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!
(This topic is long and plenty gets covered so I've added a summary at the end.)
I wrote this topic when Dehya made her playable debut to talk about where miHoYo got her from in real world history. Many Sumeru characters are actually inspired from real people. Alhaitham for example came from Ibn Al-haytham the "father of optics." There is also a budding Dehaitham ship going around but sadly our boy Al-haytham lived over two hundred years and one Muslim Caliphate after Dehya's death. So no real world ships. I mean unless he had a thing for GGGGGILFs.
Anyway Dehya was inspired by a Berber queen who ruled Numidia a kingdom of the Maghreb or North Africa. Unfortunately for her she was queen during the height of the Muslim Conquest meaning she wasn't queen for long. But it's her role in the conquest that made her a legend even to today. She's currently a local hero for feminism and was the symbol of anti-colonialism during European Imperialism.
Under the standard of their queen Kahina, the independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline; and as the Moors respected in their females the character of a prophetess, they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar to their own. The veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the defence of Africa: the conquests of an age were lost in a single day; and the Arabian chief, overwhelmed by the torrent, retired to the confines of Egypt.
These Arabian forces were from the Umayyad Caliphate. Kahina is their name for her. It's an Arabic word meaning prophet because I guess she fought so well during the battle that it was like she could see into the future and predict each of their moves before they made them.
It took the Umayyad five years to reorganize their forces and finally beat her in the Battle of Tabarka. Once she fell the rest of the Maghreb didn't last much longer.
So how popular is she? Well apparently her story was so legendary that many groups have tried to claim her as one of their own. Jewish people claim that as a Berber this makes her Jewish. (I'll explain all this after.) Christians claim that after Rome conquered the Maghreb later Romans Christianized the whole region so she must be Christian. Africans don't really care what her religious affiliation was but they really want her to be black so there are plenty of depictions of her with very dark skin. Finally North Africans from the Maghreb region claim that she probably held onto her native Numidian religion which was a polytheistic system.
So Jewish. The reason for this is because of the history of North Africa. A long long time ago the major group in the area were the Canaanites or Semitic people.
Ancient Egypt is also Semitic. But the one that is important today is Phoenicia the Greek name for the people that the Romans would call Punic aka the people of Carthage. All these guys are Semitic but they are different groups that the Greeks and Romans just lumped together. Carthage also both co-existed and absorbed Numidia. Yeah old world history is hard lol. Today's Phoenicians would pretty much be the Lebanese and the descendants of Numidia are Moroccan who share the land with Arabs.
Anyway the idea is that the Jews might have converted some groups of the Berbers to Judaism which did happen and there is evidence of Jewish Berbers. It also flies in the face of Dehya's black depictions because as we can see these North Africans come from Mesopotamia and the Levant and aren't African natives.
BUT either of the other ideas are much more likely. After Rome destroyed Carthage it owned the whole region for the remainder of its existence. So since that history leads to Rome becoming Christian Rome did definitely force Christianity on everybody when Theodosius became Emperor and outlawed all the other religions including Rome's own lol. And from that point on the Maghreb would have been Christian leading to the Muslim Conquests. So then the only other possibility is the small population of people that stubbornly kept their beliefs despite Roman persecution.
Also being an Eremite works with Dehya very well. Eremite is based on a Greek term for hermit but that word eremites actually means "from the desert." But more than that we were introduced to the Eremites during the Spices from the West Event (which is coming back so I thought this was great timing to mention all of this stuff) Anyway the Eremites were called "soldiers of fortune" by the event's major NPC Nazafarin.
Soldiers of fortune is one way to describe mercenaries and wouldn't you know it Persia which Sumeru is based on did regularly hire mercs. (mostly Greek but you get the idea) During the Punic Wars Carthage hired many mercenaries including Numidians who made up their cavalry. In the middle of the war they became dissatisfied by Carthage's treatment of them and rebelled which started the Mercenary War. After the Muslim Conquests the caliphates also hired Berber mercs.
Finally there might even be something with her Genshin title of "Flame-Mane."
Ibn Khaldun records many legends about Dihyā. A number of them refer to her long hair or great size, both legendary characteristics of sorcerers. She is also supposed to have had the gift of prophecy and she had three sons, which is characteristic of witches in legends. Even the fact that two were her own and one was adopted (an Arab officer she had captured) was an alleged trait of sorcerers in tales. Another legend claims that in her youth, she had supposedly freed her people from a tyrant by agreeing to marry him and then murdering him on their wedding night. Virtually nothing else of her personal life is known.
In Genshin it's just a title because of her long hair and it's more about her being a powerful warrior. But it's interesting that the Arabs might have linked their view on her power as a prophetess to her hair. I wonder if that will get a mention in her upcoming Character Quest. Maybe they'll explain that Flame-Mane came about because of something that links to her Pyro Vision giving her power in battle or something.
And lastly she was a babe!
Topic originally created on February 24th, 2023.
