Why that IS the ruined king in the Splash art

So this was originally inspired by This! thread in which he argues that is not the ruined king, now here is why i think it is.

Lets focus first on the splash art in which we see kindred mounted over their kill in shallow water with the man himself in a set of splendid armor with a crown that appears to be half sunk into the waters and his hand is also deeply sunk into it maybe because a Sword keeps it from floating?

Notice how beautiful and clear this water and surrounding grass is, this fits as the shadow isles was once said to be a land of peerless natural beauty

now lets take a look at a few shadow isle quotes and lore.

"Once, he was a noble king, until grief overcame his reason. In the end, it was not his blade that stole our lives." ― KalistaSquare.png Kalista

Here Kalista describes the nations downfall, she implies that in the end the king was not responsible for the death of their people, so she blames the king but not completely, interesting. Also of note is the fact that he was overcome with grief, most believe this to be the death of his daughter.

"The powers that govern life and death are not to be trifled with. The Shattered Crown is a king’s reward for defying the shadows’ embrace. I believe we are meant to ponder mortality through poetry and verse, not enslave it to our will." ― Ionian storyteller

Here we have a tale describing punishment for researching ways to defy death, along with all of this we know the spell was originally meant to bring the kings daughter back to life, but maybe kindred killed him during the ritual but instead of the spell stopping it latched onto the king instead and he arose as a member of the undead bringing his whole kingdom with him.

To me this heavily implies that kindred did kill the ruined king but did so as the king was casting the spell and so without the king and his mind as the focus the spell hit the caster and the entire kingdom in which he ruled turning it into the shadow isles.

We know that Shurima suffered a similar fate when Xerath interfered with the ritual disrupting the the intention of the magic but not stopping it resulting in an entire land changing forever due to one disruption in the spell.

This of course means that ultimately Kindred is responsible for the Isles becoming a land that denies death because they acted without first thinking about what would happen to such powerful magics should the caster perish.

Some of this relies on old lore and some on new lore but regardless I have a feeling that come Halloween we will know the full story.