stonethrown replied to your post: I’m tired of Riot changing Leona and Diana’s lore...
I haven’t been following the Targon storyline for a while now, but what I would suspect for the timing of these updated stories is that Riot was probably critical of the backlash they got for turning Leona into a religious Zealot in Pantheon’s lore. Hopefully this isn’t the last we see, because this both answers and raises questions.
You’re probably right about that. In Leona’s 2017 lore it mentions how Atreus called Leona out for escorting a creature of the mountain up Targon instead of killing it, and that resulted in them fighting to the death until the Solari intervened. Since that isn’t mentioned in Pantheon’s 2019 lore, they had to change her. I guess Riot wanted to shift Leona’s lore away from the association with Pantheon to the association with Diana, which is why when they changed Leona’s lore they had to change Diana’s lore alongside it.
Gone now, though, is Leona’s Rakkor heritage and the Solari prophecy that brought her from the Rakkor into the Solari. I do think Leona’s old lore was incredibly long-winded and the 2020 lore is pretty trimmed down, so that’s an upside. In the 2017 lore she went from ‘I must punish Diana’ to ‘I must find Diana’ in her own biography, while in the 2020 lore she never has that harsh a mindset on Diana. While that’s clearer, it also makes things less conflicting between them - before, Leona had the struggle of turning back to the Solari faith or trying to reach out to Diana.
I also think this makes her less of her own character and more just as a foil to Diana. Diana has the interesting story, to me. Foreigner parents travel to Targon, die in a storm and leave a child. The child challenges the society she’s grown in and discovers ideals opposite the Solari faith and they attempt to put her down. So Diana’s lore is focused around trying to change a rigid belief system, and Leona is the foil that fits perfectly into that system.
I notice now that there is nothing particular about Leona herself, besides the fact that she is just the ideal Solari. I wish that either lore had expanded into what good things come about by being a Solari. What is supposed to drive Leona to be that leader for her people?
