My Theory Behind the History of Amumu

To start things off, I absolutely LOVED both the Amumu music video, and the documentary behind it. I would love to see more of this content from Riot.

Anyway, with Amumu in the spotlight right now, I thought I would do something that I have been brainstorming on for quite awhile: The History of Amumu. Its quite an interesting topic, with plenty of speculation behind it. We don't have any clear answer to when he was alive, where he lived, who (or what) he really is, or exactly how he died. The point of this thred is to hopefully shed some light on our mysterious little mummy.

http://i.imgur.com/9Se4k7u.jpg

As a disclaimer; I am not a Riot employee. Anything I say in this thread may not match the views or ideas of Riot. In fact, everything I say in this thread could be 100% incorrect. So, take everything you read with a grain of salt.

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To start us off, I think we should look into where, when, and how Amumu lived when he was alive. Out of all our questions, it is quite easy to determine where Amumu came from, and that is Shurima. But how exactly did he live? Was he from a noble family, or was he closer to the bottom of the social pyramid? This can actually be answered with music video just recently released.

http://i.imgur.com/UseCvgG.png?1

As you can see, Amumu came from a sarcophagus. Since Shurima is basically Runeterra's version of Egypt, we can look back into ancient Egypt for plenty of clues.

Now, people who were mummified and put into large stone coffins were normally people of very high importance, mainly Pharaohs, or the leaders of ancient Egypt. However, this doesn't exactly make sense for Amumu because he is sometimes to be depicted as a child (more on this later). So, how could a child be a leader of an entire Empire? Well, there was one person who did just this.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02050/Tutankhamun_2050264a.jpg

Tutankhamun is probably the inspiration behind Amumu. King Tut (as he is more widely known as) became ruler over Egypt at around the age of only 10 years old. So, if Amumu is a child at around the age of 10, why couldn't he also have been the Emperor of Shurima? If we look at the lore entry on Amumu that was accidently out on the PBE about a month ago, it says this:

"The walls inside were smooth obsidian and carved with ancient writings and images. He could not read - he was a simple man - but he studied the images.

"He saw a boy prince, sitting cross-legged upon a sun disk borne by a team of servants, a beaming smile upon his face. Chests of coins and riches were piled before him, the offerings of strangely garbed, bowing emissaries.

"He saw other carvings, again showing the smiling prince, this time walking among his people. Their heads were pressed to the ground before him. Stylized rays of sunshine radiated from the boy's crown.

Welp. There you have it. Essentially a confirmation on two things: Amumu was a child (sorry Yordle theorists), and he was once the ruler of the Shuriman Empire.

So, why is he so depressed? Even in the leaked lore, it says that he was actually quite happy. Well, this could be where the curse comes into play.

Further into the lore, we see this:

"He looked upon one last image before he left the tomb. It showed the boy prince dead, lying upon a bier. Those closest to him were wailing... but further back, people were celebrating. Had the boy prince been beloved, or had he been a tyrant? There was no way of knowing."

It seems like there were some people that were not happy about Amumu being on the throne. A child ruling an empire? Yeah, not too many people would be happy with that. So, someone could safely assume that he was assassinated, but this doesn't really make sense. In Azir's lore, we could see that the only people who could really get close to him at all were trusted advisors and friends. Thus, the same thing could be said for Amumu, especially since he was only a child. So, how do you kill someone that would be so closely guarded without risking your own life? Well, you wouldn't kill them directly, with a weapon. Instead, you would kill them indirectly... with a curse.

Both the lore and the music video shows that anything Amumu touches that's alive essentially withers away and dies. Even plants that are within the vicinity of Amumu turn black within a short amount of time. Basically, the opposite of The Midas Touch (which would turn everything into gold).

This curse was more then likely put on him before he died, and during his reign. Amumu would watch everyone he loved slowly wither away, and eventually die. Since Amumu was old enough to have some sort of a sense of reason (but yet, still be young enough to throw a tantrum), this would have sent him into a spiraling depression. He couldn't approach or touch anyone, or else they would just slowly die right before his eyes.

Talk about torturous, huh?

Thus, his death was probably that of suicide. Only, how does a child get to the point of suicide, even if stuff like this is happening? In the music video, we see that the curse actually does speak to him, and thus, it probably kept edging him towards ending his own life. Whoever put the curse on Amumu obviously wanted him dead, and the curse must have done its job. How did he commit suicide? Unfortunately, there is no way to know.

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So, what about his resurrection? How did Amumu become the Amumu we see today? The curse was made to slowly kill him, not bring him back to life. Well, we can look to the music video for this:

http://i.imgur.com/UseCvgG.png?1

If you look closely, his sarcophagus is surrounded by destruction. He was an Emperor of Shurima, so, he would have obviously been buried in Shurima. But the destruction around his sarcophagus is an indicator as to when he was revived; right after the failed Ascension Ritual for Azir.

After the ritual was finished, Shurima started to fall apart, and the sands slowly consumed the entire empire. Everyone who was in the capital city that wasn't an ascended being would have been destroyed on the spot (which is confirmed in Azir's lore entry. He had to watch his own family get obliterated right before his eyes! The feels......they're too much!). But what if Amumu was buried in a certain location to where his tomb would still be affected by the blast, but the magic causing the blast had an opposite affect on his mummified body? Instead of destroying him, it actually resurrected him.

Since he is a re-anmiated corpse, it makes sense that he has no memory whatsoever of who he once was. Like Sion, he would probably have small memories here and there, but still not be able to remember everything. Although, he still held his personality which he had at the time of his death: a curious and endearing child, but with a broken soul that has left him in the depressed state he is in. Since he is a child, he is always looking for a friend, looking for someone to cheer him up, however, he doesn't remember that he was cursed, let alone remember what the curse actually does (damn... the deeper we go, the more depressing it gets!).

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Well, there you have it folks! My theory on the history of Amumu! To summarize, Amumu was once the Emperor of Shurima, probably ascending to the throne at a very young age. People were not happy about a child ruling over them, so someone put a curse on him that made all living things around him or that he touched slowly wither away and die. This sent him into a deep depression that eventually led him to suicide. After the failed Ascension Ritual for Azir, the magic from the resulting blast actually resurrected Amumu, leaving him as an empty, depressed shell of whom he once was.

There were a couple other questions I didn't cover; such as how long before Azir did Amumu rule, or how long has he been traveling? Reason why I didn't cover them was because they aren't too important to overall theory.

There are more then likely other questions out there that I didn't think of. If there are, feel free to ask, and we'll brainstorm on it. :)

Tell me what you guys thought about this, and feel free to share your own theories. I'd love to hear what you guys have to say!