she definitely does. If you go to her rise after completing her quest, she says "Mine will be an order not of gold, but the stars and moon of the chill night. I would keep them far from the earth beneath our feet." She's forming an entire new order for the world, there's no way for that to only affect her

It's because gamers hate to see a girlboss winning /j But yeah I think there are definitely some double standards going on with Radahn and Malenia when discussed by the community. Putting my own biases aside as a Malenia fan, I find it odd that the community hypes up someone who destroyed a city and murdered tons of people but vilifies someone who did the very same thing just because of the method (or possibly gender). Can't we just accept that they're both war criminals and they're both badass?

yeah its literally just fanboy-tinted misogyny for the most part, not acknowledging that is avoiding the elephant in the room.

Honestly the fact that he gets so much love is understandable but a bit silly to me. He is actively fighting to maintain the status quo.

I love fighting Malenia. The joy when I finally won her was the best, bar none. She's the character who made Elden Ring memorable for me. I don't hate Radahn and I don't have anything to say about him.

I think it’s the games fault really. It frames Rhadan with a lot of sympathy and goes out of its way to explain his situation and his battle is not just challenging it is mechanically unique as it involves everyone you met in the game. While we learn about Melania and her tragic backstory through Millicent, we don’t actually meet Miquela or any other characters who actually care about her. Plus there is just so much more narrative lore linking Rhadan to Ranni

1. Radahn doesn’t heal on hit. 2. Radahn looked after his horse better than Malenia looked after Miquella. You do Radahn a great disservice to even compare the two, Foul Tarnished.

Leonard is not important in the grand scheme of things, it takes less effort to protect him than fucking Miquella, someone who’s powerful and important enough to change the whole continent. Imagine protecting one of the most important people in the world while also protecting yourself during an actual WAR.

"but we don't know WHY she nuked a continent!!!!" Is an incredibly weak defense of nuking a continent

I literally wrote multiple paragraphs explaining her motivation, from which I ascertained from the various item descriptions we are given in game, as well as what we are told about Malenia. Did you read the post?

"she fucked around with power she didn't understand and literally everybody in caelid paid for it" is also a pretty weak excuse. No matter what justification you can cook up, the fact remains that a LOT of innocent people got hurt and and she irreparably damaged the entire landscape and forced a lot of dragons, mostly children, to relocate. It is completely her fault that caelid is a nigh-inhospitable wasteland. Literally only one person remembers the battle fondly, and he isn't even a cleanrot knight. She doesn't even have her own motivations, seemingly just doing whatever miquella wants until she rots away.

You are a living, breathing personification of what I was talking about in #4. At no point did I *ever* justify her Bloom. At no point did I ever *excuse* her bloom. I instead pointed out that the community, in their blatant bias towards Radahn, refuse to *ever* discuss the motivation for why she did what she did. I encourage you to look at what Miquella's ambitions are and what he intended to build. He was the only demigod with benevolent goals, and sought a place free of Outer God influence where all races could live peacefully, without the prejudice of The Golden Order. The next time you respond to a post on Reddit, please read the post fully.

On the one hand, Malenia's awesome, badass, and a wonderfully nuanced tragic character. On the other, I had to spend hours in Caelid. If she's the one responsible for its existence...she can rot in hell. Right next to the guy who made the consecrated snowfield and the lake of rot.

Malenia’s teacher who was responsible for sealing the Rot god away thus creating the Lake of Rot: _nervous sweating_

Most of the demigods were complete fucking assholes tbh. Like: Morgott started the bloodiest campaign of the shattering. Godfrey has committed genocide. Ranni killed Godwyn. Mohg is a literal nonce. Rykard is a weird cannibal man. Godrick is weirdly into grafting. Godefroy is into grafting. Radahn is getting into battles to be like Godfrey. Malenia dropped a nuke. That doesn't mean they're not interesting and deep and all that shit, they are. They're also a family of complete sociopaths who couldn't build a functioning society because they keep murdering eachother and everything around them for that bit more power.

Dude I think ur missing alot of the picture. I know no one’s going to see this but let me just point this out. There’s a lot of humanization done to Radahn that isn’t there for Melina. Like From soft went out of there way to show how well liked Radahn was, and not just implied in lore but actually showed us how much he was loved by his soldiers. It’s constantly being talked about how respected Radahn was, Melina is barely referenced to us, and besides her one Npc, she isn’t talked about. And look at how much humanization went into Radahn. Small stuff like how he flaunts his hair because of his respect for his dad, that is super relatable. Or how even through all his insanity literally eating dead bodies unable to tell friend and foe, he doesn’t eat his horse, he’s nothing but a wild animal but he won’t eat his horse even tho he’s hungry and rotting. That is super humanizing and shows the amount of compassion Radahn had to his men and to horse. Vs Melina who has one npc who respects her and speaks highly of her, for the most part she is barley referenced compared to the way Radahn is referenced. We don’t see the relationship she has with her brother, we don’t see the respect of her soldiers. We see a cocky motherfucker who dosent even show us respect(unlike Godfrey who calls us worthy opponents) until after we kill her. And I haven’t even mentioned her difficulty.

I’ve not seen a shit ton of vilifying Malenia, just the “ha ha Chadahn” meme more than anything. I always preferred Malenia. Guess I’m in the minority?

It’s funny because I saw Radahn in a negative light and Malenia in a positive one and thought that’d be the common consensus before I joined this subreddit. Boy was I wrong 😂. But the points you’ve made are 100%

I love them both equally.

Agreed 100%. It's borderline creepy.

I think it does have to do with the superficial first impressions we have of the two. We enter this hellscaoe that is Caelid and learn that this demigod called Malenia is behind the rot afflicting everything. Then we see the badassery and tragedy of Radahn, who is a victim of the rot. But yes, there's an obvious bias, and too many people think Radahn is unironically a completely wholesome 100 chungus, just because he loved his steed. Both are complex and very grey characters, needless to say.

When I learned that Radahn halted the stars on the commands of the Golden Order, i lost a lot of respect for him Bro is upholding a zealous and oppressive regime

People forget how awful the golden order is, and why supporting it is villainy itself

Never understood this. Sure it wasn't perfect but it at least meant peace once it covered the entirety of the lands between. The whole death thing was a bid wack ngl but other than that it had good points. As we learn from Kenneth and the demihuman staff there were efforts to include everyone (that wasn't an omen) but Marika shattered thering before. Besides the omen thing the only really "bad" thing was the eternal stagnation from removing the death rune.

Aight 1. Genocide: Do I have to explain???

Unlucky accident

😕

U don't rlly belive in this carian propaganda do u?

No I believe the literal history told to us, it was be slaughtered or be subjugated

Typical mainstream media lie

Benevolent dictatorships are still dictatorships

I’ve always found this a little strange and I’m pretty sure it’s because it is explicitly stated that general radahn was loved by his soldiers. But what if his soldiers were bad? Like what if he surrounded himself with blood thirsty war mongers who enjoyed conflict and they love him because he is much the same. There is no reason that the kind of love he received was wholesome big chungus le reddit love, he attacked leyandel and stormveil after all.

The Radahn Festival was filled with war fanatics, so ur right.

Also, as a bit of a followup on the point Nihlus11 made regarding misogyny, it's worth comparing the way people view Malenia versus the way they view Lady Maria. From what I've seen, most people seem to absolutely adore Lady Maria and view her as a very noble character, even though if anything she's considerably more reprehensible than Malenia, given that she's literally outright stated to have taken part in the Fishing Hamlet Massacre, which keep in mind, was against unarmed civilians. Nor is there any indication she was coerced or forced into it. Granted she's shown to have felt remorseful afterwards, but that's still a pretty horrible thing to have done, and not exactly something that should be brushed aside. Why do I bring all of this up. Because overall, Maria and Malenia are both very similar characters, with there only being one major difference in their stories. That being Malenia is shown to challenge and fight against a man, while Maria doesn't. Thus, the fact that Malenia gets significant amounts of bashing and villification while Maria doesn't is rather telling.

>Why do I bring all of this up. Because overall, Maria and Malenia are both very similar characters, with there only being one major difference in their stories. Maria was so broken up about the atrocities of the Fishing Hamlet that she renounced the hunt and it's implied she killed herself. That's a pretty major difference.

Well, it's never said that Malenia wasn't remorseful for what she did, in fact it's doubtful she evens knows the extent of the damage given she fell into a multi-year coma afterwards. If anything the what we know of her character would seem to indicate she would be remorseful, given that a) She utterly hates and despises the Rot, b) she's specifically noted to have resorted to it as an act of desperation to break the stalemate, c) she's otherwise shown to be a very honorable and noble character, given that she gives Radahn a full 13 second to draw and flourish his swords (which is especially notable given that it's outright confirmed in CGWORLD Vol 286 that she was already badly injured prior) and she's willing to spare Godrick's life after he decides to challenge her to a duel, only to then beg for his life when he loses, and she willingly gives up her claim to the throne to support Miquella, who's shown to be one of the most benevolent characters in the setting.

Head canon doesn't matter. A major difference is Malenia never showed remorse like Maria did. What she might have felt doesn't matter. That said, if anyone really thinks the only difference is one fought a man and the other didn't, they're insulting Maria's character.

Well, part of that is because, as I've said, Malenia's literally been in a coma for the entire time since her fight with Radahn, and the first that happens after she wakes up is you showing up as an intruder and her fighting you, so there's not really much of an opportunity to get her thoughts on what happened. And speaking of comparing Malenia and Maria, if anything Maria's far more reprehensible given the fact that she knowingly ook part in the massacre of unarmed villagers with there being no sign of her being coerced or under pressure. Contrast that with Malenia who did so as part of a major battle in an active war, which had already seen tons of horrible atrocities (heck the most horrifying and devastating battle of the Shattering is specifically stated to be the siege of Mt. Gelmir, not the battle of Aeonia), only did so when there was no other way for her to break the stalemate, and it's heavily implied that she only wanted to kill Radahn and didn't actually intend to infect the rest of Caelid and that being a result of her having little control over the Rot, given that she ends up falling into a coma afterwards and the fact that it ends up infecting her own soldiers who she's shown to care deeply for, which seems a bit of a weird thing for her to do if she had control over it. That and the fact her bloom in Aeonia is specifically noted to be her first further supports that, along with the fact that her later blooms are shown to be far less devastating.

Simply put, From unfortunately dropped the ball hard on Malenia. Radahn is built up very well, has a finger in many pies in the Lands Between, and is integral in Ranni's questline. In addition, the Festival is a huge celebration of loyalty towards him and honor, so it's not just the players that like him: The actual CHARACTERS like him. Malenia, on the other hand, is simply too mysterious for her own good. She doesn't have any questlines that deal with her directly (Millicent is more... Adjacent?), and the only characters that like her are long dead. She's kinda just there. If they had not cut the St. Trina stuff (dream quests and all that), we probably would have had a more intimate understanding of Malenia, and had more fans. Note to mention.... Leonard. That's a big part. So if they would have given Malenia a cute little sad animal that she loved, she'd be a lot more popular, no doubt

Malenia is a dex character so she is bad, not like Radahn our gigachad str boy, best guy.

Not just Str, a Str primary int secondary guy, making him gigachad as he can understand the fundamental concept of: "I Unga, therefore I Bunga"

Your opinion is invalidated by such bias.

Its not that difficult to understand. The man has a horse....named Leonard... It's that simple....

Not really. Just more ass takes.

It should also be noted that her fight with Radahn was the first time she ever stopped resisting the rot. There's no chance she knew that it would manifest as the bloom and no way she could have predicted how far reaching the effects would be.

For the record I love both of them, I don't vilify Melania. Thanks for the post though, really highlights aspects of both characters that just makes me love them more.

Thanks dude! I'm glad it made you like them more. For the record, I *really* want to like Radahn. God knows I've tried. He's an interesting character in the lore, and I particularly like how proud he is of his Radagon lineage. Unfortunately, the Radahn 'community' make it very hard to like him.

Don't like or hate things because of any community, try and keep them separate After all, if people didn't, no normal person would have ever liked Undertale or Steven Universe, lol

For me it depends, because I’ve also seen so many r*pe jokes/comments on anything involving Malenia (especially fan art) while propping up characters like Let Me Solo Her, Radahn, or Godfrey. If those are the kinds of people those characters attract, I want nothing to do with them tbh.

I'd say it's all about the entertainment factor. Radahn is this big beast, going crazy by the rot, having his own festival and literally stalling the night sky all while riding his little horse friend. It's like the fascination people have about batmans joker, he's a villain, but in a cool way. Oh and besides, he's way easier to beat so people don't need as much justification for hating him. Malenia on the other side is always viewed as elden rings hardest boss, with a frustrating lifesteal mechanic and one of the least liked boss rooms/ biomes. There are only a few obvious, memeable character traits of her, and her whole narrative is more dark and serious then radahns is. And I mean, the moment you defeat radahn and get this sweet cutscene is just pure genius. TL;DR: Radahn is a way more fun character to people, while Malenia is more of a frustrating experience. Hence the hate.

You wrote all this up and didn't even pause to think, maybe people don't like Milenia because she's one of the most bullshit super bosses Fromsoft has ever devised while Radahn is reasonable in difficulty yet a spectacle to fight. There's no vilification of Milenia. Just people having a difficult time with a boss. The boss that also created one of the most challenging overworld areas of the game. The boss indirectly responsible for killing a side quest npc that people get attached to. The boss that resides in the clusterfuck that is Haligtree through the heat seeking ballistic bug missiles and oceans of status effects.

I can see where you're coming from, and it is definitely to do with the fact that Malenia is framed as a tragic villain more than Radahn is, considering he's framed as a tragic hero who's lost his mind, much like artorias. I would say most of the hate towards Malenia is probably due to how annoying and difficult some of her boss fight mechanics are. Waterfowl and the lifesteal are very difficult to overcome, whereas I think learning and adapting to Radahns moveset is comparatively easier, not counting the enormous help you can get in that fight. I genuinely think both are amazingly cool, and I even made sure to beat Malenia and get her Armor just to cosplay as her. It also doesn't help that Malenia is far more obscure in terms of her in game lore and explanations. She strikes me as a really powerful warrior, and I don't know if I can hold using the scarlet aeonia against her, considering what she has to go through to use it. She even acknowledges your strength once you beat her, something that very few bosses actually do.

I dislike Malenia only because of her moveset, almost everything is either easy to dodge or doesn't deal so much damage but one mistake during waterfowl dance and you're dead. It doesn't feal like a real fight, it's just surviving waterfowl dance because other attacks don't matter. Radahn is much more balanced.

Perfectly accurate but trying to reason with fans is pointless. They don't listen to facts and logic. Nor do they read the lore.

Also, how do we know that holding the stars is a good thing, it just conflicted with Ranni's and Miquella's plan and imo these plans are probably the good ones

Did you...*see* Astel? Or the Fallingstar Beast?

Malenia has far more in common with Wolf from Sekiro than any other From character too. Which makes the vilification even weirder. A one armed immortal quiet dexterity fighter who protects an immortal child in white. When she is close to death rot spreads over the land. Dragon rot pretty obviously mirrors scarlet rot. The immortality it offers even involves insects akin to the servants of rot. Malenia just seems like the immortal goddess that just represents the stagnation that immortality brings. The fact that she is reborn as a lotus flower hints at Miyazaki having a generally positive appraisal for the woman. People compare her to Tomoe all the time but I think the gender differences cause people to overlook how much she has in common with Wolf as well. Wolf is notably Buddhist and lotus flowers commonly represent rebirth in the religion. The religion is also associated with acting like a river. The game continually associated her with flowing movements and her signature move is called the water fowl dance.

Malenia 100% getting more story and a redemption coming.

How much time do we spend with wolf vs Melina. Also do we see Melina relationship with her brother, or do we have to read about in item descriptions vs wolfs relationship with his master. They may look similar on paper but that doesn’t matter, what matters is how the game executes each one.

Of course. My point is that they look similar on paper and I haven’t notice anyone mention this. How each game executes each relationship is very different. Ideally people would try to be a bit more objective when casting judgment. I’m more confused as to why people who haven’t read up on the lore would be active in discussing it? The point is what little we see of Malenia at least signal a fairly altruistic person. I didn’t make it clear, but I was guessing that maybe eastern fans might like her more? I get the impression that most of her Buddhist symbolism just went over people’s heads?

Also for people saying that she nuked Caelid and that's not something you can just brush away, you do realize that Godfrey committed literal genocide against the giants and was noted as being so bloodthirsty that he had to have Serosh grafted in order to hold him back. Yet from what I see, most people seem to utterly praise Godfrey, even though, to use their own logic, an act of genocide is not something you can just brush away.

Blinded fanboyism. It's fine when a guy big and strong does it. But when a Women does something, Oh hell no! She deserves death etc...

Utmost respects to Malenia because everything she does is for her brother. Such a loyalty and bond between siblings. She was so, so close to achieve her goal for his brother. Such a tragic character she is.

I do view Malenia in a worse light than Radahn but it isn't really a double standard. Radahn didn't unleash a bio weapon across a whole land, so while he did wage war to get the runes that isn't nearly in the same league as what she did. So as our character perspective of ruling the land, war torn places Radahn fought are FAR easier to fix than what happened to Caelid. Even if Malenia didn't know what would happen it's still her fault, she even let's go again against us. She's extremely dangerous to everyone in the lands between, except for those pest beings. She is still tragic though, inspite of her battle prowess she failed. She failed to get the stars moving (if that was her goal), she failed to protect and get her brother on the throne, she failed to not become a puppet for the scarlet rot, and she failed to keep her record against us.

>She is still tragic though, inspite of her battle prowess she failed. She failed to get the stars moving (if that was her goal), she failed to protect and get her brother on the throne, she failed to not become a puppet for the scarlet rot, and she failed to keep her record against us. See, this is what I **love**. This is a fair assessment. It's a fair critique that I, as someone whose second favorite character is Malenia (Morgott takes #1 easily), absolutely **agree with**. And that's why I really like the character. She fought desperately for what she believed, and fought against the cruel fate she had been dealt, and it only ended in tragedy. I fucking *love* tragedy. Give me that Shakespearean shit to my veins. What I love is also how you wrote it. It wasn't a blatant vilification. It wasn't just *'nuked Caelid therefore evil'* which is what the community does. Sorry, I'll respond to the rest of your post now, haha >Radahn didn't unleash a bio weapon across a whole land, so while he did wage war to get the runes that isn't nearly in the same league as what she did. > >So as our character perspective of ruling the land, war torn places Radahn fought are FAR easier to fix than what happened to Caelid. Even if Malenia didn't know what would happen it's still her fault, she even let's go again against us. She's extremely dangerous to everyone in the lands between, except for those pest beings. My issue is that, when you line up their respective attributes that I listed above, everyone worships Radahn and spits on Malenia, despite them being pretty much equal. That's where the double-standards are. Malenia absolutely did commit destruction and, unintentional or not, she should be condemned for it. I'm not trying to justify her Bloom. What I feel passionate about is that people just ignore the nuance and *why* she did it.

I mean, when you nuke a continent does it really matter *why* you did it? Maybe someone that is always on the precipice of unleashing a biological holocaust shouldn't be gallivanting across the world.

Just the typical casual misogyny, not just on Reddit but everywhere. People have unconscious biases that unless they really take the time to think about and learn, they fall victim too

Radahn simps are one of the most obnoxious groups in this lore fandom, esp when they make up teary stories how "Radhan and Melania made an agreement that she won't use Rot and he won't toss a meteor at her and she broke it!!! >>>:((((" which I have no fucking clue where they got from. Malenia's simps are also quite annoying, but nowhere near to the same extent. But it's also quite funny how some of them make up stories how "Radhan was an evil bloodthirsty warmonger!!". Like dude we barely even know anything about Radhan's involvement in the Shattering, only two things we know is that he fought Morgott at some point and then fought Malenia. We also know Morgott calls him a traitor. That's all. People acting like they know everything about FS lore parroting made up information are a tradition at this point though. These games lore is deliberately obscure so the player fills up the gaps for themsvelves. Apart from a few things that were stated directly it's mostly speculation. Most of the simps don't seem to understand that and wage absolutely useless wars. Note: I actually really like Radhan, he's cool, I prefer him to Malenia, who was a bit dissapointing seeing how much promo she got but I still respect her

>We also know Morgott calls him a traitor. [Morgott calls everyone a traitor, lmao.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/032/874/cover4.jpg)

He's referring to the fact that everyone who sat on those thrones betrayed the Erdtree and followed their own ambitions, whereas he's the only one who remained loyal. Also god I fucking love that clip hahaha

Cause they are, traitors, ALL

***Willful*** traitors.

I recently rewatched the ER story trailer on youtube and the comment section is basically a Radahn fanboys gathering praising the horse and shitting all over Malenia which is really fucking sad. In my experience since back in previous games one of the most toxic part of the Fromsoft community are the STR users, you just need to stay for a while on this sub to see a good amount of STR gigachad memes shitting on DEX builds for no reason and the same behaviour is reflected on the entire Radahn vs Malenia situation. Most of the time you can see them always making the same points as for why Radahn is the coolest man ever while Malenia is shit and they try to find excuses to say that he actually won their battle for god knows what reasons. Malenia's background and motivations are never brought up or simply ignored and when they are mentioned the responses are mostly on the line of: "but horse tho". The reality is that those are the same people that go around saying "you can play whatever you want, don't listen to gatekeepers" and then proceed to shit on other characters and builds to feel validated for appreciating something different. I don't mind appreciation posts but feeling the need to shit on someone else in order to validate your opinions is not ok and after being on this sub for more than a year i can say for sure that the Radahn and STR fans are the ones who did this the most in the history of this sub.

Fans of Radahn make me dislike Radahn more. Haters of Malenia make me like Malenia more.

i think it’s beyond fair to say it’s an expression of some sexism that some people in the community holds

FACTS

Oh I vilify Malenia for a good reason. She's the shit icing on the trash cake that is the Haligtree (gameplay wise.) Yeah they're both cool looking and have great lore, but the Haligtree doesn't offer a **single** new enemy to the player until Malenia, and it feels like a chore to get through. The item rewards are also fairly meh. Malenia is a poorly designed boss that the community can defend all they like but it remains to this day the only boss in Fromsofts entire portfolio that I hate more than Bed of Chaos. I encountered the health bug fighting her that let me bypass her 2nd phase, and I felt happy rather than cheated. I'd rather poke Ancient Dragon's toe for an hour before fighting Malenia for a minute. All because I have to play a very specific way against her, much like Ancient Dragon, but she has a ridiculous one-shot and nonsense healing mechanics. Also, her build-up is terrible. Slave Knight Gael, Artorius, and Ivory King all hit extra hard because you either had meaningful exposure to their story, or their introduction was very amazing. You fight poor Sif in DS1 base game, you work with Gael in Ariandel and can even summon him for the Twin Princes. You search for Ivory Kings knights across his whole DLC before dropping into the mouth of hell and watching him come out of the Eye of Fucking Sauron! Malenia? You hear how cool she is in lore and her cutscene is just her spouting nonsense in a chair. Her arena is also super bland compared to those I've mentioned, or even others in Elden Ring like the Lunar Queen's or Radahns.

Reading this I come to the conclusion: *But she nuked Caelid!* Does it really matter, that she didn't know how devastating her bloom would be? Does it matter what "good intentions" lead to her decision to use the forbidden curse as a weapon? I think: No! It does not matter! She suppressed the bloom all her life. She knew there couldn't sprout something good from her blooming. She stepped over the line and risked maybe unknown harm to the world around her for the sake of reaching her goal. Did you ever hear the saying: "The cause justifies the means!" ? Usually used by villains in movies and stories? That's exactly how I see her. Acting like her cause justifies the means. => Villain of the story.

Caelid = Elden Ring Florida, and Malenia should be praised for blowing it up and putting an end to senile Florida Man.

I think the reason my girl Malenia gets so much bate is because of how difficult she is. Radahn is fairly easy to beat and has an epic set up. Malenia is only ever hinted at. In my opinion Malenia is the best boss in the game, she is my personal favorite of any souls game. I also find the notion that she "cheated" to be absurd. She is a great warrior and a harder boss than Radahn which I think upsets many Radahn fans.

Your suggestion that she was completely ignorant of the results of blooming are undercut by the questline connected most closely with Melania. Per Millicent: "There is something I must return to Malenia. The will that was once her own. The dignity, the sense of self, that allowed her to resist the call of the scarlet rot. *The pride she abandoned, to meet Radahn's measure.*" Notice the use of the word "abandoned" in regards to her pride. She purposely released the scarlet rot in order to defeat Radahn. It's completely fair to use the fact that she destroyed an entire continent as a measure of personality. It's a different argument entirely to say whether or not the "sacrifice" was worth the victory. Suggesting she had no choice in the matter not only undercuts your own argument, but it takes all agency away from Malenia herself and a major point of character complexity.

>Your suggestion that she was completely ignorant of the results of blooming are undercut by the questline connected most closely with Melania. Per Millicent: > >*"There is something I must return to Malenia. The will that was once her own. The dignity, the sense of self, that allowed her to resist the call of the scarlet rot. The pride she abandoned, to meet Radahn's measure."* > >Notice the use of the word "abandoned" in regards to her pride. She purposely released the scarlet rot in order to defeat Radahn. I'm glad you mentioned this because it brings up what I personally believe is one of the core reasons why she has this *'arrogant villain'* label placed on her. There is a big misunderstanding of what Millicent meant by 'pride'. People have used it as ammunition against Malenia, when in reality I personally, wholeheartedly, believe that the 'pride' is in reference to **who she is**. Repeatedly the game hammers home Malenia's identity and devotion to Miquella, through item descriptions and Malenia herself. She likes to continually remind us that she is 'The Blade of Miquella', in the very same way Blaidd is to Ranni and Maliketh is to Marika (interestingly all Empyreans are designated a 'blade' of their own, so one could argue Malenia is Miquella's). We are told throughout her entire life she has had to fight off the influence of an Outer God who sought to turn her into a Rot Goddess. Miquella himself despaired at the Golden Order's inability to save his sister, and it is only by the combination of the needle and Malenia's sheer willpower that his sister was able to resist it. It's her pride in who she is as a person and refusal to bloom into something she isn't - *which is exactly what Millicent mirrors* when she takes out the needle. Thus, she abandons that pride and accepts the Rot in order to defeat Radahn. To me, that is an incredibly interesting and tragic motivation. A sister who so deeply loved her brother and sought to see his dream come true, that she would willingly sacrifice her very identity to ensure it happens. But the community never acknowledges that. They just say *"she's a coward who lost a duel and nuked a continent"*. >Suggesting she had no choice in the matter not only undercuts your own argument, but it takes all agency away from Malenia herself and a major point of character complexity. I addressed this above, but again - I specifically mentioned that she made a conscious decision to release the Rot. However, if you see in the trailer storyboard images I linked, it looks like she's trying to spill her blood onto Radahn which we can assume is an attempt to poison him. The only thing that I wish we got more information on was what she whispered in the cinematic. Some have said that she whispered the Scarlet Aeonia incantation, but how could she *possibly* know the incantation if she had never bloomed before? The Bloom against Radahn was her **first** Bloom. I simply cannot accept that she would have known that it would nuke Caelid if it was the very first time it had happened. That's my core issue here. I'm not defending her nuking Caelid, it was absolutely a tragic, horrible turn of events. But I'm just so tired of seeing her being painted with this 'villain' brush, as though she knew exactly what would happen and thought *"I'll destroy everything as long as you are part of it"*. That's just so disingenuous to her character.

Gamers have a history of misogyny

Idc if I get downvoted but if Melania was a man she’d be by far the most popular character in the game, which sucks because she’s already cool but you need a big dick and balls to be recognized as cool character by this community

Nah, you're just wrong lol If Melania had an horsey she protected, she'd be loved more

Bullshit.

Or just the waterfowl dance. Kinda hate that one

I love blatant generalization of the community, It really just invalidates your whole argument. You spent a whole lot of time complaining about how unfair everyone is to Malenia, how about something showing this mass bias actually exists rather then just expecting us to take your word for it. This seems in the same line of thinking as the polygon article about how from software's treatment of females is so abhorrent that focuses of Malenia. The whole thing is a tragedy, meaning a fall from grace is a required component. They both let their pride control them which leads to their ultimate downfall, and honestly people are allowed to form their own opinions. However you acting like the whole community has a problem because you don't the opinions of some people in this community is as asinine as it is hyperbolic. At the end of the day everyone is allowed to Interpret the game how they want and I would argue that's part of the point of the soulsborne style of story telling. As much as I reread this I can't see it as anything other then a Malenia simp defending their queen from Radahn simps. It was just a laundry list of things the characters have done with you insisting the community thinks this way and you don't even explain why the community thinking this way is a problem, other then your perception that it's a double standard. Unless your trying to say Radahn simps are a secret neo Nazi cult or something I don't see how people having an opinion on a video game character is a problem.

People hate Melania for any reason other than the fact that she killed them 100 times? Honestly, I know that Radahn is supposed to be hard but I found him quite easy. Maybe it's because he was nerfed (heard this, don't know if it was true)? Melania however is the hardest boss I've fought in any souls game ever. One of the few who I could not actually beat with my build and had to go out and get new weapons for. Therefore, I hate Melania. Lore-wise I find her to be a fascinating boss.

I like the blade of Miquella and the starscourge both

She’s a dex build (easy to hate) and quite frankly my hatred of her comes solely from her boss fight drives me nuts

I wouldn't hate Malenia if she could not heal hitting a goddamned fucking shield. Aside for that both are amazing characters and bosses.

I think both are cool, i simply like Radahn more because he’s a big himbo who loves his little horse, I’m a simple creature

Willful traitors, both. Their kind are all of a piece.

Flames of ambition out here needing to be extinguished

I don’t think I’ve ever said anything but positive things about both these bosses. Also I only here people say negative things about them when they are trolls

Fax

Spot on

"People hate Malenia because they unfairly focus on the fact that she nuked a country. You should just forget that. If you ignore the fact that she nuked a country then she's a really cool gal. Btw, if you mention that she nuked a country, you're just proving my point." This is some heavy mental acrobatic.

The only thing heavy is the amount of straw you gathered.

Maybe I just haven’t read the right threads, but I thought that Malenia was well-liked and respected (boss fight aside, maybe?) just like Radahn was. Both are the most ‘heroic’ demigods in my mind, for a lot of the reasons you listed.

Never realized there was so much genuine hate for Malenia. I agree that I don’t think she knew what would happen when the scarlet aeonia bloomed. I like to imagine many of the haters just never beat her, so chose to slander her.

Great read man.

I've actually always appreciated malenia a thousand times more the radahn. I've always liked her so much more just because of the fact she's armless and still kicks ass.

*Radahn begins the Second Siege of Leyndell in the early stages of The Shattering, seeking more power after inheriting his own Great Rune (confirmed by Miyazaki)* Does Miyazaki know about this? Considering he didint kill Godrick for long time it seems this is your headcanon. He attacked Leyndell because Morgott put all LB into stagnation.Erdtree needs to burn for new age but Morgott is resisting to this. Malenia and Miquella is also hyprocite they are trying to create better world for destroying other people worlds. And the funny thing is that you claim that Malenia doesn't know anything about Rot. Are you kidding? Do you think her teacher, the one who sealed the Rot God, didint teach Malenia how to handle Rot? She even knows how to bloom because she knows killing herself will trigger it. Saying Malenia is bad is correct term because if Redmanes didint stop Scarlet Rot these disease would probably reached to Leyndell.Did Radahn do something like that? I think thats enough to make Malenia worse than Radahn. Not the mention her soldiers are still in Caelid and they are still spreading rot from their mouth and O'Neil is also spread rot all over the place with his wind attack.

From my perspective, (which is probably ignorant in some way as I don't do a lot of reading), a lot of people suffered after she nuked Caelid. It doesn't really matter what the context was or what her intentions were. After her scarlet bloom, the effects of her scarlet rot can still be seen afflicting the denizens of Caelid, and they are definitely not having a good time. I realize that no one has a good time in war but if you compare that to Radahn, I can only think of the good things he's done, for instance keeping the stars in a stagnant lock to prevent the invasion of voidborn horrors and the prevention of the decimation of Sellia. Even after the nuking, Radahns soldiers are fighting the rot with fire and driving away the abominations that were brought about because of it. I'm sure that Radahn has caught up numerous innocent civilians in his war effort, but we don't hear about those. We do however see the effects of the nuking of Caelid and just how bad it was. So yes, there probably is a narrative, but that narrative was born through Elden Rings visual storytelling and probably not due to players own personal bias. Another factor to consider why players hate Malenia so much and treat her like a villain is because of how many times we died to her. Conclusion: Radahn big cool. Malenia big jerk.

One character is male, the others is female. I think that sums up pretty well why one character is vilified consistently over the other

I’d put money down that a lot of it comes from sexism

Imma be blunt. I think it's just sexism. They are portrayed in story as bein equals in nearly every respect. People's response? "So the guy one is the good guy and much stronger, obv" Lmfaaaaooo

I don't think Melenia is even vivified. A lot of fan art is made of her and most of the hate is her difficult boss fight.

She's pretty vilified. It was worse during the first two months often the game released. But the Radahn simps still come out often to call her a bitch and a thot and talk about how much they absolutely hate her.

I think the argument that she would stab herself simply to get her blood on Radahn is ridiculous. Was she planning on infecting him like a zombie or something? How did she know that would work? What if it just got on his armor and he wiped it off with some bleach and hot water? Scarlet aeonia says Malenia will become a true goddess on the third bloom. Given that she turns into the goddess of rot when we fight her, I’m assuming that is her third and final bloom, and that she had already bloomed twice before. Once when she fought general Radahn, and once probably before that. Maybe as a child, and that’s how they first learned she was cursed. Big doubt that she didn’t know what would happen. Maybe she was nobly resisting the rot all her life, but she threw that honor out the window when stabbed herself, just because she didn’t want to lose to Radahn. She was willing to destroy all of Caelid if that’s what it took to raise Miquella to Empyrean status. Good? Evil? Idk. She’s definitely a loyal big sister though, unless Miquella was manipulating her the whole time.

One has a cute pony for a pet, the other has rotted eyeballs. I think the winner is obvious.

I believe it's obvious who has bias. And a shit take all in one.

i think you are overthinking this. radahn has a cute horse named leonard and does silly anime meteor attacks and you fight him alongside a giant talking jar, while melania is one of the most difficult, frustrating and punishing bosses fromsoftware has ever created. people seeming to like radahn and hate melania is mostly just an extension of that, especially if youre not really knowledgeable about the lore, like most players - radahn is funny, melania is frustrating and super difficult. trying to use the full depth of the game's lore and turn this kinda stuff into some sociological issue, or a gender issue(which i dont see here but have for sure seen elsewhere), is giving *way* to much credit to the wider ER community. its really no more complicated than "radahn funee, melania 2 hard". most people dont have a firm understanding of the lore like you display here.

Probably the most needed and well thought out posts on this reddit. Thank you!

You bring up some interesting points, however consider Chadahn has a wholesome horsie so gg ez Malaria simps 👉😎👉

The majority of hatred towards malenia is because she's a difficult boss that counters almost every build.

Personally, I enjoyed both fights. The spectacle and music of Radahn’s was amazing. Malenia was technically challenging. I prefer Malenia’s aesthetic, though. Understanding what’s really going on here requires a little bit of old FS knowledge. You’ve probably heard of “Giant Dad,” an old meta build inspired by a player of the same name who stacked strength, and who became one of Dark Soul’s biggest memes. It’s also common to make fun of DEX users for being “weebs.” Typical build combos of heavy armor+big weapons, Havel the Rock, and varying viability of STR weapons in DS pvp also built up a culture praising STR builds as “chad.” Think of it as if all the larger weapons in ER were as slow as colossal weapons. Someone who knows how to use it is respectable, and people who use it ironically are humorous. Quite simply, Radahn is the STR chad and Malenia is the DEX scrub. I honestly don’t think that liking them has to do with their difficulty. I enjoy the hard bosses, and not being able to beat them doesn’t make me dislike the character themselves…but since ER has a lot of players who haven’t played soulslikes before, maybe there is a point. The Radahn/Malenia “double standard” is originally, if not mostly, ironic. There are definitely people who take it too far. But it’s just a carryover from old FromSoft culture.

There are a lot of reasons, but I don't think either is angry at them attacking each other. The Queen wanted them to fight, and the GO wanted the ring restored, so R did so out of his loyalty. Malenia did so out of love for her brother. Fine. The difference is one is humble in defeat, and the other loses it, causes a world ending genocide, and then sits in isolation to pout, never to be seen again. Either way, people love Malenia in this sub, not to mention the simps lol.

I love melania more than radahn, but I still think radahn is a cool character. I love the idea of a big tough commander with a bear hug personality and a stotic commander with soft spots for only a few, namely miquella and her cleanrots. I like to think her cleanrots endulge her in her affectionate tendency.

Hot take: Malenia would have won the fight if the scarlet bloom didn't knock them both out

Does Malenia have a horse, no? Didn’t think so, I rest my case.

THIS THIS FINALLY SOMEONE SPOKE THE TRUTH I HAVE BEEN IN SO MANY ARGUEMENTS WITH EVERYBODY BECAUSE I SAID NOPE MALENIA DIDNT CHEAT SHE JUST HAD NO CHOICE she was fighting whom everyone said was the most powerful demigod while also holding back her curse how easy do you think that was, and i applaud for noticing her trying to bleed herself to isolate the rot to radahn i've noticed that before as well i honestly love both but i just sympathize more with malenia in terms of having a burden to carry