In this article:
- Miquella is one of the many gods featured in Elden Ring. The mysterious Empyrean is known to have turned away from the Golden Order and the Greater Will in an effort to cure his sister Malenia.
- Cursed to be young forever, Miquella’s power is implied to be limited, hence his need to be raised to full godhood by Mohg.
- Miquella’s unclear motives and suspicious identity have led fans to believe that he’s slated to be the central enemy in an upcoming Elden Ring DLC.
Since the release of Elden Ring earlier this year, fans have been fascinated by its rich world of dark fantasy and lowkey (or maybe highkey) horrific gods. There’s something about the gods of Elden Ring that marks them as more monstrous than divine. They look like the stuff of nightmares and they have powers that, in more conventional games, would be described as demonic.
Miquella the Unalloyed is just as terrifying. Though many lore tidbits and characters point to him being an eternal child, they also imply that he’s the most terrifying and powerful out of all the Empyreans.
Miquella the Unalloyed Is the Most “Fearsome Empyrean” and Not a Redhead
Miquella was born to Queen Marika the Eternal, a powerful goddess and Empyrean who ruled over the Lands Between, the setting of Elden Ring. As the son of a chief deity, Miquella inherited numerous powers and his mother’s golden hair. However, his most significant and feared ability is his power to charm others or as the game puts it, “compel affection”.
It’s implied that this means Miquella can make anyone love him and do his bidding, therefore making him the most feared of the Empyreans. Unlike other gods who have to fight to maintain their influence, Miquella could theoretically get other people to do the dirty work for him.
We don’t know much about the extent of these powers but Miquella’s relationship to many of the game’s characters, both godly and not, suggests that they may be compelled to organize around him. For one, many knights swore their allegiance to Miquella and promised to protect the Haligtree he planted atop the city of Elphael. Sure, Empyreans are respected and admired for their power, but how much of that is just admiration for the divine and how much of it is secretly because of Miquella’s influence?
And then, there’s the next big question about Miquella: What exactly is going on between him and Mohg?
Miquella Is Cursed and Has An…Odd Connection to Mohg
Like his sister Malenia, who is cursed with the Scarlet Rot, Miquella is cursed to be forever young. The siblings’ curse comes from their less-than-ideal origins. In Elden Ring, Empyreans are supposed to be born from an Empyrean and a non-Empyrean. However, Malenia and Miquella were the children of Marika and Radagon who are really just the same god but with a feminine and masculine aspect. Basically, they’re cursed because of divine incest. That’s a simpler way to put it.
Eternal youth doesn’t sound so bad since immortality is a common trope for gods, but in Miquella’s case, it means that he’s trapped in a child-like (for a god, at least) state that keeps his powers relatively restricted. Because of this, he finds it difficult to find ways to cure his sister Miquella’s curse.
This is what ultimately drives him to rebel from the Golden Order, a collection of beliefs organized around the Greater Wills โ Lovecraftian gods from beyond the world of Elden Ring that give the Empyreans their power. In doing so, Miquella became their enemy after he was already chosen to succeed his mother Marika.
Miquella then abandoned them to create the Haligtree, his very own version of the Erdtree, as part of an attempt to cure his sister Malenia’s Scarlet Rot curse. He watered the tree with his own blood, hoping to give it divine powers like his own. Miquella also came up with unalloyed goldm, a magical metal capable of warding off the Golden Order.
This is how Miquella obtained the title Miquella, the Unalloyed.
So, what does this all have to do with Mohg?
Unlike him, Mohg remained aligned with the Golden Order and sought to raise his power by becoming the consort of Miquella. This is the part that trips up a lot of fans since Mohg and Miquella are both portrayed as men. But hey, in a world with Eldritch gods from beyond and an alien human race, that’s the least”odd” thing that Elden Ring has.
Seeing that Miquella had embeded himself into his Haligtree, Mohg arrived and stole him by splitting the tree open and spiriting him away into a cocoon where he lay dreaming for years. When Malenia awoke from the first blossoming of the Scarlet Rot, she was horrified to find that her brother had been taken.
Mohg used the power he received from the Formless Mother, another outer god, to try and “develop” Miquella out of his eternal youth and into a full-fledged god.
Itโs Not Clear Whether Miquella Is Good or Evil, Though Itโs Likely Somewhere in Between
For someone who gets mentioned a lot in the story and has a strongly felt impact on the world of Elden Ring, Miquella doesn’t really talk to the player. His whole thing is that he remains asleep, trapped in his own dream, while his body remained imprisoned by Mohg. This makes him quite a mysterious character whose motivations aren’t entirely clear.
Though it’s obvious that he loves his sister Malenia and despises the gods from beyond for their inability to help her, he’s not a completely benevolent force either. Several tidbits of the lore point to Miquella being a sinister force in Elden Ring.
He’s connected to the Bewitching Branches, a consumable in game item that charms foes and turns them into your ally for a fixed duration. This lines up with the fan theory that Mohg has been compelled by Miquella to “abduct” him. Why he’d want that or if he’s even doing it consciously is unclear, but that never stopped a fan theory.
Miquella is also heavily implied to be connected to St. Trina, another divine entity that is associated with sleep. Her in-game items give enemies the sleep status effect. It’s not even clear whether St. Trina is actually female since it’s hinted in some item descriptions that St. Trina appears to be a young girl or a young boy.
Who else in Elden Ring looks young enough to be ambiguously androgynous? Miquella. The confusion could be furthered by the fact that he has Marika’s long golden locks.
We’re Likely to Get A DLC About Miquella
Now that Elden Ring is several months old, fans have begun to clamor for additional DLC content about its most mysterious figures. Chief among these is Miquella, making it no surprise that fans desperately want to see him featured as a major boss in an expansion.
No matter what Miquella is, it’s certain that he isn’t dead. The game’s lore points out that Mohg only has Miquella’s body and that his spirit is “elsewhere”. Notably, Sir Gideon Ofnir says that Miquella has to be alive if he’s really sleeping because, logically, one would have to be alive in order to sleep.
Would you play a Miquella-centric Elden Ring DLC? If not, maybe there’s another Elden Ring character you’d like to see featured in one. Let us know in the comments!