The Golden Kingdom was trapped inside the island’s dungeon a thousand years ago. The royal family’s last name is Merini, so the Golden Kingdom could also logically be called Merini Island and the Kingdom of Merini.
Merini is part of the Eastern Continent, which is mostly populated by dwarves and gnomes, and home to the largest gnomish nation. There are also many people from the shorter-lived races, however Merini is the only tall-man kingdom we explicitly know of.
Based on what we’ve seen of Merini, they appear to be a post-Antiquity Mediterranean culture, a fusion of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, with some influence from the Germanic and Nordic cultures that seem to belong to their neighbors.
(Japanese Pronunciation: Merini)
Merini (メリニ) hasn’t been written in English characters by Kui, so we can’t be 100% sure if it’s Merini or Melini since the two sounds are interchangeable in Japanese. Yen Press and most other translators have used Merini, so I will too… However both spellings are equally valid in my opinion, since no matter how you spell it in English, the subtext is basically the same! It’s worth saying though, that since the Japanese pronounce it “Merini”, that means it’s probably meant to be “Melini.”
Merini is located on the northwestern coast of the Eastern Continent, there is at least one mountain, and it shares a border with Kahka Brud. Since it’s close to where Marcille is from, and Merini is known for producing olives, it would make sense for Merini to have a Mediterranean-like culture and climate. There are many similarities between Merini and the real world city of Venice.
Merini is an Italian family name, primarily found in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, which shares a border with the Venetian region of Veneto. Merini is a patronymic surname derived from the given name Merino, which is a variant of Marino.
Marino has Roman origins, and originates from the Latin word "marinus," which translates to "of the sea" or "belonging to the sea." It was likely used to indicate a connection or association with the sea or someone who lived close to the coast.
Since Merini is a kingdom by the sea with a large coastline (it seems to be a sort of peninsula), and it’s also a kingdom that rises out of the sea, “of the sea” makes perfect sense as its name. The name Merini coming specifically from Lombardy, which borders Veneto, also makes a lot of sense since Merini has so much in common with Venice.
Melini (Μελίνη) is a village on the island nation of Cyprus. Cyprus is geographically a part of West Asia, but its cultural ties and geopolitics are overwhelmingly Southeast European, and it is closely tied to Greece. Cyprus is the third-largest and third-most populous island in the Mediterranean, and is located east of Greece, north of Egypt, south of Turkey, and west of Lebanon and Syria.
In Ancient Greek, the word melini means foxtail millet (Setaria italica), and probably comes from Proto-Indo-European melh- (“to grind, crush”).
Foxtail millet is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet, and the most grown millet species in Asia. Foxtail millet was domesticated in China around 6500 BC, and spread from there to become a staple crop in many parts of the world. It only arrived in Europe much later, around 600 BC.
Melini meaning a type of grain makes sense since the people of the kingdom would, without Thistle’s protection, eventually be devoured by the demon as if they were crops grown for food.
Being an ancient grain used primarily in Asia may also fit with the fact that the Golden Kingdom was once an elven territory, so the elves (who seem to be South Asian and Mediterranean culturally) may have introduced the millet to the country when they were in control of it.
It’s also fitting that Melini, like Cyprus, is a country in the center of many different cultures, where West meets East, since it’s a place that has traded hands between the elves, the dwarves and tall-men.
In the real world, the olive is a species of small tree or shrub, which originates in the Mediterranean Basin, which includes Southern Europe, West Asia and North Africa. The species is cultivated in all the countries of the Mediterranean region and is extremely important to their cultures. Knowing that Merini grows olives is a valuable clue to figuring out the world of Dungeon Meshi: if they can grow olives, that means they must have a Mediterranean climate!
A Mediterranean climate, also called a dry summer climate, is a temperate climate type that occurs in the lower mid-latitudes (normally 30 to 44 north and south latitude) and most commonly on the western coast of landmasses. Such climates typically have dry summers and wet winters, with summer conditions ranging from warm to hot and winter conditions typically being mild to cool.
The Mediterranean Basin, California, and parts of Chile, South Africa, and Australia all have Mediterranean climates, and similar types of vegetation.
These areas are therefore where the so-called "Mediterranean trinity" of major agricultural crops (wheat, grapes and olives) are able to be grown. As a result, these regions are notable for their high-quality wines, grapeseed/olive oils, and bread products.
In Dungeon Meshi, olives may have been introduced to Merini by the Western elves, since they seem to be the source of Ancient Mediterranean culture, but it’s also possible that olives originated in the Eastern hemisphere.
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 126 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are linked by 472 bridges.
The city’s symbol is a winged lion holding a book, it was a major crossroads for international trade and warfare between East and West, and the city is famous for sinking into the ocean… All things it has in common with Dungeon Meshi’s Merini.
For almost a millennium (810-1797), Venice was the capital of the Republic of Venice. It was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the staging area for wars between the East and the West, and an important center of commerce from the 13th century to the end of the 17th.
The city-state of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history.
Venice, because of its location, is always at risk of flooding and sinking into the water. The city will one day become uninhabitable unless a solution is found and implemented in time.
The original population of Venice consisted mostly of refugees – from nearby Roman cities such as Padua, Aquileia, Treviso, Altino, and Portogruaro, as well as from the undefended countryside – who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions.
We know that Merini has a Mediterranean-like culture, which I think originates from the elves of the West. So if the history of Merini is at all similar to Venice, this would suggest that the people of Merini originally lived further inland on the Eastern Continent, but that their culturally Northern/Western/Central/Eastern European neighbors (mostly dwarves and gnomes) pushed them out to the coast… And eventually desired to wipe them out entirely.
We know that during Delgal’s reign, neighboring countries were threatening to destroy Merini, and with all of this information, we can guess that it might have been out of a desire to destroy what they saw as a foreign, elven-influenced culture ruled by tall-men that should not be allowed to exist next to them.
The winged lion is the patron deity or guardian beast of Merini, and the demon takes on this form when it begins to seduce Thistle. For a long time, Thistle holds the demon captive inside of a magic book.
The demon continues to use this winged lion form for the remainder of the manga, probably because it’s the shape that Laios and his party first encountered it as, though as the manga progresses it gains more and more traditionally demonic features, such as goat horns, additional limbs and wings, and strange pupils. We know at other times the demon has manifested to other people as various types of sheep, goat or pig as well.
Another likely inspiration for Merini is Mont-Saint-Michel, a tidal island in Normandy, France. The island lies approximately one kilometer off France's north-western coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River near Avranches. Now a rocky tidal island, the mount occupied dry land in prehistoric times. As sea levels rose, erosion reshaped the coastal landscape, and several outcrops of granite emerged in the bay.
Polderisation and occasional flooding have created salt marsh meadows that were found to be ideally suited to grazing sheep. The well-flavored meat that results from the diet of the sheep in the pré salé (salt meadow) makes agneau de pré-salé (salt meadow or salt marsh lamb) a local specialty that may be found on the menus of restaurants that depend on income from the many visitors to the mount.
Mont-Saint-Michel’s position—on an island just a few hundred meters (yards) from land—made it accessible at low tide to the many pilgrims to its abbey, and defensible as the incoming tide stranded, drove off, or drowned would-be assailants.
According to legend, Saint Aubert received repeated dream visions from the archangel Michael to build on the island. In 708, he built an oratory there, and in 710, the island was renamed from Mont Tombe to Mont-Saint-Michel au péril de la Mer (Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea).
In the following years the Mont exchanged hands and was fought over multiple times for its strategic value. Eventually the Mont began to accumulate wealth and power, which had a negative impact on the lifestyle of the religious people who lived there. Wealthy people from outside bribed and influenced the monks, and it eroded the purity of their religious worship on the island, leading to the island’s gradual corruption and downfall.
Mont-Saint-Michel’s popularity and prestige as a center of pilgrimage waned with the Reformation, and by the time of the French Revolution there were scarcely any monks in residence. The abbey was closed and converted into a prison, initially to hold clerical opponents of the republican regime. High-profile political prisoners followed. The prison was closed in 1863.
In 1874, Édouard Corroyer, a French architect of historic monuments, began a fifteen year long restoration project, to protect the historic island from further decay.
Mont-Saint-Michel is dominated by its abbey, which looks very similar to the Golden Castle that Kui draws at the center of Merini, poking out of the sea as the country rises up out of the ocean at the end of the manga. It is a combination of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. The abbey went through many phases and transformations during its long life, and it could be considered a mega-structure, where new things were built on top of the old, similar to the layered way that Merini’s dungeon is depicted. Notre-Dame Sous-Terre (Our Mother Underground) is the oldest part of Mont-Saint-Michel, built in 966, but later completely covered by the multiple expansions of the abbey and then forgotten for many centuries. It features pre-Romanesque architecture.
Mont-Saint-Michel used to be a part of the nearby landmass but became an island as the tides rose. Merini sank beneath the sea, and then rose out of the sea again a thousand years later. Both of them have changed hands frequently between different rival groups, and have often been under siege. The island’s religious past involves dream visions from the archangel Michael, who ordered the island be developed into a place of worship. The people of Merini worship the winged lion, and receive dream visions from the demon pretending to be the winged lion.
Though they are not the same, sometimes the archangel Michael/Saint Michael is confused with Saint Mark, and Saint Mark is famously associated with the winged lion of Venice, which I discussed earlier.
The corruption of the people of Mont-Saint-Michel mirrors the corruption of the Ancients and the people of Merini, going from just utilizing their resources to survive, to living in grotesque luxury has narrative echoes as well.
The way that the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel was built, new on top of old, hidden ruins (Notre-Dame Sous-Terre) showing the history of the island, reminds me of the ancient dwarven ruins that are hidden beneath Merini. “Our Mother Underground” is a very evocative name, which sounds like something dwarves might call a sacred place. If the Dungeon Meshi elves are the Romans, then the dwarven ruins being pre-Romanesque would fit perfectly. The ancient dwarves built in Merini, then the elves built on top of them, and finally the land was given to tall-men to create a buffer zone between the two antagonistic races.
Mont-Saint-Michel was turned into a prison for many years, and Merini was hidden away inside of the dungeon, which is a prison made to contain the demon, which then made Merini into a prison too: Thistle will not allow any of the residents to leave, not even through death. In the end, the island rose back up out of the water, and in the post-canon materials, it is most likely being restored and rebuilt into a beautiful, prosperous kingdom once more!
It’s also worth noting that Mont-Saint-Michel has unique culinary culture, specifically the agneau de pré-salé (salt meadow or salt marsh lamb) which is a local specialty, and omelette de la mère Poulard, a special egg dish that the island is famous for. Eggs are, of course, an important metaphor in Dungeon Meshi, and this particular omelet was invented by a woman named Anne! Could that be why Kui named the pony and the kelpie in Senshi’s story Anne? I’ll talk more about Anne Poulard and her famous omelet in Senshi’s entry in Chapter 9, The Dwarves.
Although I think that the kingdom of Merini has the most in common with Venice, there are also some interesting parallels between Merini and the island of Crete.
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, and was the center of Europe's first advanced civilization, the Minoans. This island is the source of the story of the Minotaur and the labyrinth, which are hugely important to the story of Dungeon Meshi. In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate, confusing structure built to hold the Minotaur, a monster who could only eat human flesh. For more info on this, see Chapter 12, Elven Culture.
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age culture known for its monumental architecture, complex urban settlements, and energetic art. It developed from the local Neolithic culture around 3100 BCE, and eventually came under the cultural and political domination of the mainland Mycenaean Greeks. Later it was ruled by Rome, then successively by the Byzantine Empire, Andalusian Arabs, the Venetian Republic, and the Ottoman Empire.
Minoan civilization was largely forgotten after the Late Bronze Age collapse, and was only rediscovered in the early twentieth century through archaeological excavation.
Little is known about the structure of Minoan society. Minoan art contains no unambiguous depiction of a monarch, and textual evidence suggests they may have had some other form of governance. Likewise, it is not clear whether there was ever a unified Minoan state. Religious practices included worship at peak sanctuaries and sacred caves, but nothing is certain regarding their pantheon.
The Minoans constructed enormous labyrinthine buildings whose exact role in Minoan society is a matter of continuing debate. Because neither of the Minoan scripts has been fully deciphered, neither of them can be read, and their relationship to other ancient languages is unknown.
The Ancients in Dungeon Meshi were a hyper-advanced civilization that has been partially forgotten in the present day. They are mysterious, and most people know very little about them. The Ancients built the original dungeons (labyrinths) to contain the demon, some of these dungeons are underground (caves) and some are in towers (mountains). Kui shows us a post-cataclysm Ancient human rediscovering the demon by falling into a cave by accident. Most modern people in Dungeon Meshi don’t know what the dungeons (labyrinths) are actually for.
Also, the island of Crete is mountainous, and Merini has at least one mountain, the tip of which is the island where most of the manga takes place.
(Japanese Pronunciation: Shisuru Alt. Translation: Sissel)
Thistle is an elf that once served as a jester and eventually the court mage for the Golden Kingdom. He was raised alongside Delgal like they were brothers, but he was never officially adopted into the royal family.
Thistle was taken from his parents at such a young age that he doesn’t remember his real name, or much about his life circumstances. He believes that he was abandoned, and he’s happy to consider Merini his home. He doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in elves or elven culture.
Thistle (シスル) was originally translated as “Sissel” due to the fact that the English word thistle is written “shi-su-ru” in Japanese katakana because Japanese doesn’t have a “th” sound, the r/l sounds are swapped in Japanese pronunciation, and additional U’s had to be added to break up consonant sounds. Ryoko Kui has since clarified in the World Guide that the character’s name is Thistle.
English translators most likely didn’t recognize that “shisuru” was supposed to be the English word Thistle, and instead turned the Shi into Si, dropped all the U’s and turned the R into an L to get something pronounced Si-sil, which they then chose to write as Sissel due to that being an existing name.
(There is an alternate universe where they could have chosen to translate his name as Cecil…)
Yen Press, the English publishers of Dungeon Meshi, then altered the artwork in the first version of the Adventurer's Bible and changed the English text Kui used to write “Thistle” so it said “Sissel” instead, probably because they didn’t want to have to go back and correct the previous volumes of the manga the next time they printed more books. They also edited a blurb in Adventurer's Bible that originally said Thistle was named after the thistle flower, to instead say “Delgal’s father named him “Sissel” to sound like the thistle plant.”
A few other official translations have made similar mistakes with his name, including Japanese merchandise and social media posts created for the anime.
Yen Press also mistakenly used female pronouns for Thistle for several volumes, and then added extra dialog that didn’t exist in the Japanese version of the manga, that had the main party learn Thistle’s gender and switch to using male pronouns. At no point in the original Japanese version are the characters confused about Thistle’s gender (though it’s possible they don’t know it), they just don’t use any pronouns for him at all for a long time, which is not unusual in Japanese.
The word thistle comes from Old English þistel, from Proto-Germanic þistilaz. þīh- from teyg-, which is a variant of Proto-Indo-European (s)teyg- (“to prick”).
A thistle is a type of flowering plant characterized by its sharp prickles, which are an adaptation that protects the plant from being eaten. Many species of thistle are invasive weeds, hated by farmers for how they suppress the growth of desired feed plants and prevent livestock from grazing. A 10% infestation of thistles leads to a 10% decrease in edible plants in a field, and getting rid of them is very difficult without specialized herbicides. Some species of thistle are also mildly poisonous.
However, if one can avoid the painful prickles, thistles are edible and a great source of protein. I’ll discuss the historic use of the thistle plant at the end of Thistle’s entry.
Although invasive thistles are often hated, native thistles can be a natural part of an ecosystem, and they provide a valuable service by reintroducing oxygen and nutrients to soil that is too barren to support other types of plant life. Goats, deer and sheep will all eat at least part of the thistle, and it seems like cows can be trained to do so as well, though farmers must monitor their cows thistle consumption to prevent nitrate poisoning caused by overindulgence.
It’s worth noting that goats are one of the creatures most likely to eat thistles, and a goat is one of the other forms that the demon takes on.
Like a thistle plant protecting itself with its prickles, Thistle in Dungeon Meshi has spent a thousand years avoiding being eaten, and when the demon does finally eat him, he says the flavor of Thistle’s desires is exquisite. Based on how the demon acts, I think no other Dungeon Lord has ever survived as long as Thistle has, so you could say that Thistle has been “a thorn in his side” for a long time.
The Touden siblings’ family name comes from the word thorn, which is a similar plant structure that keeps plants from being eaten, and trying to eat Laios is what eventually causes the demon’s ultimate “death.” So the fact that the Toudens and Thistle have this motif in common between their names is very likely intentional!
On a deeper level, the demon is using dungeons in order to cultivate and grow human desires, so that it can consume those desires, like a farmer raising livestock. The fact that Thistle’s presence is preventing the demon from feeding on Thistle, or on any other humans in the Merini island dungeon, makes Thistle a pest that is getting in the demon’s way.
Thistle is also metaphorically an invasive species in the Golden Kingdom. Freinag’s advisors are afraid that if an elf became a part of the court, they will eventually undermine and usurp the royal family’s power, and that’s exactly what Thistle ends up doing, even though it isn’t on purpose.
Although his presence in the Golden Kingdom is what saves them from being killed by neighboring groups, Thistle’s insistence on protecting everyone to the point that nobody ages or dies anymore stifles and suffocates the people. All of the adults eventually go mad and try to escape, and the children become complacent pseudo-adults, trapped in teenage bodies for a thousand years. They are like a field of grass being choked to death by a thistle plant that is protecting them from being eaten… But also doesn’t allow them to grow past a certain point and live their natural lives.
Though Yaad could have perhaps retaken the kingship in the end, he chooses to pass it on to Laios instead, effectively destroying the Merini lineage, exactly as the advisors feared might happen.
Many myths, legends, and fairy tales make use of the self-fulfilling prophecy as a central element of narratives that are designed to illustrate inexorable fate. A common motif is that a child is prophesied to cause something that those in power do not want to happen, but the prophesied events come about as a result of the actions taken to prevent them. One of the best known examples of this is the story of Oedipus and his father Laios, who is one of the namesakes of Dungeon Meshi’s main character, Laios.
The mythological Laios was so afraid of his son rising up to take his throne that he unknowingly created a situation that led to it happening. The advisors of Freinag Merini were so afraid of an elf in their court usurping their tall-man kingdom that they created a situation where that is exactly what happened.
In Dungeon Meshi, Laios is the one that ends this tragic story and brings hope, rather than the one that starts it.
If Freinag’s advisors had gotten an adult elf, maybe Freinag wouldn’t have become so attached and Thistle wouldn’t have become so close to Delgal. Or if Thistle had been truly treated like Delgal’s brother and equal, and a legitimate member of the royal family, even if he was excluded from the line of inheritance, maybe Thistle wouldn’t have acted the way he did, and the ultimate tragedy of Merini could have been averted.
However, one could argue that things that happened because of Thistle’s presence were both a self-fulfilling prophecy and also something that needed to happen. The country of Mereni was struggling for its survival. Freinag was assassinated by one of his own subordinates, so the royal family was unpopular, and they had a dying heir, and they were under attack by neighboring countries that wanted to destroy them.
Thistle, although he is blamed for the destruction of the house of Merini, is the one that enables the eventual reinvigoration of the country. He saves the common people and the culture of Merini by hiding it away in the dungeon. He causes the gradual dying off of all of the old people of Merini, who take their old-fashioned ways of thinking with them. The young people are malleable, bored and eager to try new things.
Then the dungeon draws in people like Laios, Marcille, Chilchuck, Senshi, and Kabru, who all have new, groundbreaking ideas about how society should function, and who are motivated to build a better world where people of every race can be equals, and nobody goes hungry.
This does lead to the Merini family losing its power, but the culture of their country and the peasantry has survived. Merini is being turned into a new country that has a strong presence on the global stage, and that is developing radical, revolutionary new ideas that will probably change the whole Dungeon Meshi world for the better.
In the end, Thistle’s actions doomed one bloodline, but saved the country as a whole from being just a sad, forgotten footnote in history… and probably directly enabled the world to become a better place.
Sissel is a Norwegian women’s name, a variant of Cecilia. Cecilia comes from Latin Caecilia, feminine form of Caecilius, a Roman family name possibly derived from the descriptive nickname caecus (“blind”).
The Caecilii were a plebian (commoner) clan in Ancient Rome, and over time their name was often mistaken for a personal name, and so it metamorphosed into the name Caecilius/Caecilia.
The Caecilii traced their origin to the mythical Caeculus, a son of Vulcan (god of blacksmiths). Caeculus was abandoned by his parents to die as an infant, but he was adopted and raised in the countryside among shepherds, and he eventually became a bandit. He called upon the people of the countryside to build a new town, convincing them with the aid of a miracle.
The most famous Cecilia is Cecilia of Rome, a martyr and a patron saint of music. She was a Catholic that had taken a vow of virginity, but her parents forced her to marry a pagan man. As music played at her wedding, she “sang in her heart to God” and so is associated with music. She was able to convert her new husband to Catholicism and keep her vow of virginity, and eventually when she died it involved her surviving miraculously for three days after being hit on the neck by a sword.
Though I think Kui intended the character’s name to be Thistle, I do think it’s possible that she looked up the name Sissel as well and liked that Sissel also had so many interesting connotations, so the name would work no matter what version you heard.
Thistle is “blind” in that he has lost the ability to objectively understand what is happening around him, he refuses to acknowledge that Delgal is dead or that the people of the Golden Kingdom want to be free of him, even if it means that they’ll have to someday die.
Thistle was also taken from his birth parents, unknown elves who may have abandoned him like in the Caeculus myth. Like Caeculus, Thistle is also able to perform a miracle and convince the people of the Golden Kingdom to trust him as their savior, which leads to them creating their new home inside of the dungeon.
Finally, Saint Cecelia is the patron of musicians and Thistle is a musician, sometimes he even uses a flute as a magic wand. When Thistle gets his desires eaten in the manga, he doesn’t pray to any god, but he does beg for someone, anyone to hear him, to save him, which is essentially what a prayer is.
Thistle then reaches out with his hand, and in his last moments of consciousness, he performs one last miracle (like Caeculus, like Cecelia) and brings Marcille back to life, which is the thing that saves Laios and his party, since otherwise they probably wouldn’t have been able to recover from their battle with Thistle.
Finally, like Cecelia, Thistle miraculously survived death multiple times, living over a thousand years, then living even after all of his desires were eaten, and then possibly living past the end of the manga, since Kui has not told us that he definitely passed away.
The thistle is the national emblem of Scotland. According to legend, while attempting to sneak up on the Scottish army, a barefoot Norseman stepped on a thistle, causing him to cry out in pain, thus alerting Scots to the presence of Norse invaders. Thistle in Dungeon Meshi isn’t much of an early warning system, but like the legendary Scottish thistle, he did protect his home from Nordic (dwarven) invaders.
In Portugal, the thistle was sometimes used as a heraldic element or Christian symbol that evoked the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Images of thistles are often seen carved into stone churches, monasteries, and tombs.
In the Medieval era, the thistle was a symbol of the Virgin Mary because its white sap looked like milk, however it may also have an association with sex because the sap looks like semen. People also thought the thistle could cure baldness.
Thistle plants can be eaten, and they were popular in Ancient Roman cuisine. In the modern day, they are mostly used in the production of a specific type of cheese in Portugal, where thistle extract is used instead of rennet. They have also been used for medicinal purposes, such as treating swollen joints, and liver or stomach problems.
Some Roman recipes include thistles prepared with salted gravy, olive oil, and hard-boiled eggs; thistles prepared with herbs, and boiled thistles prepared with pepper, cumin, gravy, and olive oil.
In the historic Portuguese cookbook from 1680, “Arte de cozinha dividida em duas partes” by Domingos Rodrigues, there are references to dishes that use thistles, such as ‘thistles curdled with eggs’, ‘bundle of thistle garnished with the same thistle’, ‘Italian-style thistle garnished with cream’, ‘boiled thistles’, among others. This tells us that both Portugal and Italy used the thistle in some dishes around this time.
Another Portuguese cookbook, Lucas Rigaud’s 1780 “Cozinheiro Moderno ou Nova Arte de Cozinha” had more than seven hundred recipes from the kitchens of European nobility, including recipes with thistles, which tells us that other countries in Europe also enjoyed eating thistles at one point.
After the eighteenth century, the use of thistles in cooking became rare, most likely because there was an abundance of other easier to eat foods available because of industrial agriculture. Thistle is still sometimes used for specialty dishes.
Because all of this information about thistles comes from Portugal, and the cheese made with thistle extract is Portuguese, this could suggest that Merini’s culture has specifically Portuguese elements in it.
This makes sense, since Portugal is a Mediterranean culture, like Merini is implied to be, and like Merini’s position on the far west of the Eastern Continent, Portugal is the west-most Continental European country that borders the Atlantic Ocean.
Because of its position, Portugal has historically been a major entry point into the rest of Europe, and international trade was for a long time the foundation of their economy. It would make sense if the same was true for Merini.
Although Thistle was never officially adopted by the tall-man Merini family, he is taken in, loved by Freinag, and raised beside Delgal like a brother. Unfortunately Delgal’s wife and children resent Thistle and there is an uncomfortable distance between them because he is not officially a part of their family, and they probably see Thistle as a threat to their control of Merini. Thistle has more power than Delgal, and more power than them, and that is unacceptable.
Thistle is one of four characters (Kabru, Kiki & Kaka) in Dungeon Meshi that are involved in an interracial adoption. All of the adopted children have dark skin while their adoptive parents have light skin, and all of them are of a different race than their adoptive parents, and demonstrate different possible outcomes to an interracial adoption.
I believe that Kui, after showing two interracial adoptions that have gone very, very wrong (Thistle and Kabru), wanted to make sure readers didn’t think she was trying to say all interracial adoption was inherently bad, so she added Kiki and Kaka’s happy relationship with Mr. and Mrs. Floke to round the story out and show that it is possible to have a positive outcome in these types of situation.
Originally Thistle appears to have lived with the rest of the Golden Kingdom and the Merini family in the dungeon, and up until Yaad’s birth, things seemed to be happy. However, after Thistle banishes Eodio’s soul from his body, it seems like Thistle moves himself and the comatose bodies of the Merini family to his hidden house in the depths of the dungeon. Only Yaad remains in the Golden Kingdom, and Thistle eventually takes him too, when he believes that Yaad has betrayed him.
In Thistle’s secret house, which resembles a toy or doll house from a fairy tale, Thistle has arranged the soulless bodies of the Merini family around a dinner table, in a desperate attempt to maintain the fantasy that they are a loving family, and that everything will be all right once Thistle finds Delgal.
In this little toy house, Thistle has spent years filling diaries with writing and poetry, surrounded by the comatose bodies of the family he loves (Delgal, Yaad) and hates (Everyone else), and rooms full of shattered mirrors, hung floor to ceiling. What is he trying to avoid looking at? The reality that he doesn’t look like his adopted family? The fact that his body still looks childish while Delgal is an old man, close to death, close to leaving Thistle behind? It’s ambiguous.
Thistle is obviously deeply scarred by the rejection of Delgal’s wife and children, and his lack of legitimacy in the family troubles him. He doesn’t belong with the elves (he believes he was abandoned, and doesn’t want to connect with their culture), but he also doesn’t belong with the tall-men, even though he considers Merini his home, and loves Delgal with all his heart.
This may be a commentary on the ways that interracial adoptees often have difficulty finding their place in both their birth culture and their adopted culture, and how they may feel like an intruder in their adopted family, where they are treated like a lesser family member because they are adopted.
(Japanese Pronunciation: Furaināgu)
Freinag (フライナーグ) is the king that unofficially adopts Thistle. He’s Delgal’s father, and the ancestor of the Island’s governor poisons him on Delgal’s wedding day. Freinag does not appear to be a real name or word, however if we break it into parts…
Free, not enslaved. It comes from Middle High German vrî, Old High German frî, from Proto-West Germanic frī. Many ancient names include a mention of whether or not the name-bearer is free or not, since only free people were considered “citizens”, and only citizens had rights.
Nag can either come from Middle English and mean an old, useless horse, or from Swedish nagga, Danish nage or Icelandic nagga, meaning someone who complains a lot, a persistent bother.
Freinag was assassinated because he was an unpopular king, perhaps once he was a free, noble horse, but now he’s just become useless in his old age, and his subordinates were eager to replace him with someone else.
(Japanese Pronunciation: Derugaru, Alt. Translations: Dergal, Delgar, Dergar)
Delgal (デルガル) is the son of Freinag, the father of Eodio, and grandfather of Yaad. He was raised alongside Thistle and they think of each other like brothers. Thistle’s obsession with protecting Delgal is his primary motivation throughout the story.
Delgal is a real French family name, mostly seen in the Southern part of France, in Tarn-et-Garonne specifically. There’s a township in Tarn that was named Gaillac by the Ancient Romans, and this name comes from the Latin word gallus, meaning a Gaul, or an inhabitant of Gaul, the ancient name for the region that is now known as France. So people with the name “Delgal” are most likely people whose ancestors were from the town of Gaillac, and their name means “from Gaul.”
It’s interesting to note that “del” is Italian or Spanish rather than French, despite the name belonging primarily to French people. What this likely means is it was a name given to people from Gaul who lived in Italy or Spain for a time, and so the locals called them “Delgal”... And then they took the name Delgal back home with them when they returned to France.
The kingdom of Merini appears to have a Mediterranean culture, so the name Delgal could just be describing the heritage of the Merini bloodline as being Gaulish, which makes sense.
But since “del” means “of the” or “from”, what else could “gal” mean?
In several Nordic languages, gal means crazy, or it means to shout spells. It is derived from Old Norse galinn, from gala (“sing bewitching songs” or “bewitched by magical singing”), which comes from Proto-Germanic galaną and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European gʰel- (“to shout, charm away”).
So perhaps Delgal is meant to mean “the son of the one who was enchanted by magical singing”, since Thistle is a musician who uses magic, and it was Delgal’s father who unofficially adopted Thistle, enchanted by the music Thistle made. This led to Delgal and Thistle’s close relationship, and Delgal pushing Thistle to learn magic, and eventually Delgal urging Thistle to solve their problems using magic… Which led to the downfall of the Merini bloodline.
Eodio (エオディオ) is Delgal’s son and Yaad’s father. He is often a source of conflict in the family because he feels Thistle is preventing him and his son Yaad from ruling the country as is their right as Delgal’s descendants. Thistle threw Eodio’s soul out of his body during an argument, it’s unclear if Eodio is still a ghost, or if he’s moved on to the afterlife or if his soul has been destroyed. Eodio’s body was destroyed when Delgal possessed it to try and reach the surface to find help, and so Thistle has replaced Eodio’s body at the dinner table with a comical-looking wooden dummy that resembles a marionette.
Eodio isn’t a name that I can find, however “dio” in Latin means god (in ancient times, any god, after Christianity, the Christian God), and combining it with “eo” could have several different meanings.
“Eo dio” or “e o dio” means “by that god” or “from god.” Eodio was very sickly, and he only survived because Thistle was actively using magic to keep him alive. So you could say that Eodio is alive “by the will of god”, or that Eodio’s life is a “gift or blessing from god”, and in this case, Thistle has become the god of the kingdom of Merini who controls life and death.
Eo dio can also mean “oh God!” in Italian, an exclamation of despair or excitement. Taken as a positive, this could be expressing gratitude for how Thistle saved Eodio’s life, or taken negatively, it could be a cry of despair because of what Thistle did to Eodio eventually.
Eodio also has a strong resemblance to the word “odio” which means “hate” in many Latin languages, and comes from Proto-Italic odjom. This could be meant to describe the distrust and dislike that exists between Eodio and Thistle.
(Japanese Pronunciation: Yaado)
Yaad (ヤアド) is the youngest member of the Merini family.
I couldn’t find any name that resembled Yaad, however, “yado” in Japanese is やど, meaning lodging, inn, house, or home. Yaad welcomes Laios’ party into the Golden Kingdom’s village and treats them with hospitality, and at the end of the manga Yaad is the one that invites Laios to rule the kingdom, so that could be what Kui was thinking of when she named him this.
The word yad/yaad (יד) in Hebrew means “hand.” This is also the name of a Jewish ritual pointer, used to follow along with the text while reading Torah scrolls. The yad is often a long rod, capped by a small hand with its index finger pointing from it.
The yad ensures that the parchment is not touched during the reading. There are several suggested reasons for this, including the mistaken idea that the fragile parchment is easily damaged by skin oils. However, the true reason for using the yad is to preserve the ritual purity of the sacred text by not having human hands touch it.
I think Yaad being named after the Jewish pointing device is a very intriguing possibility. Yaad is one of the few characters in Dungeon Meshi that is explicitly religious: he goes to a church, he prays, and he believes in the Winged Lion being the guardian deity of the Golden Kingdom. His introduction to the story is also religiously coded, he pleads for Laios to save them from Thistle, talks about prophecy and divine visions given in dreams, and is presented with a holy, priest-like aura. His design is religious-looking, although what he is wearing is actually a vest on top of a long dress-like robe, it resembles an alb (long, high-collared robe) and in close-ups, where you cannot see that it's a vest, the vest looks like a stole (scarf) worn by Catholic priests.
The stole of a Catholic priest sometimes has a cross sewn or embroidered on either end, in Yaad’s case, there is a symbol of a plant (looking vaguely cross-like) on both sides of his vest, in the position a cross on a stole would be.
Yaad’s robe and vest also has a resemblance to a tallit, a fringed garment worn as a prayer shawl by religious Jews, which, when worn a certain way could also look similar to the vest Yaad wears.
Yaad exists in the story to guide Laios towards his ultimate fate of becoming king of Merini, something that Yaad himself will never become, even though it should be his by blood right. Yaad will never “touch” the kingship, however he can guide someone else towards it, and place Laios on the throne instead of himself.
In the post-canon content Yaad becomes Laios’ top advisor, and he’s mentoring Kabru in political science, but he expects to die at any moment and seems to be content guiding and helping others.