[Analysis] On the Pale King's presence in the flashback sequence (or lack thereof)
So I personally loved the entire sequence & how it's integrated with the rest of the story & found it very well-crafted.
But I've been seeing some readings of it like that the way he didn't directly show up means that Hornet hates him or doesn't care about him, and that...
Seems to me a shallow, simplistic reading that ignores a lot of context & great storytelling craftsmanship.
First piece of context is that the narrative always made a point of keeping him somewhat mysterious & showing him "indirectly" through his works, his architecture etc. & this was a huge part of what created the OG game's emotional charge that you never got this neat catharsis wrapped with a bow. So to show him too "directly" would be kind of blasphemy/ break with that philosophy/aesthetic. It'd be like giving the Vessels direct dialogue.
He is not at all absent. He's painfully present. His friggin leitmotif is playing. (throughout the whole flashback, even)
He also appears as a statue. Remember how in the OG game there was this lore tidbit of how statues of him were all subtly different. Which on the one hand plays into the idea that he valued and/or "gave" the bugs individuality, but also how the protag not just a historical figure, but their long-lost father who is long gone & they can't really come & meet him & get answers from him; They are forever stuck with a hundred different second-hand accounts that each reflect the lenses they're told through.
The particular statue has a design with too many eyes (spider-like maybe?) - I wouldn't be surprised if Hornet once had one of those little idols with this particular design. On the one hand it's an obstacle to jump over, but also a wall to cling onto, a 'source of strenght' like she describes him in the 1st game.
The Second crucial piece of context is that in the flashback sequence she starts out reflecting on what she learned/ got from her parental figures - from Herrah she learned to make her own path & brush off the haters, from Vespa she learned to be swift & a tough survivor etc.
But then she gets to thinking about what she got from the King...
& it's like she goes suddenly quiet.
Like she's deliberately trying not to think about it.
Third crucial piece of context: Where is this sequence in the story? In the aftermath of the grand mishap. Which has Hornet feeling kinda guilty & self-hating to the extent that she notes in one journal entry that if the craw jurors killed her, she would justly deserve it.
We do get told what she is thinking in that moment through the rather harsh entry on the wingmould. "Crude construct from my father's fallen domain. Only a fool would mess with the void"
But this has to be seen, again, in the context that... she just messed with the void. She's describing herself as the same kind of fool.
Indirectly tells us what she thinks she got from him: Her love of gadgets, the role of protector of the kingdom, and that she failed at it.
He couldn't save Hallownest (and subsequently crumbled under the weight of his errors); & her life was, in many ways, defined by the aftermath of that. What's more: She couldn't save Hallownest, either & could only watch as it crumbled around her while she kept trying to protect it, & it's implied that she still feels weighed down by that.
This also comes up elsewhere, like in her interactions with second sentinel, or her 1st descent to Abyss where Lace outright kind of mocks her for how she keeps struggling & trying & fighting on & on even when it seems pointless.
So the wingsmould entry tells us what she thinks & feels in that moment, but it has to be seen in a larger context.
Elsewhere (before the mishap) there's suggestions of her remembering the White Palace in a more positive light - she gets noted as having an "affinity for radial blades", describes how a a "beautiful" a flower creature would've fit right in at the court, & even states she used to hope she'd grow wings eventually (despite the later revelation that she was kinda pressured to prove herself as more weaver-like) - and there's also her constant tendency to think of how to analyze & make use of the features of the various creatures she sees around her from using materials, replicating the capabilities of creatures, incorporating bits of Pharlooms tech etc.
She says she even kind of gets the plasmium guy though he may seem "justly punished" because "its an alluring power". (similar situation, but less personally charged for her.) So this one exception & insisting the void is obviously of the devil comes off as a reaction formation of sorts or a desire to distance herself from her fuckup.
If you took his laboratory notes about "the power opposed" & dialed down the formality language register a few notches, they'd actually fit right in to her journal.
So this one exception & insisting the void is obviously of the devil comes off as a reaction formation of sorts or a desire to distance herself from her fuckup.
She has effectively found herself in something very much like his situation.
When she first shows up in pharloom she says she's just helping ppl as part of her own agenda, looking for sources of knowledge & power (he probably saw the Kingdom as something like a craft project at first) but she takes charge of the mess and a bunch of otherwise helpless ppl flock to her, & by the end of it, she's come to have an sense of obligation & protectiveness.
(note that what seems to have haunted him most, besides the obvious stuff with his family, is all those little retainers patiently, loyally waiting for him to come up with an answer, which he never did find.)
But alas, there's an angry possessive godness looking to subjugate everyone into a hive mind after being ditched/betrayed by her favored creations, & fighting her directly isn't an option/ would lead to some worse outcome.
Sooo a plan is hatched with a trio of allies to dissappear her. (one of which takes a lot of convincing to start to trust her / believe she won't be just as a bad as the last ruler he had the misfortune with. its in fact the same previous ruler that caused the initial mistrust of both Herrah & Caretaker.)
And it not only does it go sideways bigtime, it turns out that it happened to take down a bunch of innocents & now society is collapsing all around cause everybody thinks they're doomed.
You could say that she had incomplete information, but... so did he. If she refused already having seen something similar blown up first, it wouldn't be the same situation.
It's also worth noting how normally she's sooo quick to smell what's cooking (the shamans certainly note it & assumed she already knew) - Maybe she saw what she wanted to see cause she needed it to work. Or it was an honest mistake, but either way whats done is done.
(Understand yet why his leitmotif is playing in the flashback?)
So it comes down to Hornet's own "repeat or transcend" moment.
Is she gonna crumble under the weight of her mistake as well?
Or will she persevere where he could not...
(this is accentuated by how triggering the void snare gets you kind of a fakeout ending where you have to make the choice to reload the file to progress to act 3, it's up to you wether this is the ending or not. - he probably didn't "press continue" there, but basically went off to die. )
It's telling that the main things she wants to know from Mr. Mushroom is if he thinks that her efforts to fix it are in vain. (speaking of Mushrooms: remember the "What good to forsee doom inevitable?" from the fungal core? )
Fourth piece of context: How the arc/ narrative concludes.
It's a bit like the ppl who hang the take that "Ghost is actually the perfect vessel" on what the White Lady says in their 1st interaction without featuring in what she says/ happens between them later. Sometimes in storytelling an idea will be introduced to be examined & then put aside later.
The sequence continued further, to something that probably takes place in the aftermath of the King's demise (or at least, in the Queen's gardens from the visual of her glowing roots being seen through gaps)
The White Lady is clearly speaking for both of them in her flashback ("our wish, our house, our family, you must think us unrepentant etc.") - "You must hate us, you must think we're unrepentant and the worst etc."
& Hornet explicitly says that she doesn't hate them or blame them & actually gets why they acted as they did (meaning all 4 of them) & did so all the more the older she's gotten.
& this is the first half of her big self-acceptance moment, her counterpart to the birthplace memory. Where she accepts the part of herself that is like him, the part that does kind of seek power. (to make a better world) When we actually see her in that white robe.
She notes how, despite their imperfections & disagreements, & the way that her feelings about her might be messy & knotty sometimes (Vespa thought trying to resist the Radiance was foolish; The knotty feelings about Herrah are, I think, pretty obvious in the Huntress questline (& it would be just as out of context just to take that as proof that she hates her or something) - or just in the OG game after she dies. Herrah herself markedly doesn't ever seem to have wanted this. She really stands out as A grade with how she tells Hornet to be what she wants to be not what other ppl might want. And of course despite the sentiment there ends up her own set of volunteer sacrifices in collecting the hearts, "though the cost may be great" as she says at one point.)
The conclusion she comes to in the end is that all 4 of her parental figures wanted her to be strong & independent even if that means she'll be different from them or might resent them.
(Contrast poor, poor Lace, whose mother wanted her to be as much like herself as possible and to be weak so that she would never betray her. )
In this concept the flower is said to represent the gift that comes from living through hardship; But its also a contingency the King & Queen prepared in case they'd need it to mop up their mess, & now Hornet is using it to fix her own.
Their situations might be very different, but because she's been through hardship herself, she gets the feeling that Lace expresses about how she's doomed to be a rotten person cause she came from a rotten person, & that's why Hornet really wants to save her from it.
The White Lady tells her to "cut yourself free of our sad fate", ie, that she doesn't have to be crushed by her errors the way that the two of them were.
In the final speech she makes before confronting Lace, far from seeing or describing Hallownest as some fool's fallen domain or the void as something whose horrible nature should be obvious, she says that she'll always be a daughter of Hallownest and that she has no reason anymore to fear the dark.
And indeed "the dark" effectively shows up to bail her out since they still owed her for saving them in Kingdom's edge (& for nudging them towards their own "transcend" path...)
