League of Legends' upcoming champion Seraphine has been a hot button topic within the community since her reveal. For the past few months, Seraphine has been teased and hyped through a variety of different mediums ranging from comics, covers of K/DA songs being posted online, and a Twitter account where Seraphine herself is posting. This allows fans to follow her journey as an indie singer to an eventual pop star idol with an upcoming feature on a K/DA album.
However, K/DA is known as an alternate universe to League of Legends' canonical lore. With all of this attention being brought to Seraphine's alternate universe biography, there was some speculation as to whether or not her true in-universe story would be as detailed. Once her story was revealed to the public, it wasn't met with the warmest reception, with Seraphine now touted as the champion that doesn't fit in.
Playing for K/DA
Perhaps Seraphine's biggest offense is a lack of a true foothold in the world of Runeterra, the world in which most of League of Legends' stories take place in. Seraphine is the first Piltover and Zaun champion released since Camille, making her lore a great opportunity to expand on the region through its music. Instead, her lore does none of this. This lack of connection between Seraphine's identity and Piltover and Zaun leads to many content creators and fans feeling as if her in-universe story was an afterthought to her K/DA story, which players can only indulge in after buying an ultimate skin for the champion during the K/DA comeback event.
A Missed Opportunity
To fix Seraphine's lack of identity and create a much more interesting narrative, Seraphine could’ve been a rock star instead of a pop idol. There are plenty of examples of rock music be associated with Zaun. Having Seraphine take this style of music and bringing it to Piltover with massive success would be another event in history that shows Piltover stealing things from Zaun. They try to pretend that they’re nothing alike, a theme that is constant with stories previously using the two regions before, and what makes Seraphine's biography reveal a huge disappointment is her story's inability to continue this theme.
A character that does this well is Camille, the steel shadow. Camille is an augmented human fitted with the finest machinery and weapons into her own body in order to push her it past its limit, an idea that was birthed after witnessing augmented humans from Zaun first. Zaunites who augment their bodies don’t do it for sport, but out of necessary. And instead of having fine materials, they use scrap metal, garbage, and anything they can find.
Seraphine becoming a famous rock star in Piltover would be another instance of Zaunite culture being ripped from them and made palatable for the people of Piltover, and this could make for a realistic clash between the regions yet again. Instead, it feels like there was a scramble to try and justify a pop star being able to exist in Runeterra, rather than creating a character that takes what players already know about the existing framework and working within it to expand and make room for more interesting stories in the future.
It's even more disappointing knowing that Arcane, an upcoming League of Legends animated series, is set to place in Piltover and Zaun, which makes it likely that Seraphine could make an appearance. But if her character remains as is, it's unclear what impact her appearance would have on the story, whether it be positive or negative.
Up until now, it felt as if the universe Riot Games created could house just about any type of character, but Seraphine proves that there is one type of character that can never fit in. A character that was created specifically for a different world proved to be a very difficult for the canon of League of Legends. This year has been a very good lore for League of Legends with Yone being introduced by a gorgeous animation and Samira bringing diversity and depth to an already fun and live world, so Seraphine's underwhelming addition to the world is definitely a small blip on Riot's impressive track record this year. With the K/DA event coming up soon, players will be able to witness Seraphine in what many would consider her intended state, part of the K/DA universe.
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