Strange Girl Gaming

In a previous post I mentioned that The Dancer of the Boreal Valley is my favourite boss from Dark Souls 3 and while I may have given some slight reasoning for this I didn’t explain why this boss became somewhat of a fascination for me. You see the SoulsBorne universe is filled with over 100 bosses so for a boss to be a personal favourite to anybody not just me they have to tick all of the right boxes, the lore, the look and the difficulty are the main factors that determine the credibility of a boss.

The Dancer has got some very interesting lore behind her. There is a theory among the SoulsBorne community that she could be the daughter of Gwynevere, a theory that I do believe to be true. Think about it, when you transpose the soul of the Dancer you have 2 choices, the dual swords she wields which are a lot of fun to use but more importantly you have the second option of transposing her soul for the soothing sunlight miracle, a miracle that is strongly associated with the princess of sunlight Gwynevere who happens to be the daughter of Gwyn the first lord of cinder. If the Dancer was the daughter of Gwynevere it would make her a member of the old royalty. For me this brings so much more to not only the character of the Dancer but also other characters such as Pontif Sulyvhan considering the Dancer is one of his outrider knights.

Imagine if this is true if she is the daughter of Gwynevere that would mean that we the unkindled have killed Gwyn, the Dancer, the Nameless king (first born of Gwyn), potentially Gwyndolin (though he is consumed by Aldrich despite what you did in Dark Souls 1), oceiros and Lorian & Lothric of course this is if the theory of Gwynevere being the queen of Lothric is true. This would mean that we have killed every member of Gwneveres family except for her mother, well if that isn’t enough to make her show up in the last piece of Dark Souls 3 DLC I don’t know what will. If on the flip side she wasn’t a member of the old royal family, she certainly was a daughter of the old royal family of Irythll, becoming a Dancer by the orders of the Pontiff when he took over, following this she forced to become a legioneer which means she was exiled.

The movements of the Dancer are fluent, graceful and elegant. It truly does feel like a dance, the fight keeps you on your toes, you need to watch her, study her to learn her movements to dodge, block or counter her. She poses a challenge, a real threat. She is preventing us from entering Lothric castle where our final lord of cinder is hiding. The boss room is dark, with the previously open door being shut by the entrance of the Dancer, I feel like this was the perfect boss room for this sort of fight, the atmosphere was unnerving as you fought this creature with her armour fused to her hide.

Another thing I like about this boss is that if you like to inflict pain upon yourself or simply want endure a painfully difficult challenge then you can force the Dancer out much earlier than intended, you can kill Emma as soon as you encounter her, a bit harsh if you ask me but I’m not here to tell you how to play the game and if killing a helpless old lady to give yourself a challenge is worth it well then you kill that old lady. But I tried to defeat the dancer before even fighting Vordt and that ended horribly, honestly I take my hat of to anybody that defeated her at that stage.

I’ll leave you with one final thought, in Irythll we find two ghostly figures that seem to be male and female walking together down the street just like the previous figure that was walking alone, but the female of the pair appears to have the helmet of the Dancer. Could this be the Dancer and perhaps Vordt since it has been stated that they were always together. It would make sense since their boss are opposite each other in the courtyard. It’s sad to think about what the Pontiff did to the this Dancer, I believe she was a member of the old royalty, the Pontiff had to deal with her in some way after he had left Gwyndolin to be devoured by Aldrich and locked up Yorshka.

Maybe in the future I’ll write more about Dark Souls, perhaps I’ll rank every boss in SoulsBorne, or maybe we can look at the areas through out the series.