so, English used to have a formality distinction in second person pronouns, like du/Sie in German and tú/usted in Spanish. It was most directly influenced by French, which still uses tu/vous.

English used thou for informal speech and you for formal.

by the 1600s the nobility found "thou" so rude that there's a beautifully ridiculous insult recorded during the period: "I thou thee, thou traitor!"

people were scandalized by the early Quakers because as "the Society of Friends", they referred to everyone with "thou".

"thou" was so marginalized by most other groups that it fell completely out of use, and so the formerly plural or polite "you" became the only second person pronoun anybody used.

but because religious texts written in the 1600s used that distinction, people now paradoxically consider thou to be more formal, rather than something that'd get you smacked in the mouth by an aristocrat

a lot of media fucks this up, but Elden Ring isn't one of them, and it's honestly interesting how it's deployed

humans basically never use the distinction with each other. Even when being disrespectful or speaking to someone they consider lower status or a friend.

Kenneth Haight, stuffed shirt extraordinaire, uses "you" for the Tarnished.

even Enia uses "you", despite being the most senior human representative of the Golden Order, by every definition

the demigods make some use of the distinction, though.

which does give them a more archaic feel, which is undoubtedly part of the point, but there's still some interesting distinctions.

Morgott uses thou, and it's pretty obvious he's contemptuous about it. Same with Godrick, though it's notable that he's probably a descendant of Godwyn, not one of the original sons of the Golden Lineage.

Ranni uses it, and never stops, even if you follow her questline to the end, and basically become her consort. It might become a familiar thou after a certain point, but it's unclear.

Rykard uses "you".

Rykard is technically more polite to you than the others.

Which is fucking hilarious

Rennala uses thou for everybody, and I'd guess it's pretty much all familiar thou, given her whole deal.

Malenia uses "you", which is either a formality thing, or has something to do with how the Haligtree was seen by some as a more accepting place than others.

Mohg doesn't use second person pronouns for the Tarnished at all, but he uses "you" to refer to Miquella.

and given the "Welcome, honored guest" thing, I'm guessing he's an all "you" all the time kind of deal

and this entire ramble spawned from me trying to figure out whether I should have Mohg use thou-you distinction in a memory share post for Varré.

I had this debate with myself at 1:30 AM

you would start this debate with yourself at 0130

it's very On Brand for Spider

(the thou/you is INTERESTING really but the rest is so you)

komikbookgeek: I couldn't help myself

lol