From Myth to Fantasy Role-Playing Game: Aspects of the Child God in The Elder Scrolls Lore
From Myth to Fantasy Role-Playing Game: Aspects of the Child God in The Elder Scrolls Lore

Summary/Abstract: In the present article, we propose an analysis of mythocritics about Arkay, a divine figure created for the religious-historical domain of The Elder Scrolls, a series of fantasy Computer Role-Playing Games. In particular, we aim to illustrate that it is possible to recognize, in this deity, the powerful action of the Child God archetype. In the first part we trace a brief profile of the Child God, concentrating on its main mythemes: the agro-cyclic destiny, the centrality of death and the fatal relation with the Mother Goddess. In the second part we track these mythemes in Arkay, who holds the title of «God of the Cycle of Birth and Death», oversees burials and funeral rites and has a maternal-mortuary connection with two goddesses, Mara and Namira. Through the fil rouge of the Child God archetype, our research proves the extraordinary coherence characterizing a portion of The Elder Scrolls Lore, whose creators, not differently from every artist of any age, always draw on the same archetypal material stored in the collective unconscious.

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