#in some ways...

Keith has never set foot on Altea, has never heard stories about it ( that he can recall, anyway ), has never known of it’s existence. He was born a long, long time after it’s destruction on a planet far, far from Galra & Altea that was uninhabited, aside from his Altean mother and occasionally, in brief visits, his Galran father. 

When Altea was destroyed, not everyone died in one solid swoop. There were some that managed to escape, scattering away from the planet in small groups/individually, though, of course, the effort was in vain as Zarkon was quick to hunt them all down in an attempt at eradicating the entire race. However, Keith’s mother and her then-husband managed to escape ----- sort of. They landed on a small, uninhabited planet, that was overgrown by various plant life & was alive itself. Well aware that one of Zarkon’s fleets would be there soon to kill them and rather than let his wife die with him, he ( against her wishes ) hid their ship ( small, an escape vessel more so than anything else ) within the thick undergrowth and stowed his wife away in the singular sleep/healing pod that their ship provided. 

Through some stroke of luck, the planet assisted in helping hide her, covering her further in vines and flowers and roots, and in her comatose state, her life signature stopped being given off. She wasn’t found, and thus survived, but her husband was killed. Thanks the planet being uninhabited, the was no reason to destroy it and thus it was left alone for 10k years. 

She eventually woke from her sleep, her pod finally failing to sustain itself any longer and she was freed, though it took her almost two days to fight her way through the plant life that had grown over top of her. Once out, however, Zarkon was able to pick up an Altean life signature and sent a nearby ship to cut what he thought was the final weed of that race ( shout out 2 Allura and Coran for sprouting back up ) that wasn’t large enough to destroy a planet, but could certainly trapeze through the plants and shit to find one woman ----- how hard could it be? 

The people he sent ended up getting fucked up, between the planet itself’s poisonous/hazardous plants and Keith’s mother picking them off from the shadows in an effort to survive, despite her previously pacifistic nature. One of the men she attempted to kill managed to survive, and dying, begged for her mercy. She gave it, taking him below ground where her and his life signatures would not be picked up and tending to his wounds. 

Fast forward roughly eleven years, Keith is 10, living below ground on this planet and sees his father roughly once a year in very short intervals. If he saw him in a crowd he might not recognize him & isn’t at all close to him, though his father loves him dearly and brings him a gift of some kind every time he visits ----- his knife is one of those gifts. However, all things, good or bad, must come to an end and they were found out. While Keith’s father was not killed, he was forced to watch them kill Keith’s mother as a punishment.

Keith managed to escape through a stroke of luck, Keith’s father able to relay a message to Keith’s mother about what was to come prior to a fleet reaching her and their son, and Keith was put on the long-since repaired ship ( though not in great condition ), given a goodbye from his mother and sent off into the great abyss. 

Through luck, hiding, and learning through consequences, Keith managed to evade capture and survive in space until he was no longer being pursued and he lived as a planet hopper for roughly 3-4 years before coming to Earth and blending in among the people there. Eventually he joined the Garrison and all that.