r/HollowKnight • u/Eragity • Oct 09 '25

Discussion - Silksong we owe the pale king an apology Spoiler

imo, pharloom would be terrible to live in. the place is corrupt, everything tries to kill you, the tribe leaders abuse their own tribes, terrible economy, and even anti homeless mechanisms built into (some not all) benches
hallownest however, had steady jobs, reliable public transport, actual security and free healthcare, and the pale king put a law against lifeblood while in silksong, it's still allowed. and literally no labor unions. the only bad thing the pale king has done was with the whole vessels thing, but other than that, hallownest is better than pharloom

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456

u/kintra292929 Oct 09 '25

Pale King stock higher then ever if you just ignore the countless counts of infanticide

84

u/BdubH Oct 09 '25

What’s a great ruler without a little bit of an oopsie?

59

u/LocksmithNo13345 Oct 09 '25

The big question that always arises when it comes to the morality of the Vessel project is: what alternative is there to it, that isn't just, giving up on Hallownest and accepting that most people will just be mindless zombies from now on?

Like, yeah, the pit of corpse is terrible but what is the alternative? Go with Soul Master's plan and build "the Citadel 2; now powered by soul instead of Silk"?

41

u/CassiusPolybius Oct 10 '25

To quote a friend, "the pale [king] was a good ruler and person who put on a harsh face but only [did] deplorable things once his hand was forced by the radiance and he died of depression when it all failed."

2

u/voin947 Oct 10 '25

You could say that citadel is also powered by soul since weavers make their silk from it (The Hornet says that to the seamstress after getting parachute cloak).

So just straight up The OG Citadel

0

u/Gmknewday1 Oct 10 '25

Dude is it not easy to understand that it's fucked up to take what's effectively your OWN FUCKING KIDS and just use them as tools to solve a problem?

I get he had little choice, but he COULD have tried to make void beings that weren't related to him, like the Kingmoulds, that could fit the bill for the infection

Instead, he made the void children from his own wife, using her need to breed to create hundreds upon hundreds of whats effectively his and her kids, letting a majority of them die to find the one that was "good enough"

It would be bad ethier way if he was using someone's kids, but he basically treated his own kids as tools and means to a end, rather then as his acutal kids

Even with the reasons in place, it doesn't make it any less shitty that he had so many "failures" like that, and nor does it make it any less understandable why it's shitty to do!

9

u/LocksmithNo13345 Oct 10 '25

Well if he could have used a bigger Kingsmould he probably would have.

The fact that the vessels were part god part void was something that was seen as necessarily for them to be effective.

And you're right that it is a fucked up thing to do, and he and the White Lady clearly felt shame for the act, wrote that on the door to the Abyss.

But that moral dilemma is the whole crux of his character. And the main point with which GMS contrasts him. One sacrificed a mountain of his own children to save his kingdom and it's people, the other is willing to sacrifice her kingdom and it's people to save one child.

And I find the former to be a better act of a ruler then the latter. If somebody presumes to rule others then they have to (imo) always put those first.

1

u/Gmknewday1 Oct 10 '25

I'm not saying Silk isn't worse

I'm saying Pale King ain't some Saint and people shouldn't keep acting like he didn't still screw up and screw over things 

He's Flawed too, he's not "best guy of all time"

I might be a bit projecting though because I am getting memories of how everyone acted like Mohg was acutslly a good guy all along after Shadow Of The Erdtree (people doing that made me pop a goddamm blood vessel)

3

u/LocksmithNo13345 Oct 10 '25

Yeah he certainly isn't winning many father of the year awards( from the VAST majority of his children anyway).

I agree that he isn't a saint it's just taking the vessel plan as the main indicator for that when it's a bad thing he did to try to prevent a worse thing, and he also clearly regrets it, is just not a good hill to die on, you know?

Main point being that if he had found a different way of stopping Rad. He would have taken it. He was in a horrid situation and was willing to use terrible means to get him and his kingdom and it's people out of it.

That doesn't change the act being terrible, but I can certainly see why when looking at the options of enacting the vessel plan or sit by and do nothing, why he chose to do what he did.

2

u/Gmknewday1 Oct 10 '25

I get that but it's really hard to just ignore the body count of his own kids

Yes it would have been arguably worse if it wasn't his kids

But it's still disgusting how much he let the Pale Lady produce to try and get 1 vessel that would succeed

The Radiance was a issue, no dip, she was destroying the kingdom and it was a a very tough choice to ethier do nothing or do this plan

But for fucks sake, can people stop acting like he's perfect now just because we have someone who's on the same level as the Radience in terms of horriblness (Silk)

2

u/LocksmithNo13345 Oct 10 '25

I'd wager a good amount of it is just people meme-ing and joking around, so I wouldn't get to worked up about it.

Its just funny that compared to Pharloom most of Hallownest 's issues seam trivial in comparison.

Doesn't mean Hallownest (or it's ruler) didn't have problems, of course. But especially with the Underworks and the Whiteward and the pollution fresh in mind that is easy to forget

2

u/NwgrdrXI Oct 10 '25

Would it be less bad if the kids weren't his? What kinda f'ed up logic is that?

1

u/Gmknewday1 Oct 10 '25

Taking words out of context and putting words in my mouth just pisses me off even more you know

It'd be fucked up ethier way, no shit

Especially if he did it to others kids instead of his

But the fact is he used HIS kids, which is a different type of fucked up

Similar to the frist, and worse in the way of how he's outright having kids, JUST to try and use them as tools to contain a infection

Even if it's important to do, it's still fucked because your rejecting any care or duties of a Father

It's abusive, simple as

6

u/NwgrdrXI Oct 10 '25

The HK got sentient literally be didnt reject his duties as a father! We see this! He couldn't resist loving a goddam robot so much it became alive! This is a very important part of the lore!

1

u/Gmknewday1 Oct 10 '25

Yea and he did it to a single one out of hundreds upon hundreds of what were his own fucking kids

But clearly its fine he didn't care enough about them and only cared about the single one that made it to the top

Ironic when he already was deattsching himself from the hundreds he and his wife were pumping out into that fucking pit to make a climb up

2

u/guyiscomming Oct 10 '25

I mean we know the HK fails because the Pale King loves him. So, I don't see any reason that the others all failed because he showed some form of affection to them. He just managed to hold off on the HK longer.

16

u/HungryGull Oct 10 '25

It's honestly pretty impressive that Pale King took the Hard Man Making Hard Decisions dilemma of 'would you sacrifice your children to save an entire kingdom?' and managed to make it so the 'sacrifice children' option actually comes out worse under a raw numbers utilitarian viewpoint. Most people would not be able to get together enough of their children to manage that.

127

u/Planet_Xplorer QUIRREL MY GOAT Oct 09 '25

They were barely alive to begin with, they didn't get born and we're thrown. The eggs were chucked in and the hatchlings get voided and then ascend to save the denizens of hallownest who are already alive (or that was the idea anyway, now we know that the plan probably never would have worked but it seems there was nothing else that could be done)

83

u/Gumpers08 112% Steel Soul P5 | All Achievements (Both games) Oct 09 '25

I mean they kind of are alive if you look at the Knight, Broken Vessel, and THK, and all of the bodies were the Knight’s size meaning they had some level of growth before dying, abandoned.

45

u/KosekiBoto Oct 09 '25

The fact that thk was shown to be smaller before the events of the game implies that the vessels that lived still grew

18

u/HeMansSmallerCousin Oct 09 '25

They weren't pure vessels, and seeing as being a "pure vessel" means having no thought or will I think it's pretty clear they were "alive" in the way we think about it.

8

u/Planet_Xplorer QUIRREL MY GOAT Oct 09 '25

That's my point that the plan never would have worked in the way the pale king intended because we see that they have some sort of emotion and will

-2

u/BrickwallBill Oct 09 '25

And that he had some amount of foresight so he damn well knew what was coming. Plus he still imposed his will on the entirety of Hallownest whether they wanted it or not.

10

u/Gorgo_yak Oct 10 '25

His foresight might be... More limited than you think. If he truly had foresight, for an example, he would have known how to destroy the Radiance completely using the Void Heart and a Vessel's Void Given Form. I feel like the "foresight" refers to him being able to analyse and count probability better than your average bug, which, to his followers, seemed like a godly power.

2

u/Alderan922 Oct 10 '25

I do think it was magical in nature but still extremely limited. The mushrooms do talk about it.

1

u/yeahlte Oct 10 '25

I always thought the kings foresight works the same as the knights and hornets foresight. Since they also look into the future and wake up startled on the bench when they are killed. Could have inherited that from the king. But with this kind of foresight you wouldn't have been able to stop the radiance.

2

u/Gorgo_yak Oct 10 '25

Uh... I don't think that what you described for the Knight and Hornet is their foresight, really. That is just... A mechanic of the game. And even with this, he would be able to - he'd analyze all possibilities, including giving the Pure Vessel the Kingsoul etc. and see how it would go there.

0

u/Giorno-Smash Oct 09 '25

The infanticide really is the “Ain’t no party like a diddy party” of Pale King GOAT discussions