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!
(This article was originally put up on reddit. It combines a few of my old Khaenri'ah theories so I've added a summary at the bottom.)
I've theorized about Khaenri'ah and what came before it several times already. But following the release of Sumeru and another lore dump in the form of one pseudo-mandatory World Quest and a hidden quest or two under a backdrop of new local ruins it's given me a few more ideas. The thing is we really can't even confirm if the planet's name is Teyvat. Legends claim that Phanes hatched from an egg which became the world and then he created four shining shades to help him establish it, taming the unruly environment for humanity's benefit. But then we have accounts from Yae, Zhongli and a few books suggesting humanity wasn't around in the beginning and the world of Teyvat already existed long before Phanes arrived from off-world. In fact when Phanes arrived he needed to fend off the ancient world's reigning species the vishaps.
That's not important for today's story. What we want is what happens after Phanes is already around and interacting with the early humans. This period is typically referred to as the unified human civilization and during this time humanity was able to directly communicate with Celestia, the city in the sky where Phanes and his shades dwell. They also had priests who could receive revelation from them. The only thing Celestia demanded of them which is based off of the Abrahamic religions is that the people never question its actions and never try to reach it. So of course just like the humans in the Bible, they did just that. Years of prosperity passed and the people became concerned that it couldn't last. So they started to question Celestia and Celestia didn't answer angering both sides. In response the humans began scheming to reach Celestia aka Genshin's version of the Tower of Babel and just like in the story Celestia attacked and scattered the people.
This is the end of the unified civilization and the start of the age of chaos. Now this is when I should mention that Genshin's version of this civilization is based on ancient Greco-Roman culture with plenty of ancient runes displaying Latin and characters from the time period being given Greek names like Adonis, Ion and Spartacus. With these people scattered Teyvat turned into a frantic power grab by the Archons to protect as many of the humans as they could under their personal philosophies. But another large group of these humans eventually burrowed underground and created a society of their own devoid of higher powers.
To distinguish all these new groups of humans miHoYo took names and lore from other cultures around our world. Originally that resulted in the modern Seven Nations each based off of a specific country and when you have a unified civilization based on much younger Greek and Roman culture, the Chinese and Japanese derived Liyue and Inazuma made it feel like this was just a choice by miHoYo with no real bearing on the lore. That's no longer the case but lets just name some of these cultures. So as most of us know by now Mondstadt is German specifically the Holy Roman era of German history, Liyue is mostly a fictional Wuxia version of China but Zhongli at least references the Nationalist era, Inazuma is Tokugawa Shogunate-Meiji Restoration Japan, Sumeru is Achaemenid Persia with shoutouts to other periods of Persian history like the Sassanid era and Muslim Conquest, Fontaine is Industrial France with the Revolutions likely to inspire its Archon Quest, Natlan is the West African/South American Yoruba culture with possible hints of Aztec and Hawaiian religion and finally Snezhnaya will be the end of Tsarist Russia and the Revolutions that ended it. Then Khaenri'ah and other older civilizations in between the modern era and the ancient unified era are based on Scandinavian and Nordic culture.
Now again this looks like miHoYo just threw a dart at a board to pick out these specific cultures (and of course representing themselves in the game with Liyue) but after Sumeru came out I think every choice was deliberate. To start we have a new piece of lore with regards to Khaenri'ah. Just like on Dragonspine you can go around finding broken Ruin Guards and decipher their hidden code which leads you to find out about something called the Schwanenritter or German for Knight of the Swan. Figuring this out you also get the Achievement "In the Name of Anfortas." Anfortas is another name for the Fisher King and both the Fisher King and Knight of the Swan are characters related to Parzival or Percival in the Legends of King Arthur. I'm going to guess most people are going to go "omg Khaenri'ah's British!" but no that's not really true. King Arthur is definitely British folklore but Britain at this point in time doesn't have to be. Looking over the history of the isles you find that Britain used to just be Celts that repelled a Roman invasion, then didn't repel one, then Rome fell and the Vikings came and sacked it. King Arthur takes place around this time so all these references do actually relate to Khaenri'ah. And it's this new lore that made me take a deeper look at this Scandinavian inspiration for Khaenri'ah.
There is an idea that Mondstadt was just shorthand by miHoYo for generic medieval city. While this is definitely disproven by the wasserburg and distinctly medieval German architecture of Mondstadt (on top of other things) we do see a great many non-German names in the city. Our acting Grand Master for example has the very obvious last name Gunnhildr aka the Danish Mother of Kings. Diluc's last name Ragnvindr is also Nordic derived. (it's a little more on the nose though because it's just Wind God in old Nordic)
We're going to take this Nordic relation in Mondstadt and roll with it. See Viking/Scandinavian history is pretty interesting. They didn't stay put during their short run in the limelight. Not only did they sack and rule Britain for a while they also conquered Italy and the Levant and enslaved/lived among the Slavs giving rise to the Kievan Rus aka ye olde Russians. The first thing I want to bring up with that is that I think Khaenri'ah might not have been a true nation. Similar to Sal Vindagnyr these Nordic inspired places might just be a stop gap in between the scattering of people and the true nations that would follow. Just like the Vikings themselves they didn't really have any spot to call home until much later on in history and in terms of Genshin this might have played out in terms of what course of action the Khaenri'ahns agreed on taking. We can see already in Sumeru that there was at least one group that didn't agree with a Khaenri'ahn invasion and the Knights of Swan under Anfortas ultimately tried to protect Sumeru from them. We also have a Black Serpent Knight in the Chasm who wrote a poem in Latin to his wife showing his unified civilization origin and ultimate fate as a doomed knight of Khaenri'ah.
The next thing I want to bring up is those Nordic names in Mondstadt. On top of being a nation that was more like a collective of different groups running away from Celestia's wrath I think there were even groups that decided not to stay. In Sumeru not only do we have the Knights of Swan we also have the Ruins of Dahri which is infested with Ruin robots. As they are ruins it means they necessarily used to be a settlement which suggests a Khaenri'ahn group that might have chosen to live in Sumeru. Similarly the Gunnhildrs and Ragnvindrs decided to live in Mondstadt. And we're likely to see groups like these again in Fontaine and Snezhnaya. Fontaine is based on France and there is a very very popular group of Vikings that settled in France. In fact they ultimately started Britain on their path to being the Britain of today. I am of course talking about the Normans. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a big shoutout to these guys in Fontaine's lore maybe even some ruins named after Normandy. And this goes double for Snezhnaya which is based on Russia. With their history in the Kievan Rus, Russians are essentially a Scandinavian descendent on top of being Slavic and Rus. It may even turn out that it's this close relationship with Khaenri'ah that the Tsaritsa was so deeply affected by its destruction going so far as to lose her philosophy of Love and Mercy to the extent that her Archon Quest's Chapter Title is an Everwinter Without Mercy.
If this is correct it could also explain what we saw in the Cataclysm. We know that Rhinedottir was a belligerent in the event but with this idea of a disparate conglomeration of Khaenri'ahns she might have only been in charge of a group of antagonistic people while you have the kingdom proper of which King Irmin, the Alberichs, Dainsleif and the Black Serpent Knights were a part of and finally the many groups that left Khaenri'ah to settle in other nations even defending those nations against their supposed homeland. In that way while Rhinedottir's forces were directly cursed by Celestia and the Archons as a consequence of their attack the innocent royal family and citizens of Khaenri'ah would naturally bemoan the injustice and potentially become swayed by the Abyss Order that rose in its wake. These innocent Khaenri'ahns also explain the Bloodstained Knight's fealty to the Abyss.
Side Note: I've noticed that when it comes to categorizing the references miHoYo used for Genshin's regions and cultures people sometimes suggest multiple sources. (and then they accuse miHoYo of being racist and mashing together different cultures) So looking at what I just talked about it seems like Khaenri'ah is suddenly English right? But it had long been established that Khaenri'ah was inspired by Viking aka Scandinavian culture. So is miHoYo really just smushing together English and Nordic peoples? No. Here's why.
If we really look at the history of the UK that we know today it actually has a major Viking connection. All the way back in the Viking heyday a bunch of them settled down along the north and eastern parts of the island in what historians call the Danelaw. The Angles eventually pushed them out for a short while but they came back to set up the North Sea Empire before getting permanently kicked out when the empire's last king Cnut the Great died. But that wouldn't be the end either. Vikings were also raiding France at the same time and eventually were given the Duchy of Normandy where they settled and renamed themselves and the French Germanic people they ruled over the Normans. Then these Vikings went back to kill the King of England and turned it Norman French until the Hundred Years War when the Normans, then rebranded the Angevins, were pushed out of France into England. So yeah modern day England is pretty closely tied to the Vikings. It wasn't miHoYo that smushed them together; real life did it for them.
And while we can trace the Normans back to their Viking origins we can also trace all of these guys back to Roman times when the Great Migration was happening. Angles, Saxons, all flavors of the pre-Viking English? They were Germanic migrants. The French? They were Germanic migrants called the Franks which is how France got its name. And of course the Germans are Germanic though it's pretty messy. And the Scandinavians are also Germanic with Scandinavia being the origin point of their migrations. This is why the languages are somewhat mutually intelligible as seen here. It gets categorized these days as North Germanic and West Germanic but as the video shows these are just how the people ended up seeing themselves as when realistically we can still link them together.
I brought this kind of thing up before about Sumeru. Many people still believe that Sumeru is miHoYo's ignorant attempt at combining the cultures of Egypt, the Middle East and India. (and also for some reason Southeast Asia) But in reality it was miHoYo's very well researched attempt at showing Persian history and culture starting from the first of its empires the Achaemenid Empire which did actually include Egypt, most of the Middle East and northwest India.
Caribert went further than I had predicted it would. As with most of my predictions for upcoming events and quests I managed to pick out the essentials from the livestream but not the specific details. So I had stated that I believed the glowing purple hilichurl would be Caribert and his story was about undoing the curse Celestia imposed on them. Check. A long long while ago I stated that part of the Dainsleif Travail quote about facing him for the right to save "her" would be correcting certain things Dainsleif has deemed fact. This would be one of those along with the mysterious powers he employs. I also suggested that we'd find out about Kaeya in this quest through Caribert who'd blow the whistle on his noble lineage. Well that whistle was blown, it just blown by Dainsleif directly which I was definitely not counting on. That was really abrupt especially given Dainsleif's previous appearances in Mondstadt. I also suggested Caribert might be a researcher who ends up figuring out how to break the curse which turned out to be close since that research was indeed conducted but by his dad.
In another theory of mine I explained what our MC's true purpose is and that there are plenty of parties trying to accomplish the same thing though they'll all fall short and meet with failure. Chlothar's whole "my son has become the Loom of Fate!" would be another of those mooks. Yeah Caribert didn't become jack lol. I think the previous Dainsleif quest explained that pretty well. If Chlothar did actually gain the Loom of Fate already and we know our sibling was right there when he did it then that would be that. Everybody could become this Loom of Fate and Khaenri'ah's problem would be solved. But since the Loom of Fate operation is still under way it means Chlothar just jumped the gun.
At the same time the fact that Chlothar would connect our MC who is a Descender, with the Abyss really helps push my other theory. Well I suppose Honkai's recent Chapter XXXV helped even more. In my theory I presented the idea that humanity is just caught in the middle of a big pissing contest between the heavenly Celestia and hellish Abyss. If we push that up a tier that would be the Honkai rivalry between the Imaginary Tree and Sea of Quanta. Well in Chapter XXXV we take on enemies that seem to represent both. There are Void Seeds and Imaginary Tree Fragments and the seeds are spawned by the fragments. (I'm translating these names. I can't find an English source on them.) So it would seem that to your average human these two entities might as well be one and the same.
The next interesting thing I wasn't counting on was actually hearing the Sea of Quanta. I don't think that's ever been a thing even in Honkai. Yes you can talk to the Will of the Honkai but that is just the Cocoon of Finality and Otto previously only spoke to an AI created in the Previous Era. That being said Dainsleif seems to know about this entity so it could just as easily be an avatar of the sea and not the sea itself similar to how the Descenders are likely avatars of the Imaginary Tree. Either way the existence of a conscious and malevolent Void is confirmed now and that's good enough for me mostly because of that other theory about those plans and how only our MC will get it right. This quest is showing us how the Abyss got started. We were once told by Tsumi during the Three Realms Gateway Offering that the Abyss rely on the Void as a power source but it was like a drug for them while flat out poisonous for everybody else. I claimed based on the Void really being the Sea of Quanta that it was whispering to these mooks and convincing them to commit to their plans which line up with the sea's own goal aka destroy the world so that another leaf can be reabsorbed into entropy.
I just brought up that Khaenri'ah wasn't a true nation but a conglomeration of the peoples fleeing from Celestia's wrath. But that left things a little messy because we also already knew there was some royal family in Khaenri'ah ever since the last Dainsleif quest. So what kind of system makes sense with a royal lineage but composed of just any random collection of runaways? Thanks to this quest we now know. "Pure blood" Khaenri'ahns are based on the Romans left behind after Rome's fall. These aren't necessarily Roman (Eastern Romans = Greek and Western Romans = Goths) but are for all intents and purposes a single group of people. But Khaenri'ah then accepted anybody from any of the establishing nations as long as they rejected their nation's god. That comes from the Viking aspect of Khaenri'ah. The Vikings are known for pillaging and plundering but taking a closer look we have the Normans whose conquests also ended up uniting disparate populations under their banner. Anyway that would explain the "English" Schwanenritter and this one Latin poem you can find in the Chasm from someone who references Barbatos but had joined Khaenri'ah.
But then there's also Chlothar suggesting that the expats(?) that joined Khaenri'ah were changed to hilichurls while all the pure blood ones were given immortality for being the "greater sinners." So first we know that's bs because the last quest showed the hilichurls are also immortal and suffering from erosion. Dainsleif and the hilichurls suffer equally when the Abyss tries breaking the curse. Second that would actually imply that the hilichurls were the greater sinners maybe because not only did they reject Celestia they actually accepted Celestia's Seven at first and then defected from them. It could be that Celestia felt more betrayed by them and disfigured them into the Hylic hilichurls doomed to not only rot away slowly but also not even have a comprehensive mind while they live. (Or Chlothar just has no idea what he's talking about.)
The quest reveals that Chlothar Alberich is the founder of the Abyss. But he's dead and our sibling is still the prince(ss) which means at least to me that while Chlothar did originate the Abyss he was never its King. I still believe that title goes to Rhinedottir who as the recent event reiterated is also known as Gold the crazed alchemist who brought down Khaenri'ah to begin with. I'm going to guess they keep doing that to make sure that while we learn about her from Albedo and Alice we don't forget that she's still a psychopath.
The fact that Chlothar established the Abyss also means there was a significant delay between it and the fall of Khaenri'ah. I think that was implied already but we also know that Rhinedottir created the Rifthounds and other Abyss forces during the fall which sets up a certain timeline. We know that the surviving Khaenri'ahns were cursed and some ended up hilichurls but now we also know that they were just ordinary people with a strong anti-god bias the whole time. It was Rhinedottir's own group that started out as zealots of the Void Realm. This could also explain why our sibling remained an underling to her despite being on the Loom of Fate mission based on the events of this quest.
Now I hear some of you asking "but what about the cutscene from Windblume and Rhinedottir talking about being a mother because of Albedo?" To that I say this is Genshin. You know how just about every villain we've seen so far has had some kind of sob story to explain their villainy? Well Rhinedottir was the villainous Gold before she made Albedo so it's likely Albedo is her redemption arc. I theorized that the point of Rhinedottir and Albedo is to show how hard it is to get to rubedo in their alchemy. It could be that once Albedo loses control by screwing up into citrinitas that episode hits Rhinedottir hard and sets up a plot for us to save her from herself.
Side Note: I wonder if when that happens if our sibling will double down and that's when they become King/Queen of the Abyss taking over for Rhinedottir to stubbornly continue their destructive quest.
Dainsleif says that the "Sinner" can see into memories of the past. Because of that it saw into the Ley Line-born dream of our MC and now knows about them. I think miHoYo was just using this as an excuse to keep Dainsleif out of our party until Khaenri'ah but what it also implies is that we've now "met" one of our ultimate enemies. As a Descender we're at the same level as Phanes but because our mission sets us up to gain the Loom of Fate we will end up at the level of the Imaginary Tree which is equally balanced against the Sea of Quanta. And as I previously said it works even better if the voice ends up an avatar of the Sea of Quanta since we'd technically be an avatar of the Imaginary Tree.
Finally there's the Kaeya of it all. I think he's going to have it rough. If miHoYo keeps up the positive atmosphere of Genshin though he should be fine. But this is miHoYo we're talking about. They could easily plunge this game into Honkai angsty hell and then Kaeya's going to have a bad time. Mona had made the statement a long time ago that
At this stage I really have no idea what the right choice would be. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Kaeya was told by his father on one rainy day when he left him in Mondstadt that he was their "last hope." We're never told what that means so the theories ran wild that Kaeya might have been the last surviving member of Khaenri'ahn royalty. Actually I believed that too more because his surname Alberich is a German gnome in folklore whose name means the ruler of magical creatures. Usually it's the elves but in some interpretations this is what the Germans call Oberon, the King of the Fae. We were eventually told that Khaenri'ah's last king was Irmin with other potential connotations and that the Alberichs were nobility not royalty which was reinforced by Dainsleif.
So who is Kaeya really?
Actually the quest might have answered a few things. For example Kaeya's name is either an Indian name meaning "monsoon flower" or a Turkish surname. As we all know Sumeru covers the history of the territorial bounds of Achaemenid Persia. So Turkey and India (well northwest India) are included in the package. Because of his eyes and surname though most people dismissed this since he's decidedly Khaenri'ahn. We don't have to do that anymore.
The Caribert Quest is set in Sumeru where Chlothar traveled to figure out a way to save his son from Celestia's curse and it is very likely he does eventually beat the curse though not during the events of the quest. Its ending presents itself as an important new development. Dainsleif is shocked by it and our MC is convinced we've unearthed Chlothar's remains with evidence presented in Caribert's scarf in his possession. There's also an emphasis on pure blood Khaenri'ahns which Kaeya identifies Dainsleif to be while Kaeya himself is not.
So what if the timeline of events is this:
Chlothar comes out of the quest to eventually establish the Abyss Order in Sumeru. (I would imagine the sibling did not join at this time as Dainsleif would have opposed it.) But as time goes on the order becomes more radical and Chlothar ends up disillusioned by his previous fascination with the Sinner. Somehow he finds a way to break the curse on himself but doesn't use it on the rest of the Abyss. It could be that they are too far gone by then having become dependent on the Void. With the curse broken Chlothar decides to live out his life. He falls in love again this time with a woman from Sumeru. (Maybe he never really left. What if the reason why Kaeya thought Khaenri'ah was near Sumeru is because the Abyss Order - composed of Khaenri'ah's survivors - was established and headquartered in Sumeru during Chlothar's reign?) Anyway he has a child with this woman who is either Kaeya himself or an ancestor depending on how long ago it was when the curse broke. For now I think Chlothar being Kaeya's father works better and so Kaeya's name comes from his Sumeran mother. Before his death Chlothar realizes Kaeya's potential so he takes him to Mondstadt to survive. After he died he was buried back where it all started and next to his first wife. Who buried him, why and what happened to Kaeya's mother is still up in the air. In my head canon the answers are the sibling, to show respect and she died in childbirth. But at this point anything is possible.
So the first question is why the sibling and what respect were they showing? We know that they will eventually join the Abyss and I think that was out of guilt for the part they played in this quest. While Celestia's curse wasn't their fault the fanaticism the Khaenri'ahns developed for the Void Realm came from these events. This is also why Dainsleif disagrees with them and they stopped traveling together. Guilt pushed them to join and lead the Abyss in the vain hope of breaking the curse while they and the Abyss are still fixated on vengeance against Celestia. As Dainsleif said it's folly. The rift between them might have widened when the sibling found out that Chlothar had figured out how to break the curse while Dainsleif only had at the end of this quest. The sibling might believe that only by going down the path of the Abyss, retracing Chlothar's steps, can they figure out a new solution that'll work for everybody. When Chlothar died the sibling finds them and remembering how they met and what happened since, they decide to take him back to be with his wife. They make a promise to save the Khaenri'ahns from the evils of Celestia and that has sealed their fate ever since.
Now the more important question is Kaeya. What exactly is his potential? Why can't he escape his past? What is this important decision he'll have to make? I think whatever Chlothar did to himself that broke the curse was also inherited by Kaeya. Now Kaeya is the key to their salvation but it comes at an irreversible cost.
We saw how far Chlothar was willing to go to break the curse. He bowed his head and begged for Rukkhadevata's help. If it wasn't for the Sinner he would have likely continued. What if what it finally took to break the curse was unabashed supplication to Celestia? And we all know Celestia demands that humanity follow its Heavenly Principles. Based on my overall theory which seems to keep being reinforced by each successive quest it'll be defying the principles that allows humanity to ascend. Even if it's just to ascend out of Celestia's fake sky they'll still need to reject the principles first and maybe Chlothar only broke the curse by swearing that path away.
So what does that actually mean? Well on the one hand Kaeya serves as a "blueprint" for all Khaenri'ahns to follow Chlothar's path. Kaeya could give himself to them and break the curse on the Abyss, hilichurls and any surviving pure bloods that didn't join a side. But then they would all never leave the fake sky. It'd be trading one curse for another. On the other hand he can maybe cleanse himself of his limited Khaenri'ahn blood and that would remove the blueprint from him. Without it though the Abyss who have been fueled by the Void for so long can never be saved.
What'll it be? Save all of your people and all those innocent lives by subjugating them all to Celestia forever? They'll be restored to humanity and be able to live their lives again but are thenceforth doomed to the fake sky under Celestia's rule. Or reject it. Those who aren't polluted by the Void can continue to fight against the Heavenly Principles and find their way to ascension. (as they are though, meaning hilichurls stay hilichurls) But all the Khaenri'ahns who chose to join the Abyss - including any that only joined in desperation because of the pain and suffering they already endured - are permanently lost.
Of course it feels like this wouldn't be a hard choice for Kaeya to make. He's stated plainly that he doesn't care for Khaenri'ah and he doesn't present himself like someone who'd ever offer himself up. But it's one thing to say you don't care; it's very different when you actually do hold people's fates in your hands. Now miHoYo hasn't made Genshin anywhere near dark enough for a plot like this. But let's not forget how they got their start. Honkai throws plots like this at players every patch. It's not too much of a stretch to think they'd give Kaeya such a sadistic choice.
Some time ago I brought up a bunch of terms that were used in the Khvarena of Good and Evil World Quest. This quest series expanded greatly on the lore not just about Sumeru but possibly Fontaine too. But the point of the quest was actually about Khaenri'ah.
Late into the quest series we fight an Abyss Herald named Klingsor and discover the truth. Anfortas and the Knights of Swan or Schwanenritter are characters in Arthurian Legend and Klingsor is also part of their specific story. He is part of a specific version of the story written by Wolfram von Eschenbach known as Percival. Percival is one of the Knights of the Round Table. Anfortas in this adaptation is the Fisher King whose kingdom suffers as a result of a magical wound he received. Who should have doled out this wound but Klingsor. As for the knights the legend behind them is just that you can't ask their true identities. In Eschenbach's version the knight just happens to be Percival's son.
The take-away from this reference I think is about the sides. Anfortas and his knights were Khaenri'ahn forces that opposed Rhinedottir's attack on the Seven Nations. They defended Sumeru. So we have the extremist Klingsor and the loyalist Anfortas. In King Arthur, both Klingsor and Anfortas were knights but while Anfortas became a Knight of the Round Table Klingsor was rejected. In a bid for revenge Klingsor set up his own kingdom and when Anfortas and his knights go to kill him he manages to distract Anfortas and wound him. This shows that Anfortas is corruptible which then sets up Eschenbach's hero Percival to successfully defeat Klingsor because he was not distracted. Percival then goes on to heal Anfortas and when the Fisher King is healed his kingdom recovers.
This rift in the earth given that it has to do with Klingsor and the Abyss is Khaenri'ah. A few times now we've been told that Khaenri'ah was destroyed and the survivors cursed. Dainsleif said so, our own sibling said so and most recently Chlothar Alberich founder of the Abyss Order also said so. We even got a trailer showing our sibling looking at the destruction of the nation and a whole quest about the Abyss wanting to bring it back. You'd think that means it's a sure bet the place is gone right? But then there's Klingsor and Nasejuna.
What if Khaenri'ah isn't destroyed at all? What if it's just that all the paths to the underground nation are sealed and the survivors are just stranded from it? And when I say "all" let's remember that Khaenri'ah somehow simultaneously attacked Mondstadt, Inazuma, Sumeru and chucked an iron meteorite at the Chasm. What if they also simultaneously attacked the remaining regions too? If that's the case then maybe we have an answer for why the chapter number is blurred out. It's not just going to be one chapter. We'll get one for each path into Khaenri'ah.
So right now the Chapters work off the regions. Each new region opens up the next official chapter of the story ending with Snezhnaya as Chapter 6. If this idea is right Khaenri'ah could make up Chapters 7-13. The way it would work is that following the fall of the Tsaritsa and the resolution of the Snezhnaya conflict we'll get an Archon Quest Interlude Chapter catching us off guard as an army finds another way to open a path into Khaenri'ah. After that it'll start off like Enkanomiya. The quest only creates the path but "it's too dangerous" for us to enter without being prepared. Instead a small force stands guard over the new breach. Maybe it's Snezhnayan, maybe it's reformed Fatui. Or it could be that by then we'll have done a few more Dainsleif quests and Dainsleif manages to gather a force of less corrupted survivors who act in the same capacity as the Swan Knights in Sumeru. In the first Khaenri'ah update we'll finally journey into the forbidden region but only be able to explore a small chunk of it say a Snezhnaya sized chunk. And then miHoYo can use the same excuse to explain why we're not able to explore more of the region.
So in summary:
- There are conflicting accounts about how Teyvat's ancient history actually played out. Is Teyvat even the name of the planet?
- There is a deliberate reason why miHoYo chose the regions it did for Genshin. Among other things Khaenri'ah's basis on Scandinavia could suggest that much like the Nordic people the Khaenri'ahns were a single people but rather a loosely tied collective of different civilizations that owe their ancestry to Scandinavia.
- As a result you have groups with different motivations and loyalties and that could explain why Khaenri'ahns were fighting against Khaenri'ahns in Sumeru.
- The Nordic relationship also means Khaenri'ah is deeply tied to Mondstadt, Fontaine and Snezhnaya and could hint at deeper lore to come. For example the final area of Fontaine could relate to the Normans and be a direct connection between the two nations.
- On top of that these divergent groups could complicate our view on the Abyss Order. Some in their ranks could honestly have been innocent victims that are now lashing out in pain after Celestia's actions.
- The Caribert Archon Quest reinforced a few more theories about Khaenri'ah for example that Dainsleif is an unreliable narrator and his belief that the curse afflicting Khaenri'ahns was irreversible. This will play a role late into the game.
- It is further shown that Celestia and the Abyss are the ones in competition for Teyvat while the humans are simply caught in the middle.
- The Sinner is an avatar of the Sea of Quanta just like the Descenders are avatars of the Imaginary Tree.
- Caribert shows us that Khaenri'ah was made up of divergent groups from each of the other nations on top of a core group of "pure blooded" Khaenri'ahns. These "pure bloods" could relate to the core Viking groups that conquered Europe during the Viking Age.
- It's likely that the extended Khaenri'ahn population were punished further by Celestia by both disfiguring them and making them immortal. It could be because they would have technically accepted the Heavenly Principles before deserting it.
- While it is now revealed that Chlothar established the Abyss Order he's dead and yet our sibling is still the second in command. I maintain that the Queen of the Abyss is still Rhinedottir.
- This is more likely as we know Rhinedottir already had Abyssal powers prior to the fall while Chlothar spent a long time as a cursed human before establishing the Abyss Order. It's likely her original forces hold the high positions in the order while the Khaenri'ahns gathered by Chlothar make up its grunts.
- Our sibling might be with the Abyss simply to make up for their role in its creation. This would explain their stubbornness in the previous quests.
- Rhinedottir while being Queen and also Gold might still have some redeeming quality as shown by the Windblume event.
- If she is redeemed this could also be when our sibling truly takes over leadership of the Abyss.
- The Sinner will become one of the main enemies we'll face late game as we are opposites just like Celestia and the Abyss or the Imaginary Tree and the Sea of Quanta.
- Kaeya has a truly important choice to make. It's been downplayed for now but I think Mona is on to something even more so now.
- Kaeya's name suggests a link to Sumeru and we find Chlothar working on the curse problem in Sumeru. Maybe Kaeya is Chlothar's son with a Sumeru woman after he breaks the curse on himself.
- The method he used to free himself can't work on the Abyss Order because they've relied too much on the Void. (the "forbidden knowledge" if you will)
- This is why our twin is hard at work continuing the Loom of Fate operation. They think they can retrace Chlothar's steps to figure out a method that'll also work on the Abyss.
- It'll turn out that Kaeya is a solution to their problem but it'll come at a great cost. If he goes for it the Khaenri'ahns get rid of the curse but they'll be stuck under the Heavenly Principles forever. If Kaeya doesn't go for it then the MC might still be able to honestly break the curse but they can't save the Abyss Order at all and it's still not easy to reclaim your humanity after becoming a hilichurl. The choice will be who Kaeya chooses to save with innocent lives on both sides.
- Khaenri'ahns Klingsor and Anfortas come from the Legends of King Arthur. This is to show the mentalities of the Khaenri'ahns of the time period of the Cataclysm.
- What if the Khaenri'ah Chapter number is blurred out because the Khaenri'ah Chapter will be multiple chapters because the region will be a Teyvat sized underground nation that will release in Seven Nation sized pieces?
Does this interpretation of Khaeri'ahn civilization make sense? Is there more that I missed? And does a multi-chapter Khaenri'ah story sound plausible? How might this affect the story we'll get?
Topic originally created on September 22nd, 2022. (based on even older theories extending all the way back to 8/31/2021 and acts as a compilation of those theories and even more recent ones previously posted on the official Genshin Impact subreddit)