Questions about the lore - ending spoilers

[dreenot]

I just finished the game and I'm trying to understand what happened.
What I understood (my conception):

Wyrms where extinct except for one, the reincarnated Pale King. Is unknown why they died.

The Wyrm trapped Radiance to become king with moth tribe help. Is unknown why he needed to do it or who was she.

Radiance infected bugs trying to escape.

King make the abyss to create a hollow creature of void to contain Radiance forever. A lot of failed ones still there.

The Hollow Knight was used to contain the Radiance and stop the infection.

They think it worked and had time to make statues like in city of tears. The dreamers where kids and know the Knight.

Hollow Knight failed to contain Radiance.

The dreamers are used to seal the Knight in the Black Temple Egg but it's late and almost everybody is dead.

There are a lot of corpses everywhere and zombie violent bugs.

The main character can replace the Knight or kill Radiance and finally stops the infection.

Conclusion:

What matters if it stops or not? Everybody is already dead.
Who was the dreamers before they seal the Knight?
Who was Radiance and what relation she had with the king?
Who are the main character.. why is he different of the other shades.. how he escaped the abyss?
Why was not he the chosen to be the vessel?
The vessel in the vision on abyss is he or the Knight in the Black Egg?
What happens after he consume the light?

I'm not an english speaker, sorry if is not well written

[Username]

Originally posted by dreenot:

The Wyrm trapped Radiance to become king with moth tribe help. Is unknown why he needed to do it or who was she.

The Radiance was originally Hallownest's ruler. The king sealed away the radiance so that he could be the only ruler of Hallownest. This is explained in a secret room in the white palace, and by the seer if you talked to her after getting 2400 essence, so it's pretty easy to miss.

Originally posted by dreenot:

Who was the dreamers before they seal the Knight?

We don't know much about that, but it seems like they were just people who were influential. Lurien watched over the city of tears, Monomon had one of the largest archives of knowledge in the kingdom, and Herrah was basically the ruler of Deepnest.

Originally posted by dreenot:

Who was Radiance and what relation she had with the king?

The radiance was the thing that originally ruled over hallownest. It doesn't seem like she and the king knew eachother personally.

Originally posted by dreenot:

Who are the main character.. why is he different of the other shades.. how he escaped the abyss?

This is a very interesting topic. We don't know how they escaped the abyss and ended up in King's pass, (But Team Cherry has said they will likely explore that eventually) but I don't think they are any different from the other vessels. The only thing that sets them apart, at least that we can tell, is the fact that eventually they embrace the void completely.

Originally posted by dreenot:

Why was not he the chosen to be the vessel?
The vessel in the vision on abyss is he or the Knight in the Black Egg?

The vessel we see in that vision is definitely the Hollow Knight trapped in the black egg. You can tell by the shape of their horns. We can also guess why that knight was chosen: The king mentions they have very exact standards for vessels: No thoughts, no minds, no will. We also learn from the white lady that having these things means the radiance could eventually corrupt their container.

The king probably thought our knight wasn't fit to seal the radiance, but didn't realize the Hollow Knight couldn't do it either.

Originally posted by dreenot:

What happens after he consume the light?

We don't know. Presumably, the kingdom starts to rebuild now that people aren't going crazy.

Keep in mind, some of this is still up for debate. I hope this answered some of your questions.

[TheBrightKing]

The king and radiance were opposing forces; the king granted expanded minds to the bugs of hallownest and radiance relinquised them with the infection. Just wanted to clarify that.

Now to your questions:

-not everybody is dead: zote, sly, bretta, iselda, cornifer, jiji, jinn, ogrim, emilitia and other survivors are still alive; there are also the ones on the hotspring of the crossroads and the spider that is not infected on weavers den alongside midwife, bardoon, white lady, quirrel, tuk, hornet and leg eater to put some examples.

It is your purpose, to contain the infection even if almost everything is lost. You can still save what remains of the kingdom

-monomon was a teacher, not a teacher in the way that she teachs people, but in the way that she investigates in her laboratory, her archives. She probably foresaw that the vessel thingy wouldnt work and she offered herself voluntary as a seal.

Herrah was the queen of distant village and spiders, they didnt recognize the king as king and they lived separated from the kingdom, but the king offered her a bargain in exchange of becoming a seal; he offered her what she desired the most; a daughter (that you find in the game, yes, that daughter is "she" that is dressed with a red piece of cloth like other spiders, she that uses a needle as weapon; you know who im talking about.) So she became a dreamer and had her daughter but didnt spend a lot of time with her since she had to go to sleep.

Lurien was a loyal servant to the king who watched over the city on his spire, he was of high hierarchy and happily accepted to serve the king with that honour; he wrote a letter on his spire and left one guy to watch iver him while he slept, that guy got infected and is the guy you find near him sleeping, if you dreamnail him youll know he was supposed to watch over his master

-radiance was a higher being represented as the old light or nature by some bugs; it supposedly was the ruler of the moth tribe and of hallownest in elder days, when the wyrm came and transformed into the king, he convinced the moth tribe and the other bugs to forget her; thats why and how the infection started. The king was the opposing force of radiance, she had the power to make bugs mindless husks and the king had the power of giving them a mind. Thats the only relation they had.

-we dont know how he escaped the abyss. The main character is another vessel, made to contain the infection; he is special because like the hollow knight in its early days the main character is a pure vessel, and unlike the hollow knight it has not been tarnished yet (tho a decision you make in the game may have tarnished you when going for the good ending) so you can contain radiance forever without ending like the holllow knight, at least untill you are supposedly tarnished.

-the one you see in the abyss is the one in the egg, he was chosen because he was pure; the others including you were thrown away into the abyss when they found the first pure one. But he was later tarnished by an idea instilled, thats why he failed to contain radiance and became infected.

-after he consumes the light the infection supposedly ends and the bugs probably live without the fear of being infected. The ones who were affected wont come to life again and i dont think that getting a mind is possible without the kings power, so hallownest in some way returns to its primal state, just with some bugs that still have a mind.