he has a home on daibazaal , but as basically a limited quintessence construct , it really is easier for him to basically save energy & return to being in the space black made for him , so home is wherever she is . 

I demand a starter just straight up no plot, we die like everyone

BOI

so uh . remember when black stored shiro ? well , black also stored zarkon . there’s no way around it , black does have a close bond with her paladins . i may have mentioned this before , but while yes , zarkon believes that honerva is the love of his life , black is his soulmate . black knows more about zarkon than he knows about himself . black can probably ... see all other realities , too —- & from the looks of it , zarkon as a dictator is in the minority of those . black did what any good lion would do with her omniscient , near - omnipotent abilities . she stored what was ‘ correct ’ .  she stored the zarkon that was supposed to exist , one that is made of the ‘ base ’ person that she met & adored , & one who has conflicting memories , because black had to supplement missing parts , since zarkon died & his body lived on , whereas shiro died & his body vanished & a clone was released in his place . 

does zarkon have all his memories together ? to a certain point , yes . his natural memories lead up to honerva’s pregnancy , a discussion of what to name their son ( deciding on a combination of altean & galra legend , lotor ) , & gets blurry after that . black saw no need to preserve the corruption that escalated after that . the remainder of zarkon’s memories are , for lack of a better term , filtered by black . he has no connection consciously to his future self , but has the sinking feeling that the reality he’s ‘ lived ’ in is not the truth . after all , black can only do so much . 

for zarkon , his memories line up much with the ‘ other universe ’ , which for black & for most realities , is the correct one . zarkon believes honerva died , he often visits alfor & the other paladins in this mindscape , so on so forth —- but something feels off . black can only replicate so much . zarkon is her paladin , she can only make so much of the others , of their traits . zarkon is smart , he gets that something is wrong . & no , he’s not angry at black , he could never be angry at black for trying to protect him . black was trying to preserve what should’ve been & zarkon , especially torn from the safety of black’s simulated world , is really doing Bad in coping with what happened . 

zarkon , i’ve mentioned before , is basically cosmic alexander the great . he looks up to other mythological conquerors , but his conquests weren’t what they become in the future . zarkon was all for integration , for working with planets , as well as the people of planets . what we see lotor doing in the flashback ? zarkon used to be like that , too . working alongside the people of other planets ; zarkon isn’t an idiot . not when he was alive . the zarkon of the future is a zombie , that’s how it is . he died . he didn’t come back properly , because it’s basically like a human transmutation in fullmetal alchemist . he wanted so badly to revive honerva , but ALCHEMY . maybe an altean alchemist like alfor could’ve done it , but zarkon isn’t an alchemist . the cost to bring back honerva was another life , zarkon offered his own . he also offered his friends , but the point is the life that was taken was his & because he doesn’t know alchemy , things went horribly wrong . 

this is why paladin zarkon has such a violent reaction to seeing all the memories as they are . of knowing ten thousand years of pain that he caused , because he can’t reconcile it with himself . it doesn’t feel like him , but it is . he doesn’t remember the actions as his own , but they are . they are , as much as they aren’t . a good reference here is any homunculus in the 2003 fullmetal alchemist . 

paladin zarkon’s continued existence is finite , he’s tied to black . he goes where black goes until the quintessence he has runs out , he’s on borrowed time , as anyone brought back like that is . he doesn’t have a real body to anchor himself to anymore , he’s very much a construct of black , the result of alchemy gone horribly wrong & a lion’s love . 

paladin zarkon only agrees with like 43% of future zarkon’s choices & would knife fight himself behind the space mall but the fact that he agrees with 43% of the choices shows how morally grey he’s always been but uhhh 

honestly his main issue is the ignorance toward the empire as a whole, future zarkon is so fixated on one (1) thing it’s voltron. sure, og paladin zarkon also u kno has a thing about voltron but he also immediately thought of ‘ endlessly powerful ships for the galra empire ’ as the first thing to do with quintessence. his main focus yes is expanding but also protecting the galra empire, say what you will about his morals, but before the full on quintessence fuckery, zarkon cared deeply about his people, and thought about the necessary actions to take if he wanted to maintain control over conquered areas. 

yeah, that meant keeping on at least not bad terms with the people he conquered. subjugation & terror to control was not the vibe he wanted to give, & in many really old pantheons even in the future there are some mentions of a divine being representing strength. zarkon proved his capability to provide for his empire, showed that he would not accept terms that wouldn’t help his people, that’s also clear when the first thing he’s worried about is the fact that the rift has let out a monster that he knows will be capable of slaughtering the people of daibazaal, which uhh is unacceptable. 

if he had to choose a side in the modern era, which of course he’d have to choose, his most likely choice would be the blade of marmora. why ? it’s way easier for him to side with GALRA CITIZENS, the current empire is 1 a mess 2 using the fear tactic for control & looping back to like the paragraph above, he’s not ok with that. that’s like at least 30% of the 57% of things he disagrees with his future self on. he’d be reluctant to fully side with rebels other than the blade due to the whole ... he likes the galra empire as a thing just not what it has become. he’s just uhhh bitter about the fact that his fellow paladins are uhhh not piloting lions anymore, so being around team voltron would just be uhh having a bad time having a bad time ! because while he eventually sought eternal life ( the thought at this point has crossed his mind ), he wanted to live forever with his friends, he wanted to give eternity to the other og paladins because ... well, his love for them was unconditional & while not the love he had for honerva, they had become just as essential to the wellbeing of his ‘ soul ’ . he also has issues with the current team voltron because uhhh he considers honerva the love of his life but BLACK IS THE ENTITY HE CONSIDERS HIS SOULMATE, HIS OTHER HALF & oh man does that sting knowing that something has happened in the future & black has a new paladin. 

no, he doesn’t have any of future zarkon’s memories, he doesn’t actually know how things went wrong, but he just knows they did & he wants to reshape the empire to what it was in the past, a symbol of strength rather than fear.