How much text is there that implies that the Pale King is slowly, fully subjugating the other tribes? Cause the thing is, it isn’t clear that it’s the same as what the citadel did to the neighboring tribes in their home turf (I.e. very clearly brutally conquering them directly). I know that there are npcs who are possibly hinted to have lived through old Hallownest and were skeptical of PK (Bardoon for example) and there’s Hive Queen Vespa saying in her dream form that the hive didn’t care much what happened to the rest of Hallownest and the weavers who obviously hate him. But like, what do you think he exactly did to them, aside from forcing them to do an alliance with him. Hope that didn’t come off as confrontative, I’m just genuinely curious if there were some lore text I missed (which is easy considering how fucking big even the first game was) that might’ve given a more clear picture of what he was doing to the other tribes. In a way I almost feel compelled to criticize Team Cherry for having the PK be so vague and mysterious that it’s hard to grasp a consistent picture of him and his rule, as opposed to how they did a much better job explaining in detail what the Citadel is doing to the tribes and what Grand Mother Silk’s plans were as well.
There is of course not much. What we have is mostly environmental and the following bits:
"The Mantis tribe and the bugs of old Hallownest had no love for each other."
Seer: "The folk of my tribe were born from a light. Light similar to Essence, similar to that powerful blade, though much brighter still. They were content to bask in that light and honoured it… for a time. But another light appeared in our world… A wyrm that took the form of a king. How fickle my ancestors must have been. They forsook the light that spawned them. Turned their backs to it… Forgot it even."
Quirrel on the Spider Tribe: "Supposedly, there's a village deep in the warren. Its inhabitants never accepted Hallownest's King."
The Fungal Tribe: "Warily shall we accept the will of the Wyrm. Its prescience shields us. Fate and Future we shall entwine."
Mosskin: "Though once our lands, a pale being lays claim to the caverns ahead. [...] Be wary to wander that place."
It really is only the archive and Fog Bugs under Monomon that the King's reign seems more or less accepted happily (based on the elegy she wrote) and of course the other bugs of the other regions who formed the bulk of Hallownest as a kingdom. All of the rest of these seem somewhere between fully antagonistic or at least only reluctantly accepting that the Pale King is inevitable.
As for what the Pale King did: I think its great that Team Cherry didn't explain, because it means I get to make up stuff based on this lore to fill hundreds of pages of fanfic about it! The wider the holes the better I eat.
Personally, I think that the Pale King aligned with the simple insects and moths after chasing off the radiance and becoming the new light of Hallownest. After that it probably depended. I mean he did have an army of armored bugs and five powerful knights. I'm sure they waged war. In fact, the Mantis' alude to making a "truce" with the payment being their independence for keeping the Mantis Door closed and beating back the beasts of Deepnest.
However towards the end, before the Infection truly began, there is some evidence that PK was going around that truce and forming an alliance with Deepnest in the form of birthing Hornet, accepting silk from the Weavers (seen at the stag station near the White Palace) and building two tramways (Though in the collapse one failed and was overtaken by Deepnest again).
There's also the clear implication that some Mantids did not accept the truce. The Traitor Lord abandons the tribe with a contingent of traitors to explicitly take back the Queen's Gardens and kill the White Lady seemingly in revenge for the love his child shared with a knight of Hallownest.
Anyways that's at least some of my evidence! Thanks for the question