User:TheFlamingX/blogs/New Knight Information

The content of this blog was written after the release of Chapter 5

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Yeah, it's gonna be revealed unto babes, and Sublime

— Sublime, Jailhouse

Chapter 5 released and alongside it we got some new information about the Knight that basically killed all the most popular Knight candidates. At least, that's what I thought, but here we are, like 4 days into Chapter 5, I've been immersing myself in the community and analysis... and I think I've seen one comment mention this groundbreaking evidence. And it wasn't even presented as "this disproves everything" it was more like "this is a new thing." So I'm here to clarify evidence, explain how this conflicts with our previous Knight theories, and provide some basic analysis of what the Knight now could be.

Evidence

Let's begin with a summary of Chapter 5, for some perspicacity. It's the day of the festival, which Kris spends with Susie and Noelle. The latter two's relationship develops enormously, but is cut short by the collapse of Rudy. Before Kris and Susie get the opportunity to visit the hospital, Kris removes the soul from their body and opens a Dark Fountain in Asgore's flower shop, with Asgore still inside. The two heroes rush in to rescue him, and find Flowery, a Darkner of one of the flowers Asgore cares for, who has attempted to create an idealized world for Asgore as a gift for all the care Asgore has provided to him and the other flowers. Asgore, however, has little interest in the gifts and tokens bestowed upon him, and is instead attempts to learn more about Dark Worlds. Facing resistance, the Fun Gang fights Flowery and ends up losing. Asgore, upon seeing Kris battered and beaten, comes to his senses and realizes that his obsession with Dark Worlds after his "failure" in past was what led to the separation of his family, and not the failure itself. Flowery, having Asgore's interests at heart, allows Kris to seal the fountain, but before they can the Roaring Knight appears and kidnaps Asgore. Kris and Susie return to the Light World and find a shelter code hidden in the dirt of Flowery, and the chapter ends with the reveal that Susie now lives in Castle Town.

Big picture, that's the story of Chapter 5, with a bit of emphasis on Asgore's character arc (since that's the main thing we're talking about). Now, Asgore's failure: what is it? Being the conflict of the most important character of the chapter, we get quite a lot of valuable information on it. The failure was "a long time ago" with Asgore calling it a "tragedy," and accusing the Roaring Knight as being the guilty party. He also reveals the Roaring Knight created a Dark Fountain at some point in the ordeal. However, Asgore lacks proof, and becomes obsessed with getting proof, ultimately causing his separation from Toriel and Kris. He picked up the Black Shard he flaunts in Chapter 4 from the scene. This is basically as non-conclusionary I can present the information, but if we start making some basic assumptions, we can fill in a lot of blanks.

This conflict was mostly likely what got Asgore removed from the police force. I don't think there's any mention of the police force in this Dark World, but given that his obsession was intense enough to get his wife to leave him? It was probably enough to get him sacked.

The tragedy: a tragedy means someone experienced extreme consequences. What were the consequences? It depends on who it is. Who is it? Dess, probably, given how the timeline works out, and how her consequence would probably be her disappearance. I guess Kris is also a candidate, since the Egg rooms seem to allude to some trauma in their past. Maybe it was a little bit of both, with Dess going missing and Kris sustaining trauma by witnessing it.

There's also the idea that all this evidence that Toby dedicated an entire chapter to was actually just all wrong, and that Asgore actually isn't a credible source. I really don't think Toby would do this because 1) Asgore isn't presented as a particularly uncredible source, 2) we'd be wasting a lot of time when we're already over halfway through the story, and 3) doing so would only serve to complicate the plot. Toby isn't trying to write a story only for the more diehard theorists: the average player who doesn't interact with the community at all should be able to understand the story by the end of it, which means as you approach the climax you explain the plot (a role Chapter 5 serves well).

Conflicts

An aside before we get into the conflicts: the components of Knight identity theories. Knight identity theories make the assumption that the "Roaring Knight" is a title, and not its own character, and then use the information known about the Knight and a candidate to draw connections between the two and say "this character is the Knight". This is a perfectly acceptable way to make theories, but it's important to understand that new information may make previous candidates less likely.

Much like Gerson, the Roaring Knight is old

This chapter introduces two new pieces of information about the Knight: they're old, and they're probably the one that made Dess disappear. These two pieces of information are a hit to all the most popular Knight theories, hitting Dess Knight twice.

Deconfirmation Venn Diagram
Old	Both	Dessapearer
Papyrus Asriel	Dess	Rudy Carol

Papyrus only entered town recently, so unless you think Toby is misleading us it deconfirms him. Asriel would've been a child, so unless you think Toby is misleading us it deconfirms him. Dess would've been a child, and she can't really be a victim of the Knight if she is the Knight, so unless you think Toby is misleading us it deconfirms her. Rudy would've been doing it for Dess, and he wouldn't've made Dess disappear, so unless you think Toby is misleading us it deconfirms him. Carol would've been also been doing it for Dess, and she wouldn't've made Dess disappear, so unless you think Toby is misleading us it deconfirms her.

I'm trying to make a point with this "Toby misleading us" schtick. I really don't want anyone to walk away from this blog thinking Chapter 5's focus was just a big trick or red herring. And if someone does end up walking away with that conclusion, I at least want to sow seeds of doubt in their mind. I think that the information provided by Asgore is extremely telling, and the only way I see for this to not change everything we know is to deny it, which I firmly believe to not be the case. I suppose I'm a Asgore-truther, so to speak.

All of the candidates' motivations get a lot more murky, if we try to stick with the characters despite the new information. I get that the Knight is the character with the eternally mysterious motivations: creating a titan, kidnapping a laundry list of residents, showing up hours late to the trap they arranged, but also still working with Kris towards some common goal. Some people speculate the Knight is committed to breaking/following the prophecy, which does check the boxes of doing seemingly random things, but why would any of these characters be so interested in doing that? If any of them were the Knight, we're left with almost nothing in terms of motivation ("so, nothing changes. hyuck hyuck hyuck").

Something I'd like to emphasize is the fact that none of the Knight candidates were ever that close to confirmed. Just because Andrew Cunningham said "I think the Knight is Dess" doesn't make it true. And I'd like to fixate on Dess, in particular. There isn't much in the way of dialogue that connects the Knight and Dess. There was plenty of dialogue characterizing Dess, and a fair amount characterizing the Knight, but nothing really connecting the two. Most of the connecting information came from assets and shared imagery. And that's an important occlusion, because textual evidence is a LOT stronger than basically every other type of evidence. Any other form of evidence, whether it be the imagery or themes or whatever else is open to interpretation, and those interpretations may not be the author's intention (from what I've observed in Toby Fox's games, at least).

Anyways, a theory that I don't think holds water anymore is the Kris/Carol/Knight alliance. Even if Carol wasn't present for the incident, surely she would've heard some of Asgore's ramblings and kept her distance from the person who made her daughter disappear. And if we step back and look at the evidence, there's not actually that much to tie the Knight and Carol as associates. Like, maybe one of Carol's katanas was a gift from the Knight, but that's pure speculation and basically the only evidence we have to suggest they were working together.

Instead, what we have may be that Kris is employing double trucies (triple trucies if you include the Fun Gang) with the Knight and Carol. If Kris's "true alliance" is with the Knight, then an alliance with Carol for the sake of information would be beneficial to their cause, as long as they were able to keep the Knight's involvement a secret. Though this does recontextualize every Kris/Carol interaction, so maybe more analysis is needed on this mini-theory. It also conflicts with the whole "...police...sacrifice...next week..." thing when the person on the phone is probably Carol... but... whatever. This section is to disprove theories, not make up new ones.

Rudy Knighters take a similar hit, as they often suggested that Rudy was in the know, "just like Carol and Asgore". Ignoring him being "fallen down", whatever that's supposed to mean, Rudy is even less likely than Carol is to work with the Knight if the Knight really did vanish Dess. There's also the fact that Rudy might've been the most willing to listen to Asgore, on account of them being best friends, and most understanding of the Knight's villainy.

Tail of Hell theories also take a hit. I'm a big FRIEND non-believer and I think saying FRIEND is the same as the Tail of Hell is putting the cart before the horse, so I'm not calling Tail of Hell FRIEND, but Tail of Hell theories often suggested that they were the ones responsible for Dess going missing/Kris's childhood trauma. But lo and behold, Toby gave us a big shiny candidate fill that role, a character with far more plot relevance than Tail of Hell ever will. Unless the Knight... is Tail of Hell? (probably not)

Speculation

To me at least, the story feels like it's moving a direction where the Knight is either a new character or it's own character. None of the most popular Knight candidates have an easy explanation for why they're the Knight or how they would do what the Knight does. There's also the possibility that one of the "mystery characters" is the Knight, those being Gaster/FRIEND/the vessel/ect., but we know so little about these characters that they might as well just be a new character.

Tying the Knight to the characters of Hometown, I think there needs to be some sort of mistake. Like, Kris/Noelle/Asriel/Dess accidently create a Dark Fountain, and the Roaring Knight emerges from it, who then kidnaps Dess, or something. The Knight comes across as an entity too malicious and self-serving to willingly summon. Plus, it somewhat explains Kris's unwillingness to get their friends involved in things: they try to fight Spamton alone, they do the Sword route alone, and they keep Susie out of the loop on the Knight alliance, even though Susie would probably be able to agree with any reason Kris has to ally with the Knight. Perhaps Kris feels guilty for getting Dess involved, which ends up leading to her disappearance. Asgore doesn't know Kris's involvement or he doesn't expect Kris to know better, so he blames himself.

If Kris is working with the Knight, and Kris is working with Carol, we assumed the Knight to be working with Carol. However, given the knowledge that the Knight is complicit in Dess's disappearance, doubt begins to plague the idea. Carol is established to be fairly protective of Noelle, even if she is outwardly cold towards her, and I have a hard time believing that she thought much differently of Dess. The idea that she would be willing to work with the person that was responsible for the Dessapearance is a tough pill to swallow.

On the matter of Chapter 4's phone call: we've never seen the Knight speak. If we suppose the Knight is on the phone call, this would be the only time they've talked. There's also the fact that it was Kris who was the one who relayed the terms of the deal to Tenna. This may have just be out of convenience, but what if it's because the Knight can't speak? Additionally, neither King nor Queen ever talked with the Knight, they both simply observed him. I'm not really going anywhere with this, since Kris and the Knight clearly have an alliance, but if the Knight really can't speak then their bond with Kris means a lot more than we perhaps first thought it did.

If Carol is the only one on the phone, is out of the loop, and the Knight isn't on the phone at all, it makes the whole "police sacrifice" thing quite confusing. If she's the only one on the phone, but in the loop, then nothing much changes from the Knight and Carol group call theory, I suppose. Maybe we let the ellipses do a lot of work. I mean, that might be a case of Toby telling us not to read into too much? But that's me being philosophically inconsistent. And this whole "Knight can't talk thing" doesn't really amount to much even if it is true.

Looping back to the Roaring Knight having been summoned, I think the idea of Kris now working with the Knight is interesting. It's like Goku working with Frieza: they have a bad history, maybe a history too bad to ever work together, but some motive that forces them to look past that. But that returns us to the ever unanswerable question of what the Knight's motive is. Perhaps Kris was willing to cut a deal to have the Knight bring Dess back in exchange for some objective of the Knight? It would explain the absence of extreme antagonism from the Knight, especially if what Kris is helping the Knight with is something only they can do. But what the Knight wants seems to be pretty evil... as much as I hate to do this, it's probably best to leave it to Toby.

I'm planning to write a more complete blog on the matter later, but Deltarune is a story meant to be consumed by anyone. In the end, the plot will be understandable to the average player who has played through the whole thing. To that end, if a theory wants a chance of being real it needs to have a path to be explained in some simple manner. I think introducing points like "the Knight was present years ago" are acceptable in a theory, even if there's not much foreshadowing it, just because it's a simple idea that could easily be introduced to tie it all together. Obviously, don't introduce too many of these, but we literally don't have the full picture. It's reasonable to try and factor these ideas in rather than trying to ONLY use what we have, when the next chapter is going to introduce information we didn't have previously.

Anyways, even beyond the singular idea of the Knight being summoned, I saw this other theory today that suggested the Knight was an amalgamate of Kris and Noelle, formed in the Chapter 5 Weird Route, and because there's only one "ending" to Deltarune, other routes will resolve with a time loop back to the start, which is how the Knight gets into place. I actually quite liked the theory, even if it were only from a "this would be cool" perspective. I think it's not completely impossible for Toby to do something like that, but I do think it'd be difficult to answer the question of why the Knight would do what they do. Plus, I dunno, it feels a bit edgy for Deltarune? Like, play through Chapter 5, and you'd think this story would have the protagonist merged with another protagonist and corrupted? I guess it's the same reason I don't really believe "Kris loses a hand" theories: it's just tonally separate from what Deltarune usually is. Not that I'm going to bash anyone for believing them, I like that they're around, but they're just a bit too unlikely to support.

A similar Knight theory is just Noelle Knight. Pretty similar to the Kris/Noelle Amalgamate Knight, but cut the Amalgamate stuff. It's a bit less cool, but also a bit more realistic. But it has a better explanation for the time loop. It supposes that the red dot imagery we keep seeing surrounding Noelle is a representation of her determination, and how it's growing. And how eventually, her determination will surpass the player's determination and Noelle will be able to do a bit of an Omega Flowey type deal. I'm not a huge fan of this explanation, since it seems like a total rehash of Undertale, but it's not totally out of the question.

Another piece of evidence that I just thought was cool, between the Kris/Noelle Amalgamate Knight and Noelle Knight theories, is the Roaring Knight fight's pre-turn text. The stuff like "you saw golden stars" and "the north and east winds blew fiercely" kinda describes the Chapter 5 Weird Route scene, no? Between the drowning and the crazy hair animation on Noelle, which seems to indicate winds from the east and the north. It's somewhat compelling.

The matter of the Knight's antlers and to a lesser extent, the bat, make me think the exact connection between the Holidays and the Knight is yet to be revealed. The Knight did vanish Dess, of all people the people in the town, and it's like why her? Was she just at the wrong place at the wrong time, or was she special somehow? There might also be the idea that the Knight grew their antlers after they vanished Dess... which just feeds into Dess Knight theories... but then there's the question of who was the Knight before Dess, then?

Conclusion

I really think Dess Knight is dead. Though maybe I've laid it on a little thick in this blog post... sorry about that. Dess Knight is just so often portrayed as gospel when it has so many completely valid issues, and that rubs me the wrong way. It's never "if Dess Knight, then xyz is the case", it's just "xyz is the case". I'd really like to see more debate on the matter. To that end, if you'd like to comment on what I've written, consider leaving something on the talk page. TheFlamingX (talk) 19:31, 29 June 2026 (UTC)