Personal thoughts on Kayle's (and Morgana's) new lore

I wonder if people are actually going to see this since I'm posting at 9:38 PST. Should I wait till morning? These are the boards for NA after all, and everyone should be sleeping. I could check back in the morning, though, and maybe repost it if it seems to be buried. But whatever.

This is mainly being made as an offshoot to this earlier thread and the discussion in it, about whether Kayle is an example of Riot trying to make "good," justice-themed characters actually assholes while darker-themed characters, like Morgana, are intentionally depicted as possessing more traditionally "good" traits despite their darkness.

Personally speaking, I don't think Riot is making a clear-cut statement that justice = more bad than a darker character, at least in the case of Kayle and her sister. Rather, I think this is mainly a case of some things being unintentionally read in a way that makes Kayle seem a lot more like the bad guy than she really is, mostly as a result of omitted details that are quite important.

First, the obvious example, found in Kayle's bio: Kayle was actually cool with how Morgana was trying to rehabilitate sinners and plead their cases in an attempt to reform them. The dissent was found in her followers, particularly Ronas, who tried to arrest Morgana and got killed for it when Morg tried to protect her own followers. This new lore isn't an example of Kayle always thought Morgana was in the wrong for trying to save people from getting smited/smote/whatever the word is.

Then we get into more contentious territory, namely Kayle going apezoid after finding out how Ronas got killed and trying to pull an Arthas on the rioting city and fighting Morgana, inadvertently killing their dad because of the fight. This part I admittedly can't really defend her much on. Like, finding your city in the middle of a riot and finding out the woman who your followers warned you about is the one responsible for killing your protege is grounds to get pissed, but not enough to try and wipe out the entire city's population.

But, it does transition into the part which I personally think is getting the most pushback, namely how she decides to bugger off to Targon after finding out her dad was killed in her fight with Morgana. This part is seen as how she vows to swear off her emotions, and thus her humanity, to better deliver justice, while not seeming to give a shit about how her dad got killed and that her blind pursuit of justice is what even caused that. Which, obviously, makes it seem like she's an asshole and that Riot is trying to brand her as the bad guy.

In reality, though, I think it's something of a case of miscommunication and details being omitted when they probably shouldn't have.

For example, we don't get any indication of Kayle's personal feelings in her own bio about how she feels about accidentally killing her father, just that the fighting was described as "senseless" and that she wants to make sure she would "never again let mortal emotions rule her." Morgana's bio handles this a bit better, saying she was "dumbstruck" as she descended to see her dying father in her sister's arms, but is then followed up with how she doesn't say anything and buggers off into the heavens without looking back, which makes her sound like a bitch. Obviously we can infer that Kayle probably feels terrible about accidentally killing her dad, but since it's not made clear, it can easily be read that she doesn't care at all. Her vow to swear off human emotions also leaves a sour taste in people's mouths because, as the thread I'm shooting off from puts it (and puts it rather well, in my opinion), it sounds like she's becoming inhuman and distanced from common humanity and morality. Once again, it's not made clear that this vow was made because she let her rage get the better of her and caused her to try and wipe out a city, fight her sister with the intent of offing her, and accidentally kill her father. It can be inferred that the vow was made because she regretted what she did, and that she decides to leave for Targon to figure out how to deliver justice properly. But that remorse and desire for improvement isn't made clear, and people read the vow as her just resolving to be an asshole. The absence of Kayle's feelings and personal thoughts at the sisters' splitting up, the most critical point of their story, unintentionally makes Kayle come across as the bad guy, and I think this was something of an unintentional oversight by the writers.

This runs counter to Morgana's bio, where it's made blatantly obvious how she's in anguish about accidentally killing their father. She howls with grief, ditches her weapon to rush to her father's side, cradles his dying body, curses what she is and what she inherited, chews out Kayle, and is constantly reminded by her wings of what she is and is tormented by their presence. The difference is pretty clear. While I think people are predisposed to align with darker-themed characters with sympathetic qualities over light-themed characters who commit to delivering justice (I certainly am), this clarity with which Morgana's personal values, emotions, and beliefs shine come across in her bio emphasizes her sympathetic and traditionally "good" traits, while the fact that we're forced to infer these aspects of Kayle's personality in her bio makes it harder to identify and inevitably causes differing interpretations, which in this case are usually negative. I severely doubt that Riot wholly intended to make Kayle look like a piece of shit, and I think some minor alterations and additions of these aforementioned personality traits would serve to make Kayle look much better in the people's eyes.

On that note, I will say that Riot is doing the inverse (I think that's the word to use here) with Morgana's bio, again unintentionally omitting details, but this time the bad aspects of Morgana. It's quite obvious that Riot wanted to spin Kayle as the more hardline of the two when it came to delivering justice, while making Morgana more caring with her rehabilitation, and that's perfectly fine. However, not enough is being said in either sister's bio about things Morgana could have done a lot better. For starters, incinerating Ronas doesn't seem like something one would do in the name of self-defense, especially when it's only an arrest and not an attempt on her life. More could be said here, maybe some indignation or some insight into some misguided notion that offing Ronas was the best course of action. Failing to quell the riot which had consumed the city, the mention of which is oddly apparently omitted from Morgana's bio, and the cause of which is apparently absent in either sister's story (which I think should be added!), is another, as part of the reason why Kayle flies off the handle to begin with is because of that riot, which Morgana probably might have been able to stop. A note of how she failed to do so for whatever reason could have been mentioned there. Finally, her going into battle against Kayle seems a lot more like she's the primary victim of Kayle's wrath, especially with the bit of "If Kayle was to purge the darkness she saw in mortal hearts, she would have to start with her own sister." Ironically, we actually do get a look into Kayle's thought process in this inconveniently-timed instance as I had wanted, while Morgana is described as simply meeting her in the skies to fight in both stories. We could again, start inferring, and conclude that Morgana was sick of Kayle's one-note pursuit of justice and decides to commit to a fight, especially when we consider that neither of them seemed to be holding back, but that is again an inference that many people would not have made and have instead settled at the simplest answer already at their feet. In a similar case to Kayle, I don't think that Riot intended to make Morgana seem as traditionally "good" as she is, but the way her bio reads it makes her look like a very sweet and hurting woman who just likes a dark aesthetic. Which, of course, runs counter to how Kayle reads as a chafingly uncompromising and hardline pursuer of justice who doesn't care about the idea of humanity.

At the end of the day, I think Riot did a good job with the sisters' new lore, giving an interesting story where both sides have their merits and their flaws. While the unintentional omission of important details of each sister's respective personality and behavior resulted in Kayle being read as an asshat and Morgana as a saint in comparison, some minor edits and additions can easily fix any of my, and possibly the rest of the community's, misgivings about the new lore. Obviously I can't speak for Riot and their intentions, but I think they worked hard to make this story and did their best to deliver it to us, and I think they did deliver for the most part. I'm more than happy to see what the rest of the Boards, and if I'm lucky a Rioter, think in the comments.

Edits: Grammar and language.