The entirety of Elden Ring's lore explained! Part 1.

Disclaimer: this video is a reupload. I've fixed a couple mistakes and added more information to the original video. Please read the pinned comment for further observations I couldn't fit in this script.

Thanks for watching!
I know this video is unusually fast paced. If you have any questions regarding Elden Ring's lore, please feel free to ask them in the comment section! xD

This video is the first of a series about Elden Ring. It is intended as a summary/basis of understanding of the game's lore. I'll be building upon it with my next uploads.
Oh, and sorry if this video's title presentation came out the wrong way for some. I definitely didn't intend to cause any controversy. Please don't be rude in the comments. :D

While I don't like using external sources as direct reference for discussing From Software games' lore - I've seen many get tunnel visioned because of that, same as with hyper-focusing on fan translations of the japanese script -, I of course know that understanding Miyazaki's influences is very important to decipher his works. Here is a comprehensive reading list for this very purpose:

-Carl Jung's complete works (the Book of Symbols being the most relevant one);
-The Golden Bough by James George Frazer;
-The Nag Hammadi;
-The Bible;
-History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (especially the section about Uppsala);
-A Song of Ice and Fire book series by George R. R. Martin;
-Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism;
-Manly P. Hall's works (The Secret Teachings of All Ages being the most relevant one);
-H.P. Lovecraft's complete works (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath being the most relevant one);
-Ovid's Metamorphosis;
-Homer's Odyssey;
-Plato's complete works;
-Goethe's Faust;
-The Berserk manga by Kentaro Miura;
-The Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga by Hayao Miyazaki;
-The Hermetic Arcanum;
-The Dune book series by Frank Herbert;
-J R. R. Tolkien's works;

This list contemplates only the works which I'm absolutely certain were direct, major sources of inspiration for Miyazaki. I could elaborate in depth on why I selected each one of them. Of course, there's more than a couple dozen books worth of material here, but I assure you reading them all will help you deeply understand Miyazaki's writing. I assembled it off the top of my head, so I surely forgot quite a few; I'll be updating this list when I remember which others I've missed.

Of course, I also recommend you to read general stories of world mythologies (especially the Norse, Kabbalah and Shinto), history, antropology and philosophy. Sometimes I'll be reading a random book about one of these topics and notice a clear parallel to something I saw in one of Miyazaki's games.