Who is Seraphine, League Of Legends newest Champion?

For a few weeks now, a Twitter account by the name of Seraphine has been posting her music, pictures of her cat, and her general thoughts and feelings; all pretty normal Twitter activity. The only difference is that Seraphine is not actually a real person, but the newest champion coming to League of Legends. While this hasn’t been officially confirmed or commented on by Riot, all the signs point towards the account being a genius marketing strategy to generate hype for the new champion’s announcement.

Assuming all this really is Riot’s doing, who could Seraphine be in the lore and why does she have her own social media accounts?

Damning Evidence

So why do people believe that Seraphine is the League’s newest character? Riot hasn’t spoken out on the matter yet, but the coincidences are just too numerous to ignore.

We first caught wind of the name ‘Seraphine’ this month through Brazilian streamer “Streamie”, who has become well known for the accuracy of her leaks. She previously leaked both Lillia and Yone, giving her words much more weight than other leakers. 

Her latest leak came a few weeks ago at the beginning of August, focusing on the new ADC Samira, the PsyOps skinline and more. Seraphine was only briefly mentioned in the leak, with little more than her name to go on. The information allegedly came from the same reliable source who leaked Lillia to Streamie, and much of the leak about PsyOps and the Targon cinematic has already proven to be true. As a result, we can at least assume that the information is correct. The leak also included information on the new champion Samira, whose name was found in the PBE files.

The leak didn’t tell us much more than Seraphine’s name though, and apart from her being a “sensational mage” with some relation to music, the trail of breadcrumbs ended there. That was until Seraphine’s social media accounts were found and made known to the wider community.

Seraphine, or whoever may be behind the account, uses Twitter just like everyone else. She retweets art, music and opinions that she shares, while also promoting her own music. Minus the fact that she is obviously a persona and not real, everything about the account is as convincing and organic as any ‘real’ artist’s. 

The account was made in June 2020, and her first tweet was on the 26th of June, long before the Streamie leak. As a result, we know it’s not just some fan account in response to the leak, but the real deal. It would have to be a big coincidence for her to have the same name as the new champion.

The similarities only continue to stack up though. Seraphine’s bio reads “aspiring songwriter + producer”, with a link to her SoundCloud, and many of her posts reference her own music or other artists she likes. So far her SoundCloud only has one song, a cover of Childhood Dreams by ARY, but her identity as a musician lines up perfectly with the teased ‘musical mage’. Her pinned tweet is a snippet of a beat she’s working on, with artwork featuring CDs decorated with planets, mountains and waves (this is important later).

A bit of detective work reveals that the song Childhood Dreams is actually licensed to Universal Music Pictures Group, who very recently partnered with Riot to create music for Worlds 2020. As we covered previously, 14 famous UMPG artists met up in Shanghai in July to create six unique songs for the upcoming World Championship. Among them were stars including Matzka, Gong, Chiyo Monna, and more.

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While these artists aren’t particularly well known in the West, they are all a big deal in China, where Worlds will be held this year. It’s telling that Seraphine’s first song is one licensed by UMPG, suggesting a connection to Riot.

The hints become even more evident as you dig deeper. In the background of one of her pictures is a Tibbers plushie identical to the one purchasable on the Riot store, and in response to a question about League of Legends, she only responded with “yea I like league! :)”.

Also, if you somehow didn’t notice already, all of her “selfies” are carefully rendered digital paintings. The style is almost too close to Riot’s, with an appealing mix of realistic and cartoon features. One look at Riot’s previous band KDA is all it takes to see the similarities. 

Both the quality and frequency of the pictures makes it hard to believe that just one person could be behind the account. It would make much more sense if the art team at Riot were behind it all, carefully planning and creating these images to tease the champion.

If it’s a bit hard to believe that Riot would go to such lengths, just think back to True Damage. To promote the virtual band’s song ‘Giants’, Riot created an Instagram account where similar pictures of the band members were posted. Since it worked for True Damage, it looks like Riot is going even further this time with Seraphine.

Streamie herself seems to agree, saying “Rito is doing with Seraphine the same thing it did with True Damage last year, posting photos of her in the real world.” In reference to Seraphine’s Twitter account, she then added: “She [Seraphine] has to be the new champion of League of Legends.”

With all of the hints being dropped, it’s all but certain that Seraphine is Riot’s newest creation, and the community seems to agree.

Worlds Song Speculation

Now that more and more people are getting wind of Seraphine, the hype is starting to build quickly. She has gone from only a few thousand to 40k followers overnight, and more are sure to come. Still staying in character though, the account has thanked everyone for their support.

People have already started making fan art, and there’s sure to be more activity from the account in the coming weeks or even days. Firstly though, if Seraphine is indeed a new champion, then it’s clear that the version we see on Twitter is not the base version that we will see in-game; this online persona is living in our world, not that of League of Legends. 

The obvious explanation is that the version we see of Seraphine on Twitter is going to be her release skin, similar to how Senna’s release skin was from True Damage.

Following the incredible reception of K/DA, which now has over 362M hits, Riot is sure to try and replicate that success this year. Since we already know True Damage and K/DA exist in the same canon, it’s not a stretch to think that Seraphine could be introduced as part of a new band, or even as a solo artist. That also means she’s likely to feature in a new Worlds song for 2020, and with only a few months to go, the timing is perfect.

This theory is backed up further by one of Seraphine’s tweets, which says ‘Hello!’ in both English and Mandarin. Even her cat is called Bao, and many of the comments on her tweets are in Mandarin. It seems like the champion is being marketed heavily towards both Chinese and Western audiences ahead of Worlds in Shanghai, which makes sense with the vast Chinese fan base LoL has amassed.

It’s even possible that we’ll see a Chinese band composed of those Universal Music Group stars, with one of them singing as Seraphine. For now, we can only wait for more information, but Seraphine is sure to reveal more in time.

Lore Implications

Following the release of Yone, there are high expectations for every new champion’s impact on the lore. Runeterra is a rich and constantly evolving world, and in recent years Riot have put massive effort into retconning and expanding the world for years to come. The question is then, where does Seraphine fit into it all? 

Fortunately, her Twitter seems to have been carefully planned and has two main themes - stars and the sea. It’s in her Twitter username, which contains both a wave and star emoji, and almost everything she retweets relates to one of the two themes. Riot even put a star beneath her left eye to make it extra prominent.

Her two journal entries, in particular, could have significant lore implications. The first relates to her fascination with the sea, and her sort of melancholic longing to return to it. This fascination could even suggest that Seraphine is a sea-dweller like Nami or Fizz. Remember that this is the ‘real world’ Seraphine, so her base version could very well be a sea-dwelling champion, but the version we see now is entirely human. 

This view is supported by another tweet, which reads “when i was 5 i thought a mermaid was just something you could grow up to be.” Many of her other selfies are also taken by the sea.

In Runeterra we already have a tribe of mermaids, the Marai. In fact, Nami is a member of the Marai, and it’s possible that Seraphine is also part of the same Vastayan race. Alternatively, the base version Seraphine could have met or befriended a member of the Marai. It’s also interesting that the Marai territory is located directly south of Mount Targon, which would make sense with all of the celestial imagery we see on Seraphine’s Twitter account. 

The sky around Mount Targon is supposedly full of celestial bodies: the sun and moon, but also constellations, planets, fiery comets and auspicious arrangements of stars. These are all plain to see on Seraphine’s social media accounts, and her second journal entry seems to be a direct reference to Mount Targon. Its second page features a collage of a mountain and sea, and Seraphine atop the mountain as a flightless penguin. 

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She also writes about a character named ‘Scratch’, who we assume is the bird taking flight over Mount Targon. While this might all seem very cryptic, it’s possible that both Seraphine and ‘Scratch’ traversed Mount Targon to the summit, but only Scratch was able to pass the final test and ascend to Targon Prime like a bird. Scratch may even by the final unknown Aspect, the Aspect of the Wanderer. Seraphine though, flightless, was left alone on Mount Targon, always too afraid to leave. Although it’s a bit of a reach, Seraphine also has a very similar ‘Disney-esque’ aesthetic to Zoe, the Aspect of Twilight.

With Targon being the newest region in Legends of Runeterra, it would be a great time to expand on its lore. Then again, Seraphine has also retweeted things about rice cookers and rats in jeans - so take it all with a pinch of salt.