We are very wrong about how we're thinking about these Gnoses. Well, probably. See, ever since version 1.1,
I feel like the entire Genshin lore community has collectively agreed that each Gnosis represents a different piece of a singular chess set. And up until the release of Sumeru we only really had two Gnoses to work with: the Anemo and Geo Gnosis. And no one really thought twice
about the Geo Gnosis being a rook and the Anemo Gnosis being a queen. And then when we finally got the Electro Gnosis, most agreed that it's either a bishop, due to the shape, or a knight because the Shogun is like a war general. And this concept basically
pleased everyone, myself included. With seven Archons, we'd have had enough Gnoses to make two bishops, two rooks, two knights, and one queen with one theorized eighth Gnosis
taking the place of the king and that was likely being held by Celestia or some secret eighth Archon in Khaenri'ah, or something. You know, it makes sense, right? It's good. And that's probably why basically
every theory about the Gnoses to this day has been about
which Archon would have which chess piece represented by their Gnosis. I'm guilty of this too, but recently, I've started to think that we're asking the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions when it comes to the association between chess and Gnosis. So, in this video, I wanna pitch a bit of a different idea about the Gnoses which may just change the way we think about the role of the Archons. But before we continue, I wanna take a moment to thank the Red Magic 8S Pro Gaming Phone for sponsoring this video. Now, I have had a Red Magic 8S Pro Gaming Phone for a while now and... I really like it, like, a lot. Like, these phones just feel so nice to play on. They're a really good size with a completely seamless screen. They've got way more brightness settings
than any other phone I've tried. They've got a real headphone jack, dual stereo speakers and they come with built-in,
completely customizable finger triggers so you can go pew, pew, pew, pew. Ahem, yes. Well, graphics-wise,
this phone comes with two chips in it: one to run phone stuff and another one just for game stuff... so you can do really cool things
like running game at like, 60 FPS which usually makes the phone run really, really hot but Red Magic phones have this special cooling system which includes, like, a heat sink
and two surprisingly quiet fans. And you must be thinking
''well, that must kill the battery if you do that'' but no, I get at least 10 full hours of peak gaming before we actually need to think about plugging it in. It's priced really well too,
so if you're in the market for a new phone or if you wanna cope with the fact
that Genshin will never be on the Switch and even if it was, it would never look as nice as it does on the Red Magic 8S Pro,
because the Switch's hardware is super old and was never really that great to begin with then you can check out my link
in the description box for more information. And if you're not in the market for a phone at all or if you just really love playing games on your PC Nubia also sent me this really stylish keyboard that's definitely built to take some serious abuse and this snazzy gaming mouse
with a really nice cloth covered cable It's really quality stuff. Once again, thank you so much to Nubia and their Red Magic 8S Pro Gaming Phone and keyboard and mouse for sponsoring this video. You can find more information
in the link in the description box below. And now, back to the video. Now, where were we? Oh right, we were talking about the most common theories that most people have about which Archon has which Gnosis and how they arrive at that conclusion. Now, one of the most popular ways to predict which Archon will have which Gnosis
is something I've dubbed ''movement theory.'' This theory suggests that a Gnosis as a chess piece is determined by how that chess piece moves. For example, Venti is the God of Freedom
and also the queen piece; and the queen piece, in chess, can move however it likes. In other words, it can move freely while Zhongli is the God of Contracts
and he is therefore inflexible and can only move
in a straightforward manner, kind of like a rook. So, you get the idea, right? Like, it's pretty straightforward. But this kinda got me thinking. When we saw the Winter Night's Lazzo trailer we got to see the Anemo and Geo Gnosis on a real chessboard as they were placed literal pieces; only, Venti's piece didn't make any sense. You see, the chess board was a very specific layout from a very specific and famous chess game: Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov in 1996, game 1, move 34. The first game in a series
of six championships chess matches wherein an AI, that's Deep Blue here,
defeated a chess master, Kasparov. So, we know what this board should look like and what the pieces on the board should be. Now, logic dictates that if the Geo Gnosis is a rook then it should take the place of a rook on the board and if the Anemo Gnosis is a queen then it should take the place of a queen on the board, right? But the Anemo Gnosis is actually in the place of a king. Now, this sparked a whole series of new theories: that the Anemo Gnosis
was actually a king all along and not a queen and I kind of bought into this myself. Well, actually, I suggested
that the abilities of the queens and kings were switched in general,
but whatever, the result is basically the same. The point here is that either Venti has to have the king piece or else he's a queen masquerading as a king which is weird, because why would HoYoVerse do that? Maybe we should take another look at this Deep Blue vs Kasparov game thing. Okay, so, there are six games total in the Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov series in 1996 and this is just game 1. Game 1 seems to incorporate three regions: Mondstadt, Inazuma, and Liyue. So this means that we have enough chess matches remaining to assign an entire match to each of the following regions: Sumeru, Fontaine, Natlan, Snezhnaya, and Khaenri'ah. I'm counting Khaenri'ah because it's included in Travail, ok? So, game 1 carries up to the end of Inazuma's story arc which lets us map a pawn to Signora and the knight that captured her to the Shogun. But if we think of the Archons
as being represented by their Gnosis then that means that
the Electro Gnosis should be a knight, right? But hang on a second. It makes sense to me if Shogun
─or Ei─ is represented by the knight piece since Ei was the battle-ready of the twins but Makoto was the true, original Archon. So, by that logic, the Gnosis should reflect Makoto and not Ei. But to confuse things even more the person who had the Gnosis
for the last 500 years was actually Miko who then gave it to Scaramouche. So, there are four options to chose from here. That means the real question is: are we using the Gnosis to represent the current Archons the original Archons, or just
the person who happens to possess the Gnosis? Unfortunately, we don't have another Winter's Night Lazzo-style trailer chessboard to compare match 2 with. Yet. But. The endgame of match 2,
which should represent just Sumeru's Archon Quest was basically a fight between two bishops which is why many, myself included believe that the Electro Gnosis
and the Dendro Gnosis were both bishops. You know, since Scaramouche
and Nahida confronted each other and both of them were
in possession of their respective Gnosis. But that still doesn't answer the question of who or what the Gnoses
are actually representing on the board. If it's just representing whoever is holding it then the Electro Gnosis is probably
not a knight but instead a bishop since Scaramouche was the one who was actually holding and using the Gnosis which means that Makoto
would also be a bishop of sorts, I guess? Although, you could also make the case that there could be two Electro Gnoses since, you know, the Electro Archons were twins. So, one Electro bishop Gnosis
and then one Electro knight Gnosis but like... even though I can kind of see that because we have two different types of electro slimes it still just- seems really unlikely because why wouldn't Ei just
talk about using her own Gnosis for things. Why use Makoto's? Why is
all this emphasis on Makoto's Gnosis, right? And really, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to trying to decipher who has what piece and why. And I could go on for a really long time going over all of them but no matter how you rationalize this no matter how you look at every theory around these Gnoses representing different pieces of the same chess set they all come with some kind of
currently unresolvable problem. So, let me play devil's advocate for a bit. Chess is not like checkers where you have to capture all of your opponent's pieces to win. And it's not like go either, where you have to go around capturing as much territory as you possibly can. The only goal of chess is to capture or corner the king. And that's it. That's the whole
point of chess. it's just capture the king. It's like Capture the Flag but on a board game. Now, thus far, in every region the goal of the Fatui has been to capture or corner the Archon because the Archons have the Gnoses. So in my eyes, game one must have ended in Inazuma because the Archon did not have the Gnosis. So, even if they cornered Ei,
it wouldn't have let them achieve their goal because she wasn't the king piece.
She didn't have the winning piece. Scaramouche had already taken it with him. So, the Fatui lost the match because the enemy team didn't have a king piece to capture. There was no way to win that game,
which is probably why Pierro's just like: "oh yeah, we lost the battle, but not the war." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Now, take a look at game two. I mentioned earlier that it was a battle between
two bishops, and that's definitely true. But the identities of these bishops are not equated to Nahida and Scaramouche. Instead, these two are each side's respective kings. Technically speaking, before this match even started Scaramouche had already half-given the Gnosis to the Fatui since he was one of their number. It hadn't gone all the way to
Tsaritsa yet which is probably why it could be on the board, but this would also put Nahida in the position of the king on the opposite side. Neither Nahida nor Scaramouche have much freedom of movement
during the Sumeru Archon Quest so this kind of fits their
position as kings in this particular match way more than it does the bishops. Now, at the end of the Archon
Quest, Nahida is confronted by Dottore who eventually takes both
the Dendro and the Electro Gnosis from her thus allowing the Fatui to win the game. However, if you compare this outcome to the ending of game two you'll notice that the bishop is the piece that puts the losing side's king into check. Therefore, the bishop here
must be Dottore and not Scaramouche which means that the other bishop could be the Traveler. Now, this game ended by resignation which is actually in line with how Nahida gambled on Dottore buying her bluff about Celestia waking up. It's just check versus checkmate, really. it's a distinction I'm trying to make. But again, in this scenario, that makes Nahida a king piece which is the same as Venti. And yeah, you can have two knights,
bishops, and rooks in a set, no problem but it can't really have two kings now, can you? And that's when I started wondering what if we're just wrong
about the way we think about the Gnoses? What if they're not all pieces from the same chess set? What if, instead, they are each their respective kings from their own chess sets? Take another look at the three
Gnoses that we have seen thus far in-game. Do you notice anything odd about them? Each of them are visually distinct. Yes, they're all gold, black and with a gemstone filling to match their Archon's element but beyond that, they don't
really look like they belong together. Just look at the bases: the Electro Gnosis doesn't flare outwards at the bottom or have the little flared bits at the top. The patterns on them are also different as are overall shapes and decorations. And take another close look at the top of these Gnosis. Notice how the Anemo
and Geo Gnosis both have four-pointed crowns while the Electro Gnosis... okay, well, you could argue for both two and four points here. But the main point I want to make is that its top actually represents the helmet of a Shogun and Shoguns were often described as kings by foreigners due to similarities in
the power and influence that they wielded even though they were
technically ranked beneath the emperor but they were basically the real power
behind the throne anyway, so... whatever, it still applies. This basically makes it kind of like a king's crown, right? I know it's a little bit of a stretch, just roll with me. And if you want to get clever you can compare a crown indicative
of each Gnosis' influential region and you'll notice that they match up pretty well. The Anemo Gnosis matches that
of a medieval European king's crown which fits perfectly for Mondstadt. And Inazuma obviously matches the Japanese Shogun. And, well, I admit the Liyue
comparison is a little bit of a stretch but you can still see the basic square shape of a Chinese emperor's headpiece here. I would actually like
to propose that the Geo Gnosis is probably also referencing either the Dragons of the Five Directions or the Five Emblematic Animals of which the yellow dragon, who would be Zhongli in this case is at the center. That makes a four-pointed box which would match Venti's four-pointed crown. And while the Shogun crown
doesn't appear to have four points total you could make a case at the top that branching out and splitting into two counts as four. I know that's weak, but I'm gonna
account for some artistic license here. But in any case, this idea that every Gnosis is the king of a different region's chess set also resolves issues the "one chess set" theory had like how there were only seven Archons
and eight chess pieces or who were the pawns in those chess sets or why would Electro potentially have two pieces etc, etc, you get the idea. And it works well with the theory that the Gnoses came from the power of the seven Sovereigns; the seven Dragon Kings, right? That's a pretty popular theory when it comes to Gnoses. It also means that the chess pieces
they replace on the board, à la Lazzo doesn't even matter, because the
Gnoses are just there as placeholders. Think of it more like swapping out your player piece during a game of Monopoly or if you're playing a game of something like Risk or Stratego the Gnosis can take the place
of basically any soldier on the field. It's kind of like putting on a costume and then assuming a role. Also, keep in mind that Visions
are called "primitive Gnoses" by Venti which might suggest that, metaphorically at least Vision wielders are the pawns. The special property of a pawn in chess is that if it makes it to the other side of the board it can promote, or maybe "ascend" is a better term. And from there, the pawn can become
any piece in the game, except the king because there can only be one king per color. And not to tie this back to Deshret, like I do a lot of the time but Deshret, the Scarlet King wanted to make humanity the king of all kings; to rise above the gods and basically become their own gods. And to do that he tried to break the cycle of seven by implementing the same plan as the Dragon Kings: obtain forbidden knowledge and use it to challenge heaven. And maybe if he succeeded then those little pawns could
ascend to the forbidden role of king. Anyway, I don't really have much more to add for right now. I guess we'll just have to wait and see until we can see at least one
other Gnosis before we can say for sure one way or another what these
pieces are or what they represent or maybe we'll get another Winter Night's Lazzo. That would be awesome too. But that's gonna do it for my spicy take theory salad. So, what'd you think? Is it possible, plausible, probable? Or is it just poop? Let me know in the comments down below. A special thank you to all of my channel members who have been very patient with me as I was trying to catch up after not posting videos for like, a whole month. I've got a lot of stuff in the oven right now and I cannot wait to share them and- Oh hey, you, the one who's still watching this video thanks for sticking around to the end. Never doubt your awesomeness. But alright guys, take care of yourselves, stay hydrated don't forget to stretch, and I will see you all in the next one. Bye for now.
