...daydreaming...

...is how much how much Grand Mother Silk is explicitly written to be an Evil Counterpart to the Pale King.

Interesting how you effectively end up with Queen Marika from Elden Ring, cause it's just Demiurge archetype played straight instead of tweaked this time. Or by the same token, "Pale Kind but Evil" might simply be the logical consequence of trying to make a Contrasting Sequel Antagonist to the Radiance.

Down to how both games open with a poem that personifies the Kingdom but effectively talks about the ruler.

Both are revered rulers of hightech Kingdoms, very "order-aligned" alignment wise, (The King being a associated with civilization & described as "bringing order", & in Pharloom things are so ordered its hammered down with the clockworks, bells and orchestra metaphors. )

Hallownest had its flaws & imperfections, like some inequality (like any advanced society), it was mostly a place of wonders & plenty before it fell, & he seems to have had a high approval rating. Consider who hates him (a prideful tough guy like Xero, and an arrogant gasbag like Soul Master) & who likes him (Lurien, who was beloved by his staff, & Ogrim, the walking parody of chivalry & honor)

Meanwhile we're told rather quickly how much Pharloom is an absolute hellhole - you have to pay to breathe, characters like Seamstress & Chapel Maid experienced persecution, ppl are locked up for "indolence", the workers are made to work non-stop & constantly pledge their fealty etc. As per the hunter's journals many workers were exploited etc.

The greatest contrast is the infrastructure - one of the first thing we're told about the King is that he built & designed everything himself, & he is repeatedly characterized through his creation - in the White Palace you only find his corpse & he doesn't get lines, but we're told everything about him through environmental storytelling.

In Hallownest there's individually designed ornate benches everywhere; In Pharloom they're very samey & you have to pay for them. He built fancy public transport; Pharloom has it but convenience is considered a "sin" for the pilgrims.

It's like if you took all of Hallownest's slight flaws & magnified them a hundred fold, you would get Pharloom.

He revered & treasured individuality (to the point that it was an explicit part of his iconography with the subtly different statues - his gift of civilization, thought & individuality being contrasted with the reversion to base instincts & false unity brought on by the Radiance) that shit's not allowed in Pharloom.

But if the infection turns you into a mindless beast, then the Haunting kind of makes you a robotic worker drone (Forge Daughter mentions everyone's gone crazy but they still work)

The comparison is subtly shown in act 2 (how Hornet deduces the Kingdom is run by a higher being - great reverence? Wondrous tech? Mystical plague?), how Pharloom is also called "eternal", but then made very obvious later on when ppl start referring to the Great Mother as "Pale Monarch"/ "Pale Beast". She's the same "flavor" of God.

Another parallel is shown when you find the First Sinner, which shows the creation of the weavers/ is implied to have been the very first weaver ever - The Grand Mother didn't make them from scratch like Unn & the Radiance are said to have done (maybe this is easier for higher beings of the "dream" variety), but uplifted lesser spider creatures, similar to how the Pale King is thought to have imbued pre-existing creatures with intellect. ("She called us daughters. She called us divine. She lied")

(hence why Lace is referred to as "a child spun pure", without using other components. as per her journal entry she "took a lot of silk to sustain" meaning that the Grand Mother could have pulled the plug on her at any time. )

Their respective relationships with Lace and the Pure Vessel are ultimately the real kicker, in the way that they are inverse mirrors of each other (the comparison is pretty directly invoked when you kill her in the path to the 1st/bad ending, & you can tell Hornet is so viscerally reminded that she, otherwise very harsh & pragmatic, tells a sadistic enemy that her life "counted")

Both Lace and the Pure Vessel are artificially created constructs which the ruler fashioned to serve their own ends, though to be "empty shells". (Lace being literally empty inside since she's made of only thread)

Obviously their personalities & appearances are mirrors - one is tall & stoic, the other tiny & hysterical, but both agile fighters that look vaguely 'knightly'.

But the Pale King hated doing what he did, the guilt crushed him, & ultimately he loved the Pure Vessel, eldritch void tendrils & all, even when he believed they couldn't love him back. In turn the Pure Vessel seems to have been pretty attached to him & tried their hardest to be what would be needed/ wanted, resigning themself to their fate ("Do not hope")

Lace, meanwhile, was deliberately made weak in mind & body so she would never betray the Grand Mother, as a replacement goldfish for the weavers, and as a result she pretty much hates herself & is full of spite & pettyness, directly attributing this to the Great Mother.

In the bad ending she gets killed fighting for her; In the "trap" ending however she betrays her after all. (but it comes off as partially motivated by wanting to spite her & partially a kind of sibling jealousy towards the weavers. )

She took relish in the idea of "watching it all come down" after all she's been through, in contrast to how the Pure Vessel still trying to protect Hallownest/resist the Radiance to the last even to the point of attempt to end themself and/or helping the protagonist as a Shade. Basically they're on the opposite sides of the D&D alignment chart. (which is not to say poor Lace couldn't grow past her Chaotic Evil ways if given some TLC; She makes for a very tragic villain.)

& this is when we see an interesting twist, that, even when the Grand Mother gets thrown into the void & (as she'd see it) betrayed again, she ends up chosing to protect Lace.

Which is like peak writing & a level of realistic complexity because... She was a shit parent when it counted. She's like that person that says they will catch a grenade for you but won't do the dishes. But a lot of shit parents are like that. They will abuse you & make you hate yourself but would still do the stereotypic parental sacrifices. I'm sure that if I needed money or to be protected from a bullet my father would help me out even though I've "spurned" him but also he abused me & treated me like a possession so yeah, this is not at all unrealistic. (nor would I consider it a redeeming feature - but it sure adds dimensionality.) Like this is something a lesser writer wouldn't have included.

A lesser writer would have made her a flatter villain & do one last act to show she doesn't care, instead the last thing she does in the "good" ending is help Hornet & Lace escape. Even when Lace explicitly says she wants her to suffer & thrash & deny her power (Oh Lace, I understand you. The urge to do self-destructive shit to spite a parent who acts as your savior despite always treating you like crap, making you feel gross emotions. They can treat you like a pet/toy, but still be very upset at the prospect their pet/toy being broken. )

It's like how in Evangelion, Misato has all these conflicted feelings because her shit father pulled a heroic sacrifice. It doesn't mean he was "good all along" it means frustrating people will do things that make you feel conflicting emotions. You'd like bad people to only do "bad" things so they don't confuse your heart but its not so neat.

No wonder Lace's reaction at the end is one last bitter laugh at how ridiculous it all is.

Even so there's something poignant & beautiful/artistic about how the last thing we see the antagonist do is help Hornet save Lace in a kind of sacrificial act - a strikingly human act from an eldritch monstrosity drawn in that super abstract art style. A beast she might be, but protecting one's offspring (in the barest sense of physical survival) is a very beastly instinct. (might also be contrasted with the Pale King appearing only in statue form in the flashback, because- He made the opposite choice, one that might befit stone rather than flesh. Duty over instinct. )

I also like how it's ambiguous what cut her loose in the end - Lace's own attack, or her trying to get to her. (I strongly assume that Hornet adopts Lace after the act 3 ending)

An excellent example of how complicated artsy evocative stuff ambiguous enough to make you think will always beat the simplistic preachy moralistic shit en vogue today. (Something the OG game was also a great example of)

The contrast to the Pale KIng is really driven home when Hornet makes her first trip to the Abyss & asks something like, "would you let all your kingdom be destroyed by the void to save just her?" - really underlining the Grand Mother is effectively making the opposite choice as the Pale King. (who sacrificed his beloved kid for his Kingdom / threw his offspring into the void)

And yet the guy who sacrificed his kid for his kingdom is the one who gets undone by not quite being asshole enough/ lost because the kid loved him (whether you believe the White Lady's theory that he "tarnished" the Vessel by treating them kindly, *he* believed it, & one way or another he crumbled under his regret), whereas the Lady who threw her kingdom to the wolves for her kid loses out because she gets a very classic straightforward "mistreatment induced betrayal" from said kid.

The Duality. The Layers. The Yin & Yang.

Something something about how your offspring tends to take on the values you live, not what you tell them to do. Honor & duty to a fault begat honor & duty to a fault, & cruelty & beastlyness begat cruelty & beastliness. (although in the respective good endings, both Lace & the Vessel a chance to maybe move past that after never having a chance or a choice. )

Whereas Hornet's actions leading up to & during act 3 really establish how much she IS the daughter of Mr. No Cost to Great, Funding Public Works, Affinity For Radial Blades, Will Use Any Source Of Power At Her Disposal. She gathers her own set of four willing sacrifices to bring down a mystical plague, for Pete's sake (certainly as symbolic in significance as how she claws her own way out of the Abyss, symbolically connecting her to two certain someones.)

(Herrah, too, is a friggin Once Scene wonder in her one flashback appearance, too, by being the opposite of a "possessive" parent: "Fuck expectations, be who you want to be"

I also love how, in keeping with the 1st game, the King doesn't get speaking lines so as to keep him mysterious, but he is again just represented by his palace & his constructs.

The Hunter's journal entry on the wingmould is certainly rather harsh - Hornet considers it pretty crude (a hell of a diss from one craftsperson to another), & him a fool for meddling with the void. But he was, of course, super duper wrong in an important way that blew up in his face. ( It's really interesting how we can contrast this with the Knight's & the Hunter's thoughts on same thing in the previous game) - I'd also conclude from this that these were the first ones he made & that the Kingsmoulds were later. In a way it's wise of Hornet to see the blundering first attempts were characteristic of him. His is very much a prometheus story - he's not the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Though I'm sure ppl will point at that & fail to note how it isn't at all that one-sided, as the White Lady seems to be speaking for both of them in her segment. She says "we" & she isn't royal-we-ing, as she doesn't do that in first game & refers in general terms to "our family" etc- she reveals not only that they had further contingencies, (one that's now used to fix what might be considered Hornet's own mess) - but she's all like "you must hate us" & Hornet actually answers that she doesn't and that she understands them, even more so now that she's older. (because without power, you cannot do anything - including create a better world.) - which she seems to take as the common denominator from all 4 parental figures, that they sought strength to make a better world & wanted her to be strong as well. (again draw the contrast with how the Grand Mother wanted Lace to be weak so she couldn't possibly surpass/betray her. Or go, "Haha dad I am better than you at constructs & daring utilitarian plans now now")

Which is both in tune with the civilization vs wilderness/base instinct theme in the OG HK game & how the note it ended on was very much "yeah civilization is imperfect & flawed & nothing last forever, but it's still worth the attempt" but also doing this yin & yang duality mirror to it. Pharloom looks super ordererd/regimented but there's something very "beastly" at the core.

Act 3 itself is a bit "promethean" where Hornet had a big-time void-related fuckup of her own before she could find a better solution, so her comments have to be seen in that light. With the other figures she is reflecting on what she learned from them, so... "From Dad I learned to be a bloody fool" given the state of Pharloom at the time.

Whereas in the bad ending she tries to pull a reverse uno card on the Great Mother & steal her power, & gets reverse Uno Carded herself, & in the neutral one she pulls a mutual kill (...or did she? Ominous noises ensue... ) - either way it's very promethean. Using even the forces that want your destruction & having them explode in her face.

And even in the 3rd act timeline, she does still end up stealing some of the Great Mother's Power from her severed arm (without the rest of her attached) - despite coming from a very pharloom-based source, that's the one attack that's labelled as Pale Nails. (rather Hallownests' traditional weapon. The Great mother uses pins. Hornet fashioning it into something very much her own, strikingly resembling the Pure Vessel's dagger attacks)

There is also one of those statues of him as a spiky obstacle to jump over (here's a visual metaphor to dissect), as usual with a design that looks different from all the others (way too many eyes) - Perhaps Hornet owned one with this design at some point.

That's also an interesting look at what's behind the White Lady impassive mask (or simply what she's like with someone she wouldn't be as pokerfaced with), though it's hinted in the OG game, too. I want to see fanart of Hornet in the white robe she wears in that flashback. When Ghost returns from the Abyss & she speculates, one of her first guesses is hate. Plus, we might possibly have something like a creation myth for the setting, with how the flower is called the "first light" & generally described as giving off light similar to the fancy deities.

Something that's really recontextualized is why Herrah wrecked the failed tramway (You can see why she would mistrust a Pale Being bearing Novel Contraptions, to say the least. she probably heard the word "Eternal Kingdom" and flipped.) but also why she eventually came to ally with the Pale King against the Radiance (& that was an involved alliance - She helped designed the seal of binding, did so much trade it replaced Hallownests's dominant form of writing etc.).

Although it's unclear if Herrah herself would have remembered Pharloom or if there's many generations between the escape & her.

Her group also fled/deserted their own creator god & after getting whacked with extreme retaliation ("she overlooked down here, lets rebuild..." lore tablet in weavernest Atla, the "flee as far as you can to evade her gaze" relic), soo... like... I think she'd support the moths' right to ditch their creator, just sayin.

It annoys me when this gets treated as the King threspassing on the Radiance's turf because the moths weren't things she owns, they're people & they just... switched sides. Maybe cause the King was giving out nice shit to those who join him.

Like ppl will make up these headcannons about how he supplanted their culture or persecuted them when none of the random moth ghosts we see mentions anything like that, indeed they seem to have been one of the oldest/first groups to join Hallownest & kept much of their culture of holding rituals for the dead etc, they just. Switched Religions. That happens sometims. Ancient Rome going from pagan to christian or Iran going from zoroastrian to muslim while still remaining a continuous culture? Or how Helios fell out of popularity & Apollo took over attributes of the sun god?

While we're told that Hallownest was looking to expand (& Hornet tells the green prince imlies that it is to some extent typical behavior for Pale Beings to show up & start taking over stuff, with the Grand Mother's MO being more typical - It would certainly be a viable interpretation to say that the Pale King simply preferred the carrot over the stick, I'd definitely count him as more 'neutral' than 'good'), no one seems to have been forcibly conquerred - groups who wanted to keep their independence like the mosskin, the mantises & the Bees did that just fine & were just dealt with diplomatically. (though still effectively in his sphere of influence)

Even Seer, who thinks her ancestors done goofed by switching sides & is ostensibly trying to do penance to appease the Radiance, doesn't blame the King but the past moths. (& we're told they had a grand prophecy about the "wielder" who would fix the situation...)

That said let it be known that I don't wanna flatten the Radiance either, she has some tragic aspects (she's effectively losing herself in a rage over how people don't love her anymore, not an unrelatable motivation) & reducing her to simplistic good/bad questions misses that she's supposed to be/represent a sort of inevitable force of nature.

Midwife's line about "how far the most intelligent species has fallen" also makes a lot more sense when you consider the "high status" the First Children used to have back in Pharloom, to the point that the high ups in the hierarchy immediately obey Hornet. They were actually a high tech civilization once.

There's an interesting story there, between the Pale King & Herrah, one who renounced civilization & someone who wanted to build/establish it eventually coming together against a common foe over their shared willingness to use everything in their grasp to their advantage.

There was a somewhat ironic earlier post of mine where I noted the parallels between the Pure Vesel and Lace but wrote something like, "there's no path of pain for Grand Mother".

But there is. There IS, that's the big twist of act 3. & it was the best possible way to keep her from being a flat villain.

But what there really isn't, what is actually the big indictment, is that there is that there isn't an Ogrim or a Lurien.

The closest thing is Widow, & Widow got humiliating punishment to ensure she doesn't turn traitor like the other weavers. Window is what Moss Prophet and Seer are to the Radiance. Ogrim got a fancy charm/badge. First Sinner also tells you all you need to know. "She lied".

EDIT: Another very obvious contrast point I forgot in OG post that seems super duper deliberate: The immortality experiments.

The Pale King wanted to shut Soul Master's shit right down. Soul Master is very salty about it.