Jillian. (it's the name that lion-o kept mentioning in "study time")
buckle up everynyan, this will be a trip. all this info is copy-pasted from my messages to other people so bear with me here, i'm gonna try to highlight the names in color so things are not AS confusing 🙏
leona was a middle class thunderian woman with a bit of a rowdy past. she's rebellious in nature and often did dangerous things just for the thrill of it. as she grew older though, she tried to get her shit together and mellow herself out (cus that kind of behavior doesn't get you anywhere on a planet like thundera). prior to meeting claudus, she worked at a pawn shop.
she encountered claudus during one of her shifts, who took interest in her immediately. she, like many women in the past, fell for his charisma and it didn't take that long for them to get married. it was only after their little honeymoon that she saw claudus's true colors. it was already too late tho cus she had just conceived lion-s.
in contrast, leondra was a peasant ((more specifically a serf, but thunderians won't tell you that,,,)). she spent a majority of her life working just so she can continue living under a roof. her payment practically WAS her home. her pale fur color is due to malnutrition; she's barely able to feed herself, and whenever she does get food, she ends up giving it away to those she believes needs it more than her.
she's extremely selfless at the cost of her own health, and most poorer thunderians know her for her kindness. claudus being claudus, he wandered into the slums of thundera and met her while she was off from work for once. SHE TOO FALLS FOR HIS STUPID CHARISMA!!! that night, claudus falsely promised her a new life where she doesn't have to work as hard anymore. it was everything she could've ever wanted,,,, but he left before she woke up. leondra conceived lion-o around the same time that lion-s was conceived by leona.
jillian started off as a low class thunderian woman who had to work her way to the top. she and leondra grew up in the slums together. jillian might be the only person who can get leondra to care for herself for once, BUT ANYWAYZ,,
jillian's sweet and compassionate, yet she has a very scary understanding of people which has helped her maneuver through life quite easily. she had been building up her resume as a maid, being passed around from one high class family to another ((fun fact: she worked for tygra's family at some point)). eventually, she got a job for the royal family WOWOWOOWOWOWW!!! claudus pisses her off, but she gets paid decently!
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ORDER OF EVENTS:
lion-s and lion-o are born, both in vastly different settings
leondra struggles to provide for lion-o, so she consults jillian for advice
jillian agrees to take lion-o and care for him at the castle so long as claudus approves ((he didn't gaf soooo,,, technically that's a yes?))
leona, WHO CLEARLY SEES THAT LION-O LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE CLAUDUS, confronts claudus
leona begrudgingly accepts that lion-o is here now, and they snap a cutesy lil photo of lion-s and lion-o together while they're still babies (you'll see it at the end of episode 38 "claudus")
claudus spends all his time watching tv and eating food instead of raising his children + accidentally calls leona "leondra" once -> leona divorce !!!!!!!
leona takes custody of lion-s and moves to the south of thundera to hang low
jillian tends to the castle and raises lion-o! she'll go on later to raise kit and kat as well. she still visits leondra whenever she's free to give updates on her child
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all his life, lion-o was under the impression that JILLIAN was his mother. he kinda just forgot that that was her name??? which is why he fsr kept bringing it up in that one episode? jillian herself never told him the truth because it went against leondra's wishes; leondra didn't want him to find out and then try looking for her cus she feared it would only get him into trouble. he was far too young to remember lion-s and leona.
tygra, cheetara, and panthro know MOST of this from jaga. and it wasn't like they were actively keeping it from lion-o,,? they wanted to wait until he'd ask tho. TOOK HIM FOREVER BUT ERM,,, HE FOUND OUT LATER IN HIS ADULTHOOD YEY!!!
anywayz leondra and her status is soooo so so important cus she was quite literally everything that claudus was not! she is where lion-o gets his big ol heart from. while claudus sits and marinates in his greed and fortune, leondra did everything in her power to give and provide for the people despite her own situation. she's stubborn in that sense! outside of the slums, most thunderians believed that leona was lion-o's mama.
i'll shut up now, here's some extra art i have of the mamas
For quite a bit I've been talking about if I were to do my own ThunderCats series and it has been focusing on the cats themselves, but I actually want to talk about Mumm-Ra and how he would be.
To start, Mumm-Ra would be not be a unique being, but a member of a cabal of evil sorcerers operating from the shadows, each with a different motif. One would have an Aztec motif for instance. One of the many things they would represent is Man's fear of the Unknown and would actively try to keep it that way to the point of assassinating anyone who tries to prove their existence.
I've said that Thundera would be a diarchy, have a two-king system, with one king being a tiger and the other a lion. Javan, Tygra's father in the 2011 series, would have been Tygra's father as well, his predecessor as the House of Tigris' King of Thundera. Javan would be so close to proving that Mumm-Ra and his cabal are real only to come to the realization too late Mumm-Ra has been manipulating Thundera for centuries under the identity of Pumm-Ra, a mysterious cougar who seems to have always been in the inner circle and is strangely the only non-Pantherine cat to have any position of authority as Thundera's chief minister, leading to rumours that Pumm-Ra is so wealthy that he literally bought the position. Javan would be found dead the next morning in his office, just seeming like he suddenly passed for no reason.
As Pumm-Ra, Mumm-Ra would manipulate things so Thundera was always in a state of quasi-perpetual war and may or may not have been responsible for Thundera's imperialism and warmongering that has in turn corrupted it. Having read about the Claudus from "ThunderCats Roar", where he was a tyrannical jerk, I would play that seriously and combine it with 2011 Claudus, who showed favouritism and was a bit racist, but twist it because, after Claudus lost his parents at a young age, he was practically raised by Mumm-Ra as Pumm-Ra, resulting him being a combination of those two portrayals.
Claudus' favouritism and racism would be played differently. His favouritism would be for an older biological brother of Lion-O who predeceased him and would generally hold all non-Pantherine cats with contempt, except for Pumm-Ra. The older brother of Lion-O would have actually died in a brawl. The character of Lion-S from "Roar" would also be re-imagined as a more serious character, an older sibling of Lion-O who was stepped over. In Thundera, age would take precedence over gender.
It would eventually be revealed that the real reason Claudus stepped over Lion-S is that Lion-S isn't Claudus' daughter, she would be Lion-O's half-sister due to a rough period in Claudus and his wife's marriage that led her to seek happiness in the arms of another man. Not Mumm-Ra, I am assuring you that it was not Mumm-Ra as Pumm-Ra. 2011 Mumm-Ra calling Pumyra "Beloved" was bad enough.
Following the death of Lion-O's brother, Mumm-Ra would become far less concerned with Thundera, viewing Lion-O and Tygra as harmless. It wouldn't be until the reforms they introduce start helping Thundera and peace treaties are successfully made that Mumm-Ra would realize that they are a threat to him and his cabal. The realization that Pumm-Ra actually is Mumm-Ra would be like an end of season thing with the climax being a battle between Mumm-Ra, the first time we actually see him as Mumm-Ra instead of Pumm-Ra, and the ThunderCats.
What would the motives of Mumm-Ra and his cabal be? Well, that would be connected to the fear of the unknown thing. They'd be these beings of unknown origin with equally unknown motives who would occasionally make cryptic reference to some "Ancient Spirits."
But, that's enough of that. Does it make sense, maybe not. Is it a great idea? Maybe not. Still, just getting it out there.
