u/Waste_Yak_990

So, it's pretty obvious that Signalis takes a lot of inspiration from the King in Yellow. However, when most people discuss the King in Yellow, they usually only discuss the first four stories in the book since they're directly connected to the play and the King itself. However, I think Signalis makes a lot of sense if you consider the fifth story, "Demoiselle d'Ys".

"The Demoiselle d'Ys" is about a 19th-century man named Philip that gets lost in a moor in Brittany and gets taken in by the Countess Jeanne d'Ys, who is a falconer. She teaches him about falcons and falconry, and he notices that her home, language, and clothing are all very similar to medieval literature on falconry. The two fall in love, and Philip makes a promise that he will return and visit Jeanne every single day and that they will be in love forever. However, when they are discussing her falcons, Philip is bitten by a viper and dies. He awakens again in the moor and rushes to find her, but finds a gravestone marked 1573 that says Jeanne killed herself over the death of her lover, a stranger named Philip. On top of the grave is Jeanne's glove, still warm and recently worn.

So, we have a story about a pale woman with a close connection to falcons and her lover who makes a promise to her that they will be together. However, the promise cannot be fulfilled because one of them dies and is from a different time period. I think this explains a lot about Signalis. The promise that Elster made to Arianne is that they will be together forever, but she cannot keep that promise because she died on the Penrose and Arianne was kept in stasis. They, like Philip and Jeanne, are stuck in a time loop that repeats forever because the promise cannot be kept. Arianne desires death, but death is not an escape from the cycle. Only by keeping the promise and reuniting forever can the cycle be broken.