#### [Reddit Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tadqms/the_children_of_radagon/) Elden Ring is heavy in Norse myth but I noticed this The three children of Radagon, Ryckard, Radahn and Renna are all representative of the three children of Loki Jorgmandr the world serpent = Ryckard the god eating serpent Fenrisulfr the wolf that will swallow the sun = Radahn Starscourge Hel the one who is both dead and alive who rules as queen of the realm of the dead = Renna the ancient spirits are Odin's mount a giant sparkling elk/deer they stand against the golden order - just as when Ragnarok comes they will defy the Aesir \[the Aesir is one of the mythical races and are the ones who wanted to be considered gods, Vanir would be the sorcerers or Raya Lucaria, there are ice giants, fire giants, draugr, vargr as the beastmen of Farum Azula it needs a really deep dive that I don't want to give it but it's worth pointing out #### Relevant Comments ##### u/SegSignal Not denying there are some obvious similarities, but this seems like reaching a bit too far, especially in the case of ranni and the ancestral spirits. Besides having reached technical immortality through an existencial loophole, ranni really has no thematical relation to the dead at all, she's obsessed with the sky. ##### u/athenadark spoiler but Ranni is dead she killed her flesh to escape her possibility as an Empyrean, she tried to remove her flesh so she couldn't take her mother's place that is why Rennala keeps trying to rebirth her with the golden egg, she says it in her boss fight Hel/Hela outside of Marvel is always pictured as having half of her face that of a corpse, like Ranni she is both dead and alive, from [Norse mythology for smart people](https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/hel/) Hel is generally presented as being rather greedy, harsh, and cruel, or at least indifferent to the concerns of both the living and the dead. However, her personality is little-developed in what survives of Old Norse literature. She’s mostly mentioned only in passing. **Snorri describes her appearance as being half-black, half-white, and with a perpetually grim and fierce expression on her face.** [https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/PAdAQoxCqB97EuK7de5PMN-1200-80.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/PAdAQoxCqB97EuK7de5PMN-1200-80.jpg) the image of Ranni with her spirit self overlaid from the opening Ranni opposes the golden order, Rennala who served as her "mother" and who seeks to rebirth her was dethroned by the institution of the golden order and as glintstone sorcery was usurped, lost her husband and was locked away in the great library, Ranni has plenty of reason to want to overthrow it, she is the mirror to immortality as life-in-death or death-in-life Marika/the golden order's great "sin" was existing the rune of death from the elden ring which she then gave to her shadow Maliketh [a svartalfar in Norse mythology and the villain in thor 2] creating immortality, the Erdtree is a variant of the Yggdrasil even to the point of the "svartalfar" putting corpses in among its roots in the catacombs there is a lot of norse mythology in elden ring, and a good deal of it is the wagnerian Ring cycle story [the actual myth not the opera], even the fact that it is a magical ring [where tolkien got the idea from] ##### u/SegSignal Ranni is not dead, she lives. Her soul endures, she is just bodiless. There are multiple examples of actual undeads in this setting, an entire category of beings called Those Who Live in Death, as well as several categories of being that either preside over death or live through death. Rannis is not one of them except in the least literal and most poetical sense. She is also not half-white nor half black, the dominant color of her outfit is blue. Svaltarfars are not in any way similar in role or description to Maliketh, and in fact are so loosely defined in the edda there is literally no similarity to be drawn from them to anything in elden ring. I'm not sure what source you're using to say they had a funerary role, but I assure you Thor 2 is not norse mythology canon. Lastly, you'd do well to remember that inspiration is not imitation nor is it equivalence. Elden Ring is a separate setting to norse mythology and there is very little insight to be gained by correlating things between the two and hoping to explain one with the other. ##### u/athenadark Cauldron of story every story we encounter in some way becomes part of our personal cauldron of story and Der Ring das Niebelungen is very much a big part Hel/Hela is not dead, she is death in life, both alive and dead, she has to be dead to enter Helheim but she's so loosely defined she's alive in one edda and dead in another, unfortunately that's a huge problem with norse myth and one that carried into the Victorian age where Wagner got his mitts on it, the Marvel universe didn't help certainly Hel/Hela is the daughter of Loki and Angrboda who is a giant, but if it's from Jotun or Muspelheim isn't clear, then there is the whole what is Loki because most edda say he's Aesir but a fair few call him vanir, others jotun and a few more besides say he is like Mimir an outsider whose beheading renders him bodiless and the incarnation of the old monkey island navigator joke The idea that Hela=Ranni opens up an interesting debate because it also opens up the idea of Radagon, who we know to be Marika as well through godstuff, is not Odin all-father but Loki Firebringer and that is fascinating because Loki is analogous to Lucifer figures in that he is the opposition to order I thought it would be Radahn I'd have to argue, but the imagery of Ranni as having both a face and a ghost face was enough to go - Hel and it might be that deep, it might also be that it gives us a lens to see more analogous or references when they are that ingrained open a door to studying it from another angle, rather than just saying the curtains are blue because we can say traditionally blue means this, windows mean this and curtains mean this and because the author used this here here and here we can do this with that information it's a hole and it might be a deep dark rabbit hole leading to something, or it might just be a hole, we use it to go does this bear up to scrutiny, and I don't have the time to give this the deep dive it needs to see if it does bear up I threw it out there