i have made possibly one of my favorite hollow knight AUs and I feel I have to share it
so about a year ago now I made an au for hollow knight based on someone else's au (pale jester, go look at that au) in which the pale king joined grimm to escape the radiance, being promised a number of things that never happened (being able to go back to hollow nest to se his kids and things like that) while also having his whole identity erased and being turned into something for people to look at, and did he turn a profit for the Troup.
all the while the normal game played out, just without the pale kings influence.
he was renamed Akuma, the word itself meaning demon, but none of this is why I love it so much
akuma is a fucking bad ass.
Everything he dose is to spite someone, grimm taunting the girl in a red cloak that just walked in? yep, his cloak is on fire. Devine scamming people by eating their stuff? lace something with poison. some asshole kid walking over to ask him about his outfit, just to say it's made for girls? detach his own head while saying "im not a boy or a girl, I'm dead!" (technically true, like all wyrm he has no gender and allows grimm to pick whatever outfit he wishes, but he is very much alive)
This small albino thing manages to stand up for himself and others while being creepy as fuck and I love him for it. He lives in my brain all day.