started thinking about a swap au where instead of a weaver queen, the pale monarch of pharloom is white lady

(initially because the idea of a pale king x grand mother silk power couple just sends me. can you imagine the type of trauma a silken knight created to bind the infection would have?)

but i kept thinking about an unbound white lady and it’s genuinely pretty interesting to imagine.

so, to me, greyroot’s arc kind of confirms that roots are parasitic fungi rather than plants. further, we know white lady feels a powerful urge to spread her spores.

especially without pale king beside her with the foresight and ambition to uplift a civilization, i think she would pursue her propagation with reckless abandon, and her pharloom would become a wild place‍ ‍‍—‍ though perhaps not outright overgrown. she’d likely retain inclinations toward gardening, caring for her children, some appreciation toward beauty and kindness

but again, like with her seizure of the mosskin’s lands, i expect she’d still have all of a pale being’s callous regard to any who would deny her claims. in fact, i think she’d take a particular interest in possessing verdania in particular

anyway, what’s interesting to me is imagining that all of white lady’s children would likewise be parasitic fungi. (incidentally, this has interesting implications for the nature of vessels in canon.)

personally, i’ve already considered similar lines of thought before in my original worldbuilding projects, contemplating the organization of a society where sapient parasites must become part of the social contract.

i think it would lead to a very novel mutation of gender roles. especially with white lady as the reigning monarch, parasites would find themselves in a privileged position.

and the social order would reflect this‍ ‍‍—‍ any bug seen fit to bear the gift of fungal life should feel honored. it’s a beautiful thing and it’s a necessary thing‍ ‍‍—‍ denying a root a vessel to house them, or worse, casting them out of the shell they’ve made their home should be considered an act as cruel as any theft or murder

there’s a line spoken, i believe, by the caretaker midway through the game, referencing whiteward‍ ‍‍—‍ how gms’s pharloom saw generation after generation surgically inserting silk into their shells, deeper and deeper until they were easy prey for the haunted thread.

now imagine those same generations of bugs breeding and growing symbiotic with and dependent on fungus.

how does it all fall apart, though?

well, white lady says it herself. it’s the same line that spurred this whole train of thought. I still feel that urge you see. I always will. A voracious desire to spread seeds upon the land, to propagate myself, to breed.

why would she stop if her kingdom were full to the brim? if there were more roots than bugs for them to live in? if hosts fattened with guests were packed tight and overflowing from the most ramshackle slum‍-​tenements? if her children and subjects now turned to devouring each other for the lack of anything else to eat? no, i don’t think she would ever feel the urge cease.

maybe it would take the threat‍ ‍‍—‍ or the brutal enactment‍ ‍‍—‍ of a culling (part of me doesn’t want to make a thanos joke, but it’s right there), yet i do think eventually white lady may find the same sense of contrition and horror to bind herself.

but maybe this cure would prove even worse her nature as a disease‍ ‍‍—‍ how could a kingdom so long dependent on its pale monarch survive the binding away of all her power?

and i have no doubt the parasitic hegemony would have become downright religious in their zeal for propagation. even if their mother had turned her back on the idea, they would still want their spores spread far and wide. some of them might even hatch a plan to forcible unseal the white lady, force her to sporulate again and again.

but a plan like that would take some time to come together‍ ‍‍—‍ the kingdom may come nearly undone before its realization.

and doesn’t that seem like the perfect backdrop for a hollow knight game? a kingdom in abeyance, infested with starving parasites whose spores still choke the air?

an interesting question is where greyroot sits into all this. she of course would fit in well with the parasite‍-​chauvinist agenda. but without knowing more about the nature of roots, it’s difficult to say whether she’d be Good Friends with white lady, or a bitter rival scheming to usurp her position. or how about both‍ ‍‍—‍ greyroot as a scheming vizier, anyone?

finally, there’s the equivalent of lace and phantom‍ ‍‍—‍ though they ought to have different names given how else much has changed. perhaps they could have been the fruit of some desperate hope before white lady came to accept sealing herself as the only solution. through creating them, she sought to bear a child of root and root alone, finally overcoming the need to insinuate her kind into the shells of bugs.

then at great cost, it was achieved. perhaps the cost was too great‍ ‍‍—‍ or better yet, what if someone in her court endeavored to convince white lady it never worked, that her lace had proven as frail as phantom had?

after all, if the roots enjoy the act of infesting and puppeting bugs, they would see the lady’s new hope as a threat to their way of life and may conclude deceiving her would prolong it‍ ‍‍—‍ not realizing this would be what finally convinced her to give it all up

but now, that’s all i’ve worked out so far, thank you for entertaining this nonsense.