Before we get into this, there’ll (naturally) be spoilers for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree‘s final boss within.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree‘s final boss, Promised Consort Radahn (apart from being hard as a mouthful of nails doused in acid) has proven to be something of a contentious choice from a lore perspective.
Some argue that other candidates from Elden Ring’s panoply of blood-relative demigods, such as Godwyn the formerly Golden, might’ve been more fitting, though there’s plenty of debate as to whether his soul’s even a viable candidate for being jammed into Mohg’s puppeteered corpse.
Whether you’re on team Edward or Jacob—sorry, I mean, Godywn or Radahn—it turns out the latter might have also been more talkative, once upon a time. On r/eldenringloretalk (thanks, Eurogamer) user LaMi_1 has dug up some “cut” voice-lines via the time-honored tradition of datamining. LaMi_1 found the following three lines:
“I am Radahn.”“Born of the red-maned Radagon, and Rennala of the Full Moon.”“A lion bred for battle.”
“I was checking the internal files of the DLC,” LaMi_1 writes, “to translate the original Japanese texts and discover if they had any relevant difference with the English version or any meaning that got lost in translation, and while scrolling the dialogues and comparing the English ones with the Japanese ones, I found out a very interesting piece of cut content.”
This leads us to a secondary question, one that’s been on the tongues of YouTube loremasters since the DLC dropped: Just how on-board was Radahn with becoming Miquella’s consort in the first place?
During the DLC, it was revealed that Mohg had, perhaps, been judged too harshly by the fanbase—his kidnapping and infatuation with Miquella caused by the child-slash-demigod himself. In other words, he was brainwashed. Two years later, Mohg: The Lord of Blood has been cleared of all charges.
If Miquella similarly forced Radahn to promise to be his consort, then that means Radahn is himself a victim of the “kindly” god’s mind control—however, Radahn’s mostly just here for a good fight, and is considered in the lore to be compassionate and, possibly, a bit gullible.
The lines LaMi_1 dug up are Zanzibart-tier in how little they actually give away about Radahn’s motivation, though “a lion bred for battle” does suggest that even he considers himself more of a pet to Miquella, rather than a partner. On the other hand, Radahn was a badass, and a badass referring to themselves as a “lion bred for battle” is—you guessed it, badass. Sometimes the curtains are just blue. It’s also interesting that he doesn’t refer to himself as Miquella’s consort, either.
There’s a whole further barrel of takes on how much of a willing partner he is, but resident PC Gamer Elden Ring buff Ted Litchfield tells me that the description of his Young Lion’s Armor indicates he got cold feet during the Shattering, with Malenia tracking him down on behalf of their brother:
“When Malenia, Blade of Miquella, let the rotflower blossom in Aeonia, Radahn heard a murmur in his ear—’Miquella awaits thee, O promised consort.'”
However much he might have once been down to clown with his half-brother and boyfriend (don’t think about it), Radahn might have had issues later on with being crammed into the desecrated body of Mohg, the Lands Between’s most misunderstood wife guy, and joined at the hip to a version of his boo who had abandoned everything good about himself in a bid for godhood.
(Image credit: FromSoftware)
We’ll never know for certain, though, because he doesn’t say anything. Radahn is mute throughout the entire fight, leaving the chatting to Miquella, who gives the world’s deadliest piggyback ride.
On the third, secret hand (that’s totally mine, stop asking) Radahn is characterised as a compassionate and honourable warrior. Defining himself by violence and war is a little out-of-character. Which would be fitting if you’ve been mind-controlled by a very unkindly version of Miquella.
Whatever your views on the Land of Shadow’s freshly-inaugurated jock supreme are, it’s clear that being mind-controlled won’t stop Radahn from flattening most players into the dirt. Unless you’re this guy, who trained themselves to school him without getting hit a single time. In which case, I’m afraid of you.
