Had a random thought about these three gods Venti mentions in the comics, and it spiraled out of control. Just a quick for-fun theory about the names of the seven sovereigns and what their inspirations might be from.
**TIMESTAMPS**
0:00 Introduction
**CITATIONS AND FURTHER READING**
Purusha – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purusha
Japan’s Creation Myth – https://jpf.org.au/classroom-resources/resources/creation-of-japan-myth/
Celtic Creation Myth – https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-folklore/celtic-creation-myth-0016475
Celtic Creation Myth – http://www.clannada.org/theology_talegreatlove.html
Tlaltecuhtli – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaltecuhtli
Aztec Creation Myths – http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-creation-story.html
Slavic Myths – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qVxRnX0CuQ
Svarog – https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Svarog
Svarog – https://www.britannica.com/topic/Svarog
Ymir – https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/ymir/
Pangu – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangu
Pangu – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0a6OzcQ18
source
*NOTES*
– In hindsight, I should have included this explanation:
I don't think the Sovereigns are LITERALLY the ground we walk on. I'm assuming they're entities like the gods of Teyvat so may be subject to similar rules. Now we know Guoba/Marchosias put all his power into the land (of Liyue) and that made him SHRINK in size and lose his mental faculties. If we extrapolate that event out to the Sovereigns, it's possible that the same thing happened to them. They were defeated, turned into energy soup, and pumped into the land like a weird magic fertilizer.
That would imbue the land with their elemental power etc, thereby "becoming the land" without having to literally BE the land.
Since Azhdaha is referred to as 'king of the vishaps' I've been nurturing a pet theory that he's either one of the old Sovereigns, or one of their replacements. This could be wrong because we know SO LITTLE about the Sovereigns but like WHAT DID YOU USED TO KNOW AZHDAHA WHAT HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN TELL ME ABOUT PRIMORDIAL ONE AND PRE-PRIMORDIAL ONE ERA YOU'RE OLD ENOUGH
I do love this theory tho… it'd make a lot of sense. I've been wondering for a while why each nation seems connected to an element– like it's a super common fantasy trope, to make 'The Fire Kingdom!' 'The Water Kingdom!', etc. But few things in Teyvat are so simple, and ALL of the nations have way more depth and culture than just 'we're the Earth Kingdom we have a bunch of rocks and maybe a desert =)' (Like in the basic version of the trope, earth/rock would usually be a desert, but Liyue doesn't have the desert, from the manga, that'd be Sumeru, but Sumeru is the Plant Kingdom too, so most of the time it'd JUST be the rainforest– etc yeah you know)
But like… it'd explain some Stuff. Stuff like… the way the elements tend to affect natural life. Now, it doesn't apply perfectly– we find the main Electro Hypostasis in Mondstadt and not Inazuma, after all. But it explains stuff like… Anemograna, Geograna, and Electrograna in some regions, but not others. Sakura blossoms reacting to Electro, specifically. Different colors of Crystalflies, since they all give Crystal Cores maybe they're all the same species with adaptations from absorbing different elemental energies?
…Tho to be fair it could also just be. Influence of Archons or leylines or even just environments. But! The nations being made of recycled dragon juice and affecting the environments and weather sounds insanely cool to me!
It's. Interesting to consider.
OMG XENOBLADE CONTENT PLEASE
3:10 So I guess light energy is like white light, a blend of all the colors. The elements aren't quite a ROYGBIV rainbow, more like uh… Red, Yellow-Orange, Green, Light-Green, Blue, Light-Blue, Purple, but I guess that's probably the basic idea. Dark/Void energy could be lack of elements, but that's sorta just physical damage; so maybe it's a blend of anti-elements, if that's a thing? Abyssal elements?
Yoo I dont know the exact place but I was exploring enkamomiya and noticed an island that the lower part had some kind of weird rock formation that looked like a horn then I glided there and also noticed some kind of "snake scale" over the whole thing, I coldnt explore more cuz I was doing the 7 plates quest for a friend but damn, if that was orobachi giving part of his body to enkanomiya, would be sick.
i don't think that in france culture we have a god who becomes land… i only know of the deity born from the land and the sea meeting, from that a white horse made of sea foam named eiocha came to life, she then ate a seed and gave birth to cernunnos god of forests(too bad we don't have a lot of info on them..). her name reminds me of rhodheia of loch which is funny. but yeah eiocha was born from the existing land and sea so i guess it doesn't fit your theory!!!
maybe she was kinda looking like the greek hippocampus, a hybrid dragon and horse
Ashikai: These are the names of the Sovereign.
Hoyoverse, who only named 3 because they are the easiest to create: writes down notes
Well, that was fun! Something to tide me over, since I won't be able to play the latest patch till tomorrow.
the last dragon sovereign you picked is similar to the blind idiot god from lovecraft (Azathoth), in the same way that if This god ever wakes up from the dream he is having which is our reality, everything from fiction to reality and space will be erased in an instant, like the dream you are having when you are asleep but is gone when you wake up. This is the most terrifying kind of deity, because they aren’t even continuous of whats happening, and if ever they wake up everything disappears, whether they want to or not.
Ashikai: explaining the theory
My brain: YANFEI SO CUTE 🥰
just to add Svarog is the name of Clara's guardian robot in Honkai Star Rail
hello! for the slavic mythology i think Marzanna would fit! she is a god of winter and death, which would fit into the snezhnaya theme. there is a ritual called the drowning of marzanna, which represents winter moving into spring, so that could sort of be like killing her?
WE ARE EATING GOOD TONIGHT! THE CHASM! TWO NEW STORY/ARCHON QUESTS! A TOOOON OF NEW WORLD QUESTS!!!!!!!!!!!
I automatically liked the video with that vertical "hello" xD keep up the good work you are the best!
On another note I'm starting to think that the ley line energy was originally honkai energy…
to any vishap homies reading this: I'm so, so sorry
are the sovereigns really dead though???🧐 or are they just asleep or sealed like azhdaha?? and the theory about the sleeping sovereign in snezhnaya is super cool and makes me wonder if there is a possibility that the GNOSES- are connected to the sovereigns. and my theory is based off a train of thought that is nonsense 😅 and if you connect the fact that the tsaritsa is collecting all the gnoses to go against celestia then she would need a LOT of power to fight this war- and where would she find that power??? 🥴
France historically began to gain a sort of "national" identity between the 600-700 with the Frankish people ruled by a family called the Merovingian, the most famous being Charlemagne (Charles the Great). Ethnically, the French and Germans are very closely related to one another, yet theeee is a lot of region crossings, with bith northern europeans (english and norse) and medditerranian peoples. mythologically, i would say most historians would catagorize the French as being Christian/Catholic, and Charlemagne was even anointed a Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope at the time, much of Chalemagne's rule was to convert polytheistic tribes to christian monotheism.
were there other mythologies/religions which preceded christianity in that region? yes, yet we lost a lot of that info due to the monothestic conversion. Something more like the norse religion would have been popular (as being a "germanic" religion), yet, a celtic people would have been possible, potentially a few more… yet, mythologically, france is rather tied to christianity/catholicism/rome, and their internal/external Germanic conflicts. France and Germany have this sort of twin relationship, France was more in line woth rome and the medditerranin and germany with the older paganism, and the two were a sort of mixing pot of the european religious debate… fighting for as far as anyone remmebers, until recently…
"celtic" is possible, "norse" paganism was likely, however, the most accurate religion/mythology associated with France is Catholocism/christiantiy…
i think its fair to include african and other still practiced religions in south america (brought by african enslaved people) to this day when thinking of natlan since the one character who appears in the trailer is named iansan, which is the name of an orixá in umbanda (though spelled iansã). i dont know much about iansã to say a thing with any certainty but i think thats relevant in knowing what would be the real world inspirations for natlan i guess?
So basically, the dragon lords are the seven continents/regions. This is taking me Xenoblade 2 and Aion in terms of big dragons being around in the early days of a planet.
We Speculated on my stream that there could be some type of reason taht svarrog ties in to the fatui and why the people from shnezennayayayyaya are such D-bags. Maybe they know some drak secret about their land and are harvesting the current semi-corpse of svarrog to create delusions or somethin. Food for thought. Say hi sometime if you like
Poggies.
that idea that the reason the lands are of a certain element in and of themselves rather than because of their archon was actually something I was thinking about like isn’t it weird that the anemo and geo archons already had powers similar to their elements before winning the archon war I mean what if like osial beat morax would he become the geo archon because he’s kinda overlapping with the hydro archon which is one reason I think the element of the archon was chosen for the land and not the other way around because along with that notice how among the gods of liyue like the actual Land itself there was morax who manipulated earth, guizhong who was the god of dust and Havria the god of salt all things related to earth and same with monstadt venti was a wind spirit decarbian was the god of storms and Andries another god of monstadt also was related to wind now granted celestial could’ve like forced deities into the corresponding regions but like venti started as a small wind spirit who manifested in monstadt so I think the elements are really tied to the land
Let me pinch in with what I could find. Brace yourself, it's chaotic, long, and fair warning, I'm not a native English speaker nor a scholar (*ﾉωﾉ).
The biggest problem with Slavic mythology is its christianization (which everyone already knows that) and the Council of Trent in XVI century. Basically because catholic church took buch of pagan celebration days (like for example Christmas time which is christianized version of Jare Gody – I can go in with some details if you want) and it's difficult to see a clear line between what was pagan and what is a christianized version. Also worth to mention is a fact that Slavic mythology is heavily influenced by germanic and east (persian).
For example, mentioned by you god Svarog is actually one of the three gods that are link as a "the major one" like Zeus. And those three are Svarog, Świętowid/Światowid (I'm sorry, I don't know how to type it out in English) and interestingly enough Perun. The only source (that is basically a bible, a holy grail for scholars at this point) says that Perun is actually the major god in Slavic pantheon, he is also the one that is involved with the creation of the world. His name means two things: thunder and oak (holy tree of Slavic people).
The most probable myth for the world creation is the myth of emergence. There are at least two that I found but I translate most, er, coherent one? Very grossly simplified myth: At the beginning there was a water, Perun was floating above, Weles (god of the Nawia, the afterlife realm) was living in the sea abyss (who'd have thought…). An they lived like that for ages. Weles got bored, talked to Perun about creating the land, the took a hadful of mud, give that to Perun, Perun threw it on the water surface, BOOm, the land was created. However, the land was very small, Weles was selfish, tried to push sleeping Perun (who apparently turns out to be his brother?) to the abyss but wherever he pushed Perun the land expanded magically, when finally Perun woke up from turbulances – betrayal.png, send some thunders, threw Weles to the deepest abyss and chained him to the rock (Prometheus much?). Perun took offence, decided he doesn't like the Earth and went to live in the Heavens.
I have one book in my native language (unfortunately) and links to few more and I saw briefly that in one of them the author is referencing some English articles. I could also read (which I wanted to do anyway) and translate them for you…?
I'll try to find something else but. Tomorrow ^^'
MIGHT be considered a small spoiler maybe ok so kind of related to this but with the Chasm we find out that there was an event in Liyue at the same time as the ones in Inazuma & Mondstadt. Going off of this perhaps what happened in Khaenri'ah WASN't the fault of the gods(to start with) but rather maybe the world started to 'wake up'(going off the theory that the world is made of the sovereigns, perhaps their life forces became one via the leylines? or perhaps its just another 'realm' bleeding through(I havent finished the new archon quest so maybe we find out more)) and attack the 'invaders'(humans). And as Khaenri'ah didn't have a guardian deity they weren't able to fight it back the way the other nations did. The corruption would have leaked through and ultimately the gods were forced to destroy/seal the corruption and by that point they could do nothing for Khaenri'ah in itself and Khaenri'ah became a sort of sacrifice?*I'm going off the idea that the sovereigns could be 'sealed' within Teyvat(which btw 7 elements, 7 archons, 7 gnosis, '7 point seal be sus')*
9:00 Izanami -> Inazuma?
As far as I know the creation myth for slavic people, dunno when written, is about Perun and Veles. That Perun was sailing on a boat through the water world, looked into the water and poof, Veles was created, and then Veles suggested creating the Earth, because he wanted to rule it, but he couldn't create it himself, so he asked Perun and Perun agreed but told him to dive into the water and bring a grasp of sand from the bottom of the sea (?) while saying that he is taking the sand in the name of Perun. Veles didn't do it, he tried to take it in his name, because he wanted to be the ruler of Earth, but because he didn't take it in Perun's name, each time he reached the surface it was without the sand, because it got washed away by water. So finally he did as Perun told him, and he created the Earth, and they exited the boat (as far as I remember) and then I think Perun went to sleep? And Veles tried to throw him into the water, to become the ruler of Earth once again, but each time he tried, Earth was stretching beneath Perun, so he never was actually thrown into the water, and thus how the big Earth was born xD I seriously cracked when I read this story.
This story comes from a Polish anthology of slavic mythos, so it may be different than the Russian one, as a lot of stories vary depending on the region. Also, slavic people didn't really have a ruling god, someone who was seen like Zeus or Odin, because we didn't have the pantheon as far as I know. Slavic people just worshiped the gods they liked the most in certain regions, so depending on the region, one god was more important than the other. Perun though seemed to be very popular, especially considering he was a God of War to some extent, and he became associated with someone akin to ruler of gods due to influences of Greek pantheon and such in modern slavic texts about our mythology. Perun is also seen as Svarog's son, so… yeah. And there is also Rod, which I know shit about, because I was never interested enough to look up all slavic gods.
The idea that the sovereigns became the land of Teyvat and imbued it with their power is actually really plausible! If the vishaps and these sovereigns came from the light realm, and the power of light is too toxic for humans to survive in but can be tolerated in a milder form, then it makes sense that as the essence in their bodies started to deteriorate the light power would translate into elemental energy and each nation would be imbued with said energy. The land of Teyvat has always kind of felt like a living thing to me as well, like the ley lines seem like veins, or maybe even a nervous system that can recognise and react to “stimuli”. It always feels like the land knows what’s happening to it
As a Hindu, Purusha can be the pure consciousness or the self as in the Gita but can also be personified as the fabric or consciousness of everything… Purusha exists either as pure consciousness, the realm of consciousness or the intelligence of the universe personified or not ^^
U should watch Wei's theory, that guy has 4 billions IQ
Fontaine could actually be romanic and be Minerva since there is a lot of represenation of her in Europe
Fun fact: Leylines are often referred to as “Dragon Veins” in certain cultures, so the idea that the countries of Teyvat are formed from the Carcasses of these sovereigns are plausible.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ymir forms the walls of Monstadt, if you know what I mean
what if the primordial one has something to do with project SAVE (i think that’s the name?)
Now that the chasm is out I bet there will be a lot of theories. Especially about the mysterious letter wich is actually catullus 55 since the only row visible is translated as the row 21 of the poem
ok but the real question is how tf does venti even know that and why would he tell us
my guess is that venti is living laughing loving in a silly goofy mood
Finally someone talking about this!!! I asked so many creators to talk about this! And Xenoblade reference got you tons of points!
Depending on where you rank it as a nation, I can suggest a dinodragon for Enkanomiya as well: Gaia. She is a primordial titan, is among the first beings in Greek myth that can be considered creators (though not THE first), and she is a personification of the earth itself. As counterpoints, though, she was still very much around after the Titanomachy (whereas most of the other titans where imprisoned in Tartarus, that is to say, underground or the abyss) and… if I am not mistaken, she is the namesake for Geo.
Also, I tried my hardest to liken light energy being split into the elements to light passing through a prism, but the color coding of the elements simply does not match.
hey ash, could you make the audio louder next time? It's really low compared to the average yt vid
It should be noted it is believed that Izanami died giving birth to Kagutsuchi specifically, Shinto's god of Fire. He is described as being on fire. In case you were confused about the whole "dying giving birth to islands". The islands necessarily aren't literal, but actually Kagutsuchi's body. After Izanami was killed giving birth to him (cause hes on fire), Izanagi beheads him and cuts him into eight pieces. These pieces are what turned into Japan's eight volcanos. So it does line up with it being made from a god's body parts, but not with the lightning theme unfortunately.
Purush means a Male in Hindi ( Indian language and also in sanskrit in which the holy books of hinduism is wrote)
Hoyoverse:crap..she figured it out….again…
Creation myths are interesting. Our myth in Finland does not have a sacrificed character, but seven eggs. There was primordial sea and air. Ilmatar (liberally translated "Lady of Air") came from heavens and started floating in the primordial sea. A first bird ever comes and makes a nest top of her. Ilmatar moves and the eggs of the bird are broken. From those seven broken eggs earth, sky, sun, moon and stars are born. This Anemo Lady was also impregnated by the sea wind and she gave birth to Väinämöinen. Väinämöinen is the most well known character in Finnish folklore, he is a hero, mage, wise sage and a horny bard. He plays a kantele (lyrelike instrument) made from jaws of a gigantic pike and it has the ability to summon humans, animals and even godlike beings to listen to it and be touched by the music. I am telling this because I find some surface level common themes between Barbatos and Väinämöinen, both being godlike beings born out of the wind and being bards that could ensnare anyone with their music.
This theory went up a while ago on reddit about the dragons becoming the hypostasis, and I just wanted to add that the hypostasis also make weird growling groans on their defeat. Idk, another cracked theory on the seven sovereigns
You should watch Wei's "Something is ACTUALLY wrong with the ARCHONS" video. If you haven't.
But, from your video I can see that the original world where the Seven Sovereigns ruled is not Teyvat.
The Puranas is a collection of indian literature but the word 'Purana' can also mean 'old'