Elden Ring: What Does It Mean To Be Empyrean?

gamerant.com:

One of the great questions of Elden Ring's lore is the nature and definition of Empyreans, who consist of Malenia, Ranni, Marika, Miquella, and the Gloam-eyed Queen in-game. These people are not a race, but share a condition, and that condition is that they have the ability to be a container for the influence of an Outer God. Whether Elden Ring's Empyreans are born or selected is unknown.

According to tradition of the Lands Between, only Empyreans may be rulers. Empyreans also are typically gifted with a shadow companion by the Greater Will and are expected to have a consort to assist them. Between the five known Empyreans, fans have been piecing together what constitutes an Empyrean and how they work.

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Ranni, Miquella, and Malenia are the three Empyreans whose backgrounds are most known. Notably, all three are children of Radagon, but not all children of Radagon are Empyrean. This status also has nothing to do with their demi-god status, as characters like Radahn, Godwyn, Rykard, Mohg, and Morgott are not Empyreans either. This fact has made some fans theorize that Empyreans are likely chosen rather than born, possibly by the Greater Will itself.

Ranni is the character with the most compelling evidence about the nature of Empyreans. This is because she did not want to be Empyrean, because being Empyrean means having a preset destiny, to possibly become a god-like Marika for the Greater Will. Ranni destroyed her own body in order to escape this destiny, which may mean being Empyrean is somehow linked to the body. This leads to an opposing theory that Empyreans are born rather than chosen, but it could also be a mixture of both. It could also be that death, no matter if partial, whole, or destined,