#id do grimm and unn but unn woukd sound very redundant and i do not have the time to research grimm

[candor-creator]

gods are not people. gods are stories.

when the Greeks created Zeus and Hera, they did not create them with the thought that people thousands of years later would declare their relationship atrocious and their actions cruel. they didn't write these characters with the idea that they should be scolded for punishing victims.

because gods are not people. Hera is marriage. beyond the goddess of marriage. she Is Marriage.

if you do not respect your marriage, terrible things will happen to you. to tell a story and to make their world clearer, the Greeks attributed those terrible things to Hera. do not break your oaths, or Hera will punish you.

if you are inhospitable, trouble will find you. a tyrant king will be toppled by the angry army of peasants crushed beneath him. a thief of renown shall be hunted down by those they've robbed and they will lose everything they once had. attack those around you who trust you, and hell shall follow. they named this hell Zeus.

with this in mind, I wanted to talk about the deities of Hallownest.

The Pale King gives the gift of mind to those who live in his kingdom, has the ability to predict the future, was an engineer, a researcher, and he was very, very, prideful. egotistical. he fully believed his kingdom would never fall, better than all the rest. he believed his plans to protect his land would succeed. he made countless sacrifices and was full of regret. he made innumerable mistakes, but remains beloved by his people, who endlessly called out to him when he vanished. he holds affection for his wife, his home, his people, his children. he gave a gift to someone he believed did not care for him, and crafted a memorial for them when they were sacrificed.

the pale king is the Mind. he is the concept of thinking highly of one's self, thinking one can do no wrong, he is pride and joy, he is curiosity, he is embarrassment and regret and shame and mistakes and fumbles and learning and growing, he is memory and he is hindsight and he is foresight, forethought, carefully considering every option on the path ahead, he is grief and he is love and he is the inability to cope with loss and he is the inability to understand the finality of death and he is the hope that things will never change and everything will be comfortable just as it is forever. he is Mind.

The White Lady is the wife of the pale king, and she is a mother, but not a Mother. she is a wife, but a cold one. she is a queen, but she is absent. she is a god, and she is selfish. when a vessel stumbled into her chambers, where she imprisoned herself of her own volition, she gave away her late husband's wedding ring, speaking of its potential power. not of its sentiment, for it was broken and useless without its other half, not of its purpose or who owned it or why she carried it, no. she gave it away and asked her child to sacrifice their own life for her.

trees do not care what happens to the fruit they bear. it falls from their branches and is either carried off by animals or reduced to rot in the grass. the seeds inside are all the tree could care about, flourishing for its own gain. the more trees, the better. nature does not care. The White Lady is Nature. and she does not nurture. The Mind loves her dearly, for her branches and her life and all she is and ever will be. Nature is neutral in return.

The Radiance is an arrogant goddess who believed in herself just as the Mind did, believing in her own beauty and power, that she could unite everyone beneath her if they just focused entirely on her, on achieving the feats she wished of them, and from arrogance she birthed arrogance, as her people abandoned her for better, clearer things the moment they were able. she wished for them to follow their Dream, and once they did, she made them regret it.

The Hollow Knight was born to be purity and perfection. something mindless and yet clever, something stoic yet without will, something silent yet sending a message. and the hollow knight looked upon this impossible task, then out across the kingdom that would be relying on its success, then up towards the eyes of its proud father, the Mind believing in its Patience and perseverance and its ability to hold strong for as long as they would need, and Patience acted for the good of the world around it.

and an eternity later, a lone knight stepped into a kingdom, listening to its final breaths, suspended in a moment between life and death, and the knight came forward to decide its Fate.