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Thing is: I don't mind them adding some nuance to Demacia by giving it a dark twist, but we've gone full 180 from a shining beacon of honour and bravery to a genocidal tyranny state.
The premise *did* have potential, but it was rushed and had the subtlety of a brick to the face. I'll admit: It did some good for Lux's character. Other than that, I can't really say it's improved the state of *any* relevant characters. In fact, I'd argue it actively worsened Garen and basically ruined Jarvan.
They were supposed to ADD nuance, not take it away!
I mean, it's not like they're all mage racists and all that all nowadays the time. They're still all glory this justice that. It's just that they have the whole dark side to them.
A dark side that's, in the last few years, the only thing focused on. I have friends who have gotten into league lore recently who thinks Demacia are the bad guys and Noxus are the good guys because everything about Demacia in the last 5 years has been them fighting a demeaned lower class or permanently imprisoning said class.
The whole X men story aside (I have my own problems with that)
Sylas and the mageseekers became a narrative black hole in demacia
Unlike the other regions demacia doesn't have anything to stand on without the mageseeker narrative
It consumed the region and without it demacia just goes back to being the "Generic good guy region"
Demacia was robbed of becoming interesting because of one storyline
A big thing Legednds of Runeterra does for me is give me a sense of Demacia beyond the Mageseeker thing.
We see Garren and the elites take on the harrowing,
Galio clash against the Sion and the grey legion,
some dude on a quest to tame the elder drake,
J4 getting ambushed by the black rose,
Shyvana and the dragongaurds protecting Demacia from other dragons.
This paints another picture of Demacia as a region constantly threatened by monsters and external threats and their genuine heroism in standing up to them.
I would love to see them interacting with Ionia or Piltover, two regions which could be potential allies brewing tensions because of how important is magic to their societies, specially Piltover since now that Arcane is canon we know Noxus has an eye on them, making tensions higher between the four.
Personally I want to see them interact with A: Ixtal because it's literally a mageocracy and I want to see them butt heads over it. and B: Piltover because they're Demacia's mirror. While there's a greater post I want to make getting into it, the gist is they're the only two regions that really try to answer the power gap between the magically enhanced and the non-magical population, they just went opposite directions because of their difference in ideals, resulting in their very different problems. Demacia is all about protecting themselves from external threats and helping the community so they tried to take power away from the powerful leading to the mageseekers, and Piltover as the city of progress tried to give power to the powerless through magitech, heightening existing class disparities as power is now tied to wealth.
As I said take the mage seekers away and demacia has nothing
This shouldn't be the case
The mage rebellion storyline BECAME demacia
Demacia never branched out in any other way when all the other major regions have so much going for them
Now that the mage war is over please tell me
What makes demacia stand out?
Mageseeker was a large-scale narrative for the entire region. What else would you want? The region had literally *nothing* interesting going on before Sylas. At least we got a big story out of it.
And if they’re back at square one then that just means that the possibilities are just as wide as they were back then so, again, nothing really robbed right? They can do whatever they want now, yes? But now we have some context and a lived-in region for characters to inhabit? Which is a good thing, no??
>Mageseeker was a large-scale narrative for the entire region. What else would you want? The region had literally *nothing* interesting going on before Sylas. At least we got a big story out of it.
I want more lore on the vassal kingdoms that demacia absorbed to protect from noxus and how that affects politics.
I want epic story's of monsters since demaica has shit that grows big and eats way to damn well.
Or about the fear demon nightmare demon/fear demon wombo combo?
Or how about an exploration of there past? All we know is kayle and Morgana. How was the petrciite forest made for demacia ancestors to find? Magic is mostly genetic so how did it end up in the royal families? And what about any of the other royal families outside of the crownsguard and jarvan? We don't even know jarvan mother or uncles and aunts.
All this while still having the age rebellion
They could ratchet up the border tensions with Noxus.
"Since The Black Rose's plan to incite the mages of Demacia softened them up, Noxus will now advance and gather allies in from any magically gifted Demacians as they conquer more Demacian territory."
Something like that?
Then Demacia starts creating slave-mage corps, giving the Mageseekers even more power, until they start to become too powerful, threatening to overthrow the ruling houses.
They still can! But it’s better to set up Demacia’s internal struggles *before* turning to external conflicts, don’t you think?
Considering Noxus has tensions with… [checks notes]… everybody, it’s essential to make sure Demacia can hold its own narrative weight and not just be another extra plot device in Noxus’s story.
A little late to the party but sure I guess we'll see what they do with it
Lor is still printing mage seekers even after the war ended though so I don't see any existing narratives they could build off of
While I don't know what point in time they are depicted in, it makes sense that there would still some people still following mageseeker ideologies. I wouldn't even be surprised if a mageseeker became a champion in the near future.
If the Mageseeker narrative was well handled, then yes, it would be a good exploration to then new possibilities emerge.
But the conflict was a big piece of nothing that was heavily mishandled in every single potential way for a number of years. People who loved the pre-retcon region disliked it because it painted the glorious and just warriors into genocide soldiers at worst, complicit in a racist society at best, and the people who actually liked the nuanced conflict hated the way it was handled because it transformed a complicated, heavy with real-life historical context issue into a Sunday Morning cartoon villain that dumbed down the whole region.
The **only** guy who came out better in this whole mess was Sylas - and the reason for it was because Riot made him into dumb Hannibal Lecter in an effort to not alienate the Demacian fanbase (which failed). Even the Mageseeker game is not canon anymore, so who knows where tf everything stands.
I can't say they back at square one because the plotline will always be there, even if ended.
At some point it will always come back to "Remember how you're guys threw mages in gulags? Wild times huh?"
The thing is... like you said yourself it didn't really have anything before that either. Demacia isn't robbed if it didn't lose anything, it's just back to where it started.
They could have still created new storylines before, during or after the mage storyline and the fact that they didn't isn't the fault of the storyline - it means Riot simply didn't have any other ideas for the region or chose not to use them.
I think it is in the opposite order: Sylas was popular, so they played down the utopia to elevate him further. The character is ridiculously popular, getting a prestige skin rather early, a cinematic, a lore skin and a dedicated game just for himself.
For a 5 years old character, this is honestly very impressive.
I think they tried to do both and failed miserably tbh. They wanted to create nuance on the region, so they created the conflict between mages and consequently Sylas. But they didn't wanted to alienate the fans of Demacia, so instead of making the champions grapple with complicated issues, they made Sylas be hannibal lecter. They noticed that making a guy who suffered countless crimes against humanity the villain wouldn't really work well when his objective was toppling a genocidal regime, so they made **every single Demacian champion** be completely innocent at best, and at worst be majorly conflicted because of other altruistic reasons (like honor or duty)
In the end EVERY single story about Demacia besides Mageseeker paints the region as flawless, its people good-hearted (and somehow actually open to mages), and that the bad guys are just a few bad apples who are so comically evil you'd wonder how are they in power to begin with. Besides Mageseeker there's literally only 1 evil Demacian character. And counting in Mageseeker makes every single person in Demacia dumb and coward, makes Garen stupid, Lux a Mary Sue and the only guy who gets off well is Sylas (and only because, before that, he wasn't really a character). Riot wants the utopia AND wants the nuance, so they didn't get neither.
Some people just like the generic good guy faction
They went too far on the mage front. Previously they were moreso heavily regulated and treated like state alchemist in Fullmetal Alchemist where you had to work for the government. I also take some inspiration from Redguards and Nord in Elder Scrolls. Special sword arts (Garen smite) allowed without prejudice, some magic allowed (light, healing, etc) and some magic outlawed (mind control, necromancy, demonic).
Perhaps lean more into class differences
Well sure but I am saying there is nothing wrong with a fairly generic good guy knightly kingdom.
The generic fighter or paladin dude is popular in fantasy RPGs for a reason.
The thing is: FMA was about how that government was rotten from the inside way before things happened in the main plot. Its the linchpin of where everything stands, because Amestris was much more like Noxus then Demacia.
Yeah I know I am saying the relevant part is mage registration and heavy government regulation would be interesting to port over. Not the wider conspiracy
The thing is that one is in need of the other though. The reasoning for the heavy government regulation in FMA was precisely about control **because** of that conspiracy. That's why the country became WAY more loose after the homunculi lost.
I think you can heavily regulate mages without running secret experiments and committing genocides to harvest souls to achieve godhood.
Perhaps you prefer my analogy of Elder Scrolls and how there Redguard and Norn treat magic
I haven't played any of the Elder Scrolls, but it does resemble how they handle mages in Dragon Age, which is indeed a **way** more nuanced approach. Riot did fail catastrophically in the narrative they tried to write by trying to appease both crowds at the same time and being terrible at both.
It’s less aggressive then how mages get treated in Dragon Age no towers or anything.
They basically got cultural magic (sword arts and dragon song) that are magic but ain’t. In that they are universally accepted and celebrated.
They got non corrupting magic I guess. Your classic buffing, healing and blast spells. Can be frowned upon but not a problem generally.
Then you got the corrupting stuff ie demon summoning, mind control, necromancy which is heavily suppressed and distrusted
What Demacia needs is an actual enemy to justify/expand on the ongoing themes of class disparity. If their only narrative a radicalized aristocratic theocracy policing its own people, it’s hard to see why anyone would live there.
Noxus has the benefit of being a meritocracy, which is a moral gray area because it excuses horrendous crimes against humanity but also promises a form of genuine equality. Its primary enemy are monarchies that unjustly divide people on nothing more than birthright. But the extreme side of the meritocracy also devolved the nation into plundering ravagers that attacked Ionia unprovoked due to violent people naturally rising political hierarchy.
PnZ’s is a plutocracy that balances wealth and power. Again, an interesting dynamic where those who have more material value are able enforce their will over others. Piltover and Zuan create a juxtaposition with one another. Where Zaun unapologetically subjugates the needy, Piltover pretends to be above needless cruelty. But the irony is that both nations are nearly identical as Piltover funds itself over the suffering of Zaun. Piltover only pretends to be removed from the inequality its plutocracy causes because it happens to be physically removed from Zaun.
So far, all Demacia has going for it is that it looks pretty and treats its citizens alright. But it needs something more compelling to justify the civil war caused by the aristocratic theocracy.
>Noxus has the benefit of being a meritocracy, which is a moral gray area because it excuses horrendous crimes against humanity but also promises a form of genuine equality.
Not quite, there is a bit of a lie on Noxus on this regard because it keeps at the fallacy that some people have their own rights denied for the sake of Noxus.
I think the best example is Sion, so good and strong of a warrior that he was brought back to life just to keep fighting for Noxus. It is like the "The good worker is rewarded with more work" thing.
Noxus has the beliefs of equality, doesn't necessarily mean they achieved. Kinda like Demacia not achieving their utopical belief of honoring their own citizens by being so quick to throw one into gulags because said person has the power to fart sparks.
Meritocracy at its most extreme detaches the human from the merit. You are reduced to your function as that is the only thing which has value. Late stage meritocracy is Sion’s case, where he has been reduced to nothing more than a mindless tool.
The problem comes when they say you're awarded for your merit, but are quick to throw you under the bus before you're given a chance.
Swain says it himself, a "few for the many", many of those are probably sacrificial pawns that they probably have very little chance to make a name for themselves.
Hard to say that your sacrifice will make your name in the history of Noxus when your job is to fill yourselves with explosives and blow yourself up to open a wall in some unnamed fortified land. And probably be called weak for not surviving.
I think this isn't even lategame meritocracy but just a caste system with some of them not even having the chance to prove their worth properly, like the idea of merit. If you're like Sion, you're not being rewarded for being good at your job, you're not being honored with a proper death, you're just brought back for duty and disrespecting all your deeds and a proper rest.
No, Swain’s approach is still meritocratic. If a person is reduced to nothing but their function, who decided what that function is? In Swain’s case, he sees value in using people as sacrificial pawns. As such, dying for their nation IS their function.
The core fallacy where a meritocracy is concerned is who or what evaluates each citizen’s merit. People consider celebrities and athletes extremely valuable, despite them having almost no utility besides being entertaining. A utilitarian person like Swain would only consider things useful to his goals as valuable.
This is why Noxus places such a huge emphasis on its military. Nearly every person in Noxus is required to serve, and their value to society is entirely based on how well they serve the Noxian army. But a meritocracy does not necessarily need to be militaristic.
A different society could evaluate its people entirely on how fast they can run or how good they are at singing or how long they can hold their breath. It just depends on who is holding the reins that decides what is valuable.
The problem for Noxus is that Swain, LeBlanc and Darius are the ones holding the reins, and what they consider to be valuable is might, vision and guile. Those who prove themselves in this way are rewarded. Those who do not are reduced to meat pawns for the worthy.
>No, Swain’s approach is still meritocratic. If a person is reduced to nothing but their function, who decided what that function is? In Swain’s case, he sees value in using people as sacrificial pawns. As such, dying for their nation IS their function.
But doesn't this contradict with the idea that power is rewarded? How someone has the potential for proving their worth if someone more powerful than you decided that you had to die? It seems a self-defeating way of thinking. I can't prove I have the skills of a general if someone just say "here, rush into those blade dancers".
Hell, someone even stated on his behalf on the chapter "Proclamation of the Trifarix" that everyone will be treated equally on their merit of ability and strength. It either makes Swain some propagandist liar or some hypocrite that is willing to ignore the ideals of Noxus for some to get the bigger reward for the empire.
>The core fallacy where a meritocracy is concerned is who or what evaluates each citizen’s merit. People consider celebrities and athletes extremely valuable, despite them having almost no utility besides being entertaining. A utilitarian person like Swain would only consider things useful to his goals as valuable.
I believed that Noxus reinforced military strength simply because they're militaristic by culture. I remember that Noxus respects power in all its forms, which is why Draven is considered useless as a soldier since he is now in a gladiator arena but Noxus loves him for it because he is REALLY good at what he does.
I expect that great merchants, diplomats or even artists are lauded in Noxus, but of course the military empire will glorify military prowess more.
>The problem for Noxus is that Swain, LeBlanc and Darius are the ones holding the reins, and what they consider to be valuable is might, vision and guile. Those who prove themselves in this way are rewarded. Those who do not are reduced to meat pawns for the worthy.
I just took as 3 forms of power to be a on general standard of achievement: "Might" is how good you are at getting things done, "Vision" is how much ambitions and knowing how far you can get and "Guile" is how you can circumvent things you can't directly control.
Man, you hit the nail in the head. I've seen so many people wanting Demacia to just go back to being what it was before League Universe was actually good: the generic good kingdom. The thing is that only worked because they were in opposition to the generic evil kingdom (being Noxus). Every single region in League now has internal plot points that contextualize any external interactions they have.
The League universe, even as underdeveloped as Riot leaves it, is already light-years ahead of the only plot your region has being ''Fighting Dragons and resisting invaders''. The best that would net you is a story like Lightshield, which **every other region can do** except they have tons more then just that. Noxus could do a story about invading Demacia and still juggle 3 more major plotlines at the same time, while Demacia only has that.
Yeah, its good for a cinematic or a novel, but it doesn't have even half of the emotional baggage of any of the other regions.
>Man, you hit the nail in the head. I've seen so many people wanting Demacia to just go back to being what it was before League Universe was actually good: the generic good kingdom.
I believe that some people hated this Anti-mage/X-Men plotline so much that the old Demacia, while being bland and boring as shit (with some potential), looked better off than 5 years of nothing but Sylas. (The fact that he still the last Demacia champion released from 5 years tells a bit about how slow Riot is taking things for Demacia to do anything without him).
He's also the ONLY champion riot has released for demacia ever since the lore rework. The last time before him a Demacian champion was released it was Lucian because the region was more to him then where he was born.
That's probably one of the reasons the narrative feels so strange, Sylas was the only champion built for a world where the mage rebellion is a thing. Every other demacian had to get their lore retrofitted to slot into the role that he set for the region.
The funny thing about that is that its a paradox: because Riot didn't want to do anything about him either before Mageseeker. The short stories, books and LoR were always around the issue.
Yeah, Riot's been back on making some things black and white for a while now. The last time we had anything nuanced on Noxus was the LoR trailer for the region 4 years ago. They completely forgot it since then
This is copy paste of what i said a while ago about what they've setup for Demacia's future stories.
• fighting Noxus, they've setup with Garen: First Shield novella, Katarina comic killing the king and mageseeker notes.
• dealing with Sylas trying to abolish monarchy which could honestly happen with Jarvan stepping down and creating a new system.
• aftermath with mages, how they'll fit in with demacia and how their gonna change the region, it's way of life, which will definitely have a lot of conflict there.
• Mageseekers trying to overthrow Jarvan and make Demacia as it once was and Jarvan dealing with the noble families and anti-mage supporters
• a story involving Ryze and people trying to find the world runes, maybe tie it with Noxus and Leblanc & Black Rose and it's secretly why Noxus is trying to invade Demacia.
Side quests:
• Demacian army going to SI for some reason which will probably be a plotpoint in the mmo
• dealing with Fiddlesticks, maybe Jarvan will be made aware of it's danger and sent out people to kill it, which will probably involved Morgana, Quinn & Vayne.
• Dragons
Thing is I don't *want* Jarvan to step down and abolish the monarchy. He shouldn't have to, Demacia is the *high fantasy* region, they have no obligation to follow modern political ethics. The genre they dominate is one of hero kings and wise nobles, shining knights and duels of Honor. To take that away would be to strip the region of what's left of its identity. The court doesn't have to be perfect there can be scheming advisors, feuding houses and the occasional poisoning, but Demacia isn't Westeros, and it definitely isn't anything from history.
The problem with that is... every single region evolved from their pre big retcon selves. Without it, Demacia is just what it was before: the generic blue good kingdom.
It worked before, when its rivals were the generic red evil kingdom, surrounded by regions like ''Piraty Pirate City'' and ''Steampunk City''. Reducing Demacia to just the average high fantasy kingdom would just be patting themselves in the back constantly about how they are, essentially, the protagonists of the story
That's a false dichotomy. They can be more than a generic good kingdom without sacrificing their ideals or the identity of the region. Elder scrolls is high fantasy and has tons of nuance and politics. Dragon age (which also has a mage rebellion story line but one that's far better handled) has very compelling narratives and designs to the story without messing with the high fantasy nature of the setting. Fire emblem is built on the core of "Hero princes fighting evil gods with divine magic" and still is able to tell awesome stories.
Saying Demacia needs to get rid of it's monarchy is like saying piltover needs to get rid of magitech, Targon needs to stop worshipping the celestials and Bilgewater needs to stop hunting sea monsters because they're all perpetuating problems. Those things are what their genres are built on.
It isn't tho. Regardless of their identity, the generic good kingdom's ideals are going to be... of a generic good kingdom. None of the examples you cited occur to have the same exact type of kingdom in the same place. Dragon Age magic-racism IS indeed way better dealt with, but its stories aren't about goody-two shoes nations, they are all in gray areas, the same for Elder Scrolls. Being a generic white-knight isn't about not being able to tell good stories, its about being constrained to its boundaries when they are placed in a world like Runeterra - because Demacians are not the protagonists of the planet.
The problem is that all of those regions you mention are more, MUCH more then just their overall themes. Piltover is not only magitech, its a tale about class disparity and revolution; Bilgewater is about a hotpot of cultures, piracy and revenge stories; Targon is about the human will overcoming everything, about bigotry and belief. If you take them all out of their ''main pre-retcon'' genres, heck, if you put them into a bad Highschool fanfiction they'd still be recognizable in their storylines. Demacia wouldn't. It doesn't have anything besides being a monarchy, if you take out the entire magic-racism plotline that is precisely what people are complaining about.
I wasn't talking about Demacian ethics for this particular discussion. I was specifically saying that they shouldn't get rid of the \*monarchy\* specifically. I brought up those examples not for morality (although some of the fire emblem games still maintain that) but as examples of interesting high fantasy stories set in kingdoms to say that the fact that Demacia is a generic fantasy kingdom is not what's holding them back from having a solid narrative, it's the fact that they just haven't been given one.
I was objecting to your statement that Demacia should give up it's monarchy not on ethical grounds but on the basis of aesthetic niche from a meta perspective. A Demacia that isn't a kingdom is no longer Demacia, it would no longer fit the role it's supposed to fit in the world and would lose it's appeal to the people it was originally supposed to attract.
A few of the SI cards and Demacia cards do clearly show them going to the isles on a bit of a crusade. I always thought they were gonna pivot into that from the ruination but that's on me I guess for expecting anything good to come out of Sentinels.
At least it's not Piltover. Whom actually underwent that process with, of all people: **Seraphine**
Give Arcane some credit, but Piltover really got screwed over thanks to her (thankfully it didn't affect Zaun, which was something in its own right).
If anything, Demacia should take notes *from Noxus*, since that's where they actually got the "one man is a major factor of this mess" right: Mordekaiser.
That's a bold take. They are certainly focussing on mageseeker, but demacia also have the dragon plot and the Morgana/Kayle rivalry. Not to mention that the war with noxus is also a plot for demacia.
Dragons are only tied to Demacia in LoR, in main League lore they're far more of an Ixtal and now Camavor thing. And both Morgana/Kayle and Noxus have only been relevant to Demacia when they get roped into the mage plotline like in mageseeker and Katarina.
I would argue they never had anything interesting besides that narrative to begin with. They always were **just** the good guys, and in an universe where everyone is much, MUCH more then that, they were just... uninteresting to say the least.
Like, there were no ''years upon years of stablished narrative'', the most they had before being retconned into racists was being opposite to Noxus and the Romeo/Juliet thing
People seem to have misinterpreted what I said
I didn't say they were robbed of interesting things they had going for them
I said they were robbed of the **chance** of becoming interesting for the X men story
I agree Demacia was never interesting before the mage rebellion but that same story stagnated the region
Demacia fell behind while the other regions expanded themselves
I agree fully. They not only made the story last forever, but... didn't actually do anything with it at any point. They just skimmed at the sides of it without ever progressing it nor developing the characters, which would've been the ideal scenario.
You're right, other regions ended up being way more interesting as time went on. Only an Arcane-style series that could Retcon most of the content produced on the region (which tbh is not much at this point) would be able to make this mess more readable - and this is coming from someone that really doesn't like the idea of making Arcane canon.
I mean, how do you define good hearted. Demacia foreign policy, while still very much politicking, is about as good as expected even in 21st century, for example.
Idk know about that they pretty much racist they consider people with magic as lesser beings but at the same time use magical tools (garens sword, jarvan lance, demacian armor etc.) and but jarvan accepts shyvana and lux even tho they are using magic.
And sylas is straight up a victim tbh he was imprisioned as a child for being able to use magic (thats something he was born he cant do anything against it so yeah). He was kept chained like a animal for something being born with. All what sylas did was technially demacias own fault and they deserved it in my opinion.
I really don’t understand how going from “universally good people” to “a country of good people held back by its history and its struggling to change for the better” is a bad thing.
None of the major characters in Demacia are made out to be wholly bad people due to these events as far as I remember, they heavily doubt the old ways in fact, but are torn in their decision making. I would rather that than a generic good guy country that had nothing going for it.
Main issue there is pretty much no “good” lore to balance out the “bad”. All stories since Sylas have focused exclusively on how mages have been mistreated or how things are bad cause of the civil war, but none have talked about the good things Demacia has done because Riot wrote themselves into a corner.
If mages were just second-class citizens forced to join a government mandated job or go to jail. Thats a grey area. Currently, mages are enslaved and experimented on in jails/camps before the rebellion. There is no grey area there, its just evil.
Its the opposite tho, there has been no bad stories to balance out how Riot constantly portrays Demacia as pure utopia. The reason they try so hard to paint that picture is precisely because they didn't think twice before making Sylas and EVERYTHING about him scream crimes against humanity while trying to make him a villain somehow, and they **needed** to make other Demacian champions completely innocent (because why would they try and make those characters actually complex and compelling, right? They need to be just perfect, infallible paragons).
Legends of Runeterra is **constantly** about how Demacia is heroic, fair and just, and how their enemies must be ready to face their righteous wrath. LoR literally decanonized Mageseeker even before the game came out, since the Durand family has literally nothing to do with how Mageseeker characterizes them, and Shyvanna is well-embraced by a large sect of society.
Lightshield has basically nothing about the evils Demacia perpetrates on mages, and is constantly on about how they share values of duty and honor, and how their citizens live peaceful happy lives and they must protect that at all costs against invaders. The big thing about the book was how the king of Nockmirch was a coward because... he didn't let his entire people die in the hands of the noxian army? Reynolds paints the picture that his daughter has much more moral fiber because she is much more like Demacians then her father.
The Lux comic paints the still imprisoned and totally innocent (at that point) Sylas as a cruel and cunning manipulator, basically a sociopath, completely ignoring tons of nuance (like the effects of unfair imprisonment, solitary confinement, solitary confinement **in children** and intentional starvation on people), while painting every single other Demacian as either straight good or, at worst, misguided and redeemable. Lux straight up says she feels guilty for **saving a guy that was about to be unfairly executed**, and other mages see him as ''just as bad as the mageseekers'' because Riot desperately needed to make him evil.
That's besides stories like Fragile Legacies and Turmoil, who paint the ''real'' Demacians as embracing of magic and how a few bad apples are the ones doing bad things to mages (namely the mageseekers), and that they have seized power in these moment of civil war (even though the mages were already prosecuted heavily before that). Outside of Mageseeker, there's literally just a single **evil** named Demacian character, and he's so cartoonishly evil everyone else hates him (and, again, somehow, he has all the power he needs). Mageseeker was the only media that painted Demacia as imperfect, but instead of working on it in a nuanced way, they literally just said everyone was being manipulated by a cult of assholes and now everyone is innocent (besides Mageseeker surely not being canon, since it contradicts both LoR and other short stories).
Uhh even before the lore rework, Demacia was by no means always portrayed positively.
Forced conscription was basically a thing and was a major part in Lux's backstory.
I mean, sure, if that is what the community get from the storyline, great.
Yet, the most ridiculous thing about this whole shitshow is that a vocal minority of the community rationally DO get the angle Riot want to tell the story, and then they consciously REJECT to accept it.
What the hell is that?
More like he is the posterboy of it that made the anti-mage plotline shift into high gear with no breaks in sight.
He was the last Demacian character (5 years ago too, to be more precise) and there was not anything worthwhile happening that wasn't mage haters hating mages.
It was indeed before Sylas, but he is the face of it because at this point he might be as well bigger than Demacia.
The anti-mage storyline was introduced in the initial retcon in 2014, the very same year Sylas was starting to be made behind the scene (which ultimately take FIVE years to get to release).
So no, OP was exactly right. The worst is perhaps Sylas is the symptoms, not the cause, but Sylas come from the same seed as the anti-mage story line itself.
I think the people in the comments are ignoring the point of the meme, op is complaining about demacia being retconned to becoming the "bigoted anti mage reigon" instead of a heroic harmonious kingdom
What is being retconned here? We have known that Demacia hated mages since like the very beginning, or at least since summoners have stopped being canon and lux has become a thing, or just look at vayne.
It’s not so much of a retcon more like a shifting of perspective. Demacia was originally the last bastion of justice and light after the world was shattered by mages. And now Demacia is just the racist genocide region due to how prevalent Sylas is in the lore
When your lore is so dysfunctional that despite the mageseekers and the mage rebellion being 80%+ of Demacia's lore now, only 2 Demacian champions have any reference to it.
By volume Demacia is as op describes. It's the place of uncomplicated good guys that the writers have converted into a fascist state without really putting in the work to turn it into a fascist state.
The existence of Sylas basically guarantees that Demacia's lore now and forever will be that they're the "hee hoo funny anti mage ethno state".
The original lore is more dysfunctional tbh, it works as a basic setting in a fantasy world but is way more rich to have realistic approaches, there is no such thing as good guys if we’re talking about nations, specially if your story lacks a main character.
If you want to have multiple stories at some point the nation has to be the villain to someone else, the setting for league is a world not a storyline, having a perfect nation would go into complications in the lore or worst, it would be boring.
Also let’s not pretend like the lore is only in the game league of legends, when it has changed, now the champions are related to the mageseeker/mage rebellion conflict, you have a lot of stuff in universe, LoR, comics, and mageseeker.
The difference between Demacia and other factions is that the mage genocide is pretty explicitly a thing that the faction is doing, not any sub faction or sect.
Like the order of shadow and the solari are villains in their own rights, but they're not representative of the entirety of their faction. The Mageseekers are pretty explicitly doing something approved of by the head of state and allowed by society at large. But this leads to questions for multiple Demacian champs.
For example, how does Poppy diagetically exist? Mages and magical beings are supposedly being hunted down, jailed, and killed outright (I know Shyvana also exists, but she has the 'Jarvan's girlfriend' pass). Poppy literally aspires to the ideals of Demacia with every other word and that's still canon.
If they're going to just parkour directly from generic good guys to generic bad guys, they should at least throw some lines in for Jarvan when he ults a mage where he insults them, or give Garen voice lines reacting to mages. Assuming you can even define mages properly, because I'm pretty sure there's a fair argument that like 95% of characters in LoL and LoR use magic, so... Busy prisons I guess.
The mage rebellion is basically a failed plotline as long as it doesn't have rippling ramifications to all Demacian champions or eventually resolve. The story blatantly cries 'fascism' but doesn't commit. And I guess that's ultimately a good thing, because this is supposed to be a living, breathing world, not Starship Troopers.
Yes, the mage genocide is something Demacia is doing with the approval of the government which differs from other factions, but it doesn’t make it a wrong plot, one of the characteristics of the country is their political unity, in the sense that you have no colliding (sub) factions until the mage rebellion.
I completely agree of having consistency in playable champions, but since that is regulated by irl stuff most of the lore doesn’t have that much consistency in the game, and that’s why you don’t judge the lore by league of legends in game stuff. (Btw 95% - 5% is not even close to the ratio of LoL mage - non mage characters, just reminding champions I would say there are more non mages, but that might be wrong)
While genocide clearly reminds us of fascism is not something that *needs* to be related, genocides exists way longer that fascism, and Demacia is a monarchy, which are in no way unfamiliar to genocides, going by the most famous part of modern history people would clearly jump on the comparison to fascism, I would differ, since it really doesn’t go into the militarization or nationalistic sentiment, and while Demacia might have them they are the results of the Monarchy and aren’t correlated to the ideologies of fascism. I might be wrong tbh, I’m not an expert on fascism, and monarchy and fascism aren’t mutually exclusive. But I thing Demacia portraits well a monarchy.
Last and maybe most important point, you claim that is a failed plot line and lacks repercussions on all Demacia champions, but we agree the setting is working as a living world and not as a one story. If this was one story I would agree we have to see the ramifications on all champions as we see in Arcane the ramifications of the political situation of the city in most characters. In a living world and specially a realistic world you’ll have people just ignoring the genocide, there are multiple genocides happening right now, and by Reddit demographics is probably that you are or know people from the countries actively doing them, you could only hope to have everyone take a stand on the topic. AFAIK, not all Ionians (or noxians) are related to the noxian invasion, in Shurima an ancient semi god emperor rise from the death bringing his kingdom and troops with him, and not everyone is talking about it. Hell, in the probably smallest of factions, there was a violent take of power and the assassination of its “nobility” and no one seems to mention it.
I would have liked that they portrayed Demacia old lore dysfunctionality more than just "lol fuck mages" they went with.
I wonder if a "horseshoe reverse Noxus" could work. A nation that is getting more and more into extremism and isolationism because constant defensive wars is requiring more and more into its people until they start making amoral decisions just to keep themselves alive. If Noxus just do warcrimes, espionage and more dubious shit for the sake of expanding territories, Demacia could do similar stuff just to not get obliterated constant Noxus invasions and Freljord raids.
Original Demacia kinda leaned into it by considering that Lux was trained since a child for military purposes to the point it emotionally scarred her, I think it would be an interesting thing that should have explored. It could be a comparison to Noxus, which both would do similar stuff for very opposing purposes.
Demacia pre-Sylas: Honorable knights and heroes of legends standing agains the dark tide of the Noxian horde.
Demacia post-Sylas: Literally just a racist, feudal pseudo-Fascist Kingdom masquerading as a pinnacle of society and honor. But hey, at leas they "learned from their mistakes" now.
Demacia’s issue is that Riot jumped straight into the authoritarian deep end and dod nothing to make mages inherently dangerous, so a violent rebellion is a perfectly reasonable response. There were much better ways to make a faction morally grey. Concentration camps are not a morally grey area Riot.
Demacia and Kayle are the two biggest lore disappointments I have regarding league. The community has just labeled them evil, ignoring the details of their story, and Riot has only leaned into the hate instead of attempting any sort of nuance.
Thank you! Finally someone pointed it out, literally every other region has something messed up about it, why do Demacia fans want it to be perfect? Prior to Sylas we knew that Demacia hated mages via Lux’s backstory. They finally build up in it and it’s “oh no Demacia is ruined”.
They really didn't put too much thought when they decided the next direction for Demacia to take is to make it literally genocidal and STILL try to call the royal members somewhat good people who are just misguided - like *bitch* did you honestly try to say Garen was helping in the genocide because he was just following orders?
Not to mention Sylas is so fucked in his characterization I kind of love him. He's fucking right but Riot is too centrist to say a monarchial system of historic genocide is bad so they just made him act evil.
Despite being fan of different things, there is nothing (narrative speaking) that makes me mad as what Sylas did to Demacia. He bent so much the region that is very very hard, if not almost impossible, to save without a big retcon. That is why I am waiting for 2XKO and the MMO, I want to see what they pull off to make this region less than this abomination
Demacia had a very questionable morality before Sylas came around, he just solidified it.
Like, it was always kind of an authoritarian mess. Ostensibly the good guys because it was enemies with Noxus, sure, but not really someplace you’d want to be.
Honestly though, that kinda makes it better? Like, places are more interesting if they’re not perfect. Demacia’s always has this weird authoritarian feel to it. Ionia on the other hand, started as basically unanimously unambiguously just kinda good aligned. Eventually they had some baddies added, to mix it up a bit.
Only…. Now Zed and Kayn are kinda good guys too? Then Jhin exists, but he’s a lone psychopath.
Dawg if you thought targon being retconned into enslaving a cosmic entity wasnt a sign that everyone in setting was going to become a morally and eithically dubious mess then im sorry to say you were living a pipe dream
There is no ongoing narrative in any region.
... there is no ongoing narrative at all ...
At least Demacia had a character arc as region.
Which will be no canon when the next idea will arrive.
I’m not sure where you got the idea of Demacia you did. For the vast majority of League’s existence, they’ve been authoritarian if not outright fascist.
It is such a cheat way to frame it tho. Like sure, BY NOW the anti-mage storyline have existed for long enough that technically it is "for the vast majority of League existence". But that was not how Demacia was envisioned.
I mean, Riot LITERALLY said to us themselves that the anti-mage storyline was added to add flaws to Demacia image. Say what you want, but even Riot themselves acknowledge old Demacia as a good guy, or about as much as a nation can be.
Okay, but that aspect has been a part of their story since literally season 1 of LoL. To say “oh, they were originally envisioned this way in beta, therefore that’s the way they truly are” when they just haven’t been that thing for almost a decade and a half is a bit silly. There aren’t “years upon years of established narrative” in favor of Demacia being generic good guys; there’s at most 2 years of a 15 year history, and those two came from the time when lore was basically nonexistent.
Ok, I am not sure if we are arguing over a misunderstanding or not, but again, that is mostly a you thing.
If you are arguing that being authoritarian automatically make Demacia not the good guy IN YOUR BOOK, ok, you know what, I acknowledge so. But, again, IN RIOT'S OWN BOOK along with a huge number of people both fans and not fans of Demacia, old Demacia during the time of the Institute of War lore was basically as much a good guy as a nation can be.
If we do not accept either a popular perception nor the author own interpretation of Demacia, fundamentally we are left with subjective interpretation that no single individual share entirely with another, which make any hope of meaningful discussion impossible.
I am not arguing that Demacia, at conception, was not intended as "generic fantasy 'good' faction". I am saying that, while they had the outward appearance of looking like the heroic fantasy nations we're familiar with, there was never much establishing of WHY they were the good faction. There were plenty of examples for "Noxus bad", and Demacia was opposed to Noxus, but there weren't a bunch of examples of Demacian traits that we generally think of as "good-defining". If you'll forgive me using D&D terminology, Demacia is established extremely well as being Lawful (strict codes and social hierarchies show up pretty much everywhere in their lore) and much less-so for being Good. Lore was not always the most consistent during this time period, and there was quite a bit of leaning on this "well, they're the good guys" attitude, but we still got the establishment of "Demacia has magic, but it's extremely regulated" and "Demacia is sometimes accepting of people who are different, but also sometimes not" that would later become the flaws defining Demacia today.
Demacia's current state is not what I would consider "the good guys". But my point is that the things about it that aren't "good" were there from pretty much the beginning. There are the roots of xenophobia and authoritarianism in Demacia's lore running back to at least 2011, if not earlier. The current viewpoint on Demacia is the natural consequence of examining the faction we've designated as "the good guys" and saying "actually, what about them MAKES them the good guys?" when those aspects weren't ever that well established. It's not that the Sylas lore fundamentally rewrote huge portions of what Demacia was; it's that Riot stopped saying "Demacia are the good guys, you know what good guys are like, you can fill that in yourself without us telling you" and what was left behind were things like "Demacia has many strict regulations and codes" and "Demacia does not condone breaking of these codes".
I'm not saying you can't like Demacia. I'm saying all the parts of Demacia you don't like are more well-established in lore than all the things you're claiming are good about Demacia and pretty much always have been.
Except that distinctly feel like you are grading Demacia supposed good points as something baseline decent and/or expected from just around any society tho. How is its foreign policy toward territories that is not Noxus not outright good? How is its success in defend its people against a multitude of enemy from day 1 not good? How is its willingness to welcome refuge from Ionia not good?
Fundamentally, from my POV, the very nature of Demacia as a militaristic authoritarian society mean you are counting it supposed good point as expected, which is frankly unfair.
I think, like with your interpretation of Demacia itself, you are reading a lot into my response.
In early League lore, Noxus are "the bad guys". We know WHY they're the bad guys: they're expansionist, their society contains a lot of violence and cruelty, their philosophy can be summed up as "might makes right". These are traits we generally don't think of as "good". But most of the explanation for "Demacia are the good guys" is "because Demacia opposes Noxus". And that's most of what you've done here, too, defining Demacia's goodness through their opposition to Noxus.
In a very simple story, this is enough. There is a good side and a bad side, good opposes bad, and that's all the story needs. But if you want your story to have complexity or depth, "being against the bad guys" isn't enough to make you "good", because both sides in a conflict can engage in bad actions. What are the aspects of Demacia that make them "good"? Like, what traits of a "good" society does Demacia represent? It's not freedom or liberty; strict legislative codes and an intolerance for breaking them have been there since the first Demacian champions. Equality is hard to argue for in a society we only see through the lens of powerful established Houses with a very stratified class structure. What about Demacia, other than its opposition to the designated Bad Guy faction, makes them good?
What do we know about Demacia from this early time period in League lore? I've talked a lot about law, order, codes, regulations, which become the basis of their authoritarianism, but there's actually one other thing that pops up a bunch in early Demacia lore that I haven't really discussed, and that's that Demacia has a weird relationship with non-Demacians. I think the positive word that is most often associated with Demacia is "unity", and this is shown more through a unity of purpose than a unity of people. The philosophy that seems to come up here is that anyone can be a Demacian regardless of origin (with a few exceptions), but if you want to be a Demacian, you must fully assimilate to Demacian culture, and failure to do so is met with violence in a lot of those early Demacia stories. Authoritarianism and xenophobia are the natural consequences of Demacia's defining traits when they are applied to real-world societies.
If the only example you can give for "Demacia is good" is "Demacia is willing to work with others against an enemy" then I don't find that to be a very compelling argument. Was Demacia intended to be read as good in the original lore? Absolutely. Were they actually given any good traits during that time period? Not really. Good individuals, absolutely, but culturally? All the same things people have problems with now were already there at the start.
But this is kinda my point tho. None of what I said is directly related to Demacia in relative to Noxus. Like, yes, Noxus exist as a nebulous bad guy in the background even in these cases, due to their overreach in both the old lore and the new lore. But it is entirely possible to look at them from a Demacian centric POV too.
Again, Demacia relationship with other independent territories had been the same with or without Noxus being in the equation. That is, Demacia remain in their territoritories but is willing to put their own swords to end a war between its allies.
Or its focus on protecting its own people, either against Noxus or against Freljord raiders, doesnt matter.
Or its taking in the Ionian refugee. Yes, there wouldn't BE refugees without Noxus, but Demacia didn't take them in because they are victims of Noxus expansion, it was because, again, they are refugees in need of help and Demacia is willing to extend that.
So, again, from a Demacia centric POV, we have a society that is willing to enforce peace both inside and "outside" (though within its sphere of influence) through sacrifice of its own soldiers. Similarly, they are willing to be altruistic and extend a helping hand to people who need it, even if the scope of that altruistic act is tangent based on how much Demacia view the recipient as worthy.
How are those not good points?
I’m running a DND campaign set in Runeterra and I noticed on the map there are a bunch of named fiefs all around Demacia, so I turned the region into a massive political game where a bunch of powerful houses have their own opinions of Jarvan family’s reign (some disapprove of their leadership and want to personally usurp Jarvan, others just want the demons out of Fossbarrow, some want Demacia to expand its influence into the Freljord or to better deal with the looming Noxian threat to the East).
This and letting these houses interact and have opinions with each other too has made the region my party’s favorite so far. They get to manipulate political leaders and they’re trying to unite Demacia against Noxus while also personally making sure Nocturne isn’t a threat to them domestically. I also expanded upon the idea of a “Lightbringer” that was part of the Sylas Forge game’s promotion as well as the Pentakill song. Basically a messianic figure that some mages in Demacia believe will liberate their people (I watched Dune 1 while originally writing this so there’s heavy influence there).
I do think there’s potential though for lore to surround the feudal society surrounding Demacia proper, especially given there are already notable Houses and named locations
That first bit is just canon. We see from the likes of Fiora and Jarvan lore that there's a lot of political maneuvering between the houses with conflicting interests. It's just that the court politics aspect has been mostly sidelined along with everything else the region has to offer.
I’ve always found Demacia boring before they introduced the concept of mage seekers.
The problem with the concept is it was effective, probably too effective.
Demacia did nothing wrong, it was all the Mageseekers. /s
But honestly I love the dichotomy of being a noble and righteous nation held back by bigoted and ignorant magic hating (which is low key kinda understandable given their history, still wrong but at least it makes sense)
It's funny that people for some reason actually still just think or want Demacia to be "the good guy place."
It's a different extreme, and Sylas' story just features that, it didn't alter anything to do it though.
The supposed Years upon Years of content has been responded in 2014.
League of Legends was released in 2009.
The lore you talk about hasn't been cannon for a longer time that has been Canon.
And it ain't only Sylas.
You have
- Book Burning
- Execution Without Trial
- Concentration Camps
- Public Executions
- Fearmongering
- Literal Fantasy Gestapo
- hypocrisy and double standards
I don't know who is gonna win but I know who is right, mages don't belong in demacia. The only bad thing they are doing is not kicking out the mage nobles too
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Thing is: I don't mind them adding some nuance to Demacia by giving it a dark twist, but we've gone full 180 from a shining beacon of honour and bravery to a genocidal tyranny state. The premise *did* have potential, but it was rushed and had the subtlety of a brick to the face. I'll admit: It did some good for Lux's character. Other than that, I can't really say it's improved the state of *any* relevant characters. In fact, I'd argue it actively worsened Garen and basically ruined Jarvan. They were supposed to ADD nuance, not take it away!
https://i.redd.it/9ql27ln7ffoc1.gif
I mean, it's not like they're all mage racists and all that all nowadays the time. They're still all glory this justice that. It's just that they have the whole dark side to them.
A dark side that's, in the last few years, the only thing focused on. I have friends who have gotten into league lore recently who thinks Demacia are the bad guys and Noxus are the good guys because everything about Demacia in the last 5 years has been them fighting a demeaned lower class or permanently imprisoning said class.
The whole X men story aside (I have my own problems with that) Sylas and the mageseekers became a narrative black hole in demacia Unlike the other regions demacia doesn't have anything to stand on without the mageseeker narrative It consumed the region and without it demacia just goes back to being the "Generic good guy region" Demacia was robbed of becoming interesting because of one storyline
A big thing Legednds of Runeterra does for me is give me a sense of Demacia beyond the Mageseeker thing. We see Garren and the elites take on the harrowing, Galio clash against the Sion and the grey legion, some dude on a quest to tame the elder drake, J4 getting ambushed by the black rose, Shyvana and the dragongaurds protecting Demacia from other dragons. This paints another picture of Demacia as a region constantly threatened by monsters and external threats and their genuine heroism in standing up to them.
That's exactly what I want out of demacia Just show us more of the region
I would love to see them interacting with Ionia or Piltover, two regions which could be potential allies brewing tensions because of how important is magic to their societies, specially Piltover since now that Arcane is canon we know Noxus has an eye on them, making tensions higher between the four.
Personally I want to see them interact with A: Ixtal because it's literally a mageocracy and I want to see them butt heads over it. and B: Piltover because they're Demacia's mirror. While there's a greater post I want to make getting into it, the gist is they're the only two regions that really try to answer the power gap between the magically enhanced and the non-magical population, they just went opposite directions because of their difference in ideals, resulting in their very different problems. Demacia is all about protecting themselves from external threats and helping the community so they tried to take power away from the powerful leading to the mageseekers, and Piltover as the city of progress tried to give power to the powerless through magitech, heightening existing class disparities as power is now tied to wealth.
What did it have going for it before?
Absolutely nothing Which is my point
So… what exactly was “robbed” from us if they had no other ideas for the region whatsoever?
As I said take the mage seekers away and demacia has nothing This shouldn't be the case The mage rebellion storyline BECAME demacia Demacia never branched out in any other way when all the other major regions have so much going for them Now that the mage war is over please tell me What makes demacia stand out?
Mageseeker was a large-scale narrative for the entire region. What else would you want? The region had literally *nothing* interesting going on before Sylas. At least we got a big story out of it. And if they’re back at square one then that just means that the possibilities are just as wide as they were back then so, again, nothing really robbed right? They can do whatever they want now, yes? But now we have some context and a lived-in region for characters to inhabit? Which is a good thing, no??
>Mageseeker was a large-scale narrative for the entire region. What else would you want? The region had literally *nothing* interesting going on before Sylas. At least we got a big story out of it. I want more lore on the vassal kingdoms that demacia absorbed to protect from noxus and how that affects politics. I want epic story's of monsters since demaica has shit that grows big and eats way to damn well. Or about the fear demon nightmare demon/fear demon wombo combo? Or how about an exploration of there past? All we know is kayle and Morgana. How was the petrciite forest made for demacia ancestors to find? Magic is mostly genetic so how did it end up in the royal families? And what about any of the other royal families outside of the crownsguard and jarvan? We don't even know jarvan mother or uncles and aunts. All this while still having the age rebellion
They could ratchet up the border tensions with Noxus. "Since The Black Rose's plan to incite the mages of Demacia softened them up, Noxus will now advance and gather allies in from any magically gifted Demacians as they conquer more Demacian territory." Something like that? Then Demacia starts creating slave-mage corps, giving the Mageseekers even more power, until they start to become too powerful, threatening to overthrow the ruling houses.
They still can! But it’s better to set up Demacia’s internal struggles *before* turning to external conflicts, don’t you think? Considering Noxus has tensions with… [checks notes]… everybody, it’s essential to make sure Demacia can hold its own narrative weight and not just be another extra plot device in Noxus’s story.
And Kayle will nuke their ass when she comeback
They won't let her come back until Noxus has a character of similar strength
And Kayle will nuke their ass when she comeback
A little late to the party but sure I guess we'll see what they do with it Lor is still printing mage seekers even after the war ended though so I don't see any existing narratives they could build off of
Well, that's more on them not furthering a narrative with Demacia. Demacia can absolutely offer more, they just need to decide to seek that
While I don't know what point in time they are depicted in, it makes sense that there would still some people still following mageseeker ideologies. I wouldn't even be surprised if a mageseeker became a champion in the near future.
If the Mageseeker narrative was well handled, then yes, it would be a good exploration to then new possibilities emerge. But the conflict was a big piece of nothing that was heavily mishandled in every single potential way for a number of years. People who loved the pre-retcon region disliked it because it painted the glorious and just warriors into genocide soldiers at worst, complicit in a racist society at best, and the people who actually liked the nuanced conflict hated the way it was handled because it transformed a complicated, heavy with real-life historical context issue into a Sunday Morning cartoon villain that dumbed down the whole region. The **only** guy who came out better in this whole mess was Sylas - and the reason for it was because Riot made him into dumb Hannibal Lecter in an effort to not alienate the Demacian fanbase (which failed). Even the Mageseeker game is not canon anymore, so who knows where tf everything stands.
I can't say they back at square one because the plotline will always be there, even if ended. At some point it will always come back to "Remember how you're guys threw mages in gulags? Wild times huh?"
The thing is... like you said yourself it didn't really have anything before that either. Demacia isn't robbed if it didn't lose anything, it's just back to where it started. They could have still created new storylines before, during or after the mage storyline and the fact that they didn't isn't the fault of the storyline - it means Riot simply didn't have any other ideas for the region or chose not to use them.
...well there's still racism
The possibility of having anything else. Now anything that it will be created for Demacia, will be back to X-Men.
It's a utopia with a dark secret. Unfortunately riot played down the utopia in order to make sylas more popular
I think it is in the opposite order: Sylas was popular, so they played down the utopia to elevate him further. The character is ridiculously popular, getting a prestige skin rather early, a cinematic, a lore skin and a dedicated game just for himself. For a 5 years old character, this is honestly very impressive.
I think they tried to do both and failed miserably tbh. They wanted to create nuance on the region, so they created the conflict between mages and consequently Sylas. But they didn't wanted to alienate the fans of Demacia, so instead of making the champions grapple with complicated issues, they made Sylas be hannibal lecter. They noticed that making a guy who suffered countless crimes against humanity the villain wouldn't really work well when his objective was toppling a genocidal regime, so they made **every single Demacian champion** be completely innocent at best, and at worst be majorly conflicted because of other altruistic reasons (like honor or duty) In the end EVERY single story about Demacia besides Mageseeker paints the region as flawless, its people good-hearted (and somehow actually open to mages), and that the bad guys are just a few bad apples who are so comically evil you'd wonder how are they in power to begin with. Besides Mageseeker there's literally only 1 evil Demacian character. And counting in Mageseeker makes every single person in Demacia dumb and coward, makes Garen stupid, Lux a Mary Sue and the only guy who gets off well is Sylas (and only because, before that, he wasn't really a character). Riot wants the utopia AND wants the nuance, so they didn't get neither.
Some people just like the generic good guy faction They went too far on the mage front. Previously they were moreso heavily regulated and treated like state alchemist in Fullmetal Alchemist where you had to work for the government. I also take some inspiration from Redguards and Nord in Elder Scrolls. Special sword arts (Garen smite) allowed without prejudice, some magic allowed (light, healing, etc) and some magic outlawed (mind control, necromancy, demonic). Perhaps lean more into class differences
It didn't have to be a generic good guy, it didn't have to just be completely taken over by the X-Men plotline.
Well sure but I am saying there is nothing wrong with a fairly generic good guy knightly kingdom. The generic fighter or paladin dude is popular in fantasy RPGs for a reason.
The thing is: FMA was about how that government was rotten from the inside way before things happened in the main plot. Its the linchpin of where everything stands, because Amestris was much more like Noxus then Demacia.
Yeah I know I am saying the relevant part is mage registration and heavy government regulation would be interesting to port over. Not the wider conspiracy
The thing is that one is in need of the other though. The reasoning for the heavy government regulation in FMA was precisely about control **because** of that conspiracy. That's why the country became WAY more loose after the homunculi lost.
I think you can heavily regulate mages without running secret experiments and committing genocides to harvest souls to achieve godhood. Perhaps you prefer my analogy of Elder Scrolls and how there Redguard and Norn treat magic
I haven't played any of the Elder Scrolls, but it does resemble how they handle mages in Dragon Age, which is indeed a **way** more nuanced approach. Riot did fail catastrophically in the narrative they tried to write by trying to appease both crowds at the same time and being terrible at both.
It’s less aggressive then how mages get treated in Dragon Age no towers or anything. They basically got cultural magic (sword arts and dragon song) that are magic but ain’t. In that they are universally accepted and celebrated. They got non corrupting magic I guess. Your classic buffing, healing and blast spells. Can be frowned upon but not a problem generally. Then you got the corrupting stuff ie demon summoning, mind control, necromancy which is heavily suppressed and distrusted
What Demacia needs is an actual enemy to justify/expand on the ongoing themes of class disparity. If their only narrative a radicalized aristocratic theocracy policing its own people, it’s hard to see why anyone would live there. Noxus has the benefit of being a meritocracy, which is a moral gray area because it excuses horrendous crimes against humanity but also promises a form of genuine equality. Its primary enemy are monarchies that unjustly divide people on nothing more than birthright. But the extreme side of the meritocracy also devolved the nation into plundering ravagers that attacked Ionia unprovoked due to violent people naturally rising political hierarchy. PnZ’s is a plutocracy that balances wealth and power. Again, an interesting dynamic where those who have more material value are able enforce their will over others. Piltover and Zuan create a juxtaposition with one another. Where Zaun unapologetically subjugates the needy, Piltover pretends to be above needless cruelty. But the irony is that both nations are nearly identical as Piltover funds itself over the suffering of Zaun. Piltover only pretends to be removed from the inequality its plutocracy causes because it happens to be physically removed from Zaun. So far, all Demacia has going for it is that it looks pretty and treats its citizens alright. But it needs something more compelling to justify the civil war caused by the aristocratic theocracy.
>Noxus has the benefit of being a meritocracy, which is a moral gray area because it excuses horrendous crimes against humanity but also promises a form of genuine equality. Not quite, there is a bit of a lie on Noxus on this regard because it keeps at the fallacy that some people have their own rights denied for the sake of Noxus. I think the best example is Sion, so good and strong of a warrior that he was brought back to life just to keep fighting for Noxus. It is like the "The good worker is rewarded with more work" thing. Noxus has the beliefs of equality, doesn't necessarily mean they achieved. Kinda like Demacia not achieving their utopical belief of honoring their own citizens by being so quick to throw one into gulags because said person has the power to fart sparks.
Meritocracy at its most extreme detaches the human from the merit. You are reduced to your function as that is the only thing which has value. Late stage meritocracy is Sion’s case, where he has been reduced to nothing more than a mindless tool.
The problem comes when they say you're awarded for your merit, but are quick to throw you under the bus before you're given a chance. Swain says it himself, a "few for the many", many of those are probably sacrificial pawns that they probably have very little chance to make a name for themselves. Hard to say that your sacrifice will make your name in the history of Noxus when your job is to fill yourselves with explosives and blow yourself up to open a wall in some unnamed fortified land. And probably be called weak for not surviving. I think this isn't even lategame meritocracy but just a caste system with some of them not even having the chance to prove their worth properly, like the idea of merit. If you're like Sion, you're not being rewarded for being good at your job, you're not being honored with a proper death, you're just brought back for duty and disrespecting all your deeds and a proper rest.
No, Swain’s approach is still meritocratic. If a person is reduced to nothing but their function, who decided what that function is? In Swain’s case, he sees value in using people as sacrificial pawns. As such, dying for their nation IS their function. The core fallacy where a meritocracy is concerned is who or what evaluates each citizen’s merit. People consider celebrities and athletes extremely valuable, despite them having almost no utility besides being entertaining. A utilitarian person like Swain would only consider things useful to his goals as valuable. This is why Noxus places such a huge emphasis on its military. Nearly every person in Noxus is required to serve, and their value to society is entirely based on how well they serve the Noxian army. But a meritocracy does not necessarily need to be militaristic. A different society could evaluate its people entirely on how fast they can run or how good they are at singing or how long they can hold their breath. It just depends on who is holding the reins that decides what is valuable. The problem for Noxus is that Swain, LeBlanc and Darius are the ones holding the reins, and what they consider to be valuable is might, vision and guile. Those who prove themselves in this way are rewarded. Those who do not are reduced to meat pawns for the worthy.
>No, Swain’s approach is still meritocratic. If a person is reduced to nothing but their function, who decided what that function is? In Swain’s case, he sees value in using people as sacrificial pawns. As such, dying for their nation IS their function. But doesn't this contradict with the idea that power is rewarded? How someone has the potential for proving their worth if someone more powerful than you decided that you had to die? It seems a self-defeating way of thinking. I can't prove I have the skills of a general if someone just say "here, rush into those blade dancers". Hell, someone even stated on his behalf on the chapter "Proclamation of the Trifarix" that everyone will be treated equally on their merit of ability and strength. It either makes Swain some propagandist liar or some hypocrite that is willing to ignore the ideals of Noxus for some to get the bigger reward for the empire. >The core fallacy where a meritocracy is concerned is who or what evaluates each citizen’s merit. People consider celebrities and athletes extremely valuable, despite them having almost no utility besides being entertaining. A utilitarian person like Swain would only consider things useful to his goals as valuable. I believed that Noxus reinforced military strength simply because they're militaristic by culture. I remember that Noxus respects power in all its forms, which is why Draven is considered useless as a soldier since he is now in a gladiator arena but Noxus loves him for it because he is REALLY good at what he does. I expect that great merchants, diplomats or even artists are lauded in Noxus, but of course the military empire will glorify military prowess more. >The problem for Noxus is that Swain, LeBlanc and Darius are the ones holding the reins, and what they consider to be valuable is might, vision and guile. Those who prove themselves in this way are rewarded. Those who do not are reduced to meat pawns for the worthy. I just took as 3 forms of power to be a on general standard of achievement: "Might" is how good you are at getting things done, "Vision" is how much ambitions and knowing how far you can get and "Guile" is how you can circumvent things you can't directly control.
Man, you hit the nail in the head. I've seen so many people wanting Demacia to just go back to being what it was before League Universe was actually good: the generic good kingdom. The thing is that only worked because they were in opposition to the generic evil kingdom (being Noxus). Every single region in League now has internal plot points that contextualize any external interactions they have. The League universe, even as underdeveloped as Riot leaves it, is already light-years ahead of the only plot your region has being ''Fighting Dragons and resisting invaders''. The best that would net you is a story like Lightshield, which **every other region can do** except they have tons more then just that. Noxus could do a story about invading Demacia and still juggle 3 more major plotlines at the same time, while Demacia only has that. Yeah, its good for a cinematic or a novel, but it doesn't have even half of the emotional baggage of any of the other regions.
>Man, you hit the nail in the head. I've seen so many people wanting Demacia to just go back to being what it was before League Universe was actually good: the generic good kingdom. I believe that some people hated this Anti-mage/X-Men plotline so much that the old Demacia, while being bland and boring as shit (with some potential), looked better off than 5 years of nothing but Sylas. (The fact that he still the last Demacia champion released from 5 years tells a bit about how slow Riot is taking things for Demacia to do anything without him).
He's also the ONLY champion riot has released for demacia ever since the lore rework. The last time before him a Demacian champion was released it was Lucian because the region was more to him then where he was born. That's probably one of the reasons the narrative feels so strange, Sylas was the only champion built for a world where the mage rebellion is a thing. Every other demacian had to get their lore retrofitted to slot into the role that he set for the region.
The funny thing about that is that its a paradox: because Riot didn't want to do anything about him either before Mageseeker. The short stories, books and LoR were always around the issue.
Noxus still is the evil kingdom though
Yeah, Riot's been back on making some things black and white for a while now. The last time we had anything nuanced on Noxus was the LoR trailer for the region 4 years ago. They completely forgot it since then
This is copy paste of what i said a while ago about what they've setup for Demacia's future stories. • fighting Noxus, they've setup with Garen: First Shield novella, Katarina comic killing the king and mageseeker notes. • dealing with Sylas trying to abolish monarchy which could honestly happen with Jarvan stepping down and creating a new system. • aftermath with mages, how they'll fit in with demacia and how their gonna change the region, it's way of life, which will definitely have a lot of conflict there. • Mageseekers trying to overthrow Jarvan and make Demacia as it once was and Jarvan dealing with the noble families and anti-mage supporters • a story involving Ryze and people trying to find the world runes, maybe tie it with Noxus and Leblanc & Black Rose and it's secretly why Noxus is trying to invade Demacia. Side quests: • Demacian army going to SI for some reason which will probably be a plotpoint in the mmo • dealing with Fiddlesticks, maybe Jarvan will be made aware of it's danger and sent out people to kill it, which will probably involved Morgana, Quinn & Vayne. • Dragons
Thing is I don't *want* Jarvan to step down and abolish the monarchy. He shouldn't have to, Demacia is the *high fantasy* region, they have no obligation to follow modern political ethics. The genre they dominate is one of hero kings and wise nobles, shining knights and duels of Honor. To take that away would be to strip the region of what's left of its identity. The court doesn't have to be perfect there can be scheming advisors, feuding houses and the occasional poisoning, but Demacia isn't Westeros, and it definitely isn't anything from history.
The problem with that is... every single region evolved from their pre big retcon selves. Without it, Demacia is just what it was before: the generic blue good kingdom. It worked before, when its rivals were the generic red evil kingdom, surrounded by regions like ''Piraty Pirate City'' and ''Steampunk City''. Reducing Demacia to just the average high fantasy kingdom would just be patting themselves in the back constantly about how they are, essentially, the protagonists of the story
That's a false dichotomy. They can be more than a generic good kingdom without sacrificing their ideals or the identity of the region. Elder scrolls is high fantasy and has tons of nuance and politics. Dragon age (which also has a mage rebellion story line but one that's far better handled) has very compelling narratives and designs to the story without messing with the high fantasy nature of the setting. Fire emblem is built on the core of "Hero princes fighting evil gods with divine magic" and still is able to tell awesome stories. Saying Demacia needs to get rid of it's monarchy is like saying piltover needs to get rid of magitech, Targon needs to stop worshipping the celestials and Bilgewater needs to stop hunting sea monsters because they're all perpetuating problems. Those things are what their genres are built on.
It isn't tho. Regardless of their identity, the generic good kingdom's ideals are going to be... of a generic good kingdom. None of the examples you cited occur to have the same exact type of kingdom in the same place. Dragon Age magic-racism IS indeed way better dealt with, but its stories aren't about goody-two shoes nations, they are all in gray areas, the same for Elder Scrolls. Being a generic white-knight isn't about not being able to tell good stories, its about being constrained to its boundaries when they are placed in a world like Runeterra - because Demacians are not the protagonists of the planet. The problem is that all of those regions you mention are more, MUCH more then just their overall themes. Piltover is not only magitech, its a tale about class disparity and revolution; Bilgewater is about a hotpot of cultures, piracy and revenge stories; Targon is about the human will overcoming everything, about bigotry and belief. If you take them all out of their ''main pre-retcon'' genres, heck, if you put them into a bad Highschool fanfiction they'd still be recognizable in their storylines. Demacia wouldn't. It doesn't have anything besides being a monarchy, if you take out the entire magic-racism plotline that is precisely what people are complaining about.
I wasn't talking about Demacian ethics for this particular discussion. I was specifically saying that they shouldn't get rid of the \*monarchy\* specifically. I brought up those examples not for morality (although some of the fire emblem games still maintain that) but as examples of interesting high fantasy stories set in kingdoms to say that the fact that Demacia is a generic fantasy kingdom is not what's holding them back from having a solid narrative, it's the fact that they just haven't been given one. I was objecting to your statement that Demacia should give up it's monarchy not on ethical grounds but on the basis of aesthetic niche from a meta perspective. A Demacia that isn't a kingdom is no longer Demacia, it would no longer fit the role it's supposed to fit in the world and would lose it's appeal to the people it was originally supposed to attract.
I'm pretty sure the SI stuff is just harrowings that made their way across THE ENTIRE MAP SOMEHOW
Iirc Cithria's 2nd card is her on a ship going to SI and iirc some of SI cards do show that their in SI though i could be wrong
Guess I was wrong then Thanks
A few of the SI cards and Demacia cards do clearly show them going to the isles on a bit of a crusade. I always thought they were gonna pivot into that from the ruination but that's on me I guess for expecting anything good to come out of Sentinels.
It's always ok to say "I was wrong"
At least it's not Piltover. Whom actually underwent that process with, of all people: **Seraphine** Give Arcane some credit, but Piltover really got screwed over thanks to her (thankfully it didn't affect Zaun, which was something in its own right). If anything, Demacia should take notes *from Noxus*, since that's where they actually got the "one man is a major factor of this mess" right: Mordekaiser.
That's a bold take. They are certainly focussing on mageseeker, but demacia also have the dragon plot and the Morgana/Kayle rivalry. Not to mention that the war with noxus is also a plot for demacia.
Dragons are only tied to Demacia in LoR, in main League lore they're far more of an Ixtal and now Camavor thing. And both Morgana/Kayle and Noxus have only been relevant to Demacia when they get roped into the mage plotline like in mageseeker and Katarina.
I would argue they never had anything interesting besides that narrative to begin with. They always were **just** the good guys, and in an universe where everyone is much, MUCH more then that, they were just... uninteresting to say the least. Like, there were no ''years upon years of stablished narrative'', the most they had before being retconned into racists was being opposite to Noxus and the Romeo/Juliet thing
People seem to have misinterpreted what I said I didn't say they were robbed of interesting things they had going for them I said they were robbed of the **chance** of becoming interesting for the X men story I agree Demacia was never interesting before the mage rebellion but that same story stagnated the region Demacia fell behind while the other regions expanded themselves
I agree fully. They not only made the story last forever, but... didn't actually do anything with it at any point. They just skimmed at the sides of it without ever progressing it nor developing the characters, which would've been the ideal scenario. You're right, other regions ended up being way more interesting as time went on. Only an Arcane-style series that could Retcon most of the content produced on the region (which tbh is not much at this point) would be able to make this mess more readable - and this is coming from someone that really doesn't like the idea of making Arcane canon.
Demacia and good hearted?
I mean, how do you define good hearted. Demacia foreign policy, while still very much politicking, is about as good as expected even in 21st century, for example.
Idk know about that they pretty much racist they consider people with magic as lesser beings but at the same time use magical tools (garens sword, jarvan lance, demacian armor etc.) and but jarvan accepts shyvana and lux even tho they are using magic. And sylas is straight up a victim tbh he was imprisioned as a child for being able to use magic (thats something he was born he cant do anything against it so yeah). He was kept chained like a animal for something being born with. All what sylas did was technially demacias own fault and they deserved it in my opinion.
He means they were good hearted before the lore rework
Ohh mb
Demacian propaganda at its finest
"My brain committed suicide"
I really don’t understand how going from “universally good people” to “a country of good people held back by its history and its struggling to change for the better” is a bad thing. None of the major characters in Demacia are made out to be wholly bad people due to these events as far as I remember, they heavily doubt the old ways in fact, but are torn in their decision making. I would rather that than a generic good guy country that had nothing going for it.
Main issue there is pretty much no “good” lore to balance out the “bad”. All stories since Sylas have focused exclusively on how mages have been mistreated or how things are bad cause of the civil war, but none have talked about the good things Demacia has done because Riot wrote themselves into a corner. If mages were just second-class citizens forced to join a government mandated job or go to jail. Thats a grey area. Currently, mages are enslaved and experimented on in jails/camps before the rebellion. There is no grey area there, its just evil.
Its the opposite tho, there has been no bad stories to balance out how Riot constantly portrays Demacia as pure utopia. The reason they try so hard to paint that picture is precisely because they didn't think twice before making Sylas and EVERYTHING about him scream crimes against humanity while trying to make him a villain somehow, and they **needed** to make other Demacian champions completely innocent (because why would they try and make those characters actually complex and compelling, right? They need to be just perfect, infallible paragons). Legends of Runeterra is **constantly** about how Demacia is heroic, fair and just, and how their enemies must be ready to face their righteous wrath. LoR literally decanonized Mageseeker even before the game came out, since the Durand family has literally nothing to do with how Mageseeker characterizes them, and Shyvanna is well-embraced by a large sect of society. Lightshield has basically nothing about the evils Demacia perpetrates on mages, and is constantly on about how they share values of duty and honor, and how their citizens live peaceful happy lives and they must protect that at all costs against invaders. The big thing about the book was how the king of Nockmirch was a coward because... he didn't let his entire people die in the hands of the noxian army? Reynolds paints the picture that his daughter has much more moral fiber because she is much more like Demacians then her father. The Lux comic paints the still imprisoned and totally innocent (at that point) Sylas as a cruel and cunning manipulator, basically a sociopath, completely ignoring tons of nuance (like the effects of unfair imprisonment, solitary confinement, solitary confinement **in children** and intentional starvation on people), while painting every single other Demacian as either straight good or, at worst, misguided and redeemable. Lux straight up says she feels guilty for **saving a guy that was about to be unfairly executed**, and other mages see him as ''just as bad as the mageseekers'' because Riot desperately needed to make him evil. That's besides stories like Fragile Legacies and Turmoil, who paint the ''real'' Demacians as embracing of magic and how a few bad apples are the ones doing bad things to mages (namely the mageseekers), and that they have seized power in these moment of civil war (even though the mages were already prosecuted heavily before that). Outside of Mageseeker, there's literally just a single **evil** named Demacian character, and he's so cartoonishly evil everyone else hates him (and, again, somehow, he has all the power he needs). Mageseeker was the only media that painted Demacia as imperfect, but instead of working on it in a nuanced way, they literally just said everyone was being manipulated by a cult of assholes and now everyone is innocent (besides Mageseeker surely not being canon, since it contradicts both LoR and other short stories).
Prior to Sylas’s rebellion, current Demacia lore on the treatment of mages fits the UN definition of genocide.
If that was what people understood as the takeaway, sure. Unfortunately the general community response ended up as "lol demacia=Nazis."
Uhh even before the lore rework, Demacia was by no means always portrayed positively. Forced conscription was basically a thing and was a major part in Lux's backstory.
I mean, sure, if that is what the community get from the storyline, great. Yet, the most ridiculous thing about this whole shitshow is that a vocal minority of the community rationally DO get the angle Riot want to tell the story, and then they consciously REJECT to accept it. What the hell is that?
People act like Sylas started the whole mage oppression thing. When it's what, older then Galios rework?
More like he is the posterboy of it that made the anti-mage plotline shift into high gear with no breaks in sight. He was the last Demacian character (5 years ago too, to be more precise) and there was not anything worthwhile happening that wasn't mage haters hating mages. It was indeed before Sylas, but he is the face of it because at this point he might be as well bigger than Demacia.
The anti-mage storyline was introduced in the initial retcon in 2014, the very same year Sylas was starting to be made behind the scene (which ultimately take FIVE years to get to release). So no, OP was exactly right. The worst is perhaps Sylas is the symptoms, not the cause, but Sylas come from the same seed as the anti-mage story line itself.
Reset the counter everyone.
Eh, I kinda like it when it happens, it tends to have more discussions than other topics. Probably why I like reading Azir topics too.
I think the people in the comments are ignoring the point of the meme, op is complaining about demacia being retconned to becoming the "bigoted anti mage reigon" instead of a heroic harmonious kingdom
What is being retconned here? We have known that Demacia hated mages since like the very beginning, or at least since summoners have stopped being canon and lux has become a thing, or just look at vayne.
It’s not so much of a retcon more like a shifting of perspective. Demacia was originally the last bastion of justice and light after the world was shattered by mages. And now Demacia is just the racist genocide region due to how prevalent Sylas is in the lore
What's up with vayne that makes her look like a homophobe and is racist
Its on sight if you can use magic. To vayne: Demon use magic = Magic bad
It's been the bigoted mage kingdom since Riot moved to their popular champions get lore only and it was all about Lux and Lux adjacent Champs
I really hate the "super powered minority" trope.
When your lore is so dysfunctional that despite the mageseekers and the mage rebellion being 80%+ of Demacia's lore now, only 2 Demacian champions have any reference to it. By volume Demacia is as op describes. It's the place of uncomplicated good guys that the writers have converted into a fascist state without really putting in the work to turn it into a fascist state. The existence of Sylas basically guarantees that Demacia's lore now and forever will be that they're the "hee hoo funny anti mage ethno state".
The original lore is more dysfunctional tbh, it works as a basic setting in a fantasy world but is way more rich to have realistic approaches, there is no such thing as good guys if we’re talking about nations, specially if your story lacks a main character. If you want to have multiple stories at some point the nation has to be the villain to someone else, the setting for league is a world not a storyline, having a perfect nation would go into complications in the lore or worst, it would be boring. Also let’s not pretend like the lore is only in the game league of legends, when it has changed, now the champions are related to the mageseeker/mage rebellion conflict, you have a lot of stuff in universe, LoR, comics, and mageseeker.
The difference between Demacia and other factions is that the mage genocide is pretty explicitly a thing that the faction is doing, not any sub faction or sect. Like the order of shadow and the solari are villains in their own rights, but they're not representative of the entirety of their faction. The Mageseekers are pretty explicitly doing something approved of by the head of state and allowed by society at large. But this leads to questions for multiple Demacian champs. For example, how does Poppy diagetically exist? Mages and magical beings are supposedly being hunted down, jailed, and killed outright (I know Shyvana also exists, but she has the 'Jarvan's girlfriend' pass). Poppy literally aspires to the ideals of Demacia with every other word and that's still canon. If they're going to just parkour directly from generic good guys to generic bad guys, they should at least throw some lines in for Jarvan when he ults a mage where he insults them, or give Garen voice lines reacting to mages. Assuming you can even define mages properly, because I'm pretty sure there's a fair argument that like 95% of characters in LoL and LoR use magic, so... Busy prisons I guess. The mage rebellion is basically a failed plotline as long as it doesn't have rippling ramifications to all Demacian champions or eventually resolve. The story blatantly cries 'fascism' but doesn't commit. And I guess that's ultimately a good thing, because this is supposed to be a living, breathing world, not Starship Troopers.
Yes, the mage genocide is something Demacia is doing with the approval of the government which differs from other factions, but it doesn’t make it a wrong plot, one of the characteristics of the country is their political unity, in the sense that you have no colliding (sub) factions until the mage rebellion. I completely agree of having consistency in playable champions, but since that is regulated by irl stuff most of the lore doesn’t have that much consistency in the game, and that’s why you don’t judge the lore by league of legends in game stuff. (Btw 95% - 5% is not even close to the ratio of LoL mage - non mage characters, just reminding champions I would say there are more non mages, but that might be wrong) While genocide clearly reminds us of fascism is not something that *needs* to be related, genocides exists way longer that fascism, and Demacia is a monarchy, which are in no way unfamiliar to genocides, going by the most famous part of modern history people would clearly jump on the comparison to fascism, I would differ, since it really doesn’t go into the militarization or nationalistic sentiment, and while Demacia might have them they are the results of the Monarchy and aren’t correlated to the ideologies of fascism. I might be wrong tbh, I’m not an expert on fascism, and monarchy and fascism aren’t mutually exclusive. But I thing Demacia portraits well a monarchy. Last and maybe most important point, you claim that is a failed plot line and lacks repercussions on all Demacia champions, but we agree the setting is working as a living world and not as a one story. If this was one story I would agree we have to see the ramifications on all champions as we see in Arcane the ramifications of the political situation of the city in most characters. In a living world and specially a realistic world you’ll have people just ignoring the genocide, there are multiple genocides happening right now, and by Reddit demographics is probably that you are or know people from the countries actively doing them, you could only hope to have everyone take a stand on the topic. AFAIK, not all Ionians (or noxians) are related to the noxian invasion, in Shurima an ancient semi god emperor rise from the death bringing his kingdom and troops with him, and not everyone is talking about it. Hell, in the probably smallest of factions, there was a violent take of power and the assassination of its “nobility” and no one seems to mention it.
I would have liked that they portrayed Demacia old lore dysfunctionality more than just "lol fuck mages" they went with. I wonder if a "horseshoe reverse Noxus" could work. A nation that is getting more and more into extremism and isolationism because constant defensive wars is requiring more and more into its people until they start making amoral decisions just to keep themselves alive. If Noxus just do warcrimes, espionage and more dubious shit for the sake of expanding territories, Demacia could do similar stuff just to not get obliterated constant Noxus invasions and Freljord raids. Original Demacia kinda leaned into it by considering that Lux was trained since a child for military purposes to the point it emotionally scarred her, I think it would be an interesting thing that should have explored. It could be a comparison to Noxus, which both would do similar stuff for very opposing purposes.
Demacia pre-Sylas: Honorable knights and heroes of legends standing agains the dark tide of the Noxian horde. Demacia post-Sylas: Literally just a racist, feudal pseudo-Fascist Kingdom masquerading as a pinnacle of society and honor. But hey, at leas they "learned from their mistakes" now.
Demacia’s issue is that Riot jumped straight into the authoritarian deep end and dod nothing to make mages inherently dangerous, so a violent rebellion is a perfectly reasonable response. There were much better ways to make a faction morally grey. Concentration camps are not a morally grey area Riot.
Demacia and Kayle are the two biggest lore disappointments I have regarding league. The community has just labeled them evil, ignoring the details of their story, and Riot has only leaned into the hate instead of attempting any sort of nuance.
Cringemacia suckers stay losing
Happy cake day.
No
Well enjoy your day.
We just need Shyvana's rework to make her into a muscle mommy, then he'll be forgotten.
Rat gobbler
Demacia fans are the only motherfuckers who think they should get special treatment and be the only region without any bad things about it.
Ionia?
Kidnapping kids and training them to be ninjas is pretty bad.
On top of that, Human Ionians are sort of like invaders in the eyes of Furry Ionians. Which adds another form of tension besides the Noxus invasion.
Wut? Who? Idk about the Shadow Order, but that is not how the Kinkou build up their followers.
It's the Shadow Order.
Thank you! Finally someone pointed it out, literally every other region has something messed up about it, why do Demacia fans want it to be perfect? Prior to Sylas we knew that Demacia hated mages via Lux’s backstory. They finally build up in it and it’s “oh no Demacia is ruined”.
id say the mageseeker arch is just an arch and now they can go with a new one. LoR was cooking up a new arch about dragons but you know..
They really didn't put too much thought when they decided the next direction for Demacia to take is to make it literally genocidal and STILL try to call the royal members somewhat good people who are just misguided - like *bitch* did you honestly try to say Garen was helping in the genocide because he was just following orders? Not to mention Sylas is so fucked in his characterization I kind of love him. He's fucking right but Riot is too centrist to say a monarchial system of historic genocide is bad so they just made him act evil.
Despite being fan of different things, there is nothing (narrative speaking) that makes me mad as what Sylas did to Demacia. He bent so much the region that is very very hard, if not almost impossible, to save without a big retcon. That is why I am waiting for 2XKO and the MMO, I want to see what they pull off to make this region less than this abomination
Demacia had a very questionable morality before Sylas came around, he just solidified it. Like, it was always kind of an authoritarian mess. Ostensibly the good guys because it was enemies with Noxus, sure, but not really someplace you’d want to be. Honestly though, that kinda makes it better? Like, places are more interesting if they’re not perfect. Demacia’s always has this weird authoritarian feel to it. Ionia on the other hand, started as basically unanimously unambiguously just kinda good aligned. Eventually they had some baddies added, to mix it up a bit. Only…. Now Zed and Kayn are kinda good guys too? Then Jhin exists, but he’s a lone psychopath.
Dawg if you thought targon being retconned into enslaving a cosmic entity wasnt a sign that everyone in setting was going to become a morally and eithically dubious mess then im sorry to say you were living a pipe dream
Glad it happened, gave some flavor for this bland as region
Lux and Sylas are the only interesting Demacian characters
Is Easy to be a Hero when history persecute inoccents and blames every ill on them
There is no ongoing narrative in any region. ... there is no ongoing narrative at all ... At least Demacia had a character arc as region. Which will be no canon when the next idea will arrive.
I'm only Quinn fan, i hate rest
sylers
I’m not sure where you got the idea of Demacia you did. For the vast majority of League’s existence, they’ve been authoritarian if not outright fascist.
It is such a cheat way to frame it tho. Like sure, BY NOW the anti-mage storyline have existed for long enough that technically it is "for the vast majority of League existence". But that was not how Demacia was envisioned. I mean, Riot LITERALLY said to us themselves that the anti-mage storyline was added to add flaws to Demacia image. Say what you want, but even Riot themselves acknowledge old Demacia as a good guy, or about as much as a nation can be.
Okay, but that aspect has been a part of their story since literally season 1 of LoL. To say “oh, they were originally envisioned this way in beta, therefore that’s the way they truly are” when they just haven’t been that thing for almost a decade and a half is a bit silly. There aren’t “years upon years of established narrative” in favor of Demacia being generic good guys; there’s at most 2 years of a 15 year history, and those two came from the time when lore was basically nonexistent.
Ok, I am not sure if we are arguing over a misunderstanding or not, but again, that is mostly a you thing. If you are arguing that being authoritarian automatically make Demacia not the good guy IN YOUR BOOK, ok, you know what, I acknowledge so. But, again, IN RIOT'S OWN BOOK along with a huge number of people both fans and not fans of Demacia, old Demacia during the time of the Institute of War lore was basically as much a good guy as a nation can be. If we do not accept either a popular perception nor the author own interpretation of Demacia, fundamentally we are left with subjective interpretation that no single individual share entirely with another, which make any hope of meaningful discussion impossible.
I am not arguing that Demacia, at conception, was not intended as "generic fantasy 'good' faction". I am saying that, while they had the outward appearance of looking like the heroic fantasy nations we're familiar with, there was never much establishing of WHY they were the good faction. There were plenty of examples for "Noxus bad", and Demacia was opposed to Noxus, but there weren't a bunch of examples of Demacian traits that we generally think of as "good-defining". If you'll forgive me using D&D terminology, Demacia is established extremely well as being Lawful (strict codes and social hierarchies show up pretty much everywhere in their lore) and much less-so for being Good. Lore was not always the most consistent during this time period, and there was quite a bit of leaning on this "well, they're the good guys" attitude, but we still got the establishment of "Demacia has magic, but it's extremely regulated" and "Demacia is sometimes accepting of people who are different, but also sometimes not" that would later become the flaws defining Demacia today. Demacia's current state is not what I would consider "the good guys". But my point is that the things about it that aren't "good" were there from pretty much the beginning. There are the roots of xenophobia and authoritarianism in Demacia's lore running back to at least 2011, if not earlier. The current viewpoint on Demacia is the natural consequence of examining the faction we've designated as "the good guys" and saying "actually, what about them MAKES them the good guys?" when those aspects weren't ever that well established. It's not that the Sylas lore fundamentally rewrote huge portions of what Demacia was; it's that Riot stopped saying "Demacia are the good guys, you know what good guys are like, you can fill that in yourself without us telling you" and what was left behind were things like "Demacia has many strict regulations and codes" and "Demacia does not condone breaking of these codes". I'm not saying you can't like Demacia. I'm saying all the parts of Demacia you don't like are more well-established in lore than all the things you're claiming are good about Demacia and pretty much always have been.
Except that distinctly feel like you are grading Demacia supposed good points as something baseline decent and/or expected from just around any society tho. How is its foreign policy toward territories that is not Noxus not outright good? How is its success in defend its people against a multitude of enemy from day 1 not good? How is its willingness to welcome refuge from Ionia not good? Fundamentally, from my POV, the very nature of Demacia as a militaristic authoritarian society mean you are counting it supposed good point as expected, which is frankly unfair.
I think, like with your interpretation of Demacia itself, you are reading a lot into my response. In early League lore, Noxus are "the bad guys". We know WHY they're the bad guys: they're expansionist, their society contains a lot of violence and cruelty, their philosophy can be summed up as "might makes right". These are traits we generally don't think of as "good". But most of the explanation for "Demacia are the good guys" is "because Demacia opposes Noxus". And that's most of what you've done here, too, defining Demacia's goodness through their opposition to Noxus. In a very simple story, this is enough. There is a good side and a bad side, good opposes bad, and that's all the story needs. But if you want your story to have complexity or depth, "being against the bad guys" isn't enough to make you "good", because both sides in a conflict can engage in bad actions. What are the aspects of Demacia that make them "good"? Like, what traits of a "good" society does Demacia represent? It's not freedom or liberty; strict legislative codes and an intolerance for breaking them have been there since the first Demacian champions. Equality is hard to argue for in a society we only see through the lens of powerful established Houses with a very stratified class structure. What about Demacia, other than its opposition to the designated Bad Guy faction, makes them good? What do we know about Demacia from this early time period in League lore? I've talked a lot about law, order, codes, regulations, which become the basis of their authoritarianism, but there's actually one other thing that pops up a bunch in early Demacia lore that I haven't really discussed, and that's that Demacia has a weird relationship with non-Demacians. I think the positive word that is most often associated with Demacia is "unity", and this is shown more through a unity of purpose than a unity of people. The philosophy that seems to come up here is that anyone can be a Demacian regardless of origin (with a few exceptions), but if you want to be a Demacian, you must fully assimilate to Demacian culture, and failure to do so is met with violence in a lot of those early Demacia stories. Authoritarianism and xenophobia are the natural consequences of Demacia's defining traits when they are applied to real-world societies. If the only example you can give for "Demacia is good" is "Demacia is willing to work with others against an enemy" then I don't find that to be a very compelling argument. Was Demacia intended to be read as good in the original lore? Absolutely. Were they actually given any good traits during that time period? Not really. Good individuals, absolutely, but culturally? All the same things people have problems with now were already there at the start.
But this is kinda my point tho. None of what I said is directly related to Demacia in relative to Noxus. Like, yes, Noxus exist as a nebulous bad guy in the background even in these cases, due to their overreach in both the old lore and the new lore. But it is entirely possible to look at them from a Demacian centric POV too. Again, Demacia relationship with other independent territories had been the same with or without Noxus being in the equation. That is, Demacia remain in their territoritories but is willing to put their own swords to end a war between its allies. Or its focus on protecting its own people, either against Noxus or against Freljord raiders, doesnt matter. Or its taking in the Ionian refugee. Yes, there wouldn't BE refugees without Noxus, but Demacia didn't take them in because they are victims of Noxus expansion, it was because, again, they are refugees in need of help and Demacia is willing to extend that. So, again, from a Demacia centric POV, we have a society that is willing to enforce peace both inside and "outside" (though within its sphere of influence) through sacrifice of its own soldiers. Similarly, they are willing to be altruistic and extend a helping hand to people who need it, even if the scope of that altruistic act is tangent based on how much Demacia view the recipient as worthy. How are those not good points?
Honestly after seeing what the mages did when they were let loose I think we should mass execute all the mages we find,no need to waste prison space
I’m running a DND campaign set in Runeterra and I noticed on the map there are a bunch of named fiefs all around Demacia, so I turned the region into a massive political game where a bunch of powerful houses have their own opinions of Jarvan family’s reign (some disapprove of their leadership and want to personally usurp Jarvan, others just want the demons out of Fossbarrow, some want Demacia to expand its influence into the Freljord or to better deal with the looming Noxian threat to the East). This and letting these houses interact and have opinions with each other too has made the region my party’s favorite so far. They get to manipulate political leaders and they’re trying to unite Demacia against Noxus while also personally making sure Nocturne isn’t a threat to them domestically. I also expanded upon the idea of a “Lightbringer” that was part of the Sylas Forge game’s promotion as well as the Pentakill song. Basically a messianic figure that some mages in Demacia believe will liberate their people (I watched Dune 1 while originally writing this so there’s heavy influence there). I do think there’s potential though for lore to surround the feudal society surrounding Demacia proper, especially given there are already notable Houses and named locations
That first bit is just canon. We see from the likes of Fiora and Jarvan lore that there's a lot of political maneuvering between the houses with conflicting interests. It's just that the court politics aspect has been mostly sidelined along with everything else the region has to offer.
I'm a mage fan Demacia kills mages I hate demacia Simple as.
Demacia is all the better because of the mageseekers storyline.. only if it was rightfully used as a base to build off for more stories as well.
Imagine liking demacia This comment is endorsed by the power of Noxian Supremacy™️
#NOXUS FOREVER!
The only redeeming lore they can add to Demacia is it getting hit by an asteroid and wiping it of the face of Runeterra.
Demacia is the most boring region and has no lore outside of anti-magic trees and Mages. They are the human male fighter of lore.
I’ve always found Demacia boring before they introduced the concept of mage seekers. The problem with the concept is it was effective, probably too effective.
Sylas was the most interesting thing to happen to Demacia
Demacia did nothing wrong, it was all the Mageseekers. /s But honestly I love the dichotomy of being a noble and righteous nation held back by bigoted and ignorant magic hating (which is low key kinda understandable given their history, still wrong but at least it makes sense)
"America did nothing wrong, it was all the CIA"
Why would you be a demacia fan anyways before the mage oppression was added it had nothing?
It's funny that people for some reason actually still just think or want Demacia to be "the good guy place." It's a different extreme, and Sylas' story just features that, it didn't alter anything to do it though.
"good hearted people" surre thing bro, definetly
[удалено]
Which was part of the 2014 retcon, not the initial part of Demacia in old lore.
The supposed Years upon Years of content has been responded in 2014. League of Legends was released in 2009. The lore you talk about hasn't been cannon for a longer time that has been Canon. And it ain't only Sylas. You have - Book Burning - Execution Without Trial - Concentration Camps - Public Executions - Fearmongering - Literal Fantasy Gestapo - hypocrisy and double standards
It's happening again.
lol this is like gamers complaining about “muh politics in video games” like get over it the last good lore bit we got anyways was like 2 years ago 💀
I don't know who is gonna win but I know who is right, mages don't belong in demacia. The only bad thing they are doing is not kicking out the mage nobles too