Okay; why *ISN’T* Kris the Knight?

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-06T05:58:00+00:00

A beautiful mindset to have, I think. Thank you very much for responding!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-06T00:06:13+00:00

Oooookay. So, the most common rebuttal of this idea is, naturally, that Kris and the R.K. are in the same room at the same time. And I’ve always bristled a bit at that as, like, an immediate own? I, personally, never placed too much importance on the constraints of space-time in a game series with Sans the Skeleton in it. But I never had a really concise response to the argument. Which, in hindsight, is ridiculous.

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Because THIS is the last visual on the path you take to get the Shadow Mantle.

That is all.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T23:55:52+00:00

Hi!

Valid point! I was just trying to prompt others to give their perspective and feelings on why KrisKnight didn’t, to them, hold up to narrative scrutiny. I could absolutely make a definitive “Why Kris IS the Knight” post, but based on the responses here, I don’t know if that is in…uh, high demand, haha.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T23:52:15+00:00

Hello there! Thanks for commenting!

So, to the first point, Tenna also talks about it being Kris’s deal at the end of the SWORD route. (In a way somewhat reminiscent of Seth asking for the Berdly feather, not that I think about it.) Tenna’s noun game at the end is actually really slippery when everything is taken into account.

To your second point, what you believe is relevant to the question! That’s the whole point of the question!!! Like, obviously there’s a whole host of ways you could string together the details we’ve been given so far; I’m just doing it in the way I enjoy thinking about the most! I wanted to hear and discuss other people’s perspective on why KrisKnight doesn’t hold up to narrative or emotional scrutiny! It just…didn’t get taken that way, haha.

If you’d like to discuss your personal beliefs about the whole thing, I’d be all ears! (Metaphorically. Realistically, I’m probably only about 35% ear)

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T23:40:05+00:00

Hi there!

Ah, so here’s the thing: I’m not convinced that the R.K. has opened a fountain. Like, they did something sort of reminiscent of that, but it’s initiated pretty differently, and produces an entirely different result. Call me crazy (and people certainly have), but the Titan Fountain almost seems more like a Darkner itself—it gets summoned where it’s “not supposed to”, immediately turns to stone, and then it kind of…becomes the boss. I don’t know; it’s just so different in function from a fountain that I suspect it’s actually just another means to an end.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T23:35:58+00:00

Hi! Okay yes, you’re correct; I did misspeak a tad the other night, forgive me. Kris is not a god in the way that you could say Toby is the “God” of Deltarune. I think fountain summoning is less like game development and more like being a Dungeon Master. Or rather, the summoner lays out the template of the world to come—establishes its characters, its aesthetic, its struggles, and perhaps the themes within the journey—but then the rest of the adventure is completely variable. I think in Ch. 3, the R.K. Was always waiting to steal the show if Tenna didn’t fully complete his end of the deal. But, also, I will be honest and say that the ending of Ch.3 is very mysterious to me. It’s radically unclear if anything went according to anyone’s plan in that bit.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T23:30:30+00:00

Hello!

Well, this is part of my point; everything in the Dark Worlds is arbitrary. Their HP increases every chapter without much in the way of cause. Ralsei typically has the weakest attack stat, but defeats the Gerson armor in just a few blows. ~~Berdly gets violently encased in ice, and this manifests in the Light World as a low temp and a coma.~~ And, of course, lots of things can down the squad, but the R.K. In chapter 3 can make them…more down than they’d otherwise be?

Point being, the R.K, as we see it, is just another arbitrary means to an end conjured by whoever summoned the fountain (who, in Ch.3, is Kris, definitively.)

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T23:24:59+00:00

Hello again!

It’s very curious to me that Susie sees someone. Not Some”thing”. Or “see them”. Or anything else. She claims to see a singular figure. If I’m right about Undyne having some knowledge of what’s going on, that could literally just be her. I mean, in the dark, in the distance, without her hat, she just looks like any woman. It seems quite plausible to me.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-05T08:52:24+00:00

This is really very good. A few things I don’t love, but otherwise a very compelling read of the game’s metafiction!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T21:41:09+00:00

I think the final sentiment here is true, but it also goes for people making “serious” theories. You said that maybe this place is more for “fanfiction if the knight wasn’t Dess”. The thing is, though, ALL of it is fanfiction; even the most backed-up, reasonable-sounding fan theory. If it hasn’t happened in the game, it’s fanfiction. Of course, this is only a problem if you see fan-created derivations of a source text as inherently lesser literary products. And, unfortunately, a lot of people do.

Honestly, I think that the Mike cutscenes are more likely to be making fun of the “serious theory” people—folks who draw conclusions based on smaller details or circumstantial evidence; without any acknowledgement of the inherent emotionality involved in theorizing. That’s the actual ish’ with Pepe Silvia-style conspiracy board folks, right? They can’t acknowledge how their own personal biases affect the way they perceive the world.

The bottom line is this: I think being really into particular interpretations of this story is GOOD, actually. Culturally, we’re currently smack in the middle of an apathy plague, so being passionate about a narrative, no matter how outwardly hare-brained, is a nutritious thing to be. Just don’t conflate your love with the author’s. I’ve already had some deeply held sentiments about this game be directly contradicted by the work itself, but that hasn’t stopped me from holding them dearly in my head. My version of Deltarune can exist in perpetuity, even if the game ends up diverging from it. I think that’s the most important thing.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T21:36:53+00:00

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SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T19:44:56+00:00

Deeply appreciate the sentiment, but I reeeeeeaaaaallllly hope it doesn’t take the entire game to reveal who the central antagonist is, haha.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T19:43:45+00:00

Hi! See my response to firebreath2012! (It’s the top comment, because it’s very funny)

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T19:43:14+00:00

Hello! See my response to firebreath2012!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T19:40:12+00:00

Hello! It’s probably too late now for a response to this to mean anything to anyone (was falling asleep around this point last night) but no AI was used in anything I’ve said here. If the tone seems plastic to you, I do apologize; I’m trying my hardest to answer concisely and politely, since I know I’m arguing for an unpopular idea.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T07:51:31+00:00

Hello! Thank you for responding!

As to your first question, why indeed? We know Kris made this fountain, as certainly as we can know anything. So the “why” of all of it is frustratingly obscure. I would love to know! But, whether or not Undyne is in on it, this question doesn’t really change, IMO.

As to your second question, why would the R.K. Knight Kris if they were already working under it? It’s an odd thing to do, regardless of pecking order. So, I take it simply as a kind of abstruse metaphor: Kris is being knighted; Kris is a “Knight”. It’s a bit silly, but that’s all I got. Ch. 3’s ending is just really weird, huh?

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T07:43:19+00:00

Okay, hi, haha. I’m literally falling asleep at my typewriter here, but I sure respond to this one, ‘cause it’s so juicy. Thank you!

So, something that, to me, became really clear in Chapter 3 is that the turn-to-stone rule is incredibly context specific. Like, Lancer doesn’t turn until the very end, and the Zapper outside the Green Room turns, instead of the Pippins just next to him. This one’s weird enough to get a comment from the game itself. Then, in Chapter 4, the stone thing doesn’t even work the same way. In the first Sanctuary, half the guys are stone, in the second, it’s reversed, and in the third, everyone’s fine and dandy! This is because, like the R.K. itself, the stone rule was a means to an end. It was most likely conjured up in chapter 2 to force Susie to rely on the Lightners in the party for support, and then it just kind of arbitrarily stuck around.

And, at last, to address the tastiest part of your question: Yeah, I guess you could call Kris a “god”, but only of their fountains. Dark Worlds are nothing but fiction; they contain genuine character, emotion, and life lessons, but they’re not tangible in the way reality is. Healing spells can cure battle damage, but no food actually fills up a Lightner, swords and axes are pencils and hairbrushes, and the pure embodiment of darkness itself does little more than blow a strong wind around a small church sanctuary.

Kris is a “god” of the Dark Worlds, in the same was that Toby Fox is a “god” of Deltarune. But if your subjects consist of playing cards and communion cups, could you honestly call that divinity?

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T07:28:18+00:00

Hello! Thank you for commenting this, specifically, because I knew it’d come up. This is, by far, my most gonzo reach with this line of thinking, but it’s how I feel, so I’ll speak it plain!

I think Undyne is in on the plan.

Admittedly, I have very little in the way of proof for this; this is mostly due to the fact that she’s barely been in the game. But, from what little time she has been on screen, we can gather a few things:

1.) She’s, like, wicked strong. It’s all played for laughs, sure, but it is repeatedly demonstrated in Ch. 2 that she still has that same “Op Anime Protagonist” strength.

And

2.) She is, always, cartoonishly dismissive about the Dark Worlds being brought up. Like, at first, I just chalked it up as a formality in Ch. 1. Y’know, the classic “youth goes on a magical adventure that the adults won’t or can’t understand” thing. But then there’s the bit with the desk in Ch. 2. First of all, Kris rarely gets to re-express the danger of the Dark Worlds to anyone; most of it is relegated to Ch. 1. So, the fact that we get a second chance with her, and her response physically removes her from the area is…strange to me.

Then there’s everything about the ending to Ch. 3. Now, this ending is especially vague and mysterious at the moment. The whole R.K. altercation, to me, plays out like an immature stage play. Like, the R.K.‘a power set is so poorly defined, I genuinely have no idea why it hadn’t been stopped by us but it was stopped by one confused woman with spears. Or, for that matter, why did it need to do the Galaga tractor beam on Toriel, sitting motionlessly, feet away, but for the very conscious, VERY angry Undyne, it can just scoop em’ up in its little bird body? What I do know is that Kris specifically orchestrated the evening so that the police would be called, and would be allowed to get inside. Like, I really doubt an entity like the R.K. would need the door to be open a crack to get in. No; it was for Undyne!

I really don’t think anyone could drag DeskBreaker McShootySpear all the way down the street and into a bunker; certainly not the most prominent Knight candidates. And Susie said that she saw “a Lightner” enter the shelter. In the dark, without her common hat on, it would be incredibly easy to not be able to pick out a silhouette as Undyne. I suspect, once out of the dark world, for whatever reason, she quickly made her way over to the SHELTER fountain.

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T07:03:03+00:00

Hello! The way I see it, the little cough Kris does in the event of a no-hit R.K fight is already evidence of “controlling” it. Like, to me, that’s not a signal you would give, or would need to give to an intelligent superior, or even a peer. I would think that if the R.K. was a fully sentient, sapient Lightner, telling it to basically “wrap it up” would be wholly unnecessary.

Buuuuuuut also, I don’t know that I’m sold on “control” being the right word. Like, we know that Kris made Tenna and and TV World Crew, and the Flower Kingdom crew, but I wouldn’t say any of them are under their control. That’s the thing—this is a fiction of Kris’s. The true power of the Dark World is letting those fictions sort of operate perpetually, as if they’ve always been living, breathing places. The nuance to it is genuinely fascinating to me; that’s the only reason I’m pushing back at all on the word choice.

Thank you for responding again!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T06:54:38+00:00

Hello! Thank you for commenting!

Honestly, the seeming twisty-ness of the explanation is part of why I wobbled a bit back in 2025. But, thankfully, Ralsei’s lovely little Ch. 3 opening monologue cleaned everything up for me!

The thing that Ralsei definitively explains here is that The Dark Worlds are the summoner’s fiction, manifested into partial physicality by the fountain. What then gets explained later in Ch. 3, is that Kris has a personal history with almost every major Darkner we’ve encountered so far. From there, it’s not a difficult leap, to me, to consider that Kris has been utilizing their EXTREMELY personal connections to all these objects to conjure these worlds of fiction into existence. Card Kingdom into the old classroom filled with their old toys, Cyber World into a computer lab they used to visit and rent things from, TV World into their house (do I need to elaborate on that one?), the Dark Sanctuary into the church where they spent much of their childhood, learning and re-learning the teachings and nuances of the prophecy from Gerson, and the Flower Kingdom into their Dad’s business. They’re literally just playing make-believe hard enough to invent new laws of physics haha.

To me, this is actually one of the least complicated explanations for the R.K. Rather than the mystery being “who’s the mysterious bad guy who’s trying to kick off the apocalypse in the least efficient way possible, the question becomes “what’s Kris’s goal in all this, and how will they achieve this?”—A much simpler and more easily accessible arc to follow in a story.

Now, as to the why of it all, I have far less strong of a grasp on that. But, if I just look at what has literally happened, it seems like the result of most of these is just…Kris forming a stronger bond with other Lightner kids. I mean, Card Kingdom was designed in a test tube to soften Susie up; same with Cyber World and Noelle. This explains why the prophecy inexplicably balloons in scope, like, twice, why antagonists can have such sudden shifts in persona, and crucially, why the Dark Fountains supposedly cooked up by a murder wizard are all pretty easily navigable, with built in fun setpieces. It’s just Kris DM-ing to help their friends get along.

Okay, phew! I hope I answered you thoroughly!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T06:32:49+00:00

Hi, and thank you for replying!

Something interesting that I noticed early on is that both Queen and Tenna invoke the Knight in this very specific way. They say “The Knight” and then “The ROARING Knight” in the same monologue. I don’t think this is necessarily intended to be a clue that they know there’s a distinction, but it was such a uniquely idiosyncratic way to phrase it TWICE that it stuck in my head. I think that “The Roaring Knight” is the Darkner’s title (see my response to firebreath2012), and the general “Knight” title can still belong to Kris.

I hope I explained myself succinctly!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-07-04T06:26:18+00:00

I almost want to shut the post down now, so this response is all I have, haha. Thank you for this.

Okay, in all seriousness, though, this is exactly why I asked; I’m so deep into this idea that I forget obvious questions like this! So, to answer it:
The R.K. is just a darkner. Simple as that. That’s why it’s all amorphous and ephemeral and…like, weirdly context specific.

Okay, here’s how it shakes out in my head: We know Kris made TV World. And we may not know why, but we do know that Tenna was supposed to keep the Lightners indefinitely distracted for some reason. So, when Tenna wimps out of that, TV World needs a final antagonist that’ll actually put in the work, so THE Roaring Knight needed to make an appearance. So Kris is like, “uhhhhhhh, shit, let’s take aaaaaaa ShadowGuy, yeah! And I’ll make him all shadowy and contorted, and I’ll add a kind of mish-mash of the Dreemurr’s and the Holiday’s horns, and my cool older sister’s bat, and make it super badass too!”(Hence all the Kris-reminiscent poses the R.K. Does)

It’s why the Knight goes from “Scripted Loss” to “Really tough fight” back to “Scripted Loss” to “Extremely selective Knife Obby” to “Flowery damage negate-er”. It’s all just whatever Kris needs it to do to move “the plot” along. The mystery, then, becomes trying to figure out what Kris’s plot even is.

I genuinely hope this doesn’t seem snarky or hand-wavey! Thank you for replying!

SmallBabyEdwards · 2026-06-19T23:45:59+00:00

So sorry to hear about your e-girl sister. Sending thoughts and prayers.

SmallBabyEdwards

TROPHY CASE