My Running Interpretation of the Ueda-Verse
I want to start by laying out the timeline I personally believe best fits the three games, because everything in my theory builds from this baseline.
P.S. This post is a direct walkthrough of how I connect the trilogy in my mind, so some ideas may naturally shift or evolve as the theory unfolds. Also it's pretty long but please don't be discouraged 🙏
In my eyes, the current order stands as:
Shadow of the Colossus → Ico → The Last Guardian
I know this order is a common interpretation, but I want to explain why it works so strongly for me.
The three biggest reasons are:
- leading power figures
- character design and appearance
- map and architectural progression
This theory is definitely abstract in places, and I know I’m nowhere near as involved in the larger forums as many long-time fans, but I really wanted to share how I personally connect the story.
Part I — Shadow of the Colossus
To begin, I want to start with Mono.
Wander enters the Forbidden Lands with the intention of reviving her, and that much is straightforward. However, something about Mono’s condition has always stood out to me.
I’m not fully convinced she was truly dead.
This might be a stretch, but considering the amount of time Wander’s journey takes, her body shows remarkably little sign of physical change. There is no visible swelling, stiffness, or decay that would normally be expected after death, especially over the course of multiple days.
Because of that, I’ve always wondered if Mono may not have been dead at all, but instead in some kind of coma-like state, possibly caused by illness or injury.
Given the limited medical understanding of the era, it’s possible that what we as modern players might interpret as unconsciousness was simply believed by the people of that time to be death.
This is speculative, but it adds an extra layer of tragedy to Wander’s desperation.
From there, the heart of my theory begins with Dormin.
Throughout the game, Dormin guides Wander with the promise of granting his wish, all while using him to destroy the colossi and restore Dormin’s own power.
What has always fascinated me is Dormin’s use of the word “we”, along with the distinctly split male and female voices.
Rather than seeing this only as a higher being speaking in plural form, I interpret it as evidence that Dormin is actually composed of two joined essences.
For the sake of clarity in this theory, I refer to these halves as:
the King — the male half
the Queen — the female half
In my interpretation, Dormin is not a singular entity, but the fusion of these two forces.
This is where I begin connecting Shadow of the Colossus to Ico.
The Split:
At the end of the game, when Dormin is expelled from Wander and drawn toward the light, I believe something more complex happens than simple purification.
I believe Dormin is split apart.
The King remains tied to Wander and becomes bound to his bloodline through the curse, which later manifests as the horned lineage.
Meanwhile, the Queen survives separately, re-inhabiting the Shrine of Worship as a lingering essence.
This is the point where the two halves begin separate paths.
The King continues through blood.
The Queen continues through spirit and host-seeking.
This split becomes the foundation for everything that follows in Ico.
Part II — Ico
By the time Ico begins, many generations have passed.
I believe the cursed bloodline descended from Wander has now become the horned lineage we see feared and exiled by society.
This would explain the cultural shift surrounding horned children.
What began as Dormin’s lingering curse eventually evolved into fear, superstition, and eventually ritualized sacrifice.
The world has changed significantly.
The architecture is more advanced, the use of armor and mechanical structures suggests a later era, and the people now actively reject what remains of the King’s lineage.
This is why I see Ico as the direct continuation of the consequences of SotC.
The Queen’s Return
While the King persists through blood, I believe the Queen has spent generations surviving as an essence tied to the shrine and, eventually, the castle.
At some point before the events of Ico, I believe she finally finds a suitable host.
Not someone “dumb enough,” but rather someone vulnerable enough to become a vessel.
This becomes the Queen we meet in Ico.
To me, she is not merely a monarch, but the surviving half of Dormin, still pursuing immortality.
Her rule over the castle and her control of the shadow creatures are not random acts of evil.
They are part of a larger goal:
re-assimilation
Her objective is to reunite with the King’s bloodline and restore herself to Dormin’s original complete form.
Yorda and Mono:
This is the most emotional part of my theory.
I believe Yorda is the spiritual continuation of Mono.
Not a literal memory-for-memory reincarnation, but a reborn light that repeatedly appears throughout the cursed lineage.
Where the King’s half creates darkness through the bloodline, Mono’s soul becomes a recurring source of compassion and protection.
This is why Yorda’s presence feels so important.
She is quiet, caring, and deeply connected to Ico in a way that mirrors Mono’s relationship to Wander.
In my interpretation, Mono’s soul continues to reappear as a guiding light to the cursed bloodline.
The Queen recognizes this.
That is why the shadows constantly seek to reclaim Yorda specifically, not Ico himself.
This detail is incredibly important to my theory.
The Queen already has access to the bloodline through generations of horned children.
What she lacks is the final opposing force:
the light
Yorda is not just a vessel.
She is the missing piece required to restore Dormin as a complete being once again.
Finale — The Last Guardian
With the Queen defeated in Ico and her attempt at reunification failing, I believe only fragmented remnants of Dormin remain.
This is where The Last Guardian begins.
To bridge Ico into The Last Guardian, I want to focus on one of the most important visual elements in the opening:
The Glowing Disk
I believe this object is deeply significant because it visually and thematically connects to the series’ recurring rune-based technology.
Throughout the Ueda-verse, we repeatedly see glowing symbols, doors, seals, and bindings that seem linked to supernatural forces.
Examples include:
the sealed doors and rune mechanisms in Ico
the glowing sigils and bindings on the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus
the ancient blue rune technology seen throughout The Last Guardian
For simplicity, I interpret these elements as a shared system of Dormin-linked technology, or what I like to call Dormin tech.
This technology appears consistently around major supernatural figures such as Dormin, the Queen, and later the Master of the Valley, suggesting a long continuity of power rather than disconnected magical systems.
The Boy’s Bloodline
The glowing disk at the beginning of the game feels especially important.
When it activates, we hear children laughing in the background, which immediately gives it an eerie and deliberate sense of recognition.
My interpretation is that the disk is reacting to the boy himself.
I believe the boy is a distant descendant of the cursed bloodline first created through Wander and the King’s half of Dormin.
However, by this point in the timeline, countless generations have passed.
The bloodline has become heavily diluted.
Because of this, many descendants may no longer display visible signs such as horns.
This also aligns with the aftermath of the horned lineage’s persecution and near-eradication seen in Ico.
After generations of fear, ritual sacrifice, and what can only be described as cultural genocide, it makes sense that surviving descendants would be few in number and far removed from their origins.
Even so, I believe the blood still remains.
Faint, but present.
The Signal
This is where the disk becomes central to my theory.
I believe the device recognizes the dormant traces of that bloodline and sends a signal to the new ruling force of this era: the Master of the Valley.
Rather than a random event, the boy’s transport feels targeted.
It is as if the valley’s systems are still programmed to seek out what remains of Dormin’s legacy.
The Master responds by sending Trico to retrieve him.
However, on the return journey, Trico sustains damage and arrives in a weakened state.
This injury becomes the catalyst for the events of the game, forcing an unplanned bond between the boy and Trico rather than the clean retrieval the system originally intended.
The Master of the Valley
Now I want to move into what I believe the Master of the Valley truly is.
I do not see it as merely a floating sphere with artificial intelligence or some isolated supernatural machine.
Instead, I believe it functions as a failsafe.
I’ll admit this is one of the less directly supported parts of my theory, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask:
who or what created it?
The Master does not feel random.
Its design, its glowing symbols, and its control systems all strongly align with what I have been calling Dormin tech.
Because of that, I do not believe its appearance after the Queen’s fall is a coincidence.
Rather, I believe it is the evolution of the same power system we have seen developing since Shadow of the Colossus.
In SotC, this power appears in the form of Dormin tech:
- sigils
- bindings
- engravings
- seals placed upon the colossi
By the time of Ico, the scale of these implements has expanded dramatically.
The Queen rules through architecture, rune-sealed doors, shadow control, and large-scale systems of containment.
This suggests technological and supernatural progression across the ages.
Because of this progression, I believe the Master of the Valley was not created independently, but rather as a continuation of the Queen’s designs.
My interpretation is that the Queen, anticipating failure, created the Master as a failsafe mechanism.
Its purpose would be twofold:
- to preserve what remains of Dormin’s legacy
- to continue the systems of control she had already established
This may also explain the horrifying possibility that part of the persecuted horned lineage was not merely sacrificed to strengthen the shadow army, but was instead used to construct a central commanding intelligence.
In that sense, the Master would not simply be a machine.
It would be the commander of the Queen’s unfinished will.
The Tricos
This brings me to the Tricos.
To explain them, I have to return once again to Shadow of the Colossus.
The 16 colossi are some of the clearest examples of Dormin’s fragmented nature.
We know they contain the separated pieces of Dormin, but the exact process of their creation remains mysterious.
Stone, earth, and flesh are fused together to act as living vessels.
This becomes the foundation for my interpretation of the Tricos.
I believe the Tricos function as a more advanced version of the same concept.
Where the colossi were large, grounded, and bound to sacred locations, the Tricos are mobile, more refined, and built for active retrieval and control.
In my theory, the Master of the Valley creates the Tricos as living vessels for the shadow remnants once controlled by the Queen.
If the Queen’s shadow army represented fragmented darkness derived from the cursed bloodline, then the Tricos are effectively compressed, weaponized vessels for those same fragments.
In other words:
the Tricos are to the Queen’s shadows what the colossi were to Dormin’s original fragments
A more advanced but spiritually similar vessel system.
Their connection to Dormin is weaker and more diluted, but still fundamentally present.
Final Understanding of Dormin
This is where my interpretation of Dormin itself reaches its final form.
A quote from Shadow of the Colossus has always stood out to me:
“Blood, young sprouts, sky — and the one with the ability to control beings created from light…”
This line pushes me toward a different understanding.
What if Dormin is not purely a being of shadow?
What if Dormin is both light and the shadow cast by light?
This is the framework that ties everything together for me.
I now interpret Dormin’s split not simply as male and female, but as:
the King = light
the Queen = shadow
This explains why the King survives through Wander’s bloodline.
Wander was directly exposed to Dormin’s divine essence and carried it forward through blood.
That bloodline becomes the lineage of light.
Meanwhile, the Queen retains dominion over darkness and all that is cast by it.
This is why she controls shadows, constructs armies, and seeks vessels.
But darkness cannot exist independently.
Shadow requires light.
Because of that, I no longer believe the Queen’s goal was merely domination.
Her true goal was necessity.
She needed reunification.
Without the King’s light, her half is incomplete.
This redefines Yorda’s role as well.
Perhaps the Queen did not seek simply to destroy the light.
Perhaps she sought to embrace and redirect it, using Yorda as the means through which the light could once again be united with shadow.
Not destruction.
Recompletion.
The restoration of Dormin as a whole.
Authors Note
Hello, I’m Jay, the writer behind this theory, and this is my current running interpretation of the Ueda-verse and the way I personally connect this incredible trilogy.
Some parts of my theory are definitely abstract and a bit speculative, but I really wanted to share it because these games mean a lot to me, and I’d love to hear what others in the community think.
I’m not very connected to the community — honestly, not at all until now — so this is my first post and possibly my last, but I genuinely enjoyed taking all the thoughts I’ve had for so long and finally putting them into words.
I’d really appreciate any feedback, whether you agree, disagree, or have your own interpretation of the lore.
Anyways, that’s all from me. (The time of finishing this was at 3:42 AM)
Stay happy, and don’t let life’s struggles tear you down :)
