Dark Souls’ Most Tragic Character Doesn’t Even Have A Name

The setting of Dark Souls is rather grim, and the games make no attempt at hiding that. Even from the beginning of the first game, it is clear that Lordran is not a happy place. True to the setting, most of the characters that the player meets, be they treacherous or friendly, are troubled in some way.

Yet with all the sadness in Dark Souls there is one character whose tragedy stands out even among the rest of the cast. However, despite their sad story, they are not even given a proper name for the player to know them by. This character is the leader of the Chaos Servant covenant, a sickly woman with the lower body of a terrifying spider monster. She is a witch who lost her family, her sight, and her health, and she is also possibly the kindest character in the game. She is known only as the Fair Lady or Quelaag’s Sister, and her story touched many Dark Souls players.

The Fair Lady was one of the daughters of the Witch of Izalith, whose attempt to replicate the First Flame backfired horribly. She and two of her daughters were warped into the Bed of Chaos, and her other children were transformed into demons with the exception of Quelana. While initially in decent health, the Fair Lady came to Blighttown and was so struck with empathy and grief at the sickness that affected the people there that she willingly absorbed it into herself. While this cured the people, this process left her blind, sickly, and in constant pain. The only thing that can provide her even a small respite is humanity, a life force of sorts in the Dark Souls universe.

Why Dark Souls’ Saddest Character Is The Fair Lady

Quelaag, wanting to ease her sister’s pain, set a trap in order to lure travelers to Blighttown and kill them so that she could take their humanity for her sister. Quelaag only wants to help her sister, but she is sadly killed by the player in Blighttown, at which point they unlock the path to the Fair Lady in Dark Souls. Tragically, when the player speaks to her, she believes that they are her recently slain sister – since Quelaag was the only one who had visited or spoken to her since she lost her sight.

Sadly, the only thing that the player can do for her is join her covenant and continue Quelaag’s work, gathering humanity from enemies and giving it to her. She will open a useful shortcut that can be used to save Solaire later in the game as thanks. Notably, once the player has given her around 80 Humanity, her spider limbs will be able to move more easily, and she will stop talking about her pain. Even if she is still frail, at least the player can ease the worst of her suffering. Many Dark Souls players collect Humanity for her solely for this purpose.

The Fair Lady’s ultimate fate is not revealed until Dark Souls 3, but it still deserves mention. In the third game, the player finds a pair of petrified corpses, the first obviously being the Fair Lady. Subtle hints point toward the corpse alongside her being Quelana, her remaining sister. It seems that due to the player’s help in the first game, she eventually received the strength to leave Blighttown and find her last sister, and they remained together until their deaths, ironically a kinder fate than most named characters. In the bleak world of Dark Souls, sometimes facing the end with a loved one may be the happiest ending one could ask for.

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