Vladimir's new lore feels stagnant.
TL;DR: Vladimir's new lore makes him feel like the writer picked a bunch of vampires out of a hat and tried to mix it with his old lore and it didn't come out good, also I hate the immortal mage angle Riot's been going with lately.
Not to be that guy that dumps on new lore right after it comes out, but I've read Vladimir's new lore and his color story a couple of times and it just... well, it doesn't feel very compelling? It's a nice little vignette of his life and what he's been doing over the centuries and that's fine and all, but it's hard, really hard to care about the character within when there's absolutely no human element to him. I get that that's the point, to make it clear he's an unspeakable monster with unspeakable deeds under his belt, but it sounds more like the story for an evil NPC instead of someone we're supposed to want to play as. It doesn't really suit his fantasy as a crafty, powerful hemomancer trying to spread his craft, it suits the fantasy of a generic vampire lord, and that takes away a lot of what made him interesting - the human element, that, even if he does horrible things, he's not just able to will his way right out of it.
I've never liked the immortal mage direction, I feel as though it's reductive and limiting in scope (especially given everything he himself spoke about and displayed in Art Is Life) and it just makes him more of a vampire, which is hard for the average player to relate to. Making him an immortal mage along with the rest of the Black Rose takes away a lot of what was interesting about him, being a young upstart mage in Noxus trying to prove the power of his craft. Now with the advent of the darkin lore, the growing list of ancient champions feel so out of place with younger and more contemporary characters that are moving and motivating the current world. It separates him from the rest of the cast in a way that's irreparable and confining.
The color story Art Is Life further widens this gap between Vladimir and the audience, showing how he's lived through ages and ages, and giving this random girl he just met this huge massive info dump on his life - we should have gotten those emotions from the lore, not because the color story told us to. It tries to inject some life into something dry and ends up making it feel forced and overdramatic which, given his ages and ages, he should be able to do a little more naturally by this point. The problem this unearths is that, given his age, he hasn't really learned a thing or changed as a person from his earlier days except gotten a little bit less reckless. Why would he still hold onto his desires as a prince to have his own kingdom when he influences events far more and far wider reaching than that? He could have had his own kingdom under a different name in a different age for as long as he'd have liked, but only just now he's deciding to follow through?
Maybe this is just me being in my feelings, but Vladimir's old lore had a lot of really interesting directions it could go, and the new lore just... doesn't. The only thing that was really interesting was his relation to Mordekaiser, and the origins of the Black Rose. The rest of it is dry and uninspiring, and makes Vladimir feel stagnant as a character. There were elements to explore and expand upon and think about and now just because 'a darkin did it' it all just feels so stiff and difficult to relate to.
