In Strange Aeons: Slay the Princess as a Response to Lovecraft
“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange aeons, even death may die.”
-H.P. Lovecraft
(Note: The Following will contain spoilers for the videogame ‘Slay the Princess’ and some short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. You have been warned.)
Slay the Princess is a game that’s been on my radar for awhile. Like most things my friends enjoy and sing the praises of, it was popular and everyone talked about it, which somehow made me want to check it out less. But unlike most of the stuff my friends sing the praises of, I decided to give it a chance, and I just have to say…
Dang. It really is that good.
And as I entered the game’s climax, when the cards were finally getting put on the table, what stuck out the most to me was how it, intentionally or not, it came across as a response to the work of the infamous Howard Phillips Lovecraft. And what surprised me even more is that I’ve yet to come across anyone online who has viewed the story through this lens beyond acknowledging it contains elements of weird fiction and cosmic horror. Thus I have steadily, over the last week, typed up the essay you read now.
Chapter I: The Princess
Let’s start with the game’s very first sentences:
You’re on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You’re here to slay her. If you don’t, it will be the end of the world.
Right at the opening, we can see cosmic horror tropes in action. There’s the entity that can end the world, per usual, but also a general vagueness that allows the audience to fill in the blanks with horrors greater than anything Lovecraft could come up with.
Anyhow, once our avian protagonist arrives at the cabin, they see a mirror they have the option to approach. Intentionally or not, this comes off as a homage to Lovecraft’s short story ‘The Outsider’, in which the main character emerges from a long slumber to discover a hideous monster in their room, only to realize it is their reflection. Though if it was intentional, I must applaud the creators for their clever foreshadowing. But let’s put a pin in that for now.
Now back to the Princess slaying (or lack thereof, depending on your choices). As mentioned earlier, cosmic (AKA Lovecraftian) horror often relies on vague descriptions so that the audience can fill in the blanks with something more horrific than anything he could ever come up with. And the Princess takes this concept to its most logical extreme, literally becoming a reflection of her aspiring murderer’s fears and anxieties with successive kills.
Once the first death occurs, the tale takes on elements a more conventional cosmic horror story: the bird person/ player makes choices with varying outcomes that all end in the Princess escaping, being assimilated by the Shifting Mound (that is not actually a Shifting Mound but that’s the closest the human mind can come to approximating a concept that exists beyond its feeble island of ignorance), said Mound giving some incredibly vague but poetic answers about the nature of her existence and the plot, and finally the player starts all over again, seemingly predetermined to give the Mound exactly what she wants. An endless variety of roads all ending to the same cabin.
And were this a more standard Lovecraftian tale, the Shifting Mound would be the simultaneously amoral yet also immoral villain of the story, predestined to destroy the world despite your efforts.
But she isn’t. She occupies the general role of a Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and all the rest, but the game never really makes a negative moral judgement against her. If anything, leaving the cabin with the Princess or joining the Shifting Mound in bringing about a new era are implied to be the best possible outcomes.
Chapter II: The Long Quiet
Given this information, one might conclude that the bird man (and his voices) must be the typical Lovecraftian protagonist, right? I would say no. He is the Protagonist of THIS story, absolutely, but he lacks the one key trait every Lovecraft protagonist has. Many people assume that what separates a Lovecraft protagonist from the monster is the number of tentacles they have. While this is true to an extent, what separates them on a deeper, thematic level is autonomy. Lovecraft’s monsters and villains hold all the cards while the protagonists start in a position of thinking they have control only for it to turn out they don’t. And the protagonist- or should I say, the Long Quiet- has the exact opposite arc. As foreshadowed earlier (albeit maybe unintentionally) the Long Quiet was a Lovecraftian God the whole time. And were this a more typical Lovecraftian horror story, he would break down in despair at his wretched form. But he doesn’t. Because he realizes that by virtue of being an elder god (as we call them in Lovecraftian circles) he therefore has autonomy and can make meaningful decisions. It’s no coincidence that after this reveal, the Long Quiet can start to make the decisions that lead to an actual ending. But if everyone’s favorite murderer is not the usual Lovecraftian Protagonist, then who does occupy the role?
Chapter III: The Narrator
At the start, the Narrator seems to be the authorative voice, the one who understands everything and has all the cards, but as the story progresses, much of this is revealed to be farce. The Long Quiet has the true power, and the only thing the narrator can do is feebly fail to delay the inevitable. Even on the odd chance his desired outcome is met, it is because the player gave it to him.
And then there is his motive. Much has been made of Lovecraft’s xenophobia and general bigotry, but they were ultimately rooted in the same anxieties as the narrator: a fear of change. Lovecraft lived during the 1920’s and 1930’s, a time in American history when new technologies and social mores were challenging the previous status quo, one that Lovecraft’s own family benefitted from. Lovecraft, like the narrator, came to see change as an existential threat to his ideal world, even as he admitted that his moral values mattered very little in the eyes of the universe. And what was Lovecraft’s ideal world? The answer can be found in one of his short stories, ‘Celephais’. It involves a man named Trevor (AKA King Kuranes) who in dreams is the king of a Medieval country where he goes on epic fantasy adventures. This is often contrasted with the dull, decaying, MODERN England of reality. In the end, Kuranes retreats more and more into his fantasy, spending all his money on drugs to extend his sleep and improve his dreams until he is bankrupt. Eventually, he is lost to the dream world forever, which is portrayed as a positive thing. While this does differ from the dull oblivion favored by the Narrator, at the root they are the same desire: a world locked in time, devoid of change, where things can’t get better but they also can’t get worse.
Death has died, but at what cost?
And this is where ‘Slay the Princess’ ultimately refutes Lovecraft: because it is a story of tragedy, yes, where change and death are painful and terrifying, yes, but it is also change and death that bring with them the experiences, the adventures, the love that makes life worth living even if the moments are only fleeting.
The Eldritch beings of the uncaring cosmos cannot be destroyed, only delayed, and their victory is inevitable. But ‘Slay the Princess’, in its’ final moments asks us: is that really a bad thing?
