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Morality in Runeterra (Theory, Discussion, and an Example)

HonestJohnTheCon·1/29/2018, 9:15:18 PM·22 votes·2,235 views

Morality is a common subject when examining a character. It decides whether someone is a hero or a villain (not a protagonist or an antagonist, though, that's completely different). However, there's a big problem with this; morality is completely subjective. What some people see as acceptable behavior others see as undesirable, questionable, or just wrong. This is a discussion I made to try and make morality a little bit easier to define.

Note: Despite the title, this can be applied to a lot of things, not just League of Legends. If it has characters, chances are you can apply this.

There's a TL;DR at the end of this, but I'd prefer you read the whole thing, especially if you're going to discuss this or disagree with me. Keep in mind that these are my opinions, so they may or may not be a little bit off to you.

#Good and Evil, Law and Chaos "There is no 'good' and 'evil'. There is only power... and those too weak to seek it."

  • Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

The main question that comes into play when talking about morality are "What's good, and what's evil?" Thanks to the Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart, we also tend to ask "What's lawful, and what's chaotic?" This has been the topic of quite a lot of debate on the SA&S Boards when talking about a character's morality. It's pretty obvious that the warrior who sacrifices his life to save hundreds of strangers are good (most of the time) and it's even more obvious that the warrior who kills random innocents is evil. However, such tropes have grown increasingly rare in common media (although some League of Legends characters are complete monsters regardless). When things start to breach into neutral territory, it gets much more difficult. Law and chaos is even harder to quantify.

In my opinion, "good", at its core, implies selflessness and altruism, while "evil" implies selfishness and egoism. "Law" rarely seems to actually mean "following the law" in the alignment system. Likewise, "chaos" doesn't always mean breaking the law. In my opinion, "law" deals with collectivism and tradition, while "chaos" is used to describe individualism and change. Note that individualism does not always equal selfishness (although this is probably why chaotic-evil characters are common).

#Character Motivations “In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.”

  • Alfred Hitchcock

Typically, the source of alignment is motivations. For this section, I'll be using this fantastic website that discusses real-life motivations in comparison to the D&D alignment chart.

The website calls upon the research of Shalom Schwartz, who theorized that there are ten (two are combined into one in later versions of the theory) primary motivations for human beings. The ten motivations are: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity/tradition, benevolence, and universalism. They all have associated values, which you can read in the website. As you'll read, some of them have compatibilities and conflicts with each other. However, you can easily layer the D&D alignment chart over the motivations, and you get this interesting image: http://easydamus.com/Composite2.png As you can see, a character's motivations often line up with their general morality. This is not a hard-and-fast rule; it's possible for a CG character to mainly pursue hedonism, but much less likely than a CE or CN character. Similarly, it is extremely rare for a LG character's primary motivation to be hedonism; the farther away a motivation is from the common motivation, the rarer it is for that motivation to be used.

For true neutrals, you kind of have to use your best judgement. If people do not have any strong motivation or if they are motivated towards another value, such as knowledge for the sake of knowledge (rather than knowledge for the sake of bettering society or power), then they are probably neutral.

By reverse engineering this table, we can determine the alignment of characters in League (or anywhere, really) more accurately, on the D&D alignment chart. Alternatively, you could use the motivations themselves as an alignment, thus ignoring the negative connotations that come with "evil". Evil should be reserved for card-carrying villains whose main goals are domination, corruption, and/or destruction.

Well, let's look into some case studies about champions with commonly debated moralities!

#Case Study #1: Zoe Zoe "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

  • Main principle of Hanlon's Razor

Zoe is an... interesting case. She seems to be a pretty average kid at first; sure, she's extremely powerful, but we don't see her do that many outright BAD things. She's even trying to fit in with others despite her lack of social skills. Endearing and relatable... and then she proceeds to blow up a tower and twelve guards.

Obviously Zoe doesn't hold life in very high regard, but she doesn't cause wanton destruction. Also, due to her... uh... "unique" upbringing, she doesn't really have any morals. She'd be better classified as amoral than immoral. Note that amorality is not any less evil than immorality, but it can make a character more sympathetic.

Well, enough of that. Let's look at her motivations: She clearly loves enjoying life and having fun, and doesn't really care about consequences (hedonism). She enjoys learning new things and is extremely curious; doing things sometimes just to find out what would happen (stimulation). And she thoroughly enjoys her freedom and independence, while ignoring what anyone tells her (except the aspect of twilight, possibly, but even then she disagrees with it when she has to do a job) (self-direction). You can't go any farther than this without comprising her values. Achievement primarily prioritizes ambition and a desire for success; she just wants fun. On the other end, universalism involves a respect for life and equality, something she definitely doesn't have.

If you look at the motivations, it shows a strong tendency towards chaos with a lesser tendency towards evil (mostly amorality, as I mentioned earlier). So, I can safely say that Zoe's C-N with self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism motivations.

I hope you guys enjoyed this. Should I do more "case studies" on champions for things like morality or other things? If you guys disagreed with anything I said, be sure to comment why you disagree (or don't, frankly it doesn't matter). Same if you agreed. I hope this system will be a better way to determine and show morality in League lore!

TL;DR The D&D alignment system is overly simplistic and doesn't do justice to the motivations of actual people or characters. The words "good" and "evil" carry too much baggage, but they are apt descriptors. Therefore, combining the alignment system with a more rational and motivation-based system might be a better solution for codifying morality in League.

40 Comments

Epicurus1/30/2018, 1:25:12 AM15 votes

For the record, I can't stand the DnD alignment system. If you need to describe a character's morality in less than 5 seconds, then I suppose it's fine, but for any serious discussion about a character it is laughably simplistic. I also find that in Runeterra, there are beings to which it becomes futile trying to assign morality at all. Such as Case Study #2: Evelynn Evelynn.

Now Evelynn is unquestionably an antagonist (particularly of Vayne's personal story), but I find it hard to say that she's actually evil. Of the ten motivation listed above, Eve operates mostly on hedonism, always acting for her own pleasure and fulfilment, but even so I think it's unfair to list her as chaotic evil, because the motivation that she really operates on its simpler: survival. Eve is a demon. She was born from pain, and pain sustains her, and without pain she will die. This is the only existence she has ever known; the only options she's ever had were to be what she is now, or cease to exist. Evelynn hunting humans is, to me, about as "evil" as a shark hunting seals. It sucks to be the seal, but it's very near sighted to call the shark evil.

But that's just my opinion. What do you think about Evelynn's morality?

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO1/30/2018, 3:16:46 PM5 votes

I wish we knew more about the religious systems of Runeterra. Knowledge of the religious workings and laws would provide insight on morality in the world.

Mordepool1/29/2018, 10:48:53 PM5 votes

Morality is subjective. Depends on your perspective

Longtowel1/30/2018, 5:05:51 AM1 votes

This is interesting.

The alignment of a champion, or any character really, depends on who's perspective you take on. If you are a moral relativist, then each character could appear very differently to you than to other people.

There is the generally accepted perception of morality by society, which generally categorizes the characters.

In League of Legends, Demacians are depicted more as the heroes while Noxians as villains, but the reality is that according to the law there are plenty of questionable traits about Demacia's ideology, although often overshadowed by their shiny and positive narrative. Noxus follows a darker ideology but is often hard to see why it is that they are wrong.

Demacia claims to stand for justice, honor and duty, while also posing traits of hypocracy, absolutism, Zealousness, and a state of perpetual Martial Law.

Noxus is much simpler in fact, operating on jungle-rules where strength is all that matters, regardless of your current status, if you display strength, you can move up. They do what they believe is necessary, even if it leads to cruelty and maliciousness. Although there are plenty of inherently evil people in Noxus, the nation in general seems to learn towards Amorality rather than immorality.

In that sense, you cannot classify either of the Empires as good or evil. Demacia is more polarised while Noxus is more consistent.

If you compare two of the leading champions from these two nations, Garen and Darius, I would consider them to be both Lawful Neutral. They do very similar things, and strive for similar goals, which is the prosperity of their nation.

Although nothing is written about it, I'm sure if Garen was a character in a novel, he is the sort of character to make decisions questionable to us, the modern people, but is unaware of it because of his blind faith in Justice and the Demacian way. While Darius would disregard the 'standards' and do whatever it is that is necessary to win the day.

An unknowing hypocrite and a ruthless pragmatist, neither are good nor evil.

Someone like Draven may drift closer to Lawful Evil, since he derives pleasure from pain, and that's a bit messed up for all standards. As for someone who is considered 'Good' I can't seem to think of a good example........

Dan Squared1/30/2018, 1:58:51 PM1 votes

its important to note that DnD alignments operate in a universe where the forces of good/evil and law/chaos are tangible things...demons are literally being of negative energies. If a Demon were not Chaotic Evil or a Devil was not Lawful Evil...they would not be what they are. Same with Angels

You have a bit more grey area with things like the difference between Chromatic and Metallic dragons, but both species have strong ties to their respective draconic gods (Tiamat for evil Chromatics, Bahamut for the good metallic) and tend to heavily lean towards their native alignment.

Then after that you have things like Mind Flayers which are an alien race that eats brains to survive and reproduces by having their tadpoles infest and take over a host body....its survival for them, but to other races they are evil. Point of view there

Alignment is in general fluid though, a player may be Lawful good at the beginning, but may overtime shift based on their decisions to Chaotic Good, or perhaps lawful neutral, and can then possibly shift back. There are only a few beings that sit solidly on one end of the spectrum.

FurriesAreHot1/30/2018, 4:22:23 PM1 votes

I was reading this and I asked myself a question that slightly broke my brain: Does Kindred have morals? Which went to is Kindred free-willed? Can they think for themselves? Do they have their own thoughts? rito kindred lore pls

HeazonZ1/30/2018, 4:26:47 PM1 votes

This was really nice. You should definitely make more. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

BladeSingularity1/30/2018, 5:42:40 PM1 votes

You should do some more case studies if you can. Really enjoyed this.

SolarisCorvus2/1/2018, 6:04:33 PM1 votes

I think a fun one would be on Xayah, Kayn or Kled. Even though everyone says kayn is evil I just see him as a cocky angst boy who thinks hes the only one good enough to get things done. Xayah is fighting for a "just cause" but clearly isnt afraid to kill in the name of said cause. Kled is just simply doing what he thinks is the life should be lived but he does murder hikers so theres that.

GenoXx1/30/2018, 1:38:34 AM1 votes

Interesting. What's your take on Jinx?

GenoXx1/30/2018, 1:38:34 AM1 votes

Interesting. What's your take on Jinx?