I’ve Seen Some People Bring Up The Idea That The Golden Flowers In Undertale Symbolize Grief. It Seemed

I’ve seen some people bring up the idea that the Golden Flowers in Undertale symbolize Grief. It seemed like an interesting idea to me, so I wanted to take a chance to examine in more depth myself. Grief is certainly a major theme in Undertale, and the Golden Flowers are directly tied to the Undertale of Asriel and Chara, and they also share another parallel with the concept of Grief:

It sticks to you.

Golden Flower seeds stick to whatever comes in contact with them, and considering the patch of flowers in the Trash Zone, they’re resilient enough to spread almost everywhere if you let them. This can be linked to the pervasive nature of Grief. 

So through that lense, what can the Golden Flowers tell us about the characters related to them?

Golden Flowers appear the most around Asgore. They cover his garden-slash-throne-room almost completely, they’re found almost everywhere in his house, he even makes them into tea. And Asgore is indeed a character consumed by his grief. For his dead children, and for the life he once had with Toriel, and the hope that the Underground once had, and for all the children he has killed. No one is more defined by their grief in Undertale than Asgore.

Compared to that, Toriel has…. less Golden Flowers in her life. The patch of Golden Flowers in the Ruins, Chara’s garve, is significant, but it’s not nearly as large as the field of flowers covering Asgore’s Throne Room. 

And she has less Golden Flowers in her home as well. Asgore has seven different Golden Flower plants in his house, Toriel has one - plus a drawing in the kids room.

And I guess Toriel IS handling her Grief… better than Asgore does? She is still struggling with it, obviously. She still has plenty of Golden Flowers… Just, you know, she’s doing better than Asgore. I think part of it might be that she feels like she’s channeling her grief into something productive and noble. The Golden Flowers over Chara’s grave soften the fall of every Human who stumbles into the Ruins - Toriel is trying to use her Grief to protect these humans.

And she is at least trying to move ahead, compared to how much Asgore dwells on the past. She doesn’t seem to regret leaving him and while Asriel and Chara’s old room in New Home is preserved exactly the same as it was in their life (including wrappped presents forever waiting for them) - Toriel seems to have made an effort to refurbished Asriel’s room in Home into a more general room for her new human wards (the photo frame and closet are empty - rather than having the old family photo\Asriel’s old clothes in them). But still, it’s very hard to ignore the fact that she still has her share of Golden Flowers in life.

Then there’s Undyne, who drinks Asgore’s Golden Flower Tea. Her connection to Golden Flowers is a lot more vague, a lot less direct. And I think it’s because she’s not really a grief-focused character herself. I made another post about it, but Undyne is more motivated by the misery and unhappiness that she sees in the Underground in the present. She’s less angry about the horrible war long ago or the death of the royal siblings as much as she’s just angry at all the monsters who are sad and miserable now. But the only solution she has for this misery is following Asgore’s war plan, the plan created from the depths of Asgore’s grief-stricken mind. She pertake in Asgore’s grief indirectly, without even fully realizing it.

And there’s also Monster Kid’s story about Asgore coming to school and donating his flowers (probably meant to be Golden Flowers) for project. Monster Kid can’t recognize a Human on sight, they were probably born long after Asriel and Chara’s death, but King Asgore’s grief still effects them - and the entire community - even if they don’t fully realize it. 

(And I wonder if Frisk choosing Golden Flower Tea in the Undyne Date symbolizes them empthazing with the Monsters’ communal grief)

Then there’s the third patch of Golden Flowers, in the Trash Zone:

In my previous Golden Flowers centric post I reasoned that they came from Alphys. She messed around with Golden Flowers in her lab, she complained about how sticky the seeds are, she hangs out in the Trash Zone, she spread it there.

And I think with her it’s less about the Grief about Asriel and Chara. About sharing Asgore’s Grief. With her she kinda… created her own ‘branch’ of Golden Flowers that she spreads herself because this Grief is her own and her own alone. I think the patch of Golden Flowers in the Trash Zone symbolize Alphys’ grief over what happened to the Amalgamates. Grief over the monsters lost life and her lost plans and her lost potential. 

After all, it was because of those experiments that she came in contact with the Golden Flowers, and because of those experiments that she spent so much time in the Garbage Dump to spread them.

That’s another way the Golden Flowers can be linked to Grief, I think. Every patch of Golden Flowers in the game is found over someone’s grave, in a way. The Patch of Golden Flowers in the Ruins is actually Chara’s Grave. The entire Throne Room is Asriel’s grave, and…. if Alphys had taken (or did take, in some timelines) that jump over the abyss, the Trash Zone Golden Flowers would the only grave she has.

But there is one character linked to Golden Flowers that I haven’t covered yet, someone with a very, very, very major connection to them….

Like…… if I said that Asgore is dealing with his Grief badly and spreading to everyone else and letting it consume it and literally consuming it in the form of tea….. well, than Flowey\Asriel IS a Golden Flower, he literally became his own Grief.

Grief for the person he was back when he could still feel love, and grief for Chara. This is most pronounced in the Pacifist Run, where Flowey assumes his old form of Asriel and basically straight-up admits that all that he does is motivated by his overwhelming grief for Chara. Every time he snatched the Happy Ending from a Neutral or Pacifist Player is just about how he didn’t want them to stop playing the game because he is basically the physical incarnation of Not Moving On.