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!
Zenless already gave us a Kiana expy in the form of Yixuan Shifu. However, even before that there were those who saw the heterochromia of Lady Sunbringer and immediately connected it to Kiana's Void Drifter Battlesuit where she too had heterochromia and in the same configuration as Sunbringer at that. That's now the least of it.
There's not really much to go on yet but right now we already have a couple more Kiana expies in this game. The Season 3 teaser showed us what looks like a Durandal expy for Zenless and also another character with Kiana's white hair who seems to be wearing her Knight Moonbeam Battlesuit.
To clarify, in Honkai Impact 3rd Durandal was revealed to be the original Kiana Kaslana for that universe. She was experimented on by Otto Apocalypse and so she lost her memories while her white hair became blonde. The Kiana who would go on to become Herrscher of the End in this timeline was actually a clone of Durandal, K-423. Clones just happen to be something Zenless also presented to us. It was jokingly referred to in our community as the Misaka Sisters Arc for the game and only related to Anby because she's the game's icon character but if we take all of this information together, I think the arc is actually much bigger than we thought.
Soldier 0 wasn't the original after all. She too was a clone, just the best one they'd created. Who was the original then? Since Yixuan released not long after, I had originally believed she might have been the base. She was clearly shown to be a Kiana expy. Now that we've gotten that Season 3 teaser though, I think even Yixuan might be a clone. And her sister Yijiang by extension. They started out as orphans after all and we don't know what happened to their parents so it's possible they just don't remember that they never had any. It could be that Sunbringer is the true base and it was her own intention to create a series of proxies. This wouldn't be unprecedented for agents of the Imaginary Tree. In Genshin, Phanes split itself into the four shining shades. In Star Rail, the Aeon Fuli created emanators by splitting itself into multiple pink-haired girls like March 7th and Cyrene. Even more recently, Yaoshi the Abundance was revealed to act through not only human flesh infected by it but also through branches separated from its main Ambrosial Arbor body, like Evanescia the Panarch Elwood.
But to what end? We know that the last attempt was Helios Academy who attempted to turn Phaethon into some kind of Messenger. My theory following v2.8 is that Phaethon is meant to be the Zenless version of the Herrscher of the End. In Honkai games, there are prerequisites to getting this Herrscher. In Honkai Gakuen for example, Kiana needed to merge together with Sirin and they became the Herrscher of the End. Actually in HI3, that's what K-423 is. The clone of Durandal was infused with Sirin's DNA by Otto Apocalypse with the intention of becoming the perfect Herrscher vessel for Sirin. In fact, that's what the yellow eyes originally represented.
The image I headered this topic with wasn't chosen arbitrarily. Void Drifter's heterochromia wasn't the first time we saw it in Kiana nor was it the point. The reason this Kiana has one yellow eye is because at that point she had been struggling to keep Sirin's genocidal impulses under control. The yellow eyes symbolize the power of the Herrscher of the Void. As such, I actually think Yixuan better represents the Void Drifter outfit than Sunbringer.
The collared short jacket, tassel hanging off the jacket, the white... shirt(?) the black one piece, garters on the legs
Again it's far too early to tell but I'd say Sunbringer had experimented with cloning herself for a long time. The Durandal character from the teaser might be the most stable specimen she'd made but she's stable because she lacks the power of the "Herrscher of the Void" whatever that is in this game. This is why that character has Durandal and Kiana's normal blue eyes. We can compare this clone to something like Trunks from DBZ failing to achieve Super Saiyan 2. His muscular form is very powerful but nowhere near that level and was easily dispatched by Cell. (people still get this reference right?) Afterwards, Sunbringer was able to create unstable clones of varying degrees of strength. You have the girl with the Knight Moonbeam outfit. She is shown with yellow eyes. You have all the Anby clones where most of them were weak and eliminated. Soldier 11 is the most successful Anby clone but is far weaker than her and Anby herself is nowhere near the level of Yixuan. (and likely Yijiang too)
If this is the case then Yixuan is possibly the most successful of these clones given she was not only shown to look like Kiana and have yellow eyes, she was literally introduced in the same way Herrscher of the Void had been with the self-generated energy stairs that let her walk in mid-air.
This may be why Yixuan has the power of a Void Hunter without needing a Void Hunter Weapon. It may be why she and her sister were able to manufacture the Qingming Bird and Auric Ink from research into the Qingming Sword, which then only she could use while Yijiang was consumed by the sword.
And that might be moot at this point but who knows. If the devs follow the Gakuen format, maybe Yixuan will be needed to upgrade Phaethon into the "Herrscher of the End" Messenger just like Sirin was needed to combine with Kiana. How much drama might it add if Yixuan has to sacrifice herself to stabilize Pyrois in order for Phaethon to create branched time? But if they go the HI3 route, then Yixuan is just the Herrscher of the Void expy while Phaethon is the true endgame. Of course, in that case there's nothing that says Yixuan, Anby and any other clones couldn't receive upgraded forms to demonstrate other levels of Kiana's development. Maybe Yixuan can get a Herrscher of Flamescion form down the road.
It's still too early to tell if this is what the Zenless devs are going for but maybe Sunbringer started creating clones of herself which eventually got scrapped after creating Soldier 11. So far we've seen a Durandal clone, a clone bearing the Knight Moonbeam Battlesuit, Yixuan and her sister Yijiang (technically the Miasmic Fiend version of Yijiang as well) Soldier 0 Anby, Soldier 11 and all of the Anby clones in between.
Happy Mother's Day?
