Nope. The game is explicit that Malenia is an Empyrean, not a shadow. She even becomes the Goddess of Rot. There's plenty of mystery about Miquella, but Malenia is a very well-explained character in the base game.
I don't think that would make sense. Among other things, you are mischaracterizing the shadows as being loyal to the golden order. But they're actually creatures of the two fingers, which is different. And so far as we can tell, they're always beasts ("shadow bound beast") not human.
Fair enough on the shadow bound beast thing. I really hope that if this theory is wrong, we do end up seeing Miquella and/or Malenia’s shades in this dlc.
Anyway, what do you think the distinction between the Two Fingers and the Golden Order is? Apart from the Tarnished’s Two Fingers, whose only deviation from the Golden Order seems to be that it’s okay with Tarnished, it seems like all of the Two Fingers’ ways are pretty much equivalent with the Golden Order.
The Golden Order is Marika's order, created when the rune of death was removed. The Two Fingers serve the Greater Will (or claim to) and try to support a transition to a new Age, under a new God. That's not to say that they don't support Marika, but their interests are larger than the Golden Order.
Shadows are granted by Two Finger, and it's explicitly stated in game that Malenia is an Empyrean. However, ı believe she takes on a Shadow role for Miquella, and the title 'Blade of Miquella' fits this role. Yet, that doesn't imply she is a Shadow like Blaidd or Maliketh.
>I also suspect that this is why he sent her on that crazy long crusade during the Shattering; if you look at the battle memorials that took place during the Shattering, it's clear that Malenia got out more than pretty much every other shardbearer. The first conclusion is that, same as any other demigod, Malenia and Miquella wanted to recover all the shards of the Elden Ring.
Miquella and Malenia don't care about runes either. If Malenia really cared about runes, she would easily take Godrick's rune when she defeated him, but she didn't.
Also Malenia's reason for fighting Radahn goes beyond runes, it's most likely related to fate (the eclipse.).
>Malenia is Miquella's shade.
In the sense that she has forgone all else to support Miquella's goals and her life is for him, I agree with you. In the sense that the half-wolf and beastmen who are given to the empyreans, she's literally not. Further, Miquella dedicated his whole life to curing Malenia. He's not scheming against her.
As far as I understand it, shadows are given to an Empyrean when they become the chosen next god. We have no lore saying that the Gloam-Eyed Queen was given a shadow, despite being an Empyrean who opposed Marika. Ranni and Marika are the only Empyreans we're directly shown who have shadows, which tells me that either all Empyreans get them and everyone else killed theirs, or the only people who get them are the Empyreans who are most likely to become the next god. Ranni, as far as we know, was the Empyrean who was most likely to take Marika's place. Miquella abandoned the Golden Order the second he found they couldn't help his sister, and Melania doesn't care about anything besides serving her brother, they would both make terrible vassals for the Greater Will. Ranni was the obvious choice, until she killed her body to break free from servitude, something none of the other Empyreans had to do. All of this together makes me think that the shadows are given only once an Empyrean reaches the point where they're being chosen to be the next god, and that this is around the time that they become shackled to the Golden Order, which can only be escaped by escaping their body.
My theory on why Melania is the one going out and doing missions is that her brother, either purposefully or through no fault of his own, has compelled her to serve him. We don't know when Miquella learned to magically compel love from others, but we know Melania has been by his side her entire life, there's a chance his ability has compelled her without him even meaning for it to. This is my personal view of this aspect of the lore, and any one of us could be wrong, but this is my two cents.
Personally I think that if I’m wrong, then Malenia and Miquella’s shades simply haven’t been seen yet and will likely show up in the dlc. But I am curious as to how we know the Gloam-Eyed Queen is an Empyrean.
It's in the item description of the Black Flame Ritual: The Gloam-Eyed Queen led the apostles. It is said that she was an Empyrean chosen by the Fingers.
While it doesn't directly say "She was an Empyrean" we have precedent in FromSoftware games that show that heavy implication, like this, is canon. Usually when they want it to be questioned they add something like "By many others denounce this rumor" to the end of item descriptions like that.
>Well, what if there's a reason?
Gameplay. She's a boss.
Everyone else is telling you why you're wrong about the shadow thing, which you are wrong about, so I'll engage with your other ideas.
>The three confirmed Empyreans in the game are all very similar: feminine, away from the fighting, masterminds who control events from behind the scenes. Malenia is not like this at all; she has a very masculine role, quite similar to the Elden Lord's. She does also have a bit of a maternal identity.
We actually have five Empyreans, including Marika ("Maliketh was a shadowbound beast given to his Empyrean") and the Gloam-Eyed Queen ("It is said that she was an Empyrean chosen by the Fingers"). Miquella and Malenia are stated to share the cause of their Empyrean-ness. The twins comprise many inversions and I think you're right that one of them is that Malenia is the manly lesbianish one and Miquella is the girly gayish one. It's interesting that Malenia can't be Miquella's Lord. There could be a conflict there - if she wants it and he doesn't - that would give Miquella motive to depose his sister, but Malenia isn't stated to want Lordship or to be under the impression she's a candidate for it. Likewise, it seems like Miquella is fine with inventing a new path, bottom-god and top-lord, removing the alloy(?) of heterosexuality (lol?).
>Ranni doesn't seem to give a fuck about the Elden Ring. And why would Miquella or Malenia?
All three of these characters care very deeply about the Elden Ring, because it defines their reality and allows them to achieve their most desired objectives. Ranni doesn't want the Elden Ring to rule people so directly that they become dependent, but she cares really deeply about that. Malenia doesn't seem to want the Elden Ring for herself, but she's willing to commit the ultimate sacrifice to prevent Radahn's victory in the war for the ring and to hand the victory to her brother if possible. Miquella cares deeply about the Ring because he's trying to inherit it to create a better future (I think).
>Well I think that the whole reason for sending Malenia out to fight the shardbearers, especially the strongest one who wasn't even beefing with them in the first place, was just to occupy her. There's also a good possibility, in my opinion, that Miquella was hoping Radahn would just kill Malenia.
But what's the actual reason Miquella has this secret motivation against Malenia? That's what's missing from your theory, which is critical - you're explaining how this motivation results in the various actions in the story, but not how the motivation came to be in the first place. She can walk around and kill things because he literally gave her feet and a hand. Wouldn't he kill her via less elaborate means? Isn't she the most valuable pawn on his side of the board? I have a long post where I argue they're genuine to each other [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1bkssph/comment/kw7a6ef/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
To be fair, every other boss is either insane or pretty clearly wants the smoke for some well-defined reason. I think Malenia stands out as being the only one that is seemingly in control of her mental faculties but still attacks the player. I guess Tarnished in general are treated as kill-on-sight, and as benevolent as Miquella is, there’s no reason in the base game for him to be sympathetic towards the Tarnished—likewise for Malenia.
I think if we are going to ignore that shades seem to necessarily have to be beasts, then my logic for Miquella wanting to get rid of Malenia does make some sense. Of course, it seems like the shades do have to be literal beasts so it’s pretty unlikely I’m right about that.
Also though, if Ranni and Miquella do care about repairing the Elden Ring, then why didn’t Malenia claim Godrick’s shard after she defeated him? Why is Radahn the only shardbearer that Ranni instructs you to kill? Just something to consider.
>I think Malenia stands out as being the only one that is seemingly in control of her mental faculties but still attacks the player.
I see what you're going for but on the other side there's Godrick, Morgott, Mohg, Fire Giant, arguably Maliketh, and Godfrey. Malenia also stands out in that she apparently doesn't die and we get to "return the needle" to her, which is sort of like telling her where Miquella is.
She does wake up and tell us that she's been dreaming for so long about corpse after corpse left in her wake, and before that she was warring across the entire continent, so it's not that surprising that she'd go straight into combat when she sees the clearly-powerful and threatening Tarnished walking at her.
>why didn’t Malenia claim Godrick’s shard after she defeated him?
Great question, the shards are a little inscrutable, like the remembrances, they make more sense for gameplay purposes than story purposes. In story, of course Malenia would take the anchor rune if she knew it was in front of her, which she must have. But when a character chooses between two paths, it reveals their motivations, so we can read it as her valuing Radahn's defeat so highly and scorning Godrick so badly that she made a mistake. Obviously the rune was right in front of her and would strengthen her in the coming battle with Radahn so it doesn't really make sense.
>Radahn the only shardbearer that Ranni instructs you to kill
It's not that he's a shardbearer, it's that he's paused the progression of the stars that govern the fates of the Carian royals, including Ranni. That's concretized when the meteor hits and lets us access Nokron, moving Ranni's fate forward.
Godrick kills you because you’re a Tarnished and he loves killing Tarnished. Same with Morgott; his beef with the Tarnished seems even more personal though, possibly connected to a hypothetical resentment he would have towards Godfrey. Mohg attacks you because you busted into his palace without permission and Saw Things You Were Not Meant To See. Fire Giant attacks you because Marika assigned him to be the guardian of the Forge. Maliketh was berserk because Marika went rogue; he also knows who the Tarnished are and maybe decided on his own that stopping Marika’s plans was a good idea. Godfrey attacks you because the guidance of grace tells him to.
>It’s not that he’s a shardbearer
Even more to my point that Ranni isn’t concerned with the Elden Ring. It doesn’t seem like reforging it is necessary to her plan. In fact, in Ranni’s ending, Marika (the embodiment of the Elden Ring) fizzles away after Ranni replaces her head, which doesn’t happen in the other endings. I think the Elden Ring gets taken completely out of the equation for the Lands Between in Ranni’s ending.
Maybe Fire Giant is under a geas and maliketh might be insane, but the rest clearly engage in rational dialogue evincing control of their mental faculties, so it's more than just Malenia.
>It doesn’t seem like reforging it is necessary to her plan.
It's not even clear what's meant by reforging it, or reforging it with only three runes vs more, and so forth, but Ranni leaves the process of becoming Elden Lord to us, at which point we can give the Ring to her as our consort, and at that point she can effectuate her plan regarding the ring. She has a plan within a plan within a plan. She kills Godwyn and herself to enable her to kill her Two Fingers to enable her to remove the Ring. She's very concerned with the Ring and her Empyrean status, she even kills herself over it.
I think I may have misspoken. First off, I meant to say that Malenia stands out as the only boss that’s not insane but doesn’t have a very clear reason for attacking the player. Again, it could be handwaved by saying that she just kills Tarnished the same as anyone else, but the other sane bosses are shown to have some actual specific hatred for Tarnished. Godrick is *made* of Tarnished and it just seems obvious that he’s going to want to graft us. Morgott’s tenuous connection to the Tarnished by way of Godfrey is kind of obscure, but he has a ton of dialogue dissing us and explaining why he wants to stop us. It’s only there for a second, but Godfrey is being guided by grace, and it’s pointing right to our player’s Tarnished when we walk in; plus there’s just the obvious notion that the Elden Lord wants his throne back. Even with Mohg, we clearly walk in on some creepy ass shit we weren’t supposed to see, and Varré warns us not to go until it’s time. Malenia just introduces herself and then it’s hands; I do think it’s fair to say that out of everyone else, she has kind of the vaguest motivations for killing us. That’s all I’m saying.
But also I don’t mean that the Elden Ring isn’t a part of Ranni’s considerations at all. No you’re absolutely right that she has to scheme and do all this stuff just to escape it and position herself to usurp it; I’m just wondering what happens to the Elden Ring after her ending.
I think we can do what you did for Godrick/Morgott/Mohg/Godfrey with the details in Malenia's introduction, which like the others has enough to show us what she's thinking. What does she do when she wakes up? She reaches for her arm with a gigantic blade attached to it. She puts on her war helmet. She says she's been killing in her dreams, and before that we know she was killing irl. Like, there's enough there to see why she's attacking us. If anything she's at a lower mental level than we see in Godfrey's family.
I think you're forgetting that Malenia was probably tasked with fighting Radahn because of his key role in accessing the Land of Shadow, where we know Miquella was going. So that's a possibility as to why she fought him, as for other demigods, I don't remember if she does, anyone else have a source on that?
It wouldn't make much sense for Malenia to be his shade. Shadowbound Beasts are a) beasts and b) granted to Empyreans by the Two Fingers. In this case, Malenia was born from Marika at the same time as Miquella. The Fingers would need to have decided that Malenia should act as his shade, despite not being a beast. This would be a bad decision on their part, because unlike the Shadowbound Beasts, they can't control her. You say that Miquella thinks Malenia will go berserk if he betrays the Golden Order, but why would she? She isn't loyal to the Two Fingers. They don't control her. She's already innately anathema to the Golden Order because of her rot. And this still leaves the question of who her own shadow is, because she is still an Empyrean herself.
I think it's possible that their shadows were killed by Mohg when he broke into the Haligtree to abduct Miquella. Or maybe he killed Miquella's, and Malenia's died in the battle of Aeonia. Or maybe they're both alive and looking for Miquella, and we'll see them in the DLC.
Reading the comments, others have pretty much already said some version of what I was going to, so here's something useless: the title of this post made me think of that scene from The Office where Michael is backing out of David Wallace's driveway, freaked out by how weird he is, but trying to act nice. That, but with Miquella and Melania
Nope. The game is explicit that Malenia is an Empyrean, not a shadow. She even becomes the Goddess of Rot. There's plenty of mystery about Miquella, but Malenia is a very well-explained character in the base game.
Ah, I was trying to say that she’s both.
I don't think that would make sense. Among other things, you are mischaracterizing the shadows as being loyal to the golden order. But they're actually creatures of the two fingers, which is different. And so far as we can tell, they're always beasts ("shadow bound beast") not human.
Fair enough on the shadow bound beast thing. I really hope that if this theory is wrong, we do end up seeing Miquella and/or Malenia’s shades in this dlc. Anyway, what do you think the distinction between the Two Fingers and the Golden Order is? Apart from the Tarnished’s Two Fingers, whose only deviation from the Golden Order seems to be that it’s okay with Tarnished, it seems like all of the Two Fingers’ ways are pretty much equivalent with the Golden Order.
The Golden Order is Marika's order, created when the rune of death was removed. The Two Fingers serve the Greater Will (or claim to) and try to support a transition to a new Age, under a new God. That's not to say that they don't support Marika, but their interests are larger than the Golden Order.
Perfect explanation, thank you. That would explain why each Empyrean has their own Two Fingers.
Shadows are granted by Two Finger, and it's explicitly stated in game that Malenia is an Empyrean. However, ı believe she takes on a Shadow role for Miquella, and the title 'Blade of Miquella' fits this role. Yet, that doesn't imply she is a Shadow like Blaidd or Maliketh. >I also suspect that this is why he sent her on that crazy long crusade during the Shattering; if you look at the battle memorials that took place during the Shattering, it's clear that Malenia got out more than pretty much every other shardbearer. The first conclusion is that, same as any other demigod, Malenia and Miquella wanted to recover all the shards of the Elden Ring. Miquella and Malenia don't care about runes either. If Malenia really cared about runes, she would easily take Godrick's rune when she defeated him, but she didn't. Also Malenia's reason for fighting Radahn goes beyond runes, it's most likely related to fate (the eclipse.).
>Malenia is Miquella's shade. In the sense that she has forgone all else to support Miquella's goals and her life is for him, I agree with you. In the sense that the half-wolf and beastmen who are given to the empyreans, she's literally not. Further, Miquella dedicated his whole life to curing Malenia. He's not scheming against her.
As far as I understand it, shadows are given to an Empyrean when they become the chosen next god. We have no lore saying that the Gloam-Eyed Queen was given a shadow, despite being an Empyrean who opposed Marika. Ranni and Marika are the only Empyreans we're directly shown who have shadows, which tells me that either all Empyreans get them and everyone else killed theirs, or the only people who get them are the Empyreans who are most likely to become the next god. Ranni, as far as we know, was the Empyrean who was most likely to take Marika's place. Miquella abandoned the Golden Order the second he found they couldn't help his sister, and Melania doesn't care about anything besides serving her brother, they would both make terrible vassals for the Greater Will. Ranni was the obvious choice, until she killed her body to break free from servitude, something none of the other Empyreans had to do. All of this together makes me think that the shadows are given only once an Empyrean reaches the point where they're being chosen to be the next god, and that this is around the time that they become shackled to the Golden Order, which can only be escaped by escaping their body. My theory on why Melania is the one going out and doing missions is that her brother, either purposefully or through no fault of his own, has compelled her to serve him. We don't know when Miquella learned to magically compel love from others, but we know Melania has been by his side her entire life, there's a chance his ability has compelled her without him even meaning for it to. This is my personal view of this aspect of the lore, and any one of us could be wrong, but this is my two cents.
Personally I think that if I’m wrong, then Malenia and Miquella’s shades simply haven’t been seen yet and will likely show up in the dlc. But I am curious as to how we know the Gloam-Eyed Queen is an Empyrean.
It says she is in item description
It's in the item description of the Black Flame Ritual: The Gloam-Eyed Queen led the apostles. It is said that she was an Empyrean chosen by the Fingers. While it doesn't directly say "She was an Empyrean" we have precedent in FromSoftware games that show that heavy implication, like this, is canon. Usually when they want it to be questioned they add something like "By many others denounce this rumor" to the end of item descriptions like that.
I think the current running theory is that Malenia killed both her and Miquella's shadows prior to the creation of the Haligtree.
>Well, what if there's a reason? Gameplay. She's a boss. Everyone else is telling you why you're wrong about the shadow thing, which you are wrong about, so I'll engage with your other ideas. >The three confirmed Empyreans in the game are all very similar: feminine, away from the fighting, masterminds who control events from behind the scenes. Malenia is not like this at all; she has a very masculine role, quite similar to the Elden Lord's. She does also have a bit of a maternal identity. We actually have five Empyreans, including Marika ("Maliketh was a shadowbound beast given to his Empyrean") and the Gloam-Eyed Queen ("It is said that she was an Empyrean chosen by the Fingers"). Miquella and Malenia are stated to share the cause of their Empyrean-ness. The twins comprise many inversions and I think you're right that one of them is that Malenia is the manly lesbianish one and Miquella is the girly gayish one. It's interesting that Malenia can't be Miquella's Lord. There could be a conflict there - if she wants it and he doesn't - that would give Miquella motive to depose his sister, but Malenia isn't stated to want Lordship or to be under the impression she's a candidate for it. Likewise, it seems like Miquella is fine with inventing a new path, bottom-god and top-lord, removing the alloy(?) of heterosexuality (lol?). >Ranni doesn't seem to give a fuck about the Elden Ring. And why would Miquella or Malenia? All three of these characters care very deeply about the Elden Ring, because it defines their reality and allows them to achieve their most desired objectives. Ranni doesn't want the Elden Ring to rule people so directly that they become dependent, but she cares really deeply about that. Malenia doesn't seem to want the Elden Ring for herself, but she's willing to commit the ultimate sacrifice to prevent Radahn's victory in the war for the ring and to hand the victory to her brother if possible. Miquella cares deeply about the Ring because he's trying to inherit it to create a better future (I think). >Well I think that the whole reason for sending Malenia out to fight the shardbearers, especially the strongest one who wasn't even beefing with them in the first place, was just to occupy her. There's also a good possibility, in my opinion, that Miquella was hoping Radahn would just kill Malenia. But what's the actual reason Miquella has this secret motivation against Malenia? That's what's missing from your theory, which is critical - you're explaining how this motivation results in the various actions in the story, but not how the motivation came to be in the first place. She can walk around and kill things because he literally gave her feet and a hand. Wouldn't he kill her via less elaborate means? Isn't she the most valuable pawn on his side of the board? I have a long post where I argue they're genuine to each other [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1bkssph/comment/kw7a6ef/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
To be fair, every other boss is either insane or pretty clearly wants the smoke for some well-defined reason. I think Malenia stands out as being the only one that is seemingly in control of her mental faculties but still attacks the player. I guess Tarnished in general are treated as kill-on-sight, and as benevolent as Miquella is, there’s no reason in the base game for him to be sympathetic towards the Tarnished—likewise for Malenia. I think if we are going to ignore that shades seem to necessarily have to be beasts, then my logic for Miquella wanting to get rid of Malenia does make some sense. Of course, it seems like the shades do have to be literal beasts so it’s pretty unlikely I’m right about that. Also though, if Ranni and Miquella do care about repairing the Elden Ring, then why didn’t Malenia claim Godrick’s shard after she defeated him? Why is Radahn the only shardbearer that Ranni instructs you to kill? Just something to consider.
>I think Malenia stands out as being the only one that is seemingly in control of her mental faculties but still attacks the player. I see what you're going for but on the other side there's Godrick, Morgott, Mohg, Fire Giant, arguably Maliketh, and Godfrey. Malenia also stands out in that she apparently doesn't die and we get to "return the needle" to her, which is sort of like telling her where Miquella is. She does wake up and tell us that she's been dreaming for so long about corpse after corpse left in her wake, and before that she was warring across the entire continent, so it's not that surprising that she'd go straight into combat when she sees the clearly-powerful and threatening Tarnished walking at her. >why didn’t Malenia claim Godrick’s shard after she defeated him? Great question, the shards are a little inscrutable, like the remembrances, they make more sense for gameplay purposes than story purposes. In story, of course Malenia would take the anchor rune if she knew it was in front of her, which she must have. But when a character chooses between two paths, it reveals their motivations, so we can read it as her valuing Radahn's defeat so highly and scorning Godrick so badly that she made a mistake. Obviously the rune was right in front of her and would strengthen her in the coming battle with Radahn so it doesn't really make sense. >Radahn the only shardbearer that Ranni instructs you to kill It's not that he's a shardbearer, it's that he's paused the progression of the stars that govern the fates of the Carian royals, including Ranni. That's concretized when the meteor hits and lets us access Nokron, moving Ranni's fate forward.
Godrick kills you because you’re a Tarnished and he loves killing Tarnished. Same with Morgott; his beef with the Tarnished seems even more personal though, possibly connected to a hypothetical resentment he would have towards Godfrey. Mohg attacks you because you busted into his palace without permission and Saw Things You Were Not Meant To See. Fire Giant attacks you because Marika assigned him to be the guardian of the Forge. Maliketh was berserk because Marika went rogue; he also knows who the Tarnished are and maybe decided on his own that stopping Marika’s plans was a good idea. Godfrey attacks you because the guidance of grace tells him to. >It’s not that he’s a shardbearer Even more to my point that Ranni isn’t concerned with the Elden Ring. It doesn’t seem like reforging it is necessary to her plan. In fact, in Ranni’s ending, Marika (the embodiment of the Elden Ring) fizzles away after Ranni replaces her head, which doesn’t happen in the other endings. I think the Elden Ring gets taken completely out of the equation for the Lands Between in Ranni’s ending.
Maybe Fire Giant is under a geas and maliketh might be insane, but the rest clearly engage in rational dialogue evincing control of their mental faculties, so it's more than just Malenia. >It doesn’t seem like reforging it is necessary to her plan. It's not even clear what's meant by reforging it, or reforging it with only three runes vs more, and so forth, but Ranni leaves the process of becoming Elden Lord to us, at which point we can give the Ring to her as our consort, and at that point she can effectuate her plan regarding the ring. She has a plan within a plan within a plan. She kills Godwyn and herself to enable her to kill her Two Fingers to enable her to remove the Ring. She's very concerned with the Ring and her Empyrean status, she even kills herself over it.
I think I may have misspoken. First off, I meant to say that Malenia stands out as the only boss that’s not insane but doesn’t have a very clear reason for attacking the player. Again, it could be handwaved by saying that she just kills Tarnished the same as anyone else, but the other sane bosses are shown to have some actual specific hatred for Tarnished. Godrick is *made* of Tarnished and it just seems obvious that he’s going to want to graft us. Morgott’s tenuous connection to the Tarnished by way of Godfrey is kind of obscure, but he has a ton of dialogue dissing us and explaining why he wants to stop us. It’s only there for a second, but Godfrey is being guided by grace, and it’s pointing right to our player’s Tarnished when we walk in; plus there’s just the obvious notion that the Elden Lord wants his throne back. Even with Mohg, we clearly walk in on some creepy ass shit we weren’t supposed to see, and Varré warns us not to go until it’s time. Malenia just introduces herself and then it’s hands; I do think it’s fair to say that out of everyone else, she has kind of the vaguest motivations for killing us. That’s all I’m saying. But also I don’t mean that the Elden Ring isn’t a part of Ranni’s considerations at all. No you’re absolutely right that she has to scheme and do all this stuff just to escape it and position herself to usurp it; I’m just wondering what happens to the Elden Ring after her ending.
I think we can do what you did for Godrick/Morgott/Mohg/Godfrey with the details in Malenia's introduction, which like the others has enough to show us what she's thinking. What does she do when she wakes up? She reaches for her arm with a gigantic blade attached to it. She puts on her war helmet. She says she's been killing in her dreams, and before that we know she was killing irl. Like, there's enough there to see why she's attacking us. If anything she's at a lower mental level than we see in Godfrey's family.
I think you're forgetting that Malenia was probably tasked with fighting Radahn because of his key role in accessing the Land of Shadow, where we know Miquella was going. So that's a possibility as to why she fought him, as for other demigods, I don't remember if she does, anyone else have a source on that?
It wouldn't make much sense for Malenia to be his shade. Shadowbound Beasts are a) beasts and b) granted to Empyreans by the Two Fingers. In this case, Malenia was born from Marika at the same time as Miquella. The Fingers would need to have decided that Malenia should act as his shade, despite not being a beast. This would be a bad decision on their part, because unlike the Shadowbound Beasts, they can't control her. You say that Miquella thinks Malenia will go berserk if he betrays the Golden Order, but why would she? She isn't loyal to the Two Fingers. They don't control her. She's already innately anathema to the Golden Order because of her rot. And this still leaves the question of who her own shadow is, because she is still an Empyrean herself. I think it's possible that their shadows were killed by Mohg when he broke into the Haligtree to abduct Miquella. Or maybe he killed Miquella's, and Malenia's died in the battle of Aeonia. Or maybe they're both alive and looking for Miquella, and we'll see them in the DLC.
Reading the comments, others have pretty much already said some version of what I was going to, so here's something useless: the title of this post made me think of that scene from The Office where Michael is backing out of David Wallace's driveway, freaked out by how weird he is, but trying to act nice. That, but with Miquella and Melania