Shyvana Analysis: Empathy and Community
Shyvana’s story is, ultimately, one about empathy and community. Those are our key words. We, the readers/players, connect with Shyvana because her story has a theme that is common human experience. Empathy is Shyvana’s heroic trait. Shyvana longs to belong, but feels she does not belong anywhere. Here quote on Universe says, “I am of two worlds, yet I belong to neither.” https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/champion/shyvana/ Shyvana’s mother, Yvva, is disgusted with her and hunts her. In Demacia’s culture, magical beings are meant to be killed or imprisoned. Shyvana’s supernatural abilities also come with instincts for viciousness and savagery. Despite these things Shyvana still chooses to embrace her humanity.
This is much better depicted Shyvana’s 4th version of her biography than the current 5th one. There are many lines dedicated to demonstrating how Shyvana becomes how she is. The first influence in forming Shyvana’s character is her dragon father. Shyvana, is technically, a deformed dragon.
“Drawn by its power, a daring mage attempted to extract its runic magicks, only to be interrupted by the dragon mother's return. The mage fled, having unknowingly infused the egg with his own mortal magic in the chaos.
Yvva was going to kill Shyvana for her deformity, but her father looks past it and loves Shyvana anyway. He shows this love by defending her from Yvva and escaping with newborn Shyvana. Empathy is all about being able to imagine yourself feeling what another is feeling, to imagine yourself in another’s head and acknowledge them as another being that thinks and feels a vividly as you do. Shyvana feels angry and inside her burns incredible power. Shyvana’s father helps to teach her to control this “ruthless fury” that comes from her mother’s side. Importantly in learning to control her abilities:
Shyvana suffered numerous self-inflicted burns as she learned that life could be fragile and not everything could be set aflame without consequence.
This lesson is one Shyvana would carry with her, an understanding that life is precious and fragile when she chooses to help Jarvan IV after her father dies. After her father’s death she goes to Demacia which is fitting, since Demacia was founded by refugees with no where else to go. Demacia’s petricite architecture helped to suppress Shyvana’s magic, and made it easier to stay in her human form. Shyvana finds Jarvan IV because she is looking for fresh meat and smelled blood, Jarvan’s blood. He was dying in the wilderness and the predator in Shyvana told her to kill him, but the human side, the empathetic side, says to save him. In this moment Shyvana is faced with the two sides of herself and she chooses humanity. She carries Jarvan to a Demacian town. She knows in her gut what the right thing to do is. Shyvana obviously looks strange, but the townspeople are just happy she has saved their prince. And then comes a revelation for Shyvana:
She saw how the villagers pulled together to nurse Jarvan back to health, even though he was a stranger, and Shyvana observed something she'd never known: comradery. Demacians looked out for each other, she learned, and the more she saw of the community, the more she longed to be part of it.
How amazing it is, Shyvana who only knew kindness from her father, finally sees the value and comfort in community. To be a part of a collective, to be apart of an “us” or a tribe. To be able to say you are from somewhere, a part of something. To belong. Shyvana had to live on the run, but now she can see in the civilized world, people belong somewhere. And how wonderful is that? This is how we connect with Shyvana. Shyvana’s circumstances are extreme and dramatic, but in life we are on the move from social group to social group until we find one where we belong. Simply, we have all had times when we didn’t feel like we were “one of them” and it made us uncomfortable. We would see other people, who are together and enjoy being together, and want to be a part of that. Being a social animals one of the most defining characteristics of the human species. That is how Shyvana is relatable.
For a time, Shyvana finds a place in this Demacian town. For months Shyvana has a role and purpose hunting animals in the wilderness and sharing it with the town. Then Yvva starts closing in on Shyvana. Shyvana has learned the lesson of empathy, but she has not totally learned community. Shyvana chooses to leave the town, thinking of the wellbeing of the other townspeople, but Jarvan stops her. Jarvan tells her she saved his life (and in doing so this makes her a part of the group) and now he would risk his life to save her. Shyvana accepts his help and with the help of Jarvan and the community Shyvana is finally able to do what even her full-blooded dragon father could not do: Kill Yvva. Jarvan trains the townsfolk. They set up a whole plan of action. They choose the arena, an old petricite building. They shoot Yvva with petricite arrows so that she can no longer fly. We almost get a play-by-play of this battle so we appreciate how much effort and struggle was involved with this success. This completes the arc, Shyvana learns that there is strength in numbers, that Demacians automatically look out for each other, even if they don’t know each other well. They know they are all Demacian, all part of the group, and that is good enough because they unite under common ideals and identify with the same history. Shyvana now appreciates the idea of the community. Together, Shyvana and Jarvan’s story represents the best version of Demacia and its ideals.
Shyvana’s 5th, and current biography misses so much of this. Shyvana’s father is gone, replaced by the greedy mage that deformed her in the first place, which seems to be quite a turn around. Shyvana does not live her life on the move into relatively late into the timeline of her story. She is also raised by a human in Piltover., Because of these two things so she would not really approach empathy and community as an outsider looking in and have to go through the arc of discovering her humanity and choosing it over savagery. Maybe she felt like an outsider, maybe she was treated badly by the other Piltover kids, but we don’t see this. In her 4th lore Shyvana is separated from community because of her upbringing, so it is demonstrated to us why Shyvana is an outsider not just from any community, but the very concept of community. Empathy and community! Achieving these are Shyvana’s whole deal!
The scope of the battle is scaled down and the demonstration of Jarvan’s leadership (because his arc here is regaining his confidence and worth as a leader) with the plan for the petricite ruins or the petricite arrows or training the locals. That is all gone. Shyvana doesn’t have a role in the community as a hunter for a few months. It is not absolutely necessary, but continuing to reinforce your theme with the tools of writing does raise the quality. The author says this happens, thus we can infer that Shyvana has integrated with the community. The 4th lore had an exchange between Shyvana and Yvva mid-battle where she shows she does not fear her mother. In the final blow Shyvana rips Yvva’s heart out in her human form by taking control over her emotions. She channels her “grief and fury” which is another part of her growth that started with when her father taught her to control her emotions. This is a whole other topic, but basically Shyvana is wielding her power, instead of being wielded by it. The human has mastered the beast. The 5th lore doesn’t have that. Instead, Yvva gets shot a lot (by normal arrows) and then Shyvana breaks her neck on the ground. It is shorter, less detailed, less exciting, less thematically connected, and as was often said when it changed from 4th to 5th it is a downgrade.
