Chapter Text
The identity of the Roaring Knight seems pretty much a guarantee at this point, especially considering their antlers and obvious connections to the Holiday Family. Carol is unlikely to be the Knight, given her weapon of choice and the timeline of the Knight’s appearance at the church, and the Knight themselves seem to be completely different from any other Lightner we saw in the Dark World thus far. As such, the most prevalent theory in the community right now is the Knight being Dess horribly lost in the darkness, with Carol and Kris trying to bring her back in the Light World.
However, there are some issues with that theory as well. Most notably, the Knight was shown to be a Lightner with the ability to unleash Dark Fountains and yet they can’t fully exist in the light of the day? They, apparently, created multiple Dark Fountains but were never noticed by locals, with whom Kris could hold many different conversations? And, of course, a point I brought up when discussing Dess as the Knight before: being the Knight appears to go against her character, with her trying to resurrect herself at the expense of the whole world and especially Noelle. Such a shift would be interesting to explore with an established character, not with someone we hear of only in whispers.
With that being said, there is another possible candidate for being the Roaring Knight, a candidate who could have a few valid reasons to risk the end of the world while staying clandestine in the narrative at large. A character who was present in the game since the very beginning and has deep connection to both Holidays and Dreemurrs. Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to…
Rudy Holiday is the Knight.
Amusingly, I would be perhaps the last person to buy into this idea before Chapters 3&4, but the Roaring Knight’s appearance in the flesh was destined to change one too many things. Let us lay some groundwork here: Rudy is the father of Dess and Noelle who, as far as the story is concerned, is being tested for some serious illness at the hospital of Hometown. His illness appear to be so grave, he has difficulties walking around and seems to be extremely weak after attending the service in Chapter 4. With that being said, his apparent illness also gives him a perfect opportunity, and its very nature could perhaps be explained by the whole Roaring Knight business. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start examining this theory point by point.
1. Rudy would make a good antagonist.
When I speculated about what make a good antagonist in my pre-Chapter 3 theories, I mentioned a few points: good antagonists have prominence in the story, often represent the said story with their example, have contradictory characterization, share deep connection to main characters and parallel their stories. So, does Rudy check all the boxes?
Rudy has undeniable prominence in the story as he was present in it since Chapter 1. Not only that, his history with Dreemurrs and Kris in particular go years and years back, to the point he could be the person to name Kris when they were adopted. He is a parental figure to Noelle (and to Kris, to a much lesser extent), just like all Dark World bosses seemed to be. King was a father to Lancer, Queen was a mother to Noelle, Tenna shares a lot of characterization with Kris’ parents. With the idea of the Legendary Heroes defeating authority figures and forging their own path, Deltarune being a coming out of age story at its core and such, Rudy would fit in naturally.
Rudy undeniably has deep connections to Noelle and Kris, two out of four main characters. His connection with Susie is a bit contrived (and it’s something I myself would argue against a bit later), but they are far from being complete strangers to each other either. Rudy as the Knight would definitely have a contradictory characterization: he is a deeply loving parent who wants to take care of Noelle and yet he is risking the apocalyptic event for his unclear goals. Noelle was already involved in the whole Dark World business, and perhaps it is her plea that would help him to finally stop.
We can’t say for certain how exactly Rudy parallels main characters however, and perhaps later chapters would expand on his characterization a bit. Otherwise, Rudy would certainly make a suitable antagonist for the story of Deltarune.
2. Rudy has a perfect opportunity to reveal Dark Fountains.
As I’ve mentioned before, Dess is a lost girl who disappeared years ago, and so her traversing Hometown is bound to attract some unwanted suspicion, even more so if she moves around as an undefined blob of darkness. Carol could have revealed the Fountains in theory, but it is impossible for her to appear in Chapter 4 as the Knight: Kris and Susie could stroll for the church immediately after leaving the mansion, with her unambiguously staying behind. On the other hand, a rain conspicuously prevents Kris and Susie from checking on Rudy before encountering the Knight in the Dark World.
Rudy’s illness grants him a perfect opportunity for unleashing the Dark Fountains at his leisure: he spends most of the time alone in his room with no adequate alibi, and it’s not like the hospital staff could prevent him from taking a little stroll to the library before going to sleep, for example. Likewise, seeing Rudy simply walking around won’t raise any suspicion from Lightners even if they know of his illness.
3. The Knight never speaks to the Heroes.
Despite the fact the Knight was proven to talk with Darkners like Jevil and Tenna, they never talk when encountering the Legendary Heroes. Which is quite strange to say the least: the Knight doesn’t shy away from taunting and ridiculing them, but draws the line on saying a single word? If the Knight is Dess, this whole ordeal becomes even stranger: Kris is the only person here who could have recognized her voice, and their loyalties are unambiguous when it comes to the Knight for now, to the point they prevent themselves from thinking about the Knight to reveal their face to the Player (how would they know how Dess looks like?) and only turn the doorknob instead of opening the door.
However, Susie does know Rudy’s voice, and thus speaking before her would compromise his identity indeed. There could be an argument made that Tenna, for example, should have recognized his voice as well, but we were openly told how inconsistent Darkners’ memories are: despite both the Card Kingdom and the Cyber World being populated by playthings of Kris, not a single Darkner there recognizes them. It can’t be explained with passage of time either, as Noelle was frequently visiting the library and yet Queen singled her out not because of their shared history but because of her searches online. And, of course, Dess could be also recognized by Tenna.
4. The Knight acts cocky and playfully, just like Rudy.
People tend to assume that being playful is a character trait associated with Dess, which is, while not exactly untrue, is also far from the whole story. We know that Dess, for example, was determined to one day take her sister away from their domineering mother and show her the big city and did not play around with Kris when they were scaring Noelle. For me, it paints a picture of a person who’d see the things done instead of indulging herself in playing around.
On the other hand, Rudy was unambiguously shown to be cheerful, playful and cocky, with him even jokingly threatening both Susie and Kris. Interestingly enough, being an adult could also explain why the Knight appears to look so down on the Heroes, though you could definitely argue that such framing also works with the Knight being just a few years older than them.
5. The Knight has gaunt, malleable frame.
The appearance of the Roaring Knight made many people speculate that they can’t be fully a Lightner – after all, they were shown to constantly alter their body, which is not something other Lightners were seen to do. With that being said, there are a few reasons for it to work in this framework as well.
The Knight is gaunt and their very body seems to be distorting, falling apart as if from a horrible illness. Like the one Rudy could be suffering from, and such a condition could have been provoked by him spending so much time evoking Dark Fountains to begin with. The roaring of the Knight could also be translated as coughing in the Light World, which also supports the idea of Rudy being the culprit.
6. Rudy is the person Susie is searching for.
At the beginning of Chapter 4, Susie speculates that they need to search for a person who has connections to police, church and the mayoral office. It is just so happened that Rudy’s best friend was a police chief, that he is a frequent visitor at the church where his daughter participates in a choir and that his wife is the mayor of Hometown.
7. Rudy appears to be especially sick in Chapter 4, right after the Knight sprung into action.
While we don’t have a direct confirmation about Rudy’s sickness, it is undeniable that it progressed rapidly in a single day, to the point he can’t even stand during the hymn at the church. While him overextending himself just so that he could be here for Noelle could work as a suitable explanation, there is an alternative one as well.
Chapter 3 was the first time the Heroes met the Knight face to face and, depending on the result of their altercation, even managed to inflict some harm on them. As such, it perfectly explains why Rudy felt especially sick the very next day, considering how much work he did as the Knight. It also justifies the Knight not even trying to engage the Heroes and constantly running away in Chapter 4, to the point they prefer to unleash the Titan and hide instead of confronting them again.
8. Miscellaneous evidence.
While not that noteworthy on its own, there is a lot of small pieces of foreshadowing to support the idea of Rudy being the Knight.
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Rudy jokingly threatens to beat up both Kris and Susie, which the Knight does.
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Susie declares that they would easily defeat the Knight in the Light World, which, considering Rudy’s condition, they probably could.
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The Knight is the person the Player would recognize, and such a reveal could completely derail their mission. The scene of Kris thinking about the Knight also implies that they could remove their helmet, that it is not a part of their corrupted body.
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Kris seemed to deliberately avoid Rudy despite frequently visiting the hospital to play the piano and having no reservations when it comes to complaining about Alphys to Carol.
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Rudy seems to genuinely like Dragon Blazers, and the mechanics of the Dark Worlds are build around these games. Such familiarity could explain his skill in the battle against the Heroes.
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Carol immediately arriving to take the guitar from Susie in the Soul’s plain view is a little strange, considering that Kris tries to keep their accomplice hidden by wiping out their call history.
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Rudy is a new character, so he is ought to play a larger role in Deltarune.
Of course, we also should speculate on the possible motive of Rudy being the Knight, though I assume you already have an explanation in mind: he is trying to find Dess who was hopelessly lost in the darkness. We don’t know for certain for how long these plans have been in motion, though the Carol and Kris’ business does indicate that it's far from a recent development.
And so, imagine if Rudy’s mysterious illness doctors can’t figure out was a direct result of him spending months and possibly years opening up Dark Fountains in search of Dess, disturbing the balance between worlds. On top of being a tragic end, such a twist would allow the Knight to go relatively unpunished for their crimes: they are already dying after all, have written their fate by their very own deeds. As a religious person, Rudy could also view the Angel's Heaven as unambiguously good, thus giving him another motive for risking an event that would be apocalyptic for Darkners.
While you could argue that we have pretty much no evidence to suggest that revealing Dark Fountains, or whatever it was that damaged Rudy’s health so much, could result in any grave sickness, the possibility of Dess being the Knight also implies that Darkness is perfectly capable of harming Lightners and turning them unrecognizable in the Dark World. At the same time, Carol has no reason to appear as a deformed creature with malleable, decaying form.
But isn’t Rudy being set up to be healed by Susie? An interesting perspective that seems to neatly tie up Susie’s arc as a Healing Master, but it does have some major issues.
Firstly, Susie’s story thus far haven’t been deeply involved with Rudy – she has much more to do with Carol’s antagonism towards their relationship with Noelle rather than with Rudy’s support. As individual people, they are hardly anyone but friendly acquaintances, and, considering everything we learned by now, there is another explanation to wrap up Susie’s arc I will discuss a bit later.
Secondly, we don’t know how his illness would behave in the Dark World. We were shown that only serious physical injuries are being somewhat transferred between worlds, and there is little chance an illness acquired in the Light World could be healed in the Dark World, especially considering the very nature of the latter.
Thirdly, Susie becoming such an unrivaled master in healing magic in such a short time so that she could cure Rudy’s disease would be somewhat contrived from the writing perspective.
However, Susie can indeed save someone’s life with her unforeseen healing powers. Notice how the Prophecy seems to only depict her with a weapon, with Susie learning healing magic in the first place because she decided to make a choice for herself when she was offered none, when the story tried to force her. Because Susie would grow to be a true healing master, she will save Ralsei’s life even through he was prophesied to die. Remember another detail here: Tenna was prophesied to be cleaved by the blade and yet Susie, with the help of Darkners she rallied, restored him.
Susie averting the Prophecy by healing Ralsei would serve as a perfect ending to her story that we see foreshadowed before with Tenna – instead of risking her life to save her friends with violence, Susie would make a conscious decision to use magic and shed her weapon so that Ralsei will be saved. Likewise, it would compliment their feud over healing magic back in Chapter 4, with its initial resolution being, well, not entirely logical. For Ralsei, being healed by Susie would signify that he indeed needs to accept help from his friends, that he shouldn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, that even a Darkner like him – especially a Darkner like him – deserves friends to stand by his side.
Since we touched on the matter of writing however, there is a very important question left to be asked: would Rudy being the Knight over corrupted Dess compliment the writing in any way? And the answer is… not really? While the Dess solution does have enough issues on its own, they could be explained in later chapters, if not neglected outright for the sake of a bigger story. At the same time, the Knight has incomparably more foreshadowing, parallels and background evidence going for her than for Rudy.
Even my point about Dess’ characterization could be completely negated by the Knight having some noble goal we don’t recognize as of yet; not to mention, I wouldn’t really declare Dess to be the paragon of virtue based on her treatment of Kris, and there is definitely something more going on with Dess’ character than her simply being a brash older sister of Noelle.
There is a possible explanation people could turn to in search of the answer as well. If Dess as the Knight has some issues, could it be more eloquent to resolve the mystery with multiple culprits? Dess could play her ultimate part as the Knight in the narrative while other character will be roaming around Hometown and creating Dark World, perhaps to explicitly support Dess’ cause. Well, I do have something to say about this.
I always assumed ‘Multiple Knights’ theory to be completely redundant from the writing perspective: instead of a single antagonist following a coherent motive, we have multiple characters serving the same role in the story while having very little going on for them. In some renditions of the theory the said characters aren’t even aware of each other and come into the knowledge of Dark Worlds through chains of lucky coincidences – is that what a compelling, satisfying and logically sound story looks like?
But with recent evidence in mind, perhaps there could be multiple Knights all working for the cause of resurrecting Dess? Maybe Kris and Carol are roaming around Hometown to create Dark Fountains while Chapter 4 was taken care of by Alvin who seemed wary of Kris going to the shelter after the service. This theory could especially work since Kris was retconed to perfectly survive without their Soul for long periods of time, having no obstacles to create as many Dark Fountains as they please.
However, it’s worth pointing out that Father Alvin has absolutely no connection to Dess and was never implied to have one, just like it’s the case for him having anything to do with the Knight’s business. Even though Noelle sings in the choir, he seemed to be more concerned over Kris and their family rather than over Holidays. Him revealing the Dark Fountain out of selfish desire to see his father again also does not work: Father Alvin was never present in the Dark World to witness the result of his actions, there is no reason for him to create two Fountains, he was never implied to know anything about Dark Worlds, and him pursuing a completely separate motive overly complicates the story and distracts from the mystery of Dess.
Interestingly enough, we do hear about some specific rules about creating Darkners from the memories of loved ones, and we know that Susie, despite forming a bond with Gerson, failed. So perhaps it’s not about loving a person so much you could get a shadow of them back, but rather about caring about them so little – or not even knowing about their dust being there at all.
We could have assumed that the Card Kingdom and the Cyber World were unleashed by Kris to help Dess, but we know that Jevil met the Knight and did not recognize Kris as such, even warning the Heroes about their plans and painting them as adversaries. Likewise, Seam clearly differentiates between the Knight and Kris, and their dialogue in Chapter 1 implies that they have their personal account of that strange Knight. King is implied to have never met the Knight, so his testimony could be completely disregarded.
The Cyber World is a bit trickier, but we do have a major piece of evidence present in the Light World: the closet in the library is being described in the same way as the closed room in the church Kris refuses to open, implying that the Knight was hiding there. Since Darkners of Chapter 2 had no issues with recognizing the Knight as the creator of their world while Darkners of Chapter 3 never named them as such, it is perfectly logical to declare that the Knight creates the Fountains themselves and bestows Darkners with a new purpose without any assistance from the Light World.
Carol could have not stayed hidden in the church, which implies that she did not create the Cyber World as well. With that being said, there is some space behind the church that could lead to the room the Knight was hiding in, and that could have been explained by her running immediately after the heroes. But Susie doesn’t react to it, implying that there was no door leading outside, and the overall timings are so incredibly tight to the point of being improbably contrived.
Also, consider the very name of the Roaring Knight Darkners seem to be inherently familiar with: Queen specifically mentions that her world was created by the Roaring Knight despite not interacting with them, and Tenna speaks about the same Roaring Knight striking a deal with him. With that idea in mind, only the Knight themselves could have created the Cyber World, which almost guarantees them creating the Sanctuary and the Card Kingdom as well.
It is perfectly possible that writing could have a touch of contradiction to it, which seems to be a reoccurring issue with new chapters and with Chapter 4 in particular (like the Knight being conscious enough to taunt the Heroes and spare them… until they decided not to by unleashing the Titan anyway…?), but it is not the assumption we should entertain when discussing theories unless we have a pretty good reason – otherwise, virtually any idea would have a chance of being the answer, no matter how convoluted and unsatisfying it truly is.
For now, Dess corrupted by the darkness being the Knight is certainly the most probable answer Deltarune is pushing forwards. It is supported by many obvious pieces of evidence, thematically satisfying, allows Dess to be explored as an actual character and not a plot device and also parallels Asriel’s story from Undertale.
While Carol Holiday as the Knight does have a lot of potential when it comes to the story, the evidence from the game preclude her from being one. As someone who wholeheartedly supported this theory before, I see no possible way for her to be the Knight, especially over Rudy or Dess. Carol is a part of a conspiracy connected with the Knight, that much is obvious, but that doesn’t make her the Knight and neither it works in favor of theories naming her as such.
Finally, the idea of Rudy being the Knight, despite having less going on for it from the narrative standpoint, seems to be more logical for me and probably the only way to justify the Knight evading any direct altercation with the Heroes and then unleashing the Titan so that they could simply hide, not run away. And, to be completely honest here, it’s not like Rudy as the Knight has no foreshadowing or parallels of his own: after all, the second to last boss in Undertale was a grief-struck father who vainly hoped to see his family reunited again.
We can’t say for certain what goals the Knight is pursuing for now, or whether they wanted to take Toriel in the first place. Them unleashing another Fountain at the church implies that they hoped to capture her after all, but why is Kris okay with it? Or, rather, what do they feel about their family, exactly? The next chapter will discuss Kris' relationship with their family and will explain their contradictory loyalties.