hrrrrnnng

When we first find the Green Prince, he's languishing alone in a cell in Sinner's Road, completely content with rotting away in there, if not for Hornet deciding to free him.

He's completely content with dying in here, and that fact is all the more obvious if you talk to the still-jailed Green Prince in Act 3.

He says, "Leave me be. This kingdom's collapse has come. Better I stay here to accept it. To die within a cage... A fitting finale for this shell, and a well-deserved fate for these cursed lands."

And he's not much different if he's freed in Act 1 or 2, either, when Act 3 comes around.

The only reason he even moves around in Silksong is to find out if his lover is alive, and when he comes upon the broken Cogwork Dancers, he explains his loss to Hornet, driving the knife even deeper; He had lost his kingdom and his lover, with a broken automaton being the only thing left of him.

After which, he takes one of them to Verdania, where we see him in Act 3, where he says,

Which sounds ambiguous enough, but that first half of that second sentence is the main point here.

"Now to remain to the end..."

He intends to die here, mourning Verdania and his lost lover, letting himself fall to the void.

Even before that, we get hints of his hopelessness in his other dialogue.

If we talk to him before Act 3 in his cell, he says:

"Leave me be, traveller. Better I accept this kingdom's cruelty than rage helpless against it. To waste in a cell, forgotten. 'Tis no worse a fate than the Haunting that binds Pharloom's many fragile minds."

And then, when you exhaust his dialogue after talking to him by the Cogwork Dancers,

"My wish is granted… and now everything I love is lost…"

His journey isn't about regaining the will to live for a better future; it's a tragedy about a man who's lost everything. The only thing keeping him alive is his clinging to the last shreds of what he had loved, including the metal mockery of his husband, who had long left the world of the living. Then, upon reaching the last remnants of Verdania... he's ready to die next to the lover he doesn't even remember anymore.

That's why, instead of expressing fear or anger at Hornet defeating him, at the end of the Clover Dancers battle, he says;

Hornet is the last to witness the memory of Verdania, now its her turn to carry it on.

The Green Prince didn't die kicking and screaming in anguish; he died having seen his home and danced with his love one final time. This was, spiritually, a suicide.

There's a core theme to this game that I've brought up before, and that theme ties into why we kill all the old rulers of Pharloom to get their hearts. And that theme is,

"For there to be a future, the past has to be left in the past. Nothing lasts forever, nor should it."

This is what that quest represents: the past being laid to rest, along with Crust King Khann, Nyleth, and Skarrsinger Karmelita. They all accept their deaths with grace, their last words being about Pharloom, all they have done for it. A peek into what motivated them in life, a final introspection before they rest.

And this point is cinched by the fact that when we come back to the body of the Green Prince and the Cogwork Dancer...

Plants are growing. Verdania is being reborn, one clover at a time. Now that the past is in the past, the future can thrive. That is what the Hollow Knight franchise aims to say: that sometimes, the best thing you can do is move on.