Why does Riven hate Noxus now?
One thing that's been really bothering me as Riot have continued to flesh out their new Riven is how they seem to have done a complete 180 in regards to her feelings towards Noxus. The old Riven was someone who essentially embodied a particular era of Noxus and her descent and eventual exile representative of the sea change in the nation's spirit, and yet when asked what she fought for and believed in during her League Judgement Riven said "I still love Noxus, I never stopped." Despite all that she had seen, all the evils she had borne and meted out, and X long years in exile Riven absolutely still loved Noxus and what the city-state meant to her. Those feelings were a core driving force behind her identity and direction going forward.
The new Riven stands in very stark counterpoint to that. Her new biography laid it out in supremely plain terms that she hates her sword and that it serves as a focus for her survivor's guilt (where before it represented her enduring ties to her Noxian ideals and desire to 'reforge' them) and in the latest chapter of Confessions of a Broken Blade we're told both that the term "exile" has no bearing on who her character is now, for lack of a desire to return to Noxus, and we're given the quotation “The girl wants nothing to do with Noxus. She hates Noxus.” Naturally that statement is an inference rather than something Riven has directly or consciously told the speaker, but we're certainly being shown nothing to suggest any sort of positive feelings whatsoever from Riven towards the place she once called home.
This doesn't have to be a bad change, and I'm certainly not here to call out Riot for 'ruining' Riven's character or anything like that. Even at a glance I can take guesses at why her character and/or direction had to change (principally Noxus' reinvention to be less overtly evil) but nonetheless there's still a real sense that this Riven just ... isn't the character I feel in love with. That can absolutely change in due course and there's no reason this new Riven can't still go on to be a great character in her own right or even reignite some of that old spark for what good there was in Noxus, but I just ...
As much as I like and appreciate everything the guys at Riot are doing with Confessions of a Broken Blade - it's really high quality stuff and it's fantastic to see them picking up hanging threads like this - it can't help but leave me feeling a little bitter, disappointed, sad ... something in that space.
This isn't a story of Riven, the Exile, the woman whose love for a nation and its ideals transcended the loss of everything she once held dear.
Obviously the title of this thread is something of a rhetorical question. Riven has plenty of reasons to feel less than positive towards Noxus, and I'm hardly expecting a Rioter to pass through and give me a direct answer regarding their behind the scenes choices. Nonetheless I still find myself wondering why something that, at least in my mind, was a cornerstone of Riven's identity seems to have been done away with. This isn't anything so overt as the changes Karma received, but it still kinda bothers me that this broadly seems have been accepted without question.
Why does the woman who previously "...never stopped" loving her homeland now hate Noxus?
