Heirdom taketh many forms, indeed.
In an interview with Gamespot in the Autumn of 2015, FromSoftware’s president and director of Dark Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki noted that “I’m considering Dark Souls 3 to be the big closure on the series.” To that end, Miyazaki further remarks that, “… there is the conclusion to a large theme that has continued through the series, something that will leave you with the impression of what Dark Souls was really about, tell you about the overarching theme.” Later, in an interview with VICE, Miyazaki further said that “there’s an inherent beauty that can be found within everything, beyond all the withering and decay.”
Dark Souls is a series that paints its story like an impressionistic painting: small touches and pure color in broad strokes that are all meant to evoke a specific feeling, even if the image isn’t in sharp detail. In this, one can’t consider the story of Dark Souls without considering the feelings the story is trying to evoke. Emotions such as sadness and loneliness are intrinsic to the narrative.
What is even more interesting about that is how the story unfolds. For each individual person the story is different and it is those differences, theories, and considerations that offer a new perspective on the journey that you yourself undertake. Perhaps, it is this that is intended: for people to talk and exchange their insights with one another as we move through our own lonely journeys akin to the journey of the Bundren family in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
I’ll be tackling the Lore somewhat unevenly and out of order, mostly with what I feel is most interesting for me to talk about at that time. So, I will, most likely, go from talking about specific lore points in one essay to meta-narratives like what the series is saying about Fire Keepers, the fear of the unknown, and the evolution and devolution of History.
Like History, I don’t expect my theories to remain the same even after I post them here. Especially, as others voice their points and arguments for and against or as the final chapters of the story are yet to be written. So, consider all of this a work in progress.
After all, ideas are birthed and live and grow apart from the author once given to the world.
The Second Kingdom and Graves, Untended
“There is a grave in Lothric that sees no visitors, a dark place where rootless warriors rest. The Queen of Lothric alone cared to wish the poor souls good fortune.” (Hidden Blessing)
One question that has stuck out like a sore thumb in the minds of many, has been ‘What is the Untended Graves.’ It’s a strange, surreal area for the player with lighting that reminds me a Black Box Theater that only reveals and occludes the form of an area that the player believes themselves familiar with. It is this belief that FromSoft subverts after allowing the player to believe a certain set of rules for the first two acts of the game, even if the clues were there from the very beginning.
I’m not talking about the moment your character stands in the Cemetery of Ash for the first time, but the opening cut-scene of Dark Souls III. Gaining control of your character for the first time isn’t actually the beginning of the game. Unlike in Dark Souls I or II which are both cut-scenes that either set the stage of the world or are abstractly hinting at the themes of forgetting and the erosion of memory, the opening cut-scene of Dark Souls III — specifically the last minute of the cinematic — speaks directly to what the Cemetery of Ash and the Untended Graves are.
In fact, it is the Untended Graves that the player sees first.
A figure in the darkness, dressed in the Firelink Armor set, drags a body in the darkness and passes a bonfire. In apparent daylight, the Fire Keeper takes up her mantle, the interior of her mask swirling with an, as of yet, unknown power. After this, the player is brought to their character creation screen but take note: Hidden Blessing, an item intrinsic to the Untended Graves, is one of the possible burial gifts.
Later on, as the player explores the Untended Graves and comes to the grave they rise out of in the Cemetery of Ash, they will find two important things. A tribe of Corvians, standing around their Storyteller leader, as they Storyteller stands above your grave. Paying rapt attention to their chieftain, are a couple of others. It is impossible to know what the story being told is. That they are eulogizing you. Clearing out the Corvians you’ll be able to find the Ashen Estus Ring.
“Once a treasure brought before Lothric’s Queen, she had it enshrined in the Cemetery of Untended Graves, so that one day an Unkindled might profit from its use.” (Ashen Estus Ring)
So, here is the first possibility for the Untended Graves. First, the Untended Graves is not an alternate reality. It is reality; as it is physically connected to the rest of the Game World in contrast to the Cemetery of Ashes, which is unmoored from the Game World except through bonfire teleportation. The Queen of Lothric, mother of Princes Lothric and Lorian, alone cared for the area. After your character was buried here, the Queen of Lothric entrusted the corpse with burial goods — of which one is the burial gift you begin the game with.
She departs but the Corvians take it upon themselves to protect the corpse.
To take a moment to speculate, this is probably why the entry to the Untended Graves is barred by King Oceiros, the Consumed King and the Husband to the Queen and Father of Princes Lothric and Lorian. Even in his madness, he protects a place valued by his departed wife. He knows, even unconsciously, of the place’s importance and erects a shrine to his precious Dragons, potentially to fulfill a conscious knowledge of the place’s importance and to further hide the Untended Graves as it hides a State Secret.
However, even lonely and desolate as it is. The Daughter of Crystal Kriemhild, favored pupil of the Crystal Sages, invades where the first bonfire would be. She is here purely to protect State Secrets and interests of Lothric as an agent of the Crown.
Oh, thou’rt…
Oh, no, ‘tisn’t anything, Ashen One.
I am but a humble handmaid of the Shrine.
The only approachable character, here as a caretaker, is the Handmaiden of the Untended Shrine. In a way, she presents the biggest challenge to understanding what this place is and what we’re being told.
As individuals, the Handmaidens hold different stocks. The Untended Handmaiden sells important gear: the High Priestess Ring and the Artorias armor set. While this is a different essay detailing the governance of Lothric, it does represent a connection with the Spiritual pillar of Lothric, of which most likely Queen Lothric was a part. The High Priestess Emma, detailed on the ring, was Prince Lothric’s wetnurse, which represents another connection to Queen Lothric.
Perhaps, the Untended Handmaiden was a High-Priestess herself and thus sells her own ring.
The Ashen Handmaiden sells most boss armors and npc armors, and teases out items from various umbral ash. Side-note: Umbral can mean Shadow or Gray. It is important to remember this word in the future.
So, why does the Ashen Handmaid recognize you if you talk to the Untended Handmaid first?
While there is a possibility that they are twins, given that twins are a thematic point in a few areas of the game, there are other possibilities that have been suggested. One theory suggests that the Handmaidens are the same and that the Untended Graves, including its Firelink Shrine, are in a different timeline: a future age of dark or even the past. In my view, the Untended and Ashen Firelink Shrines are not in different points of time and both exist in the present. Answering the question about what Firelink Shrine is, answers the questions surrounding the Untended Graves.
If we accept, then, that the Firelink Shrine in the Untended Graves is the true, real world Firelink Shrine, then that means one thing for the Firelink Shrine the player understands as home. The Ashen Firelink Shrine, caught between Light and Dark, cold and warmth, is Purgatory.
A tragic farce
A Champion is not a Champion without a Fire Keeper. A Fire Keeper is nothing without a flame — the soul of a champion — to tend. Nowhere is this more illustrated than in the story of the Champion and Judge, Gundyr and his Fire Keeper.
“This ring was entrusted to a certain Fire Keeper, but in the end she never met her champion, and the ensuing tragic farce became a favorite tale of the masses.” (Estus Ring)
“Once, a champion came late to the festivities, and was greeted by a shrine without fire, and a bell that would not toll.” (Soul of Champion Gundyr)
Once upon a time the Fire, the Soul of the World, was fading. As always, when that happens, champions and their Fire Keepers arise. Gundyr was one such champion. It is unknown why he was late to the ‘festivities.’ His Fire Keeper, was not and she arrived at the Ashen Firelink Shrine to wait, like all Firekeepers before and since.
Gundyr arrived too late. The fire of reality had already gone out and the bells, the warning of the fire’s demise, had stopped. The Fire Keeper waited in vain and died and was buried, or rather discarded, with her sisters in the tower.
It is a story so well known that the masses know it, favor it. However, this also leads to a possible conclusion of why the Monarchy of Lothric try so hard to protect the Untended Graves. It is because it reveals a terrible secret: the world is already in an Age of Dark. The apocalypse has already come and gone. In a way, this might explain the Dark Sign in the sky. The world is branded by the Dark Sign and is, itself, undead purely because of inaction by the time our Ashen One rises.
A terrible, tragic farce.
The Second Kingdom
“Or perhaps thou’rt captive already. Like that poor girl.” (Untended Shrine Handmaid)
The idea of Purgatory is older than Christianity itself, stretching back to the practices of caring and praying for the dead. In the twelfth century, Purgatory became thought of as a literal place, a place for purification before moving on in the afterlife. St. Ambrose of Milan put forth the idea, for instance, that Purgatory was a “baptism in fire” at the entrance to Heaven.
The most famous example of Purgatory, and perhaps the one most ingrained in the global consciousness, is Dante’s interpretation. The second book of The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio describes his journey with Virgil up the mountain of Purgatory, the Second Kingdom.
And of that second kingdom will I sing
Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself,
And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy.
(Canto I, Lines 4–8, Longfellow)
Purgatory in Dante’s interpretation is an island and a terraced mountain, unchained by reality or any other land-mass. Each terrace is a different vice to overcome on their way to heaven. The Nexus-esque layout of the Firelink Shrine of Dark Souls III is very similar to this terraced description of Dante’s Purgatory.
In essence, the Ashen Firelink Shrine that we call home is Purgatory where the Untended Graves Firelink Shrine is reality and where your character is truly buried. A gray, ashen place, caught between the light and the dark where you and others like Andre, the Shrine Handmaid (who all but confirms this), and especially the Fire Keeper are bound by the ‘curse of the shrine’ to serve the institution of the Fire. This explains why the Ashen Firelink Shrine serves as a way-point or a convergence point for different characters, as different characters who have their own worlds visit and rest here as well.
This may also explain why Firelink Shrine can be accessed from any bonfire in the game, and isn’t connected to any real place within the game world, unlike the Untended Shrine which can be walked to from the game-world.
Purification for our Ashen One, comes in the form of conflict and violence on their journey to bring the Lords of Cinder back to their thrones. Once the journey is complete and all of the Lords of Cinders have been brought back, the Fire Keeper anoints the Ashen One, allowing them to make the final ascent to the Paradise of the World, the Kiln of the First Flame.
Special Thanks and Citations:
Special Thanks go to Richard ( Jerks Sans Frontieres) Pilbeam for beta-reading and sound-boarding and “AssaulterBob” for proof-reading.
Citations:
- Ahmed, Sayem. “’Dark Souls III’ Director Hidetaka Miyazaki on How the Franchise Has Reached Its Turning Point | VICE | United States.” VICE. March 1, 2016. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://www.vice.com/read/on-the-sublime-and-beautiful-a-conversation-with-dark-souls-iii-director-hidetaka-miyazaki-400.
- Alighieri, Dante, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and, 1895.
- Dark Souls III, Wikidot (accessed May 27 2016)
- Hussain, Tamoor. “It Wouldn’t Be Right to Continue Creating Souls.” GameSpot. November 20, 2015. Accessed May 27, 2017. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dark-souls-3-interview-it-wouldnt-be-right-to-cont/1100-6432425/.
- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Black Box Theater” (accessed May 27, 2016), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_theater
- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Purgatorio” (accessed May 27, 2016), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatorio
- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Purgatory” (accessed May 27, 2016), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatory
- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Stage Lighting” (accessed May 27, 2016), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_lighting#Functions_of_Lighting
