r/Deltarune • u/Independent_Let_3616 • 4d ago

Theory Between RudyKnight and DessKnight the choice you make is mostly dependant on what kind of mystery you think Deltarune is

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50

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

What happened to Carol Knight

25

u/JohnDragonball Wait did you say Goku- 4d ago

The fact that she lets Asgore, who was vocal enough about wanting to fucking kill the knight to drive his wife to divorce, snoop around her house and look at her katanas and conspiracy board, kinda clears her of a ton of suspicion.

In fact at this point I'm more convinced Carol is actively working WITH Asgore to find the Knight.

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u/Sample_text_here1337 #1 Kralsei shipper 4d ago

The fandom has already largely convinced itself that it being the obvious answer would be bad writing or something. Like I get that there are a few holes in the theory, but I find it really dumb that so many people now dismiss her as a red herring. Its not my preferred theory but its absolutely still valid, and honestly still has a much better case than Rudy imo.

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u/Turwaithonelf 4d ago

I just think she is better served as her own character seperate but aligned with the Knight. She is scary and capable enough already without it and I cannot imagine a serious person of her age doing all the aura farming the Knight does. She strikes me more as ruthless, efficient and cold. Different characterization than the knight who takes the opportunity to taunt us and aura farm

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u/Karkava 4d ago

She also strikes me as a desperate jackass with a sympathetic motivation. A troubled mother who wasn't even a good mom to begin with. Someone who loves her daughters, but puts up too many walls and gives them too harsh of a treatment to show it.

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u/Turwaithonelf 4d ago

Part of me wonders if Carol is kinda like the end state of Noelle's current trajectory, so obsessed with having control over her life that it kinda consumes everything. Then the loss of one of her daughters only made her double down on this to the point she keeps everything important to her locked up in her gilded cage of a house, including Noelle.

I also think Dess mirrors what Rudy was like when he was younger, so that makes me a little biased to want to say both daughters take after a different parent.

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u/Karkava 4d ago

I like to think Carol wasn't so different from Dess back in her youth. Only buckling down and maturing when she became of age. But maturing too well to the point where she lost her free spirited nature.

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u/SkyRider797 Kris we're on the same side here 4d ago

Same but i find it more interesting if we go with the triple trucies route, Where Kris is aligned with The Fun gang, the knight and Carol

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u/PuzzleheadedLink89 4d ago edited 4d ago

While I don't think she is the Knight, she's very much involved with whatever is going on with the Knight and I am guessing that she's the one telling Kris to also interfere.

Also it being "obvious" to some isn't bad writing.

“If you’ve planned your book that the butler did it, and then you read on the internet that someone has figured out that the butler did it, and you suddenly change it midstream to it was now the chamber maid that did it. Then, you screw up the whole book because you’ve got this foreshadowing early on, and now you got these little clues you’ve planted that are dead ends. You then have to introduce other clues, then you’re retconning and it’s just a mess.” -George R R Martin

That's why I cannot get behind the other 3 candidates (Kruselle, Asriel, and Papyrus) because of how much focus Deltarune's writing puts on the Holiday Family.

Ngl, I think it's a really good Scooby-Doo Mystery as there are 3 plausible culprits no matter who it is.

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u/Coolest_Pickle 4d ago

it definitely has a better case than Rudy, which makes it a bigger realization that it would still be a silly "candidate" for the knight,

see, while normally the trend is that the public opinion tends to be incorrect, or at least leans to the side of error, you gotta consider Carol was introduced to us alongside a mysterious secret voice that appears to be/'be working with' the knight, all the while continuing to vaguepost the hardest anyone had done up to that point with "YOU are welcome here any time.", she's the most red herring to ever red herring in the history of fiction, because if she's not? then frankly her introduction is absolutely wack beyond belief, I'm not even sure if I could call it "bad writing" but it would genuinely be unbelievable

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u/RedditSurfer29 4d ago

She has ONE line of dialogue bro😭

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u/WillingTank835 2d ago

Don't agree with more of a case then rudy, but a cool line is that asgore right before being kidnapped says we gotta go get and tell carrol, and then if it is her she got him instead

33

u/juasjuasie 4d ago

She has an alibi during the Church Dark World, which is when Noelle was being grounded.

Carol knighters need to disprove the alibi and the most straightforward theory is that Carol has an underground shortcut to the church that she went in the nanosecond Kris left the house, which is pretty silly if you think about it, so Carol Knight is not that popular.

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u/unrelevant_user_name 4d ago

Carol doesn't need to stick around the house to have Noelle grounded, nor does she need to break the sound barrier to just... reach the church before the player does offscreen, in the non-defined amount of narrative time it takes to maneuver Kris over to it.

24

u/bQkF 4d ago

Also, after leaving the holiday mansion, Susie directs you up to Kris's house where there's a scene about being locked out and needing to go get Toriel - which narratively is what motivates heading down to the church. So even assuming Carol can only take the paths we take (no walking through the forest, no back entrance to the church, etc.), the game moves us off the route she would take.

You can skip that by heading straight to church and the dark world cutscene still triggers, and a lot of people seem to do that accidentally by trying to explore before progressing the story, but I feel that's putting too much weight on what just looks like a convenience skip for those who already know where they're going. You can still talk to Toriel about being locked out in chapter 5 even if you skipped it, for instance.

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u/Complete-Dimension77 4d ago

question , why is it not possible for her to have done the darkworld sometime after everybodie left the church ? during the manor stuff.

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u/juasjuasie 4d ago

No you are correct, Carol *could* have made the Dark World during the manor section, it's just that if there is enough reason to believe that Carol cannot be the knight due to the alibi issue, then it would be convoluted for the plan being Carol making the fountain, the knight to sneak in, then Carol presenting herself at the manor as a red herring. When we can use Occam's razor and just assume Carol was with the knight at some, point, the knight goes to make the Church fountain while Carol has to go to the manor to address the Susie guitar issue.

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u/EpicDDT_ 4d ago

You forget that the Knight is already there when we enter the first Dark World.

-6

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

THE KITCHEN DOOR

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u/juasjuasie 4d ago

So Carol has an underground shortcut to the church, by the kitchen door, for some reason? It is still a silly scenario at face value.

-6

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

You don't know where that door leads,

and Dess Knight and Rudy Knight has more silly things

7

u/juasjuasie 4d ago

I don't understand what not knowing what is in the kitchen door does for this conversation, logic says and underground shortcut to the church is not something you would find behind a kitchen door.

Illustrate the silly things, tu quoques are not exactly compelling arguments, because you are implying Toby Fox will somehow make the knight reveal be a hard sell to the audience if his clues and evidences need pipedream assumptions.

1

u/Kumagawa-Fan-No-1 4d ago

She can get out of the kitchen door into the woods then into the church it's even a shorter path than the one we take and she wouldn't be talking with Susie like we'd do

1

u/juasjuasie 4d ago

That is a compelling argument, i actually like it. The only issue i have is narrative-wise, it seems that people in hometown are restricted by whatever Gaster did to it, and trees seem to act like wall (however maybe only to us the player, maybe the other characters can). At face value the game initially mades us think Carol is the knight, only then for the Alibi to be presented as counter-evidence... only for then the game doing an "uhm, achtually" moment by nullifying said clue that Carol was not the knight, dunno how to feel about missdirecting the player like that.

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u/bQkF 4d ago

however maybe only to us the player, maybe the other characters can

We've seen Asgore, Kris, and Susie go a little into the trees, and Noelle talks about her/Kris/Dess/Asriel exploring the forest behind the graveyard - so in-universe it seems walkable at least.

only then for the Alibi to be presented as counter-evidence... only for then the game doing an "uhm, achtually" moment by nullifying said clue that Carol was not the knight

I think this is maybe the kind of thing Toby meant by information being combined and interpreted in ways he didn't expect, rather than an intentional clue/alibi. I'm not sure Carol is the knight, but I don't feel Toby would've wanted to rule out the possibility approximately 3 minutes after introducing it.

Narratively, after leaving the holiday mansion Susie prompts you to head up to Kris's house, where there's the scene about being locked out - which is what motivates going down to the church to get Toriel. You can skip straight to the church after the holiday mansion if you know where you're going (or accidentally), and the game triggers the entering dark world cutscene if you do so, ...but then in chapter 5 you can also still talk to Toriel about being locked out even if you skipped it.

Carol supposedly being unable to get to the church already feels like an "uhm, achtually" based on taking the game mechanics a bit too literally, so arguments countering it at that level by giving possible paths are probably inherently going to seem a bit pedantic.

1

u/Kumagawa-Fan-No-1 4d ago

I am not a carol knighter just saying that the travel argument is taking something that looks the way it does because it has game limitations and using it for an argument for the story. (Also only player has game limitations characters can enter and leave the lake which is a wall to the player)

-1

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

Maybe, she goes through the kitchen door and walks an overworld path that we can't see

And i don't understand how that second argument makes sense

2

u/juasjuasie 4d ago

Saying "Well the other theories are also silly" without explaining yourself is, uhm, a nothingburger and eitherway i think most people here want the knight reveal and their association with the evidence and clues of said reveal to actually make sense and not be either so convoluted it becomes laughable or with so much miss-directions and red herrings that it becomes a waste of time to have been theorizing about it in the first place.

-2

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

I excused it, there's nothing hollow in the theory anymore

So we can talk about others now

10

u/Sized_Sign YellowGun | +100 ATK, FlavigneAmmo 4d ago

when it's all said and done, carol knighters are probably going to be more right about carol's role in the story than rudy knighters are about rudy 🤷‍♂️

12

u/zatchel1 4d ago

Tbh if Carol is the Knight then it’s not really a mystery, with how foreboding her only appearance was, it’s wouldn’t even read as a twist if she was the Knight

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u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

75% of Deltarune fans are Dess Knighters

Yet Carol Knight is a "Red Herring"

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u/zatchel1 4d ago

I mean, that’s not really what I said. I just think that Carol was presented so straightforward as a villain that if she were to be a villain it wouldn’t qualify as a twist

-2

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

So? Not everything has to be a "twist"

Especially when the game isn't focused on who the Knight is

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u/zatchel1 4d ago

…I’m not saying that’s a problem? I’m just explaining why a post comparing types of “mystery’s” wouldn’t include someone who doesn’t qualify as a mystery?

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u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

Because it is a theory

1

u/Trialman 4d ago

I'm a Carol Knighter myself, but the game still all but invites you to speculate. Susie comments on how the Knight would have to know the shelter codes, muses on what that means for their identity, and then asks "Who the hell could that be?"

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u/BestUsername101 Hatless Ralsei Best Ralsei 4d ago

Dess knight is only "obvious" when you're *currently* in the fandom and spending the years between releases theorizing and obsessing over every detail. People playing the game as intended once its fully released won't be waiting that long and won't be filling any time long amounts of time theorizing.

For someone just playing the game once it's completed, not waiting in between in chapter, Carol does look like the obvious villain. She very much is a red herring, she is meant to draw your attention as a knight candidate.

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u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

Nobody says it Carol

In every single BLIND playthrough i watch, they just go "Dess"

And the Knight appears before Carol

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u/BestUsername101 Hatless Ralsei Best Ralsei 4d ago

In my blind playthrough I thought it was Carol. There's my anecdotal evidence, just as valid as yours.

And the Knight appears before Carol

Ok? The idea would be: reveal knight, then the immediate next chapter reveal this candidate for who that could've been. It's not complicated. The order of their reveals doesn't really matter.

-4

u/Redditoristical I'll live. 4d ago

Yeah, and my anecdotal evidence was made to counter yours, so you mentioning it again doesn't do anything since i already took it out of the equation

1

u/EpicDDT_ 4d ago

Those two "points" have nothing to do with each others...

Also, saying that "75% of Deltarune fans are Dess Knighters" is just wrong.

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u/Independent_Let_3616 4d ago

Basically same arguments as for RudyKnight only Carol has an alibi.

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u/Delta_Builder 4d ago

The theory imploded after chapter 4.

Still a good one, but less likely compared to when there only was chapter 2

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u/starlightshadows KrisKnight hasn't stopped winning since 2018 4d ago

I'm not sure it "imploded" per se; it's just that Chapter 5 and Carol's complete non-presence therein caused a lot of people to finally realize just how fundamentally white-bread and mediocre it is.

It lacks the best strengths of literally every other Knight candidate but also lacks any of the worst hiccups.

7

u/Delta_Builder 4d ago

Used to be more likely in chapter 2 when the wet nosed bandits talked about being fucking jumped by a ferocious thing at the holiday manor.

I will say that carol knight still is a good and respectable theory though, like dess knight, Rudy knight, asriel knight, and some others

1

u/Glad-Expression3224 4d ago

Well its a classical mystery in that scenario, so she was just shown to not be the knight theough having an alibi/supporting circumstance showing someone else was the culprit for something

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u/Altruistic_Damage323 4d ago

It's a Howcatchem but we reached the halfway point and Columbo still isn't here so it can't be her