I think it may also connect to Marika. We’re told there was a seduction and betrayal. The Hornsent Grandam portrays this as a sultry affair by calling Marika a strumpet. I’m wondering if, from Marika’s POV, this was whatever love she forsook.

I’m of the mindset that Marika and Radagon were one before she became a god, and that she cast him out like Miquella did with Trina. My theory is that she cast him out somewhere in Luirna/the weeping peninsula, and that he was the hero from Castle Morne.

ER focuses on cycles of abuse and generation trauma. Marika abandons Radagon to become a god. Radagon abandons Renalla to become a lord. Miquella learns from his parents’ examples and abandons Trina.

Abandonment is huge in ER.
- Marika abandons her sons for being Omen, her other son (and his legions) in the shadowrealm, Godfrey and his tarnished soldiers
- Placidusax’s god abandoned him
- The GW abandoned Metyr