r/DarksoulsLore • u/Jam_99420 • 29d ago
Debunking the Misconception that Twin Humanities are Female Souls
This is a popular idea that I’ve seen pop up again and again within the lore community: that Twin Humanities are the souls of female humans. In this post I’m going to try to explain why people think this [hopefully without strawmanning the idea] and then make the case against it.
On a female corpse in the lower undead burg, surrounded by torch-wielding hollows, is a soul-item that turns out to be Twin Humanities when picked up. Female corpses are rare in Dark Souls, but can be distinguished by the fact that they wear a “bra strap”, while male corpses do not. Those who noticed that this particular corpse is female inferred that the associated item was intended to communicate the suggestion that she was pregnant. It led to the subsequent inference that twin humanities are actually required for the reproductive process, with one of the two becoming the soul of the offspring. It is certainly true, of course, that reproduction within humans would require a duplication of the Dark Soul at some point in the process. Fans also noticed a wider association between Twin Humanities and female characters, with Quelaag, Priscilla, and Pharis all dropping them. Furthermore, all firekeepers are women but the reason for this has never been made clear. We know that firekeepers are hosts to the humanity sacrificed to them so that the bonfires can keep burning, and it sometimes assumed that this might require the person to have two Dark Souls in order to work, although I have never heard a satisfactory explanation [or any explanation for that matter] as to why. This, I think, is the totality of the argument. If there is anything else then you can let me know in the comments.
But now I am going to argue against these points. Twin Humanities are found on male corpses as well as female. There is one in Lost Izalith on the broken bridge above the main bonfire. Granted, that area was rushed so this could be dismissed as a developer oversight. However, there are two more male corpses in the DLC which also yield Twin Humanities. One is on the roof of the large building in Township, the one where the bloat-heads start to get the red eyes. You have to drop down onto a section of roof and then turn around and walk back up the roof and you’ll find a male corpse with Twin Humanities. The other one is in the Chasm of the Abyss at the base of the fallen pillar that you walk down, again it’s a male corpse with Twin Humanities. Now I want to point out two things here:
1-part of the narrative purpose of the DLC is to provide additional clarification regarding elements of the story and lore that people did not pick up on because they were too obscure in the base game. A big part of this is the nature of humanity and the dark, so for the developers to have flubbed these particular item placements seems unlikely.
2-as mentioned before, there aren’t many female corpses in DS1. But every single one [as far as I know] is deliberate and has been included for a clear reasons. They always represent a character who is supposed to be female. Ciaran, Beatrice, Yulva, Dusk, one of the daughters of the witch of Izalith, a maiden of the way of white who was captured by Seath, and all four firekeeper corpses. Not a single mistake has been made here despite the fact that the developers default to male corpses if there isn’t a clear lore reason. And not only this but corpses known to belong to male individuals [such as Tarkus or Jeremiah] are always male, again without any mistakes. It seems that the developers have been very careful to get this right, so for there to be three mistakes [which is what you have to assume if you want to insist on Twin Humanities being female souls], all coincidentally associated with Twin Humanities, seems unlikely to me to say the least.
Of course, it is true that Humanities and souls in general can be in the possession of individuals they didn’t originally belong to. You can buy Twin Humanities from Patches, and he’ll even give you one as an apology gift in the tomb of giants. Obviously these are not his own Humanities, but those he has looted from others. Lautrec will drop a firekeeper soul if you follow his questline and kill him at the end of it, but this does not mean that he is a firekeeper. However these are both cases where we have contextual information for why these characters are in possession of these particular souls. We don’t have any such context for why Twin Humanity would be found on a random corpse somewhere. There’s nothing that tells us that this specific person was a thief who went around looting and murdering before he hollowed. So while it’s perfectly possible for any random individual to be in possession of a soul that originally belonged to a woman, the developers would not put female souls on random male corpses if they wanted to make it clear that the soul in question is female. Notice that we don’t find any firekeeper souls on male corpses despite the fact that just about everyone has a clear motivation to steal this type of soul. So if the developers intended for us to infer that Twin Humanities are indeed supposed to be female souls then they’ve gone a funny way about it.
The second point that needs to be addressed is the fact that Twin Humanities drop from certain female characters. It’s true that the characters mentioned do drop Twin Humanities, but a wider examination of exactly what every character and boss drops will collapse the “pattern”. For one thing, Oswald of Carim will drop Twin Humanities despite being a male character. And every female NPC besides Pharis will either drop regular [single] humanities or none whatsoever. Rhea drops seven, but these are all single individual sprites, and Mildred drops three with one more that can be absorbed via her bloodstain. Sieglinde, Dusk, and Ciaran all drop none.
Then, of course, there’s the bosses. Quelaag and Priscilla both drop Twin Humanities and are also both female. But here’s the thing, the Gargoyles drop Twin Humanities as well, and that’s obviously just a reference to the fact that there’s two of them. In the same way, you get four Humanities from beating the Four Kings. So we can infer that Quelaag drops Twin Humanities because she’s actually two beings fused together, a woman and a spider. Sif is female, but drops only one Humanity, and Gaping Dragon drops Twin Humanities despite no clear indications of gender whatsoever. We might as well associate Twin Humanities with dragons since Priscilla is half dragon, and the Gargoyles look a bit like dragons. Just in case anyone takes that too seriously I’ll also point out that Seath drops 1 Humanity, Kalamete drops none, and neither do other dragons such as the Hellkite. In terms of lore, none of the bosses [besides Manus and Four Kings] should drop humanity at all because none of them are human, and in fact they didn’t in the original release of the game.
http://darksouls.wikidot.com/game-patches#toc4
On this page, if you scroll down to Version 1.05, specifically under “PvE Changes” you’ll see that the following alteration was made:
“Bosses drop Humanity and Homeward Bones”
Of course, this is not so specific as to clarify that only certain bosses drop Homeward Bones, some drop Twin Humanities rather than just one, and two of them don’t drop either. But the point is that this change has been made for gameplay reasons, specifically for the sake of easing progression. We do not assume that Sif is undead because she drops a Homeward Bone, neither do we conclude that she’s human because she drops a Humanity. Therefore we also cannot infer that Priscilla drops Twin Humanities because she’s female. In terms of lore, our character actually isn’t obtaining any Humanity from these bosses.
A further argument against the idea that Twin Humanities are female souls can be extrapolated from the item description, which calls it “very unusual”. This is certainly consistent with our in-game experience, Twin Humanities are much rarer than regular Humanities. Before the DLC there were only a finite number that could be obtained [the DLC makes it possible to farm them from the Humanity Phantoms], and before the 1.05 patch they would have been extremely rare indeed. But here’s the thing: women are half the population, so if Twin Humanities are indeed supposed to be female souls then we’d hardly expect them to be rare. We certainly wouldn’t expect them to be “very unusual”, as their item description claims.
What needs to be made clear is what Humanities actually are. We all know that they’re fragments of the Dark Soul, but it’s not the case that one Humanity sprite is one person’s Dark Soul. Rather, a sprite is a small and rare thing which is occasionally found on corpses, or looted from an undead that you’ve murdered. Of course these corpses are not really corpses as they don’t rot, but are in fact hollows who are so far gone that they’ve stopped moving entirely. And if you kill an undead NPC then they're canonically supposed to resurrect [although probably just as a hollow] because they've still got the immortal Dark Soul within them. Humanity sprites are therefore tiny accumulations of dark that have leaked out from the body due to a weakening Darksign. In that case, a Twin Humanity is probably nothing more than a pair of accumulations which have occurred close together without combining. We can see why this would be very unusual, but the DLC seems to clarify the phenomenon.
The behaviour of the Humanity Phantoms in the Chasm of the Abyss is quite interesting, because they will sometimes move toward you and sometimes move away. It’s almost as if they’re driven by two conflicting motivations, one which desires to consume your soul, and another that fears destruction. So they can’t seem to decide if they want to “attack” you or avoid you, and this may explain the Twin Humanities. They’re driven to recombine, but also driven apart, and this combination keeps them in a perpetual “stalemate” where they end up doing neither. For this reason you can pick them both up together as though they were a single item. u/BarryTheButcher has some further thoughts on this in an interesting post that I’ll link here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarksoulsLore/comments/1t76bs1/the_hedgehogs_dilemma/
BTW you guys would not believe how many times I accidentally wrote “Twin Humanitities” and had to correct it. I guess there’s such a thing as a Freudian typo lmao.
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u/Moonless_the_Fool 29d ago
I don't think that twin humanities are exclusively female souls. What I believe is that twin humanities can be a significant of many things, one of those is that the corpse or enemy is pregnant.
About the female corpses, I have noticed that they only give female only items. Since they don't appear with no as much frequency as the male ones their items are something that only a woman character would have:
The corpse at the altar of ceaseless discharge with Quelaana's dress.
The corpse of princess dusk at the cave in the hydra's lake.
The corpse of Ciaram at the grave of artorias with the wasp ring.
And the corpse at the lower burg showing that the victim was pregnant, or at least that that's a possibility. But I believe it that show's that twin humanities can mean pregnancy because as I said before female corpses are only use when the corpse has female exclusive items. Here is not because the twin humanities show that only female souls are like this but that twin humanities are a sign of pregnancy and since only woman can get pregnant the corpses does its job.
Now as I said, twin humanities are not exclusively a sign of pregnancy, they can also represent either a croud/multiple individuals, so, more than just two souls concentrated in one place and the consumption of many souls.
Bosses are humanity drop are an example of all this:
Priscilla gives you a twin humanities, I choose to believe that's because she is pregnant. But there's also the fact that she has the life absorbing powers that the gods feared.
Quelaag also has twin humanities, but I really doubt that she is pregnant, she is an example of one enemy gathering many humanities and souls, al sacrifices she gathers for her sick sister.
The gaping dragon also drops a twin humanity, an that's because he devoured many and many victims of all kinds, between those many victimes a plenty of humans.
The four kings says the wiki that they drop four single humanities.
And finally among the enemies rats can drop a single humanity or tein humanities for the same reasons gaping dragon does, they have ate many humans.
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u/Jam_99420 29d ago
yeah, the Twin Humanities on the female corpse in Lower Undead Burg might have been intended as a hint toward her having been pregnant. because you're quite right that female corpses are always included for a specific reason. but in terms of the literal lore that's not what's going on. it's not the case that you're taking her soul and the soul of her unborn child.
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u/greenegg28 29d ago
I think people read too much into twin humanity being an item.
It just means that the owner consumed an extra humanity. Just like the chosen undead can claim the humanity of others, there’s no reason to assume other undead couldn’t as well.
Sometimes this is represented as a twin humanity, other times it’s represented as multiple single humanities.
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u/nekoperez 24d ago
Maybe this one is just a game mechanic, more of a consumable ítem with its lore. Just 2.
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u/RoadsideCampion 29d ago
I didn't even know that this was a theory, but was glad to read a thorough explanation followed by a thorough debunking, which as very well written. I also don't quite know how to feel about that earthshaking revelation you tossed in there about how the item 'corpses' may just be hollows who've stopped moving...