I'd Still Go Into That Two-Head Hare

The Radiance is a characters who often get demonized by her (aka the Hollow Knight) fandom. Which is understandable at first glance: she causes the dream-caused zombie apocalypse we see in the game & you need to kill her to end the game (not a joke! There isn't a canon ending which doesn't end in her death). There are sources in game that say her dream-zombie illness (aka The Infection) causes a lot of distress if not pain to everyone she infects, and The Infection affects most bugs (which replace mammals in this setting) in game! So why do I like her?

So prior to the pale king (tpk) coming & conquering all of the area known in-game as Hallownest, the sophont bug groups lived in their own nations & areas (some might've overlaped, we don't know the details). That included the group which The Radiance was the goddess of: the Moths. The Moth Tribe was near the crown of Hallownest and fed Radiance their worship. But suddenly tpk appeared and the moths abandoned The Radiance. Causing her to be forgotten & seemingly go into a god coma or temporary death untill some rando bug remembered her, which causes her to realease The Infection.

But doesn't that series of events sound, sus?

Like even if we take the least charitable view of The Radiance's god-parenting, why would ALL the moths abadone her to such a degree that they FORGOT HER into Non-Existence. Actually a lot of tpk's behavior regarding his kingdom is HELLA SUS. What got me to realize this was the claim in-game that he gave all the bugs inside the Crator/Hallownest sophonce/sapience-

But wait a second! It's strongly canon that the mantises, the mushrooms, the mosskin & the Deepnest citizens were already there when he arrived! Even if we take the charitable approarch to that idea & say that tpk gave sophonce to the non-sophont bugs & that those bugs were a ton... Why does he get to be the high king of the whole area which he is a newcomer to? Now if you call this conquesting gone wrong or colonialism depends on where you're willing to draw the line between those two concepts... But I hardly see a diffrence so I'm treating it as both. His case is not helped by him claiming Hallownest is/was "the last and only kingdom", which, wow some Ozymandias shit right there!

Okay so it's likely that tpk banned the worship of The Radiance. It's unclear why she would've been banned but not the worshipping of Unn by the mosskin. But it's possible it's because the mosskin were making consessions which either the moths or Radiance weren't willing to give. Either way-

This is basically a murder attempt, right??? No wonder she's so freaked out in all fights with her! She's holding on to her own existance after a god murder attempt which almost worked.

Also: where are the moths?????

The moths besides Seer in game are either ghosts or just, GONE. Now I personally prefer the idea of there being crator/hallownest moths which fled the place & became diaspora. But you could easily read that as a genocide of the moths, in part or in full. Which would only worsen The Radiance's anger & explain why she's still doing The Infection even after tpk's dissapearance. Oh yeah! The dissapearance of tpk & where Radi is at the start of the game.

Soooooo, tpk created & killed a FUCK TON of his & his wife's children, picked one which he wanted to be "no mind to think... no will to break... no voice to cry suffering". Because he wanted a Hollow Knight to capture The Radiance to forcably stop the infection instead of like- repealing the clear ban on her worship? He didn't want to concede. He didn't want to give up his power over the people of Hallownest. No cost was too great because it would mean he keeps what he already gained. And what does he do when his plan fails?

He fucking fleas into a dream of an automaton & peaces out.

He doesn't even take his wife or inform her of it. Because NOBODY knows what happened to him. Piece Of Shit Asshole.


TL:DR; because the pale king started it & never quit being a piece of shit.

Now you might think I think that The Knight/Little Ghost/The Player is wrong to stop Radi. But I don't think so. She is causing damage to a TON of people by doing what she's doing. But I like her to be allowed to be more complicated like canon implies her to be... And more "Radi Survives" fics where she gets to have a messy recovery.