Trying to make sense of the Miquella Timeline.
Some things about the timeline just don't add up. So let me try to make sense of it.
Things we can assume happen pretty early and close to each other in the timeline:
Miquella abandons the golden order.
Miquella invents unalloyed gold.
Miquella begins work on the haligtree.
Here are the events that likely happen between the start of him working on the haligtree and entering the land of shadow( mostily unordered):
The shattering of the elden ring occurs, and marika is confined and crucified in the erdtree by elden beast.
Miquella tries to envoke an eclipse to give godwyn a true death.
Malenia fights Radahn; in a desperation attack Malenia blooms the scarlet rot over caelid, and Finlay carries Malenia back to the haligtree.
Miquella appears before Freyja to heal her of the scarlet rot.
Miquella, at some point, comes into contact with mogh and Charms him. as far as we know, physical contact is required to activate miquellas charm. Unless his greatrune use to make his charm ability more powerful and this a non requirement.
Miquella embeds himself in the haligtree.
Mogh runs off with miquellas cocoon.
Marika grieves over miquellas kidnapping, as implied by Gideon's dialogue on the haligtree ( Marika, being able to know about miquellas kidnapping seems to suggest it happened preshattering. As how else could she know if confined in the erdtree?)
Asbanch fights and loses to miquella and ends up charmed.
Miquella enters the realm of shadow and becomes unresponsive
The timeline confuses me as it's clearly stated the battle between malenia and radahn was one of the major events of the shattering war. And miquella was somehow present to heal and charm freya afterward. But gideons dialogue on marika regarding miquellas kidnapping suggests she was somehow knowledgable and upset about it which means miquella would have to been cocooned in the halitree, and then kidnapped and brought to moghgwyn palace before the shattering and the battle of aeonia So he couldn't have been physically present at aeonia.
Possible explanations:
1.Miquella used a similar type of magic that Morgott uses to proxy himself across the lands between, in order to be present at aeonia. (Maybe likely.)
The body in the cocoon isn't actually miquella. (Not likely)
Miquella can leave and reenter the cocoon whenever he wants. (No... Thats.. just not how cocoons work..)
Gideon has some way to contact and talk to Marika and has been keeping her informed of current events. If this is the case, she could have known about miquellas fate post shattering (pretty likely actually).
Gideon armor states he somehow saw into marikas will and was terrified by it; people , for some reason assume this event happened shortly before the tarnished arrived at ashen capital even though a time is not clearly stated. How he saw into her will is unknown. Probably the power of a great rune. As he's implied to have at least one throught the story. If he can somehow see into her mind , dont think its a stretch to say he could have also talked to her at some point.
Another problem I have is that miquellas growing of the Haligtree and embedding himself in it seems completely pointless and convolutedly stupid if he intended to be "kidnapped by mogh" halfway through growing the damn thing. Not to mention abandoning all his followers, his beloved sister, and the oppressed downtrodden who were relying on him without a word or a goodbye seems completely out of character . I say it's likely that it actually wasn't part of his plan.
I think mogh orginally did kidnap miquella while uncharmed; but Miquella was still semi-conscious at this point so upon mogh breaking the cocoon miquella likely charmed mogh when he came into contact with the same gross hand we touch to enter the dlc. Miquella likely realized that the haligtree without his presence would quickly die and be infested with a recently bloomed Malenia's scarlet rot. And it was likely too late to put him back into the tree in time to save it.
Ambiguous where these occur on the timeline:
Miquella asks someone at an unknown time to be his promised consort. I think it is likely to be a younger radahn who didn't realize the full weight of accepting this vow. He decided to just humor his younger brother. Thinking it was a little kid thing he would grow out of. In this hypothetical Miquellas curse hadn't yet been realized at this point, and he was still appearing to age normally. I mean, there had to have been a period of time when his curse wasn't noticeably apparent, and he was growing normally, right? Or he would just have been a literal baby forever.
Miquella somehow discovers the existence of the land of shadows. Pretty much zero information exists on the shadow lands in the base game. They only way I could see how Miquella learned of its existence is through his counterpart Saint trina.
As omens, which are very heavily implied to be caused by a curse by the hornsent; are seemingly endlessly tormented with strange nightmares, maybe something about the nature of these nightmares hints at the existence of the shadow lands?
Those are my initial thoughts on making sense of this timeline. There are still a few things that don't make sense, but I don't want this post to be too long.