My personal headcanon is that Marika/Radagon's paradoxical union manifests all over the Lands Between, that Marika's essence emanates and shapes the world into her image, and that's why the theme of twin/split/fused identities appears everywhere. It's a sort of sickness born from the world's Goddess, that nothing's half or whole but something in between.

All these years later, and the grotesque details are still coming. So the gargoyles repaired with corpse wax have the two different faces? Like as if the corpses it was made from formed a second mind and will? Which is why some gargoyles attack with two weapons?

Being able to see them like this makes me want to put them through a stabilisation and conservation process as imporant cultural relics. This is not how I feel about them in-game.

All this time I thought the face was that of a bird.

Ooooh I get it, they're twins, and a red and gold mixture; very fitting

Am I seriously the only person who thinks this is a clear correlation to Radagon and Marika? Two faces fused together, one gold and one red, and the broken gargoyle variants look almost exactly like Radagon. If you ask me, Radagon is artificially created, the Gargoyles are the missing link between him and the ancient dragons.

It bears remembering that these, alongside similar warped creatures like the Oracle Envoys, stood as symbols of Marika's reign. Despite all the gold, despite the holy trappings, how macabre must the Golden Order have been even at its height.
What a fascinating grotesquerie.

One of the most interesting way to evolve the recurring Gargoyles enemies by FromSoftware. Instead of just focusing on a single Weapon Type, make them focus on 2 Weapon Types with distinctly different fighting styles for each Weapons that they can freely switch to keep you on your toes.

On a close look their faces are oddly handsome.

Wait.. D, Beholder of Death (Darians twin brother) sits right outside their bossroom. And their armor notoriously is 2 people mashed together to represent how they share the same souls and bond to the Golden Order.

Was this just a little nod to their similarities. Or is there something more going on with the Gargoyles and the twin brothers?

Been wanting to draw these guys faces for a while and there’s no good references out there, this is perfect. I wanted to see their face up close and how it molds together

All this time and I'm just now realizing these things had human faces. It thought they were birds or whatever.

bizarre huge warrior angels like their DS3 counterparts, but far more grotesque

Its really suspicious how often you find the depiction of conjoined twins in some golden order related stuff, like the Disney twin armor and sword, the gargoyles, and maybe miquella/Trina.

And then you look at the statues in the spiral tower in the shaded lands, depicting what seems to be a woman and a man being wrapped togheter or conjoined, and it makes you think this has been going on for a long time. Maybe marika got fused with radagon way back then? The hornsent were the creators of grafting.

Plus, grafting is clearly something the golden order made use of, at least for a while, due to the scions and revants we find all over the lands between, but it seems to have fallen out of favor at one point. Gotrick seems to have rediscovered it at one point and abused the art to become stronger.

I like to think at one point, marika just couldnt take it anymore, since at that point she was basically just repeating the same stuff the horsent forced on her, saw the whole civilization she built going the same way, and decided to break the elden ring as a way to try and break the cycle, hoping a tarnished would come out on top and change things.

Makes me think of two "heroes" who were removed from the roots of the Erdtree (the damaged versions feature roots on their arms and legs) and molded into their physical forms using corpse wax. That is why they are so good in useing two compleatly different weapns.

I personally never looked up at their face that close, interesting

I did not realize they had two faces combined.

Who got the idea for that anyway or humans were manipulated by the outer gods ? They were that desesperare to emulate a perfect being until Marika found Radagon

Very cool that they follow the color scheme of the Magnum Opus in alchemy. Fromsoftware always has the best designs

800+ hours and I never noticed that, just amazing