Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle/WMG
Avast! There be spoilers here!
Each god corresponds with an RPG Player.
The "gaming sessions" we're seeing are A Form You Are Comfortable With. Tamuz is the Rules Lawyer who likes playing Evil characters, Dorot is constantly bumming things off the rest of the group, Tatania and Huraine are yuri fans, Panator is always bringing a beer, Occules wears glasses etc.
Both Alice and the Duchess are "Potential" Heroes.
Anytime the Hero; Embric; dies; another takes his place like the Belmonts or the Slayer. Whatever happened to Embric is partially triggering this.
The Grey Elves throwing Embric into a Dimensional Prison attempted to Ret-Gone him.
If Embric was never born; then Ember would have been the hero. The process is slow; though, and the timeline is having trouble deciding whether it counts or not.
- Thus, whether Ember is Alice or not changes.
The game is a Prophetic Dream of the Duchess that's being affected by her psychological torment.
She was taught by her monster Uncle that women cannot be be the main heroes. They can be strong; but they cannot stand against men. Then a hero woman named Ember disguised as a maid smited his ass. Her mind, under the influence of Greygnarl's drugs and in a surge of psychological duress, stretched into possible futures in order to come to grips with this. However, her mind itself flavored this dream and separated her rescuer into a dominant male, and a servant female. After exploring all possible avenues of the Awesome Fellowship via prophecy; her mind finally accepts that Ember is possible.
- And the dream is still prophetic. She's going to be sent to Wulfhammer by King Phylename in 8-10 years to be married to the hero who beat Greygnarl. Ember; who's going to be a little bit older than the Alice we knew; but the Duchess doesn't mind that.
- HA! I Knew It!! Confirmed in Finale+ in the Deluxe version. Although the Natural Twenty Ending seems to be the dream fighting back.
The whole plot is a Lotus Eater Machine caused by King Greyghast and Vecnatrix in order to avoid a terrible war with the grey elves or send a warning of a possible war
In order to prevent Embric starting a war with the Grey Elves; powerful magic was used to put the Duchess in a position where she can stop him with the resources she gains from her various endings.
Alice isn't the only 'false representation' in the game/dream.
Catherine's psyche is split into two halves - the outer 'shield' personality she created to cope with Greyghast's violations, and the youthful curiosity and twisted innocence hiding at the core of her personality. In Wulfhammer, these are represented by the Duchess... and Grettel, who has the same colour hair and eyes as 'real world' Catherine, is the only 'fake' character (The Fellowship don't count) who is recognised as being anywhere close to Duchess' equal... and so on.
The events of the game never happened... but we don't know how they never happened
Louni suggests that the Rule of Three is an iron-clad law of the world... and we get three different endings that suggest none of the events of the game are actually real... but we don't get three that agree on how: two suggest it's All Just a Dream, but a third suggests it's a game of D&D. Things look slightly better for the dream, but until we get a third that agrees with that in the Deluxe version or the sequel, it's not necessarily true -- and there's still time for the D&D ending or something else entirely to turn out to be the true way things never happened.
Our Duchess and the Duchess in the epilogue of Natural Twenty will face off against each other in the sequel.
"The Marquess of Notoriety" seems to be following the Iron Duchess+ ending; with the Dream Duchess as the character. However, Natural Twenty shows someone who looks like the original Duchess setting things into motion.
- By using the Golden Boxfruit, our Duchess became real in an Alternate Universe. This alternate plane dips and coexists with the one the original Duchess exists in.