ralsei redpill draft 1

-Ralsei and Asriel-

Okay, I shouldn’t have to say it but it’s true: Ralsei is clearly linked to Asriel. Normally I’d consider this too blatantly obvious to include, but there are still people who deny it. Besides, there are some connections you may not have realised.

Now of course you almost certainly know all the stuff about Ralsei being an anagram of Asriel, and Ralsei looking like a Boss Monster, and all that.

But there are some similarities that you may not know.

There are multiple instances of characters commenting on Ralsei’s similarity to Asriel.

The first is Noelle. Now I know some claim that she was actually going to say “It looks kind of like they’re on a date”, but there’s pretty much no evidence for this except for her saying “it”.

First, she says “It looks kind of like…” straight after saying “Who’s that person she’s with, anyway?”. It makes sense that her second sentence is intended as an answer to the first.

Second, people claim if she was talking about Ralsei she would say “they” rather than “it”, but in fact “it looks like” is a common phrase.

Moving on, the other instance is unambiguous; Susie says Ralsei looks like Toriel and says they could bring him to the Light World by claiming he was a long lost cousin. There is no way to misinterpret this; Susie - someone who clearly has little history with the Dreemurrs - thinks Ralsei looks like a Dreemurr. Further, her shocked and flustered reaction when Ralsei quote-unquote “reveals” himself makes little sense if she’s just surprised he has white fur instead of black.

Ralsei is also a prince, or at least claims to be one. Of course Asriel was also a prince by virtue of being the son of King Asgore and Queen Toriel. Flowey also refers to himself as a prince in a metaphorical sense.

One question this raises is that if Ralsei is a prince, who is the king? Presumably not the Spade King, Ralsei appears entirely unconnected to the Card Kingdom.

-The Dark World Bedrooms-

There is another interesting similarity between Ralsei and Asriel.

Here is Kris and Asriel’s Light World bedroom. Note that while Kris’ side of the room is pretty bare, Asriel’s is bursting with (metaphorical) life.

Now look at Kris’ Dark World bedroom. Notice anything?

[do some visual stuff here so the resemblance is obvious]

Kris’ Dark World bedroom is an near-exact copy of Asriel’s side of the room, even down to small details like the stripes on the bed. All the sprites are identical, they just have their colours changed.

This raises a lot of questions. How does Ralsei know what Kris and Asriel’s bedroom looks like? What is his intent in copying it? There are some hints that Asriel is the “golden boy” and Kris is jealous of him, but how would Ralsei know this?

In addition, there are only four things missing from Asriel’s side of the room compared to the Dark World bedroom - the console under the bed, the picture and certificate on the wall, and the clock. That last omission feels important.

Kris’ room also has another aspect taken from Asriel’s side of the room - a star theme on the walls. It’s also worth noting that Asriel’s room being star-themed was originally considered for Undertale - I don’t think that necessarily means anything, but it’s worth pointing out.

Also Susie’s bedroom has a giant rug with the Undertale ACT symbol on it. Is Ralsei trying to ensure that Susie remains subservient to Kris’ orders after her earlier rebellion? Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

-Ralsei and Flowey-

But there is more to Ralsei’s Asriel connections than just those. He also has a lot of connections with Asriel’s villainous alter-ego.

First, there is a matter of their role in each game’s respective combat tutorials. Now while this alone isn’t suspicious - Flowey only barely teaches you anything about combat in between all his lies, and most of what Ralsei teaches you in Deltarune Toriel teaches you in Undertale, there is one specific line where the two definitely can be compared.

That is when they describe the Soul. Both call it “the culmination of your being” using near-identical phrasing - Ralsei drops “very” and compresses “that is” into “that’s”, but otherwise they’re the same. This does not seem like a coincidence.

Also it’s arguable whether or not the soul is the culmination of Kris’ being anyway, but that’s an unrelated matter.

Another similarity of phrasing comes when we come back to Kris and Ralsei after they have their offscreen chats. Now we’ll be dealing with those properly later, but for now let’s focus on what Ralsei says after we come back. Now while “so that’s why” immediately draws questions about what “that” and “why” are, this phrasing is also used by Flowey during his Genocide route monologue. Now admittedly the context is completely different, so I wouldn’t read too much into it, but it’s worth mentioning.

Also, on page 69 of the Undertale artbook, there is concept art for various Photoshop Flowey faces that ultimately were not used in the final game. Among them is this clearly boss monster-inspired face. Now obviously this was probably just intended to be a hint at Flowey’s true nature, but you can’t deny it looks less like Asriel and more like a certain other character…
Echo Flowers and "UNUSED" text
If you’re watching a Deltarune theory video,  you’re probably aware of the quote-unquote “UNUSED” text. There have been many theories about the identity of the speaker, and while I don’t really have an answer to that question, I do have some interesting evidence to share.

This evidence requires us to first go back to Undertale, and the final Echo Flower room. It’s not well known, but if you go to the end of the room and then backtrack to the second flower, you’ll get a message from Flowey. It’ll be different depending on whether or not you killed Toriel; we’re interested in the one you get if you do.

"Where am I...? It's so cold here... And so dark... Someone help me... Anyone... please... Help me..."

The parallels to the “UNUSED” text are fairly obvious.

But wait, there’s more! Now I don’t personally know Japanese, so I’m trusting the reliability of a random Tumblr post for this, but in the Japanese translation the speaker of the “UNUSED” text speaks in a specific childlike style - and Flowey speaks in the same style when he wants to appear innocent. I do admit that I don’t know if Flowey speaks in that matter when it comes to the Echo Flower dialogue, though. But the similarities in English remain either way.

-Toby's Tweet-

Finally (except for one other Flowey connection that makes more sense to talk about later), let’s look at a suspicious Twitter post from Toby.

On May 13, 2020, Toby quote-retweeted a Fangamer post promoting a new floral-themed Ralsei shirt, adding the following comment:

“Ralsei shirt! He's always getting mixed up with flowers, isn't he... (that hasn't happened)”

Now decoding that from Toby’s weird faux-translated Japanese speech affection is difficult, but it definitely sounds suspicious.

-Ralsei the Shapeshifter?-

Okay, this is a big one. For some reason people just accept that Ralsei during Chapter 1 was simply covered in shadow by his hat. There is a massive amount of reasons why this is complete nonsense.

First, think about it logically. Wearing a hat will not turn pure white fur pure black. I know Deltarune is hardly a realistic game, but there are levels of unrealism and some basic principles shouldn’t be violated without explanation. If Kris could snap their fingers to reverse gravity, we would expect some sort of explanation for that power.

Further, Susie’s shocked reaction to Ralsei taking off his hat seems to indicate that we are meant to believe that the shadow cast by the hat was obscuring basic features of Ralsei’s face as well, which arguably makes even less sense.

But those two points are arguable. What is not arguable are the following points.

Ralsei’s Chapter 1 spell animation has his hand clearly outside of his hat’s brim - yet it is still pitch black.

Ralsei’s sleeves shift from green to black when he takes off his hat. This happens the instance he starts taking off his hat in Chapter 1, and stays that way throughout Chapter 2, so it really doesn’t feel like a mistake.

His glasses also change from white to green, but I suppose you have a bit of wiggle room to argue that it’s just artistic license and green glasses wouldn’t look good on hatted Ralsei.

There is also the matter of Ralsei’s horns. On his hatted talksprite and hatless overworld sprite they clearly curve inwards, but on his hatless talksprite they curve outwards. Again, this seems like too big of a mistake to make unintentionally and then not correct.

Ralsei’s fur also gets a lot smoother when he takes his hat off, but I’m prepared to accept that could just be inconsistency. It is reflected in the plushies though - make of that what you will.

Also his scarf gets slightly lighter, but that probably really is just shade from the hat.

Separately from the matter of Ralsei’s precise appearance, there is also the question of why he felt he needed to hide his appearance at all - and not do so once, but twice. There’s a brief line about Ralsei being nervous during the boat ride, but he doesn’t act that nervous when we first meet him. We’ll come back to this.

All this evidence leads us to one conclusion, one that neatly explains all this evidence: Ralsei is a shapeshifter. Shapeshifting feels like a logical power for a Darkner to have - they are all shapeshifters to some extent. Now admittedly this doesn’t answer every question, especially the stuff about Ralsei’s connections to Asriel. But it is definitely a possibility to be considered.

-Some more notes on Ralsei's design-

Ralsei’s clothes, at least in Chapter 1, have a black heart on them. Susie, on the other hand, has a gold heart on her Dark World clothes. The symbolism is fairly obvious here.

On the subject of symbols on Ralsei’s clothes, the black heart may have been changed in Chapter 2 to be an upside-down spade, but I’m not convinced. In all the sprites except the ones where he’s directly facing the camera, it still seems to be a heart, so it seems plausible to me that for some reason there’s a stray black pixel. Of course if it is meant to be a spade, that raises even more questions.

Ralsei’s feet also appear too large to fit into the shoes the “prince from the dark” is wearing in the Prophecy, and of course we never see him wear shoes.

Somewhat damningly, Ralsei holds his hands behind his back. That is a fairly archetypal symbol of untrustworthiness if there ever was one, though admittedly it is also stereotypically a thing that butlers and the like do, which fits with how submissive he acts.

And one final note: why does Ralsei feel the need to hide his appearance? We’ll come back to this later.

-The Manual-

Now this isn’t technically canon, but I think it’s worth bringing up.

As you’re probably aware, in the game files there is a complete version of Ralsei’s manual. Now while unused stuff is obviously of dubious canonicity (except for “unused” stuff), and in this case it probably can’t be entirely canon since Ralsei never refers to Kris and Susie by name in it. But I think it does provide useful information on how Toby portrays Ralsei.

First off, let’s look at the foreword. Ralsei is a drawing. Kris and Susie are taken from the prophecy. This is very interesting. Why doesn’t Ralsei use the “Prince from the Dark” from the prophecy? Is he inserting himself into the prophecy? Is that why he disguises himself in the cloak when he first meets Kris and Susie, so he looks like the Prince from the prophecy? Perhaps that’s reading too much into it. But if there wasn’t something there, I think all three heroes would either be drawings or taken from the prophecy.

Moving back a page to the dedication, Ralsei dedicates the manual to “the unending pillar of darkness that gives my body form”. Now arguably this isn’t what Dark Fountains do for regular Darkners - they still have a form even without a Dark Fountain, it’s just a different one. But you could argue that the Dark Fountain’s still giving their specific Dark World body form, so this is overall a very minor point.

One final thing, and this is an interesting one because it’s something that escaped the unused manual and was used in the merch, is the last page of the manual. On it, Ralsei says “Thank you! I’m looking forward to meeting you!”. Now on its own that’s perfectly innocuous, but let’s rewind all the way back to 2013 and the release of the Undertale demo.

Undertale originally had a digital manual. It was cut from the final game because it changed depending on your actions, and changes to Game Maker made the manipulation of external files necessary to achieve this impossible. But the demo was made before those changes, and features the manual as originally intended. Now we aren’t actually interested in any of the stuff that later engine versions couldn’t do. We’re interested in the last page of the base unaltered manual, which is a message from Flowey (still playing innocent):

“Howdy! My name’s Flowey. I’m really looking forward to meeting you! I already feel like we’re good friends.”

Sound familar? And out of all the pages of Ralsei’s manual, this is the one they chose to include in the black Ralsei plush…

-Ralsei's secret conversations-

Now this is probably one of the best known examples of Ralsei’s suspiciousness - indeed I’ve already briefly mentioned it. But I’ll give a overview of it so we’re all on the same page.

The events in question here are the two times we leave Kris’ perspective to look at Susie’s. The first time is during the prison sequence, of course. Things get interesting even before we totally leave Kris’ perspective - the camera moves over to include Susie’s cell, even though Kris would be unable to see it. Now of course that’s fairly innocuous on its own, but Ralsei then tells Kris to tell Susie what to do - something that only really makes sense if Ralsei knows that Kris is controlled by the player and can see Susie’s cell.

After Susie leaves her cell, Ralsei asks Kris to “take a moment, close your eyes, and think about what she’s doing now”. Then we fade out to look at what Susie’s doing. Now there’s something a little bit suspicious about that, but what really matters is what Ralsei says when we return to Kris’ perspective:

“…so that’s why, okay, Kris?”

Now reams of speculation have been written on this. Obviously Kris and Ralsei have had some sort of a conversation, but what that conversation was we have no idea.

Moving on to the second instance, this of course is when Susie enters Noelle’s room in the Cyber World. If you choose to view Susie’s perspective, the dialogue is pretty much the same as the first time, though I will note that unlike the previous time there do seem to be other things Kris and Ralsei could be doing besides waiting for Susie.

But what is interesting here is that you can choose not to view Susie’s perspective. Ralsei is shocked if you do this, and immediately tries to get you to change your mind - he actually changes the phrasing of the question when he asks you again. This time he asks you if you’d want to see Susie’s perspective if you could, which is a interesting turn of phrase considering the circumstances. If you still say no he drops it, but he definitely seems to want it to happen.

Finally, there’s the Snowgrave route version of the previous scene. When Susie goes into Noelle’s room, Ralsei once again tries the old “don’t you wonder what’s happening in there” shtick, but Kris, without our input, doesn’t even respond. Then when Susie bursts out, Ralsei goes “Wait, we were supposed to-“. Now precisely what was supposed to happen is unclear, but it’s often been proposed he was talking about viewing Susie’s perspective, and there certainly isn’t any evidence against that.

So clearly something is up here. The bit in the prison with Susie and the puzzle strongly suggests that Ralsei knows about the player. Therefore it is not much of a stretch to suggest that Ralsei is intentionally engineering these times when we see Susie’s perspective to allow him to talk with Kris in private. But what they are talking about remains a mystery.

This is actually a topic brought up on the sixth anniversary stream. During the prison scene, one of the Fangamer streamers refers to it as “astral projection”. [show clip, time is 2:17:50] Toby then interjects. [clip - “I don’t approve that phrasing” - “Apologies, that was on our list of things not to mention on the stream”.]

From that interchange we can clearly tell that these scenes are not merely cases where we break from Kris’ perspective for the sake of the plot - they have plot relevance, and presumably some sort of reveal later down the line.

Toby also mentions that the soul comes from the top-right of the screen, in the direction of Kris, but seeing as the Soul already takes damage for non-Kris characters in regular battles I’m not sure what to make of that.

I’ve heard it claimed that Ralsei isn’t doing this to get the player away from him and Kris because he doesn’t force the point too much if you refuse, but that’s not taking into account the fact that Ralsei really doesn’t seem to want to directly confront or disagree with Kris or the player.

It’s also argued that because Ralsei “knows what Susie did” he can’t have been talking to Kris. Putting aside that the evidence for this is very shaky as all of Ralsei’s supposed knowledge could easily be inferred - Kris does tell Susie how to solve the card puzzle, but of course we can see the puzzle and we control Kris - we have no idea how this “astral projection” works and it could easily be the case that Ralsei and Kris could talk while watching Susie. Indeed they have to be able to, because otherwise Ralsei saying “so that’s why” - with an ellipsis at the front, implying we’re seeing the end of a longer conversation - would make no sense.

It’s also worth noting that Ralsei never engineers a situation where he and Susie are alone, though since he does have a long period alone with her in Chapter 2 drawing conclusions based on that is difficult.

Another thing that’s difficult to draw conclusions on is whether or not the more unexplainable aspects of Kris’ behaviour like turning on the TV can be explained by these conversations. It is often suggested that Kris is acting on Ralsei’s instructions here, but as they behave the same in the Snowgrave route where the second conversation is skipped it seems a bit unlikely.

-Downplaying Spamton-

This is one of the more well-known instances of Ralsei’s suspiciousness, so I won’t go in detail describing it. Briefly, Ralsei denies that Spamton’s rantings meant anything, and claims he was just a “corrupted program”. What I do want to do is rebut a couple of defenses of Ralsei that are made, and point out some details you may have missed.

It’s often claimed that Ralsei is merely trying to comfort Kris when they are in obvious stress. But pay attention to the dialogue. Ralsei immediately starts denying Spamton has any significance whatsoever before anything about Kris’ reaction is mentioned, but rather when Susie brings it up - and she doesn’t show any signs of being seriously disturbed. Note that Kris isn’t shaking or showing any really visible signs of stress - Susie only notices something is wrong when she gets close and notices goosebumps.

Ralsei also shows himself either unwilling or incapable to actually address the issues Kris seems to have with Spamton, instead just trying to distract them. Now on its own that could just be social incompetence, but it starts looking more like he’s just unwilling when you consider his reaction to Susie…

And if you say “no” to Susie’s question to Kris, Ralsei’s reaction is to tell Kris not to think too hard about what happened - indicating he knows that Kris’ reaction is more than just stress after a tough fight…

-Dark World Travel-

Ralsei displays extraordinary capabilities of travel, to such an extent that wondering if he can teleport is reasonable.

First, he leaves the Card Kingdom in the very brief window of time between him saying goodbye to Kris and Susie and the Fountain being sealed. He manages to get all the way back through the Card Kingdom and through the Great Door - and that’s a mini-topic in itself - why does Ralsei close the door? Why does it close with such an ominous slam? - all in the space of about a minute. Now assuming there isn’t some massive time gap between sealing the fountain and the classroom returning to normal…

There is also the question of why he felt the need to do this. Was he trying to hide his Light World form from Kris and Susie? Was there something we don’t know about he had to in Castle Town? Is he simply afraid of temporarily losing his status as a sentient being?

But leaving aside those questions for now, we come to the even more suspicious case: Ralsei’s travel to the Cyber Kingdom. First off, he says that he “sensed a dark presence”. Was this the Dark Fountain or something else? Regardless of what it is, how did he sense it? It has also been pointed out that if Ralsei is sensing a Dark Fountain, and he really does want them sealed, then this would require the Dark Fountain to have been made while Kris and Susie walked from the school to the library - but this is getting off-topic, and in any case Knight-identity theories have never really interested me.

But of course, the real question is how he - unlike any other Darkner - can travel between Dark Worlds completely separated from each other. The only method of travelling between two Dark Worlds that aren’t directly connected in the Light World that we know of is via the Light World. Furthermore, he enters the room where he rejoins Kris and Susie from the west, like Kris and Susie did, when geographically Castle Town is to the east. This strongly suggests that Ralsei can somehow travel through the Light World.

And finally, we have both questions combined for the question of how Ralsei returned from the Cyber World to Castle Town. I suppose you have a tiny bit of leeway here to argue that Kris gathered whatever Ralsei is in the Light World up with the rest of the stuff in the computer room, but if so Ralsei’s Light World form would be deliberately invisible to the player, and that’s not very good storytelling.

You could also argue that Ralsei’s Light World form is something always carried by Kris, but again that runs into the problem of Ralsei’s Light World form being hidden, and it also breaks the established rules of how Light World objects becoming Darkners is visually portrayed.

-Ralsei's Odd Pacifism-

Ralsei makes some vague overtures towards pacifism, but they feel insincere. In Chapter 1 he tells Kris not to fight, but if you respond with silence to Ralsei asking “Is that too much to ask?” he immediately defers to Kris and claims that as long as Kris is happy with violence, he’s happy with it too. In any case he will happily beat the shit out of enemies if you ask him to.

In Chapter 2, when Ralsei decides to edit the “Cyberpedia” he makes just the one article, about “Losing Recruits”. In this he explains, well, losing recruits by attacking enemies. But he ends with this final sentence: “But, the bonds you break may make you stronger...”

What the fuck does that mean you fucking goat. Why did you put that there. Are you trying to encourage violence?
What Ralsei Doesn't Do
There are a couple of things that would make sense for Ralsei to do - if he was above board - but that he fails to do.

First, he never warns the party about the whole “turning to stone” thing. He tells Lancer “perhaps you shouldn’t” when he first joins the party, but he makes no further attempt to stop or warn him.

Second, Ralsei never mentions the Roaring before the exact instance he needs to stop someone opening a Dark Fountain. This makes me very suspicious of the Roaring’s existence, and we’ll talk more about that when we get to the Prophecy.

-Ralsei as the Devil-
Now I know some parts of the Deltarune fandom really don’t like when you bring up symbolism, but this is particularly interesting. Ralsei shares a number of traits with popular depictions of the Devil.

First, Ralsei is a “Prince from the Dark”, and Satan is often called the “Prince of Darkness”. [show carpenter film poster here?]

Next, Ralsei is opposed to the “Angel’s Heaven”, and of course I don’t need to explain the symbolism there.

Ralsei is, as previously explained, very similar in appearance to a Boss Monster, and Boss Monsters are explicitly described as similar in appearance to goats in Undertale. The Devil has often been depicted as a humanoid with goat-like features.

The “Prince from the Dark” is surrounded by fire in the Prophecy - curious, because Ralsei has not used fire magic so far. Not only is fire commonly associated with the Devil, but fire is also traditionally the opposite of ice. Noelle of course uses ice magic, and Noelle has a lot of angel symbolism surrounding her…

Of course, what also has to be mentioned is that Ralsei is competing for Satan symbolism with Gaster, but as we shall see, there are definitely connections between Ralsei and Gaster.

-Darkners' Purpose?-

This is a really massive red flag for me. During the conversation with Lancer after he joins the party in Chapter 1, Ralsei claims that Darkners’ purpose is to assist Lightners, and that it is the only way they can “feel truly fulfilled”. Susie is immediately freaked out by this, and asks Ralsei to “ditch the weird ‘purpose’ talk” and gives an alternate explanation to Lancer for his positive emotions. Now if any character’s moral compass can be trusted, it’s Susie’s in my opinion. That Ralsei is giving all this talk about Darkners being the Lightners’ inherent inferiors is not something you would expect to see vindicated in a modern work of fiction.

The only line similar to this is Seam saying that the Lightners gave the Darkners purpose, but that isn’t nearly as strong as what Ralsei says. He even wonders if not locking Jevil up would have let him find new purpose, so he doesn’t seem to think that serving Lightners is Darkners’ only purpose. I’ll also note that the Spade King is clearly being set up to be a more sympathetic character in the future, so I would not be surprised if his views on Darkners finding purpose outside of Lightners were revealed to have some truth in them.

-Ralsei and Susie ACTing-

Another really weird scene is Susie and Ralsei’s interactions in the Sweet Cap’n Cakes fight. Ralsei has this bizarre obsession with keeping ACTing as Kris’ thing, referring to it as their “special talent”, and trying to dissuade Susie from ACTing on her own. Ralsei seems really shook by Susie forcing him to ACT - he even apologises to Kris. Why does he want ACTing to be solely Kris’ thing? Is he trying to make Kris feel special somehow?

-That bit with Rouxls and K. Round noone else has mentioned-

Okay, a couple of people have mentioned it. But less people than you’d think, considering how highly suspicious this scene is. Ralsei acts really weirdly during the second K. Round fight. First, Ralsei starts out by identifying K. Round, okay that’s fine, but then he states that its crown is different. It’s not - the sprite is identical to the first K. Round fight. And then to make sure we get it, Susie chimes in by saying it looks the same. Then after Rouxls talks about it being controlled by a Control Crown (which is dubious to say the least), Ralsei claims that K.Round looks like it’s in pain -and Susie chimes in again to say it looks the same.

The whole scene is weird - Rouxls seems to be rolling with whatever Ralsei says - considering his characteristic incompetence it’s not surprising that he’s bullshitting to make himself look better,  but why is Ralsei seemingly making a bunch of shit up? It’s all very odd, and I don’t really have any answers.

-Some stuff about the fountain I couldn't fit anywhere else-

Why is the Castle Town fountain a “grand fountain”? Why is it made of “pure darkness”? What’s actually different about it, aside from allowing all Darkners within it? Why is it different? Some people have suggested that as it’s in a closet, everything technically “fits” within it, but that doesn’t explain why it’s “grand” or why it’s made of “pure darkness”. And what the hell does it mean for a Dark Fountain to be made of impure darkness?

-Ralsei's leitmotif-

Before we dive into the rest of the big stuff, let’s take a quick break to look at some minor things that are a bit suspicious.

[play leitmotif over title card]

People tend to call this leitmotif “the Legend”, but really it appears to be Ralsei’s leitmotif. Aside from the Legend, it’s used in both Castle Town themes, Ralsei’s lullaby, and the King’s battle theme. The association of any of these other pieces with the Prophecy is dubious at best. Meanwhile four out of five are directly linked to Ralsei, and while Chaos King seems to be the outlier it is from the boss battle where Ralsei plays the greatest role.

So assuming it is Ralsei’s theme, what can we take from that? While most of its use seems fairly innocuous, ironically it is the song most people consider the leitmotif’s namesake where questions are raised. If the prophecy is as important as Ralsei makes it out to be (we’ll tackle the prophecy itself in-depth later), why does it not use a single fragment of Don’t Forget, which is clearly the game’s main theme? Why does it solely use Ralsei’s theme for something that theoretically exists entirely independently of him?

In fact, Don’t Forget is never used in the same songs as Ralsei’s theme. They exist in separate musical universes.

Just something to think about, especially when we get to the Prophecy itself. That said, the music played while Ralsei talks about the Roaring does use Don’t Forget (and not Ralsei’s theme), which is interesting for reasons we’ll get into later.

-Tea-

Okay, most people know that Kris heals less from Ralsei Tea than any other tea besides their own. But Kris’ opinions on Ralsei aren’t what I want to talk about. I want to talk about their reaction. Susie uses the exact same line for Kris’ reaction to Ralsei Tea - “No reaction?” - as she does for Kris’ reaction to Kris Tea.  This is very odd, and I don’t think the reuse of text was a coincidence. Kris displays visible pleasure when drinking Susie Tea, and though their reaction to Noelle Tea is unclear, it does have its own unique text.

Then there’s the matter of Noelle and Ralsei Tea. If Noelle drinks Ralsei Tea (which admittedly I don’t think can actually happen without hacking the game) she’ll say there’s nothing in it, and it only heals 50 HP. Now admittedly that could because she only sees Ralsei once before she leaves the party, but why is there nothing instead of water, especially when it heals a whopping 50 HP, 40 HP more than the just-water Noelle Tea? How can you drink nothing, anyway? Ralsei, moreover, heals the exact same amount from drinking Noelle Tea (which can happen in the game), and despite his relative lack of interaction with Noelle he finds the tea to be “soft and sweet”. Something is definitely up here, but I don’t know what.

This also suggests that Kris’ opinions on Ralsei are only very slightly positive, since gaining 60HP from drinking Ralsei Tea would make their reaction just barely above the baseline.

-The Menu and Game Over Screens-

This is a very minor point, but it brings up something that is very rarely mentioned. While most people know that the menu changes from something blatantly Gaster-related to a more regular menu after you close the first Dark Fountain, not many people have actually considered the implications of this. Why has Gaster apparently lost control? Who has replaced him? I’ve heard it suggested that it could be Ralsei who is now in control, and while I don’t think that’s especially likely it is a possibility.

You could extend this argument to the Game Over screens. During Chapter 1 it’s clearly Gaster talking to you. But during Chapter 2 the style completely switches, and it’s now Ralsei or Susie talking to you - indeed if they aren’t in your party there’s no dialogue. Admittedly in this case Gaster seems to still have some control, as he still has dialogue if you choose not to continue. Again, while the evidence linking this to Ralsei is basically nonexistent, it is something that people haven’t really paid attention to.

-Ralsei's Knowledge-

Going back into the big stuff, Ralsei knows quite a lot of things that there isn’t yet an explanation for. This is less suspicious than other things he does, of course - he doesn’t know anything too damning, but it’s worth mentioning, especially in light of something we’ll get to later.

-Kris and Susie's names-

Ralsei knows Kris and Susie’s names, for starters. This is so blatant I’m surprised that there’s relatively little discussion of this. He knows them immediately - he says their names in his sixth line of dialogue!

And just to pre-empt any possible claims that Ralsei overheard Kris and Susie referring to each other by name, I checked Susie’s pre-Ralsei Castle Town dialogue and she never refers to Kris by name in any of it.

-Game Mechanics-

Ralsei is also the primary source for information on game mechanics. While this isn’t a trait exclusive to Ralsei, and some leeway for this has to be given in a lot of games, it’s worth noting that Jigsaw Joe and the rest of his crew get a lot of their information wrong, and that Ralsei also is the only character to mention saving the game - which of course was one of the game mechanics that Undertale decided to make diegetic.

-Hugging the Dummy-

This is a small thing, but it’s interesting to note. If you head to the Ralsei dummy before taking the Card Kingdom Darkners to Castle Town (and thus adding Ralsei to your party), if you interact with the Ralsei dummy, it’ll say: “No one’s looking. Hug the dummy?”.

If you do hug the dummy, Ralsei and Susie will react to it. Now Susie does genuinely seem the type to spy on Kris without genuine malice, but Ralsei? As I said, it’s a small thing but it sticks out with how the narration mentions that no one is looking, which seems to be a lie.

-Light World Knowledge-

We already talked about how Ralsei apparently knows the layout of Kris’ bedroom, but that’s not all he seems to know about the Light World.

Ralsei knows that Castle Town is the school closet, and that the Card Kingdom is the old classroom. We know this because he gives explicit Light World directions to Kris when retrieving the Card Kingdom Darkners. Why is he the only Darkner to know the truth of their world?

I know some will call me out on that last statement, saying that Darkners do know their true nature. But the evidence is against this. Seam and the King talk about the Lightners in ways that strongly suggest they don’t know that they’re inanimate objects - well Seam might know, but he’s not telling.

-What is Ralsei in the Light World?-

What is Ralsei in the Light World? With how much knowledge he has, he presumably knows. So why doesn’t he tell us?

Another point worth mentioning that Ralsei is the only Darkner to resemble a Lightner.

Now there have been a lot of theories on what Ralsei is, and I don’t really have any answers, but his lack of information on the topic is another thing to add to the pile of suspicious acts. It’s also worth noting that it seems a bit hard to square Ralsei being created from some ordinary object like Kris’ headband with Ralsei also being this being with powers beyond regular Darkners, unless you go full-in on Kris being the Knight.

It is also worth noting that as mentioned previously Ralsei leaves the Card Kingdom before we close the Fountain and find out what the Darkners actually were.

There’s one more thing to add: Ralsei’s description in the menu just calls him a “Dark-World being”. Why not just call him a Darkner?

-The Prophecy-

Ralsei talks a lot about the Prophecy - the Legend of Hopes and Dreams, to give it its full title, so it’s worth going into some detail about various oddities surrounding it that definitely make it seem like Ralsei either doesn’t know or isn’t telling us the full picture.

First, a line from Ralsei that seems odd. Ralsei claims when leaving Castle Town that the adventure he and Kris are embarking upon was “foretold exactly by the Prophecy”. Now the Prophecy was hardly detailed, and furthermore as we shall see there’s a lot of evidence that the specific adventure Kris and Ralsei are on is not covered by the Prophecy.

He then immediately contradicts himself by saying that he believes Kris’ choices are important, too. The contradiction here is obvious. You can’t have both, Ralsei.

-The Order of Events-

The prophecy is very specific about the order of events. First, the harmony of light and dark is shattered. Next, various apocalyptic events occur, including the Earth “drawing her final breath”. Only then do the three heroes appear. This does not align with anything else Ralsei says. All his actions are about keeping light and dark in balance - but the prophecy is all about what happens if that harmony shatters, so how can Kris, Susie, and Ralsei be the Heroes?

The conclusion is clear - while the prophecy is probably true, for reasons I’ll get into later, Ralsei is grafting his own stuff onto it. Kris, Susie, and Ralsei are not the Heroes - at least not yet, and the harmony of light and dark being shattered is inevitable.

-The EARTH and the WORLD-

This brings us onto a further point about the Prophecy, one not really related to Ralsei but one worth bringing up. The Prophecy says that the Earth will “draw her final breath”, as previously mentioned. Now, you may be wondering what the three Heroes are supposed to do if the Earth is already destroyed. The clue is in the precise wording. The Heroes will appear “at Worlds’ Edge” and save “the World”. “World” and “Earth” mean two different things. Presumably, the Earth will be destroyed while the “World” will be saved. Of course, what precisely that “World” is is very unclear. It looks like Ralsei is fighting a battle he’s destined to lose…

And one small note - note the placement of the apostrophe in “Worlds’ Edge”. That suggests that “Worlds’ Edge” is at the edge of multiple worlds…

-Sealing Fountains-

The  Prophecy states clearly that “only they” can seal the fountains, and in context that pretty clearly refers to the three heroes. It even shows all three looking at a Fountain, which somewhat seems to dispel arguments that the Prophecy should not be taken as literally saying all three are necessary to do the specific process of sealing a Fountain. I will also briefly note that the Prophecy says nothing about sealing Dark Fountains - just “Fountains”. Also note the Delta Rune within the Fountain.

But later, when Ralsei is trying to convince Susie to cooperate, he says only Kris can seal fountains. Why is this the case, assuming he’s telling the truth? While he does have a fairly strong incentive to lie in this case, since it does work at getting Susie to cooperate, he does seem to be telling the truth - while Susie is with Kris when the fountains are sealed (with the exception of Snowgrave), it does appear that it is solely Kris’ soul that is doing the sealing. Or rather, the soul within Kris, since for a variety of reasons that aren’t relevant to this video I am firmly of the belief that the red soul is ours, and it has displaced Kris’ somehow. Also, the song used when sealing the fountains is named “YOUR POWER”, and in this context I highly doubt “you” means Kris.

So that leaves us with the unanswered question of why only our soul can seal the fountains, and moreover why the Prophecy is apparently contradicted by actual events. It all seems to lend credence to the argument that the Prophecy has nothing to do with sealing Dark Fountains…

-Keeping Light and Dark in Balance?-

Ralsei talks a lot about the harmony between light and dark, and how it must be preserved. Aside from the probable inevitability of the Roaring as we have already discussed, the question is whether or not his actions actually create harmony.

The main thing is that Ralsei’s idea of what harmony between light and dark looks like doesn’t seem to be balanced. Darkners are confined to what is essentially a ghetto, unable to fulfill what Ralsei claims is their purpose of serving Lightners. Meanwhile Lightners get the rest of the fucking world to themselves.

Ralsei talks about how bad it would be if the world was covered in darkness, but what if the world was covered in light? If the Light World’s still the Light World during the night, that seems to already be the case…

Maybe it is the case that light and dark are balanced only when there are no fountains. After all, night and day balance each other out… This would fit with various fan theories about the existence of Light Fountains.

-The Prince from the Dark-

There is also the matter of the Prince from the Dark itself. Is it actually Ralsei?

I’ve already mentioned how the Prince wears shoes, while Ralsei does not and indeed appears to have feet too large to fit into the pointed shoes of the Prince.

There’s also the matter of the Prince clearly using fire magic, while Ralsei does not (yet). This isn’t a point I want to stress too hard though, since there is that concept art with Ralsei having what looks like a fire symbol on his clothes, not to mention the association of Boss Monsters with fire magic in Undertale.

And of course, while the Prince wears a hooded robe, Ralsei quickly ditches his own hooded robe after telling the Prophecy, which raises the question of why he wore it in the first place, as previously mentioned. Was he deliberately disguising himself as the Prince? Also remember that as we mentioned previously, being a Prince implies the existence of a King or Queen. Who are they?

Finally, while you may not think these differences to be that important, it’s worth remembering that the Human and the Monster are clearly Kris and Susie. Why isn’t the Prince clearly Ralsei?

-Angel's Heaven and Hell's Roar-

And one final note on the Prophecy - it says the Heroes will banish “the Angel’s Heaven”. Jevil mentions something called “Hell’s Roar”. Now if “Angel’s Heaven” is a bad thing, could “Hell’s Roar” - and thus maybe the Roaring - be a good thing? Just something to think about.

-Ralsei and Gaster-
Ralsei and Gaster have several connections that imply they are linked quite closely. Now Gaster is undeniably a very controversial character, but these connections don’t really rely on speculation about Gaster - I’d say that if you deny these connections you’re pretty much denying that everything else almost certainly connected to Gaster isn’t connected either.

-Castle Town's name-

One of the main connections is the name of Castle Town. While most of the time it’s just called “Castle Town”, if you talk to one of the Rudinn it’ll say “Welcome to [Playername]Town! Or so I heard it’s called”.

Obviously this is a fairly massive thing, though quite a lot of people miss it. Absolutely no one else, except of course for Gaster, mentions the name of the player (and nobody mentions the name of the vessel), so the question is how does the Rudinn know it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the Rudinn isn’t actually the final boss or something like that. I think it’s most likely a hint that someone in Castle Town knows more than they’re letting on…

And seeing as Ralsei has other connections to Gaster, and is the ruler of Castle Town, I think he’s the most likely candidate.

-An odd connection between Ralsei and Jevil-

This is a very minor note, but it’s interesting. The colour of Ralsei’s battle UI symbol and the colour of the green parts of Jevil’s outfit are the same - hex code B5E61D, to be precise.

Now this could be nothing - I don’t know how limited of a colour pallette Temmie & crew are limiting themselves to - but it’s worth noting.

-deltarune.com and the Prophecy-

Now this is the big one, even more so than [PLAYERNAME]town. This is what makes me completely convinced that Ralsei is in contact with Gaster.

Let’s go all the way back to before the release of Deltarune, and see what deltarune.com looked like then. Toby registered the domain long before October 31st, 2018, and before then the site only displayed a single image - “him.png”. Originally this was just part of Entry Number Seventeen, but it later changed to another message, also written in Wingdings:

“THREE HEROES APPEARED TO BANISH THE ANGEL’S HEAVEN”

So Gaster knows the Prophecy. This is why I think the Prophecy is true and not something Ralsei made up.

But wait, there’s more. Ralsei claims that the Prophecy was “foretold by time and space”. And guess who got shattered across time and space?

So Ralsei has almost certainly learnt things from Gaster, including the Prophecy and the player’s name. This would also explain the various other pieces of knowledge there isn’t yet an explanation for him having that we mentioned earlier. The question is why Gaster told him these things, and that’s a completely separate topic. Personally I suspect Gaster is trying to achieve something, and found Ralsei more compliant than Jevil or Spamton. But what that is, and what Ralsei’s role in it is, remains a mystery…

-One final note on Ralsei and Gaster-

One last small thing about Ralsei and Gaster - Ralsei’s suggested name for the party is the “Fun Gang”. Now that could be innocuous, but considering all the other connections it’s very very interesting…

-Repeat Playthroughs and Ralsei-related choices-

Finally, let’s look at how choices regarding Ralsei seem to be set up to not annoy players who are playing for a second time in the hypothetical scenario where Ralsei is evil. While this point is a bit “meta” I think it raises some interesting points.

You have the option to be consistently unpleasant and downright nasty to Ralsei. You can drop the manual, indeed you can viciously destroy it. You can call him your lackey. You can call him strange for liking to spend time alone with Kris.

You can’t do this to any other character - Kris will undermine you or they’ll shrug it off or you won’t even get the option at all. Ralsei on the other hand is clearly often upset at you for bullying him - especially at moments like calling him strange for liking spending time alone with Kris.

This really does seem like the game is accommodating for the scenario of a player who is making a repeat playthrough of it and who knows Ralsei is evil. The game accommodates them not wishing to be nice to a villain by allowing them to be cruel instead.