LoL’s new champ Aurora confirmed to be first autistic character

The newest champion in League of Legends, Aurora, has been confirmed by the developers to be the first autistic character in the game.

League of Legends has just revealed the newest champion Aurora. The solo lane Vastayan mage hails from the Frejlord, bringing a wealth of new lore from the region and an interesting kit into the MOBA.

However, one of the more interesting tidbits about Aurora is that she’s been revealed as autistic. According to the Champion Insights blog that Riot Games released on June 20th, Aurora is the first character bringing representation of autism to the game.

“In our world, we have a term to describe Aurora: she’s autistic. But Runeterra doesn’t have a term to describe her. She’s just Aurora,” senior narrative writer Elyse ‘apothecarie’ Lemoine explained.

Riot has focused a lot in recent years to improve representation in League of Legends, including revealing several characters as identifying as LGBTQ+, such as Caitlyn and Graves. Alongside this, Riot has also released champions like Neeko and K’sante, who have been openly LGBTQ+ since their arrival.

Some of the devs were inspired to share their own experiences as neurodivergent people, and Aurora was a chance to bring a part of their lives into the game they love. They explained that it’s impossible to fully encapsulate the autistic experience as it is a spectrum, meaning they pursued the most basic part of having autism.

“The way our brains work — the way we view the world — it doesn’t match the expectations that others have. And that’s really what we want to shine through for Aurora.”

But on top of that, they felt Aurora shouldn’t need to meet expectations of what an autistic character is, instead, “She should set new ones.”

Aurora will be released on the live servers on July 14, 2024, with Patch 14.14.