Hi guys I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!
Once upon a time I wrote a theory about how Teyvat works. It was not well received because the popular theory said otherwise. Too bad for them.
A long time ago all we really had to go on were folktales about how Seelies and adepti might be the same thing. We had the drunk ravings of a guy in a bar tell us that Seelies used to be magnificent beings with their own kingdom who guided humanity. Going off of that and a little digging into what the original Chinese text was, I proposed that gods and Seelies were the same thing.
Building off of that, when Enkanomiya released and gave us dragons I came up with the theory that even the Dragon Sovereigns were also the same as gods and Archons and thus Seelies. The short version was that everything on Teyvat was a form of elemental life and these differences are based on their power levels at best.
Modern Genshin lore has not been as consistent as the original lore but thanks to specific plot points from the Nod-Krai Archon Quest's finale, even the modern lore cannot disregard this fact anymore.
This explanation by Nicole the angel definitively proves that gods and angels are the same thing even according to modern lore. And
this line delivered by Lohen but that also comes from Nicole proves that Ursa who you can see is obviously a dragon, is also an angel thus dragons and angels are the same thing. And therefore by the transitive property, gods and dragons must be the same thing. My old theory is indisputably confirmed.
Now of course there will still be naysayers regardless of the facts. In fact, Archon and god was never a theory to begin with. Archon is a term solely used in the English dub of the game and is used interchangeably with the word god. This is because there is literally no distinction between the two in Chinese where the term is 魔神 or demon god as based on the Ars Goetia where each demon listed is referred to in Chinese as a demon god. The Ars Goetia is where all of the gods in this game get their true names like Morax and Buer and Amy* and Haborym*.
*: These two were messed up by modern lore. The new devs abruptly ended Amy's storyline and changed the Pyro Archon from a god and member of the Seven into a series of human beings that took on the mantle of Archon but never actually became gods thus Haborym should not be their true name as the god that they aren't and is more like a shared title which doesn't make sense either. (additionally the Archon Bifrons was made to claim that Bifrons was somehow the name the humans gave it when older examples show that Morax is the Geo Archon's true name while the humans gave him the name Rex Lapis and feel it is disrespectful to use his true Archon name)
To further this case and tie it back to the proof of gods and angels being the same thing, a year ago we had a Lantern Rite where the term god remains first came back into play in modern lore. The Chinese term that this translated from is 魔神残渣 where 魔神 once again would translate to demon god.
However because it also relates to Collei, god remains is actually a second translation from the original lore's term of Archon Residue.
Archon Residue is actually more accurate too because the direct translation for 残渣 would be residue.
Finally, from the same Archon Quest we have Nicole say this:
Since she phrased it as "not gods, technically" it still implies that that's exactly what angels really are. Even if it wasn't though, I've pointed out many times that modern lore isn't even internally consistent. However, there is a big difference between Nicole saying it in a casual throwaway line like this versus one key factor of the Archon Quest depending on Nabu having been the god remains inside of Collei. It's easy enough for Nicole to have either been dodging the question, lying outright or for the devs to revise this later but trying to explain away one of the core elements of a 7+ hour long Archon Quest that heavily drew from older existing lore would be more difficult.
Once and for all Archons, gods, dragons, angels, Seelies, slimes, specters and any other kind of elemental being that gets released in the future are all the same thing. At best it could be a power level thing but given Paimon also considered this and compared the power level disparity between dragons Neuvillette and Cacucu and we had Varesa's Tribal Chronicles that showed us Bifrons compared to any other Archon we've seen so far, this is also likely not the case. Ursa was said to have devolved into a dragon from an angel because it gave up its angel wisdom to keep its power but we also know that Zibai, Yohualtecuhtin and Thoth exist, they're angels and they don't seem to have lost anything. (in your face Nicole?) At the end of the day it could all just be their chosen banner with the "god" and "dragon" camps at odds with each other while "angels" are just the ones subjugated by Celestia.
It feels good to put this to bed even though we all know it's not going to stop the confusion in the community. The devs may have even stirred up a new one with the "primordial humans" localization of 原初之人.
