The Archons vs The Heavenly Principles [Genshin Impact Lore and Theory]

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[ChillwithAster]

i couldnt sleep so here's a video.

[why-so-toxic_]

The more I think about it I think the reason why most of the archons don’t talk about Celestia is most likely something must have happened between them

[ashleyandanime]

Little did we know. The hydro archon gave Celestia the biggest *beep you* out of all of them

[feelshowdy]

Considering the writing on the Barbatos statue that says "the gateway to Celestia" and Venti's ambiguous but close connections to the God of Time, I think he initially had the closest relationship to the divine compared to other archons, and thus carries the most guilt out of the Seven for what happened during the Cataclysm. Other archons became embittered towards Celestia because they were ordered to destroy Ka'enriah and their respective nations were ungulfed in calamity, but Venti wants to distance himself from being a pawn/gateway for the Celestial powers to keep their control over the land. Letting the anemo gnosis be 'stolen' was a first step to claiming his own freedom.

[yumemisstrawberryjam]

Maybe the reason why Ei's actions with the Fatui seem weird is because it was the Shogun puppet dealing with them at the time and Ei, while having some different opinions, still agreed with the puppet. Then by the time of her second story quest she decided to respect her change in opinions on how to deal with Inazuma?

[chickensky]

Even if all of the Archons disagree with Celestia and wish to rebel against it, I still find it strange that they're so willing to assist the Fatui specifically. All of the 4 Archons we have directly interacted with all care greatly for their own nations - probably the reason why they're choosing to defy Celestia in the first place - and even if the Fatui as an organization simply wants to use the power of the Gnoses to rebel against Celestia, it is clear that plenty of the individual Harbingers don't care about that goal. Many of them are selfish and powerhungry, if not downright sadistic, and it feels like they're simply using their authority as a Harbinger to further their own agendas. The Fatui constantly harass and even murder the citizens of other nations for no other reason than to silence them, and many of the objectively evil things the Fatui do have nothing to do with Celestia at all, they just feel like attempts to make Snezhnaya and the Harbingers specifically more powerful. If I was an Archon, even if I hated Celestia with all of my heart and knew the Tsaritsa had a plan to bring them down, there's no way I'd work with her if she was letting her Harbingers outright murder my subjects for fun. It's just strange to me that none of them - especially Ei, who feels like the most hotheaded of them - have done anything to specifically protect their people from the Fatui.

I hope that the Harbinger's relationships with each other start to decline as we travel through Fontaine and Natlan, and by the time we reach Snezhnaya, the country has turned into a full civil war where all of the Harbingers are fighting for dominance. This could set up the Traveler forming an alliance with the Tsaritsa, who's now forced to clean up the mess she made by allowing the Harbingers to grow so powerful and arrogant and lose sight of their goal. Once that problem has been taken care of, then the Traveler and the Tsaritsa (who now have at least a mutual respect for each other) can turn their attention to fighting Celestia.

[esmelusina]

I don't think they are supporting the Tsaritsa necessarily, but that they are opposing Celestia.

Abyss Order wants to restore the past.
Celestia wants to stagnate the present.
Fatui want to create a new future.

I think Venti and Zhongli are _clearly_ aligned in supporting the will of Teyvat's inhabitants as the 4th Agenda (it's the 'Age of Humans' etc). They know that the Traveler is immune to memory manipulation, so their presence as a Witness is part of their plan. The Traveler waking up is around the time Venti wakes up. Zhong Li's feigned Death is when the Traveler arrives to Liyue. These events are not arbitrarily aligned. Those two are waiting for us because our role as Witness is critical to their own collusion. That they point us like a warhead at Inazuma afterwards, despite it being out of the way and difficult to get to, was practically sending us on a recruitment drive.

So we have a 4th agenda; to give the fate of Teyvat to its inhabitants. This is basically what the entire Liyue and Inazuma arcs are all about. Sumeru and Mondstadt arcs definitely acknowledge the theme.

Fatui, Abyss Order, and Will of Teyvat (tm) are all in opposition, in some way or another, to Celestia. The chess match is multi-dimensional, and giving of the Gnoses is a way to progress the game forward.

[kyuriht]

About Venti, Remember he HAS the awareness of the Wind, in genshin the Wind can "talk" and "store information" and if kazuha can learn things just listening to the Wind Imagine what venti can know and do even in the 500 years of sleep he could have just been getting Infos (also considering he probably retains Memories of past, present and future and probably has some Power reguarding time itself i would not put It past him to know more than even some of the harbingers)

[Zeke]

It feels like Celestia is an exploitative boss and the archons are just the 7 schmucks that Celestia conned into working for it. No wonder they want out. They all regret their actions in Khaenriah as well. At least the ones that were there. They probably want to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen again.

[khaliquet]

It’s kinda strange that the fatui now have 5 of the 7, and Celestia is QUIET. They’ve should’ve taken action after one of the oldest Gods lost his gnosis.

[Blizandrio]

I can’t wait for the day we get to meet the Tsaritsa. The goddess of love that lost the love of/for her people, yet the other archons trust her is such an interesting storyline.

[noahblackwood]

I don't remember where exactly I saw this, maybe a different lore video, maybe the wiki, but someone noted that so far it seems existing archon don't care for Celestia at best, and were actively hurt by it at worst. Nahida values knowledge over gnosis, Venti only has bad things to say about Celestia in the game and in the manga, Ei's most loved person was killed in the war Celestia started, and Zhongli says erosion was something imposed on him by the heavenly principles, which actually invites a lot of questions by itself. And of course, Tsaritsa going openly against Celestia.
Not to mention all of them losing countless friends and allies in the archon war, which by itself was basically kind of a god genocide started by Celestia. I often think about the lore of how full of life each national used to be before the archon war and the cataclysm: the cutscene of dozens of youkai mingling at fairs and celebrations, many different adepti and gods working together to build Liyue, the whole Guizhong cutscene, Sumeru being build upon the peaceful cooperation of three gods etc. vs how comparatively barren it is now, with only memories and traces of dead friends and foes and all sorts of gods and non humans, and a handful of living gods left when there used to be many. (Mondstadt being a bit of an exception in most of it bc they struggled from the start lmao).

All of this to say it definitely paints a rather clear picture of why the archons wouldn't have much reason to love or respect Celestia. All they got from it seems to be grief, and all of them were powerful even without the gnoses, so it doesn't provide true value for them. But it definitely feels like there's more to that and I'm excited to see the full story

[randomalternate]

Zhongli is not openly scared of Celestia. He doesn’t even hate it. He says that there is nothing more valuable than the gnosis, while Venti and Ei don’t really care for it. He has a yet unreleased nostalgic voice line “Celestia, ah… I have not been back in a long time”. My personal theory is that he didn’t care about their politics when he was younger, but now, when Guizhong managed to make him value humans, he is kind of disappointed with Celestias punishments for civilisation like Khaenri’ah hence he’s doing his rebellion in disguise, through the Tsaritsa, as to not to break whatever contract he’d made with celestia

[Acro]

I always thought that secretly the archons wanted to go against the Heavenly Principles, because none of them put up a fight in giving their gnosis away to the Fatui.

[ivefication]

I think focalors could be the first and only archon who will actually fight for her gnosis. She could possibly be the only archon that will stand with celestia until the end, for some reasons? Maybe because of her origins, that how she replaced the old hydro archon and stuff.. Something tells me that not only the war made her be scared of celestia.

[Truck-kun]

My theory is that the real war will be between Celestia and the Abyss, with Teyvat caught in the crossfire, and thus it will turn into a three-sided war, with two sides trying to destroy each other while the humans (Probably with the help of the Archons) try to stop the world from falling apart.

[KrazyRait]

Just a thought... The traveller has woken up after the cataclysm. Thats 500 years. And all thats going on in teyvat is also happening 500 years later.
So that could possibly mean that the tsarittsa and other archons had already made a plan to have the traveller power up to be omni. And having all the power of the elements would make him powerful as the gnosis is a reflection of celestia and so, the heavenly principals and so he'd have the power to equal the heavenly principals.
This also adds another element in the story... That being that the archons tried to persuade the first sibling to explain and join their cause, but at that time 500 years ago... The first sibling saw khanrieah destroyed and the archons themselves torn apart from the wars. So the first sibling couldnt join the archons for defecting with celestia and found the ideals and powers of the abyss better to find against celestia.
So this time, the archons have put their heads together and written this play that the traveller has to act in and witness so as to understand the sufferings people and archins have been through.
This would eventually make the traveller agreeable to take up their ideals to overthrow celestia.
And with the first sibling having the power of the abyss, celestia will have a tough time to win.

[bangtanssera]

We can all just agree Ei simply was meditating and not interrupting a robot while most of choices were made by teyvat’s chatgpt and Ei herself just needed a lot of time to partially recover from what we she saw in the cataclysm. No like, I can really confirm after being traumatised you can actually let things flow the way they want to and not fight anything or not questioning anything even while understanding the consequences of her not doing anything… I was in such a state and honestly my life went downhill so quickly. I can find a reason behind Ei’s actions because of this she seems like a traumatised person that at some point tried to do something but she still wasn’t able to comprehend what was wrong in her actions. If I’m right she simply had no power in trying to do better, no any mental power to care & it’s really awful understanding she had so much responsibility but wasn’t able to perform cause archons don’t have proper mental treatment from PTSR or however it’s called in eng 😭😭

[cosminacristea]

Just a question that bothers me:

Has Celestia been mentioned in the game? I mean the literal floating island. I know that in the manga they point out that the island is Celestia, but I don't remember in game anyone ever mentioning the floating island or at least pointing at it. Like at least Paimon should have said something about a huge floating island that can be seen from almost anywhere in Teyvat, even if somehow they don't know that's Celestia. Did I forget or did they never bring it up?

[guidomista]

For Venti to be connected to the God of Time, I honestly think the cutscene of him and La Signora, showed that he wasn't trying to show off his power. I feel that he was trying not to draw attention to there or himself even if there was fatui there in front of the church. I personally think Venti is strong despite his playfulness and his constant state of being in hibernation during many of Mondstadt's battles.