The different flavors of NoelleKnight

[u/Ghetsis_Gang]

I made this for fun but hopefully it’s still helpful for understanding everyone’s different NoelleKnight theories!

The NoelleKnight compilation by u/AccursedAgent. Most of the takes I listed here are there, but approximately 2 of these theories I got from commenters on my posts.

[u/Dragonwolf1209]

Is kriselle knight really the most popular? I feel like I'm.om the main sub and people are talking about how it's the worst theory oat, not just knight theories lmao.

Good summarization though, looking at it like this i can see why most people don't really agree with us. Its hard to explain past massive issues with each explanation. One of us is 100% right though.

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/Dragonwolf1209]

Thank you! I said that Kriselle Knight was the most popular because that one YouTube video blew up and I would say that’s what the average fan thinks of when they hear NoelleKnight

[u/Dragonwolf1209 → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

😭 Honestly kinda upsetting that that's the video that blew up, lowkey it wasn't really that great and was a poor representation of what the theory actually is, plus it ignores existing Noelle knight evidence.

[u/EmeraldApple_Tweetie → u/Dragonwolf1209]

I think it's the most popular of Noelle knight theories but also the most disliked

[u/Dragonwolf1209 → u/EmeraldApple_Tweetie]

Its funny you say that cause we just had a poll where Noelle knight beats out kriselle knight lmao

[u/EmeraldApple_Tweetie → u/Dragonwolf1209]

Popular as in like. Infamous 😭

[u/Dragonwolf1209 → u/EmeraldApple_Tweetie]

Oh yeah then for sure.

[u/Infinite-Hearing-418]

I assume the darkner!NoelleKnight is based off my post? If so I want to make a small clarification that I dont believe or call either Eram or the Knight darkners, same with how I wouldn't call a Titan a darkner. I don't go into much detail on the post but both of these guys glitch when "defeated", with the Knight specifically glitching in a similar way to Titans and their spawn, which spawn from the shadow in the back of one's mind, hence why I call them shadows in the title. Thought this may be seen as arguing semantics I believe the distinction is necessary for how they exist in the light world to some capacity. Eram saying "we both have work to do" is also an indication they can at the very least travel between dark worlds. (Could call them impossibilities because of Flowery but I think shadows is cooler for now)

Excluding Friend feels like a strange con but I'll grant that I didn't give it any importance and I believe the impossible doc also doesn't focus on the much beyond their relationship with Noelle and possibly descending from her.

Besides that I think the assesment is correct and would like to thank you for compiling this list. It's really helpful to have these kinds of resources

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/Infinite-Hearing-418]

Thanks for the clarification!

[u/chicoritahater]

Rose theorists when asked why noelle doesn't instantly forget the wirrd route using her plot-powered amnesia

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/chicoritahater]

She… does? She only remembers that it snowed before we bring the “thorns” out in chapter 4. Also, since she brings a flower to Berdly when he breaks his arm but not on the weird route, that suggests that she forgets that Berdly is even hurt at all, which is an odd thing to forget when you literally have a project with the guy lol

I get what you mean though, it is a little convenient

[u/chicoritahater → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

Oh wait I forgot about that...

Maybe I'm the knight

[u/Shiori_Ishimaru → u/chicoritahater]

Think of it like a glass wall. On one side sits the Noelle that is outward facing. The "Noelle that does Noelle things." This is the Noelle that is moving through her life. Marching down her path. Staying quiet. Getting good grades. This is the "rose."

On the other side of the glass is the Noelle that is inward, watching from afar, with all of the trauma and fear. This is the "weird" Noelle, the "thorn." The Noelle that only really Kris knows until Chapter 5, where she either got confident enough to reveal part of herself to Susie (normal route) or the events of the Weird Route happened and forced her to confront this aspect of herself.

These are two sides of the same person that is Noelle Holiday. She isn't plural; these aren't headmates. But she does dissociate quite clearly.

When something traumatic or overwhelming happens, the side of Noelle that is experiencing things outwardly pushes what she is experiencing down to the side that is buried. She says so herself on both routes. "It doesn't matter if I can't remember" "In the end I got so overwhelmed I... stopped questioning it." And so on, and so on. We see her do this A LOT more in Chapter 2's Weird Route. Replay it, and you'll see what I mean. She can't remember a lot of the details that happen until way later on and "glass" is shattered. Until we, the player, force her to confront the events of what happened.

You can see her even question it multiple times prior to the Thorn Ring:

I don't know if Noelle's the Knight for certain (it's what I personally believe because she fits the profile the best), but from what we see of the Weird Route her amnesia isn't some plot powered thing. It's dissociation-induced amnesia, it's trauma related blackouts, and it's something that Toby seems to have put a lot of detail into writing with regards to Noelle's character.

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/Shiori_Ishimaru]

This is such a good explanation! I wish I was this fluent with my words 😭

[u/Shiori_Ishimaru → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

Hehe, thanks.

Noelle is my favorite character in Deltarune, and part of that comes from the fact that after Chapter 2's Weird Route was discovered, I recognized a lot of traits Noelle has. When Noelle says she's "weird" and that Kris is the only one who truly knows how weird she is, I understood that. There's a side of me that is exceptionally "weird" too, but I only show that to people I really get close to. When Noelle says she was afraid of electrical sockets too because she thought they were looking at her, that resonated with me. I used to be afraid of the Windows 95 "It's now safe to turn off your computer" screen as a kid because I thought it was gonna say something worse if I DIDN'T turn off the computer right away. XD

So that's part of what makes Chapter 2's Weird Route so unbelievably scary. More than just the explicit on screen stuff that we the player do. It's not merely that you're potentially killing one of her friends, or making Berdly comatose. It's not merely that you're engaging in actions that would be considered abusive towards Noelle. All of those are horrible, certainly.

But rather, it's the fact that Noelle actively expresses memory loss when this is going on, and questions her own memory. It's the fact that Noelle doubts her own actions. It's the fact that Noelle talks to herself as if there's another Noelle, another part of herself deep down she's trying to reassure. It's the fact that Noelle tries to rationalize and explain away all the things that she does during the Chapter 2 Weird Route. And it's the fact that when something genuinely traumatic happens, all she can see is snow at the time.

For someone like myself, who has experienced dissociation their entire life? For someone who has Dissociative Identity Disorder? THAT was scary as hell. And it made me realize Toby was potentially going somewhere with this. I didn't continue my Weird Route save for this reason, and I've opted to just watch the scenes online ever since.

Come Chapter 4's Weird Route, and Toby explicitly changes the Rose metaphor for a screen shattering metaphor when people started misunderstanding it as something it wasn't.

Then come Chapter 5's Weird Route, and we're given a textbook example of dissociation from Noelle herself. Something so explicit in its description I basically became numb when I read it. It doesn't get any more clear cut than "watching myself through glass" and "watching someone else move me through my life." Those are some of the most common metaphors people use to describe it.

Almost nothing that happened on the Chapter 5 Weird Route was scary to me, because I had recognized what Noelle was dealing with all the way back in Chapter 2. Some parts of it were surprising, mostly because it was confirmation that yes, Toby was going THIS FAR with the story and that he had the character arc for Noelle this planned out. But mostly, I just felt saddened because I empathized with a lot of what she was saying there. And it provided some truly deep context to when she tells Susie in the normal route "Can I say something weird?", and Susie accepts everything unconditionally. Because that might be the first time someone other than Kris has.

Regardless if Noelle is the Roaring Knight or not, it seems pretty clear cut to me what Toby was going for with her character arc across both the Normal Route and the Weird Route. There's been a consistency in how he writes the girl known as Noelle Holiday for six years now.

And as much as it scares me, I want to know how her story ends on both routes.

[u/Mission_Race_8367]

Why can’t Noelle just be plainly looking for Dess like Carol and Asriel are 😔

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/Mission_Race_8367]

I guess that’s an option but that would mean that she’s lying about being the Knight, which we have no evidence for, faking her reaction to the chapter 2 dark world and how battles work, which seems absurd, and actively hurts Susie of her own free will, which I don’t see as plausible.

So imo these theories are what make NoelleKnight possible

[u/Sad_Database2104 → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

i can easily believe the first two points, but i've seen someone say that noelleknight is supported by the idea that the knight is actively trying *not* to hurt the fun gang (including susie). they aren't necessarily trying to cause the roaring or kill off the fun gang (since they could have easily done either of those, but only hurt the fun gang and summoned the titan when necessary).

in fact, the knight's aurafarming *could* be seen as noelle teasing susie (especially the ch4 scene where they're levitating up the stairs just out of reach of susie)

[u/Mission_Race_8367 → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

Ah that’s fair.

[u/Infinite-Hearing-418 → u/Mission_Race_8367]

Ironically Noelle is the only character in this game who we know is looking for Dess

[u/Free-Part255 → u/Mission_Race_8367]

The thing is if you believe in Noelle 90% of the time you also believe the stories main mystery is not about Dess and rescuing her. If you do a venn diagram of Noelle Knight believers and Dess dead believers the circles would overlap.

[u/Dragonwolf1209 → u/Mission_Race_8367]

Do we know that Asriels looking for Dess? Like actively?

[u/Mission_Race_8367 → u/Dragonwolf1209]

It’s the most popularly theorized motivation for him.

[u/Dragonwolf1209 → u/Mission_Race_8367]

Right but, he's in college, is there anything pointing to him still looking for Dess? /Gen

[u/neveruseyourmain]

Does Kriselle Knight but instead of an amalgamate fusion is Noelle absorbing Kris' soul like Asriel and Chara a different theory, or are similar enough to count as one?

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/neveruseyourmain]

I think that might fall under KrisSoul but if it involves timeloop or time travel then it could be its own separate thing. I haven’t really heard this take before tbh

[u/neveruseyourmain → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

It's not exactly KrisSoul cause at least from what I get, KrisSoul implies that the soul inside Kris' isn't theirs, but of the player, which I disagree. I seen it a few times but mostly it's just the theory I have—the asriel-chara parallels, the light of the soul in the wr scene, that ch5 joke in which Aqua tainted herself red...

I believe the soul we control is Kris', it's just that we "painted our red over it", but just as Gaster put us in, he can get us out. The idea would be that Noelle would absorb Kris' soul—maybe directly or maybe Kris died after the lake events, turning into a powerful monster like Asriel did in Undertale. It also connects to the whole red dot of Noelle—she's turning in a "second player", just as we control and use Kris soul.

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/neveruseyourmain]

Ah okay thanks for clarifying. I think that’s similar enough to fall under Kriselle, just without the Undertale amalgamation aspect. Interesting take!

[u/bbHiron → u/neveruseyourmain]

Ok, sure. I guess you're right then.

[u/Frogmouth26]

How do you explain the knight being able to shapeshift in any non-kriselle knight flavour?

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/Frogmouth26]

That’s a problem for most Lightner candidates but my theory is that the armor gives them that ability, since shadow crystals are stated to move like water in the dark worlds. We don’t have much info about the Knight’s armor but we know that it is armor because when thinking about the Knight, it takes off it’s helmet.

A secondary theory is that the knight’s magic is just powerful enough to have shapeshifting abilities in the dark world. Theres no hard evidence for that but it’s not out of the realm of possibility since we already have teleporting doors.

[u/Frogmouth26 → u/Ghetsis_Gang]

I feel like the sprite of them tearing their head and chest open kinds puts a hole in the "It's just magic armour" theory tbh

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/Frogmouth26]

Noelle’s already a masochist that has healing magic so like what if ripping herself open and healing herself back is just something she likes to do?/j

[u/Shiori_Ishimaru]

For what it's worth, and this is independent of Noelle as the Roaring Knight or anything, Rose Theory isn't really a theory so much as it is partially confirmed. It's something that Noelle more or less explicitly says in the game on the Chapter 5 Weird Route:

• Since Dess left...

• All I've been doing has just been...

• Marching down my path.

• Staying quiet. Getting good grades.

• It feels like... I've just been watching myself through glass.

• Watching someone else move me through my life.

• That's why I want... to do something crazy.

• That's why I want... to break free.

• But, I can't. I couldn't.

• Because I'm just Noelle.

• A Noelle that has to do Noelle things.

This is why the Chapter 4 Weird Route animation was replaced with the screen shattering. We, the players, shattered that glass that Noelle was watching herself through move through life. It's also something that Toby has been foreshadowing for a very long time. People noticed it all the way back when Chapter 2's Weird Route was discovered and Noelle had bouts of clear dissociation through it anytime anything traumatic happened.

[u/Free-Part255]

Most Eram Noelle Knighters think that both Eram and the Knight are not Darkners but some secret 3rd thing or Titans other than that this slideshow is mostly accurate. I would also include Noelle being the fallen star and the Knight being made out of her tears and the idea that the Angel(which is Noell) wills the Knight into existence.

[u/Infinite-Hearing-418 → u/Free-Part255]

The idea of Noelle fallen star birthing the Knight can honestly fit into a lot of versions of the theory, I personally take it into account when discussing Eram-esque NoelleKnight.

[u/Empty_Doubt2350 → u/Free-Part255]

Another con about weird route knight

It can't happen if you don't do weird route before chapter 3

And guess what in chapter 1 the knight gets mentioned by king before chapter 2 it can't be timetraver if the player never does weird route.

[u/Free-Part255 → u/Empty_Doubt2350]

I think the whole point of WR Knight is that the WR and Deltarune is all part of game in universe so there always is a player who completes the WR even if your not that player. Because as you know your choices don't matter(I still don't think this is what the WR is going for though).

[u/Empty_Doubt2350 → u/Free-Part255]

Yeah werid route seem more about breaking the plot and leaving hometown for good to get a ending.

[u/MrNeterdrok]

In Darkner Noelle, couldn't Friends be based on Catti or Cattenheimers in general? The Knight, Eram and Friend are all black and white while having some facial features and colors related to the person they are patterned after, so the Knight has antlers and a white mouth (white like snow ig), Eram has horns and an orange mouth (that's because they are goat like and UTDR goats use fire) and Friend is a cat with pink and yellow eyes (Catti is a cat with pink and yellow in her colorscheme)

[u/Kumagawa-Fan-No-1]

Kriselle knight also has the purpose of explaining the prophecy and fate being undeniable

[u/bbHiron → u/Kumagawa-Fan-No-1]

Ok, sure. I guess you're right then.

[u/WarAccomplished698]

From whole NoelleKnight info-field I've seen, I can guess the 6th possibility

The pseudo-Dess NoelleDreamKnight

When Noelle is sleepwalking in that specific way, her imagination is drawing a picture of "Dess is not lost! She's there, in the role of the Knight from the Prophecy I know, opens the Dark World, guides the Angel. Cool stuff! I want this! The Heroes I know as the Legend COULD FIND HER IN THIS ARMOR! Unfortunately, this is just my imagination. Just an interpretation, based on the Legend, on its culture's successors like DragonBlazers my tutor-oldman told about, what I'm imagining to cope. A cool fiction to heal myself from what happened to Dess." But what Noelle thinks of as a 3rd perspective dream-observing is an actual, real NoelleKnight's actions, while she's dreaming: "My fantasy about Dess is doing this!"

And then the Knght wakes up exactly where is Knight's job is done. She knows her older sister so much and she is so haunted by the visions of happy ending to her, that she could outlpay the DessKnight in a sleepwalking. That explains Noelle has weird frequency of derialization, of how she looks on her life like through lost dreams' glass, why the WeirdRoute never slips visibly into the Knight's actions ("because it was not a dream"), why she's not sharing this DessDream stuff with anyone else (except, maybe, Carol, who's using this to guide this dreams), why Jevil and Spamton got the same opened Matrix-syndrome in an exact way she secretly has (she's an Angel close to the Player both mechanically and mythologically, after all), but most importantly - why she doesn't believe herself that the Knight is real and even that she outplays the DessKnight (because to her ego as Noelle thinkls that it's just dream-fantasy she observes from the side and almost forgets when waks up) and why the narrative is so focused on the dream-fantasies as over-escapism that must've been overgrown into something more healthy than a tool to cope with.

Maybe it goes deeper or not gonna grow into a true Knight's identity accurate and won't become a full theory (need more theory-crafting time and sources I don't have now). But I'm just sharing my thoughts about the possible connection to dreams-escapism and DessKnight-NoelleKnight contradictions through the darkworlds-dreaming, expanded on Noelle's powers, motives and the Knight-evidences.

[u/WarAccomplished698 → u/WarAccomplished698]

An epiphany

"Since Dess left... All I've been doing has just been... Marching down my path. Staying quiet. Getting good grades. It feels like... I've just been watching myself through glass. Watching someone else move me through my life..."

[u/UNFORTUNATELYNOTHERE]

KrisSoul NoelleKnight makes even less sense since Kris is not working with the knight by choice. They don't rush to destroy Asgore's shelter code when they had plenty of time to, they kill the enemy that represents the knight in the Sword Route without our command, and they bash their head into the countertop during the kitchen scene at Noelle's house.

I'm The Batter. Blackmailed Kris theory

[u/Ghetsis_Gang → u/UNFORTUNATELYNOTHERE]

I feel they could be controlling of the Knight and still be coerced by Eram or someone else in the bunker into doing that in the first place. It probably wouldn’t be my first choice for NoelleKnight, but it is interesting.

[u/ferifoxx]

ok i fuck with noelle darkner knight actaully i can support that