Rematch amid Roses

The narrative point of Lace's Cradle battle is fairly simple. Hornet has reached the pinnacle of Pharloom's Citadel, and now all that stands between her and her goal is a broken girl with aspirations of knighthood. The Pale monarch's loyal yet lonely daughter.

And there are plenty of different ways Team Cherry could have designed Lace's arena to reinforce that story and character beat. Perhaps an armor-lined hallway leading up to an empty throne, or a stained-glass cathedral right out of Anor Londo, or even an opulent bedroom befitting a childish princess.

Instead, they chose this:

And I know I'm far from the first to react to it with "damn, that has got to be the most Utena-inspired arena I've ever seen."

It's got the ornate elevator, lifting Hornet higher while confining her within its gilded bars.

The cutscene before the battle has Lace resting amid the flowers - this is her place of sanctuary, and Hornet has caught her in a moment of vulnerability.

And, of course, there's entire fact that it's a dance-like duel with a fencer amidst a field of roses.

There's also a few more curiously RGU-esque aspects to Lace, for those inclined to look for them: Lace's noblewoman's laugh resembles Nanami's, her fencing style and desire to be a "knight" evokes Utena's quest to be a "prince," and her dismissal of her own personhood is reminiscent of Anthy's suffering as the Rose Bride.

Indeed, in addition to RGU's lofty dueling platform - and all the attendant implications that this battle is not just a show of force but a determination of whose worldview shall become truth - I find this arena also calls to mind Anthy's birdcage-like greenhouse. It is a place of exquisite beauty, but it is also the cruel cage in which Lace is trapped.

As in RGU itself, the color symbolism of the roses is the eye-catching detail that jumps out to be studied. White roses can be used to represent purity, innocence, and loyalty. Very Lace… or rather, very much what Lace was intended to be by her Mother.

You then spend the boss fight ripping up petals. Then the start to Act 3 shows the field crushed by rubble. The result seems pretty clear: after you fight her, the pure, innocent, loyal Lace is gone for good.

But white roses are also used for weddings and funerals. New beginnings, respect, remembrance. Yours was life, pale one. The death of Grand Mother Silk's daughter; a new beginning for a girl about to rebel.

Finally, white roses are sometimes used to contrast with red roses in arrangements. White for pure and chaste love, red for passion and romantic seduction.

Visually, the effect of the arena during the battle is such that Hornet's cloak becomes a vibrant, rose-like splash of red intruding on the pure white of Lace's world. Hm!

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Of course, anime and games are full of fantastical, over-the-top visuals. Revolutionary Girl Utena is hardly the only piece of media to involve a climactic sword fight taking place in a field of flowers. (And don't even get me started on The Rose of Versailles and where RGU itself got it's inspirations, or this post would be twice as long, haha.)

And I doubt we'll ever know if Team Cherry had RGU specifically in mind when creating Lace and her arena.

But so what? Why would it matter whether or not Silksong borrows a few visuals from some random 1997 show?

Well…

The thing is, if this is an intentional reference, that's much more loaded than a simple bit of game design trivia.

Because RGU isn't just a random anime. It's arguably one of the most influential pieces of queer animation in existence.

Even today, from other anime like Gundam: Witch from Mercury to Western shows like Steven Universe or She-Ra: Princesses of Power, artists pay homage to RGU's iconic imagery and poses to tie their own characters to that rich legacy. When censors or conservative CEOs are breathing down creators' necks, a nod to Utena is often a way to encode queerness that would otherwise be erased.

So yes, referencing Utena kind of does matter, especially when it comes to character analysis. Because deliberately invoking Utena means something, and that something usually is: here there be lesbians.

…Then again, Lace's arena could just be a neat visual and these similarities are mere coincidence rather than intentional reference. It's not like Team Cherry had to worry about censors, after all. Nor, again, do I expect them to ever answer either way regarding their inspirations.

And frankly, I'm not sure I'd want them to. Theorizing around cryptic lore and symbolism is half the fun of these kinds of games!

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A child at what cost?

But enough about the arena. Let's skip ahead a bit to that Silk Heart dialog you get afterwards.

...Better a child spun mad... than none... ...Better a child spun frail... than none... ...Better a child spun pure... than them... ...One to wish our waking... ...From our Silk... A child born loyal...

Seeing someone compare these lines to the "No cost too great" monologue from Hollow Knight is what really unlocked Lace and her Mother for me. And the deeper you dive into these lines, the more interesting they become.

To state the obvious, Grand Mother Silk's attitude toward Lace is one of many direct narrative inversions of the original Hollow Knight: rather than a monarch sacrificing their children in vain hopes of saving their kingdom, Silksong tells the story of a monarch who would sacrifice their kingdom for the sake of their child.

But that's not to say that GMS was a particularly caring or supportive mother; like the Pale King, these lines paint a tragic picture of sympathetic motives leading to utterly monstrous ends. All Mother Silk wanted was a child who would not betray her. But to do that, she was willing to maim that child.

Just as it is unclear if the Vessels had even been born before being cast into the Void, it is unclear if Lace ever existed in a state where she wasn't deliberately disfigured. But there's nonetheless an ugly violence underlying the minimalist poetry of these lines, a violence no less than if GMS had carved scars into her child's limbs and mind in hopes she would never be able to live independently afterwards.

But did she succeed at that horrific goal? …Well. Let's look at "No cost too great" again first.

No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering. Born of God and Void. You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams. You are the Vessel. You are the Hollow Knight.

The great irony at the heart of Hollow Knight, the dark fulcrum upon which the tragedy of Hallownest rests, is that these chilling lines from the Pale King are false. The Hollow Knight had mind, had will. And so the Hollow Knight was not a truly pure Vessel, and could never have truly sealed the Radiance. Thus did Hallownest fall - the exact end which the Pale King had so desperately tried to prevent.

And I think there's a strong argument to be made that Lace is in the exact same situation.

"Better a child spun mad… than none." But is Lace truly mad? If anything, she comes across as bitterly rational and startlingly self-aware - both of her own flaws and of how precarious her Mother's favor is.

"Better a child spun frail… than none." But is Lace truly frail? If anything, she comes across as one of the strongest creatures in Pharloom - surviving multiple battles against Hornet and even the corruption of the void itself.

Perhaps because Lace was sane enough to resent her existence, perhaps because Lace was strong enough to strike back… perhaps that meant Lace could never have been truly loyal. And thus did Grand Mother Silk's final child betray her - the exact end which she had so desperately tried to prevent.

Like the Hollow Knight, Lace was never meant to have agency. Like the Hollow Knight, everything went wrong because she did.

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Still, even if that theory is correct, it doesn't mean there isn't some truth to Grand Mother Silk's lines. After all, the Vessels rarely vocalize and may not think in quite the same ways as other bugs; thus I suspect Lace is meant to be genuinely mentally ill and/or physically disabled while keeping the fundamental point that she is far more capable and has far more agency than everyone believes of her.

But that brings me to the one major point of frustration I have with Lace's character. In what ways is she supposed to appear "frail" and "mad?"

On the former, there is at least Phantom's situation combined with the Hunter's Journal description that it takes a lot of Silk to keep Lace alive. That's enough for fanworks to run with, though I do wish it was more obviously presented as a disability (and more clear how Lace differs from Phantom in that regard) in the game if that's what Team Cherry was going for.

As for the latter, I've seen some people come away with the impression that Lace being "mad" is what causes her to have the mind of a child and delight in violence. Which. Mmm. Those are some unfortunate stereotypes right there. People who are mentally ill and/or neurodivergent often struggle against being seen as childlike because that is used as an excuse to deny them the ability to make decisions about their lives or relationships. Similarly, the false perception that mental illness makes a person violent is used to stigmatize and justify stripping autonomy from such individuals.

I'm not one to put creators on a pedestal but I would like to think Team Cherry are at least better writers than that…

Hence why I am rather motivated to read Lace as being trapped in the role of a child rather than her madness manifesting as her actually being equivalent to a child. Under this light, other characters' perceptions of Lace as childish and violent become yet another example of how her Mother intended Lace's very mind and body to be a cage to isolate her and enforce her loyalty.

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Doomed by the narrative?

Speaking of madness and trauma and thwarted autonomy: goodness, Lace is such a terribly gothic figure. She's simultaneously the angelically ailing child, the madwoman in the attic, the ghostly pale apparition on the moors, Frankenstein's unloved monster.

(I particularly love the use of "husk" in her line here. Lace is referring to herself as an empty and cast-off shell, yes. But in Hollow Knight's setting, the word "husk" is also the common term for "corpse." Implying Lace sees herself not just as empty, but dead. The same as the Haunted bugs that surround her, not just lacking life but a walking desecration of it.

It's a great example of how Hollow Knight being a world of fantasy bugs allows its dialog and imagery to be even more visceral and evocative.)

And with this context, it makes a little more sense why Lace's anger at her abuse and lack of agency is conflated with a mysterious and nebulous insanity. It marks her as the type of broken girl who's narrative is supposed to only end in one way: an early grave, a beautiful and tragic wasting away into death.

So it was not a surprise, then, that Lace appears to die after her second duel. Hornet can even find Silkflies hovering over Lace's "corpse" to reinforce the point. Alas, poor Lace! We hardly knew ye!

…Now hold that thought while I return to Utena again and Hornet crafts a godly snare.

Apocalypse Yuri

Bringing about the apocalypse by going against one's destiny is something of a trend in fantasy yuri - and even yuri not explicitly and intentionally invoking Utena's legacy. I'm talking about everything from Madoka Magica to Life is Strange to the Locked Tomb series.

For the protagonist to get the girl, they must defy death, tear down gods, and often cause the end of the world itself.

Of course, fighting fate in this way doesn't have to be a queer story, but it should be obvious why it commonly is; to embrace one's queerness is to reject the cis/heterosexual life and norms set out for you. It is to crash into another person only to realize that everything you were told about how your life was supposed to go is wrong, that those norms are a cage you need to wrest yourself free from, and that any hope of happiness requires that you build a new world, a new understanding of yourself from the ashes of your former life.

In many cases, these are also stories in defiant dialog with beautiful, tragic, narratively satisfyingly deaths. Stories where, even when the very themes and character arcs insist the gays must be buried and the plot has come to an end, the protagonist instead whips out a shovel and a book of necromancy. Or in Hornet's case, she'll manifest a magic, void-repellent flower out of her deepest memories. A flower which is normally placed on a departed lesbian lover's grave. Hm!

(Seriously, I've seen a lot of variations on this plot, and the Everbloom has to be the most stupidly romantic way to bring a girl back from the barely-metaphorical Underworld that I've seen yet, haha!)

But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

At the end of Act 2, Hornet rejects her nature and her destiny to ascend as the Weaver Queen by choosing to ensnare the god instead. Then Lace rejects her nature and her destiny to die as her Mother's pure, loyal child and instead reveals she has strength and sanity enough to save Hornet.

And in doing so, together they cause the very foundations of Pharloom crumble. An apocalypse that's mere presence once again places them in some very illustrious, very queer company.

this too, is yuri?

Well... kinda. Memes aside, Silksong, like most Soulslikes, luxuriates in decadent ambiguity. So I wouldn't ever claim there's one right way to interpret its story. (Again, more on this when I write up some Act 3 thoughts.)

But I would say that Silksong's plot follows some amusingly well-worn yuri beats, while garnishing those beats with imagery and themes that are also associated with queer stories. Given all that, I don't think it's wrong to read the game as a lesbian love story.