The story of Elden Ring is a broad, confusing one--like the Elden Ring itself, it's fractured, made up of tiny pieces as its different characters serve a variety of masters and enact their own plans. Even as you play it, you might find yourself lost as you interact with other Tarnished and hunt down demigods in an attempt to become Elden Lord. Heck, it's not even especially clear most of the time what terms like "Elden Lord" and "Elden Ring" even mean.
We've been poring through Elden Ring's lore for weeks now, piecing together its vast and complicated backstory and the motivations of its many characters to get a sense of what's happening in the game. The story of your Tarnished character is to fight through the world and try to gather Great Runes to become Elden Lord--but that simplified explanation belies the fact that you're taking part in the war between various political factions and a bunch of nameless gods, all of whom are vying to control the Lands Between. The fate of reality itself in this place hangs in the balance, and if you're successful in your quest, you can choose how to reshape the world.
There's a lot of granularity to the story of Elden Ring, but these are the broad strokes of what's happening: What happened before your arrival, why you've come to the Lands Between, what you're trying to accomplish, and who's trying to stop you.
More deep dives into Elden Ring's story:
A story about Death
Like the Dark Souls games and Demon's Souls, your relationship with dying is at the center of Elden Ring--and actually, it informs a lot of what's happening in the world. In the Lands Between, a strange place "beyond the fog," the very structure of reality is dedicated by the will of its gods and demigods. And one of most important things about the Lands Between is that Marika, who is both the land's goddess and its queen, altered reality to put an end to "Destined Death"--the rule of nature that all things, including the gods and demigods, will pass away.
The gameplay loop of Elden Ring, like the other Soulsborne games, sees you facing tough enemies and often dying while trying to fight them, either because they stand in your way or because you're trying to gain their power--and often both at the same time. However, because of the actions of Queen Marika and your role as a Tarnished, death is somewhat trivial; you'll awaken at a nearby Site of Grace or Stake of Marika when you fall in battle. Enemies respawn when you rest at a Site of Grace for the same reason: Death is largely broken in the Lands Between, and most everyone has been alive for a really long time. It's why you hear the howls at night of the many crucified characters scattered around Limgrave, why so many enemies look like zombie knights, and why a few people seemingly wander around aimlessly or dig at the ground, as if they've lost their minds. As in Dark Souls, a lot of people seem like they've been alive so long that their wits and intellect have failed them.
When people do die, their souls generally return to the Erdtree, the big golden tree at the center of the world that's both the primordial source of life and, now, the major component of the Elden Ring and the "Golden Order." There seems to be some kind of eternal life or resurrection possible through the Erdtree, although it's not super clear what's going on there. The fact that souls physically return to the Erdtree, rather than ceasing to exist or being destroyed, is why Elden Ring includes so many ghosts, as well as gameplay elements like Spirit Ash--there are a lot of souls floating around. Returning to the Erdtree is also why you enter so many catacombs dungeons that end with a boss room full of Erdtree roots; the proximity makes it easier for the souls to get where they're going.
The Erdtree is at the center of life and death in the Lands Between, thanks to Marika's Golden Order.Into this world come the Tarnished, a name for people who were once from the Lands Between but who were exiled long ago, heavily implied to be descendants of Godfrey (ne Hoarah Loux) the first Elden Lord who was expelled from the Lands an age or more ago--though the direct lineage and connections here are never made explicit. After the events that are laid out in Elden Ring's opening cinematic, the Tarnished who had died in the outside world were beckoned back to the Lands Between to compete to become Elden Lord.
The fight to become Elden Lord, your ostensible goal throughout the game, seems strange at the outset of your journey--a lot of people ask you or tell you that that's what you're trying to do, but you basically just wake up in the Lands Between with no idea why you're there. That's because the role of "Elden Lord" is extremely powerful and important, with a lot of people and forces hoping to use that role, or whoever earns it, for their own ends. And a lot of those ends have to do with how death works, or doesn't, within the world. A number of people want to change the role of death in the world of the Lands Between, and they need the power of the Elden Ring and the Elden Lord in order to make that happen.
Marika and the demigods
To understand the whole deal of the Elden Lord, you have to understand how reality in the Lands Between work, and how it is ruled over by Marika and her family, who are both god-like beings and the equivalents of feudal kings, queens, and lords.
First up, there's the Elden Ring, a magical object that governs the rules of reality in the Lands Between--it's that gold thing on the title screen when you boot up the game. The ring is made up of Great Runes that seemingly govern different elements of the world. In removing the Rune of Death, Marika was able to change how death worked in her kingdom. The Elden Ring isn't native to the Lands Between, though. It was sent to the world by the Greater Will, a cosmic force known as an Outer God.
The Greater Will is the main Outer God in the Lands Between--the source from which many blessings and abilities spring. Marika was elevated to godhood by the Greater Will through its emissaries, the Two Fingers.The Greater Will exists somewhere far away from the Lands Between, so to exert its, uh, will, it has emissaries and agents. Marika is one of those agents--she was originally of a people from outside the Lands Between called the Numen. Emissaries of the Greater Will, the Two Fingers, chose Marika to become an Empyrean, a person who could be elevated to godhood and serve as a vessel for the Elden Ring. Marika fulfilled that purpose and eventually became a god. So at the top of the hierarchy is the Greater Will, then Marika and the Elden Ring, then, seemingly, the Two Fingers, then the demigods, who are Marika's children and step-children.
While Marika had the power of the Elden Ring behind her, she didn't find the Lands Between empty. In fact, quite a few people lived there, with civilizations and gods of their own. They included giants in the mountains, dragons (who may have been subjects of the Greater Will before Marika), and humans, as well as various other races scattered throughout the world. With control of the Elden Ring and the Rune of Death, Marika established the Golden Order, a sort of "Church of Marika" that also encompassed the rules of reality in the Lands Between. And she started a campaign to bring the other civilizations to heel under her monarchy and the Golden Order. For that, she needed someone to wage war on her behalf--a king to her queen, essentially. The role of consort to Marika was known as the Elden Lord, a person who would wield massive power in the Lands Between as Marika's right hand.
For her first Elden Lord, Marika chose a powerful warrior called Hoarah Loux; in his new royal position, he was renamed Godfrey the Golden. Under Marika's orders, Godfrey waged war on the giants and various other races. (When you get to the Mountaintops of Giants, you find a whole lot of frozen giants there, thanks to Godfrey.) He also had children with Marika: Godwyn the Golden and the twins, Morgott and Mohg.
Godwyn was, apparently, Marika's most favored child in the end, and he would go on to fight the dragons, even befriending a few thanks to his prowess in battle. Morgott and Mohg, however, were both "Omen" children--strange, powerful, cursed beings with horns growing all over their bodies. The Golden Order, it seemed, shunned the Omens, cutting off their horns at birth, a procedure that usually killed them. Royal Omen children weren't treated quite so heinously--instead, Morgott and Mohg were sent into to live in the jails and sewers beneath Marika's capital, Leyndell.