Gwen is the newest League of Legends Champion, but she’s also the latest addition to a decade-long story of a guy and his army of ghosts. Gwen is part of the Shadow Isles, a region of Runeterra that has long been surrounded by mystery. To understand what Gwen is about we have to go to the source of the story – a very sad and stupid man who made some really bad decisions.
Right now one of the most important stories to understand League of Legends Canon is the story of Viego and Isolde that was hinted at and told through various media. The clues began in 2012 with the Elise patch reworking Twisted Treeline and adding the Blade of the Ruined King, and the big strokes of the story were published in Stories and Champion Bios in 2013 and 2014.
It wasn’t until 2020 that we actually met the guy in question, and he wasn’t what fans were expecting. He’s a hot young guy who’s absolutely shredded and emotionally immature. Some people were expecting a wise old king or a proud warrior, but Viego is the guy who writes long Facebook status about how sad he is and when someone asks what’s going on they say they don’t want to talk about it.
The problem is, this sad man is the guy who holds on to the Black Mist, a strong corrosive force that raves the land of the living. The fog is full of ghosts and monsters, and very few people survive once it appears. Viego controls the fog, and that’s enough to make him the enemy of half a dozen champions and the antagonist of his own game currently being produced by League of Legends Publisher Riot and developer Airship Syndicate.
Viego was a prince who suddenly became king when his older brother died, and he was terrible at it. It got worse when he met a seamstress named Isolde, and he was beaten by her – so beaten that he began raiding the royal coffers to spoil his new wife. He screwed up being king so badly that his advisors tried to kill him, but the conspiracy failed and poisoned Isolde.
As an emotionally unintelligent and in love young man, Viego handled this super bad. He took Isolde’s body to a place called Blessed Isles, kicked in the door and immersed Isolde in the holy water that was supposed to heal everything. It turned out to be a really bad idea to throw a body into it as it caused something called ruination, which turned the beautiful blessed islands into the nightmarish shadow islands. Viego became the ruined king and Black Mist pours endlessly from his broken heart.
Isolde remains in the game, however. During the destruction, it looks like her soul is divided into several parts.
One of those soul shards went into Gwen, a doll she had lovingly handcrafted. A shard of soul could be with Yorick, a champion from the Shadow Isles who is summoning a Maiden of the Mists. Similar to the jewel of the four souls from Inuyasha, Isolde’s soul is a very powerful instrument of action that could be anywhere.
Most players thought Isolde was a champion herself, but instead we have Gwen, who is just one facet of Isolde. She is not very happy with Viego and wants to stop the Shadow Isles. With a full game with the ruined King on the way, plus a large number of champions either hailing from the Shadow Isles or working against them, Viego will definitely make an appearance in the future. There are tons of armored, beefy villains with deep voices and sinister masks league‘s roster – it’s kind of nice to have a deeply relatable fuckboy who’s going to cause trouble in the world, especially since it looks like we can beat him up and take his money for lunch in the future.
