Characters / League of Legends: Viego

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Viego, the Ruined King

Viego Santiarul Molach vol Kalah Heigaar

"Love ruins all."

Voiced by:
Sean Teale (English)
Alejandro Orozco (Mexican Spanish)
Nobuyuki Hiyama (Japanese)
Henrique Canales (Brazilian Portuguese)
Yo-Han Park (Korean)
Boris Repetur (Russian)
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra, Ruined King, Ruination

“No price is too great. No atrocity beyond my reach. For her... I will do anything.”

Once ruler of a long-lost kingdom, Viego perished over a thousand years ago when his attempt to bring his wife back from the dead triggered the magical catastrophe known as the Ruination. Transformed into a powerful, unliving wraith tortured by an obsessive longing for his centuries-dead queen, Viego now stands as the Ruined King, controlling the deadly Harrowings as he scours Runeterra for anything that might one day restore her, and destroying all in his path as the Black Mist pours endlessly from his cruel, broken heart.

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Viego is a Skirmisher champion who dominates his battles with blade and Black Mist, slaying foes before possessing them and using their strength for his dark bidding. He does not use mana or any other resources, with his abilities only being limited by cooldowns.

• Viego's passive, Sovereign's Domination, allows him to temporarily possess enemy champions he helps kill, healing for a portion of their max health. During possession, Viego's items, attacks, and non-ultimate abilities become those of his slain enemy's, he gains bonus movement speed when moving toward enemy champions, and he gains a free cast of Heartbreaker.
• His first ability, Blade of the Ruined King, passively causes Viego's attacks to deal a percent of the target's current health as bonus damage, and when Viego attacks an enemy he recently hit with an ability, the attack strikes twice and heals him based on the damage dealt. On activation, Viego stabs his sword forward, damaging enemies.
• With his second ability, Spectral Maw, Viego charges up and then dashes forward, hurling a blast of mist that stuns and damages the first enemy hit. The stun duration and mist range increase with charge time, but the damage and dash range do not.
• With his third ability, Harrowed Path, Viego sends out a wave of Black Mist which envelops the area in front of him, additionally surrounding the first instance of terrain it collides with. While in the mist, Viego becomes camouflaged and gains bonus attack and movement speed.
• Viego's ultimate ability, Heartbreaker, causes him to teleport forward, attacking the enemy champion in range with the lowest percent health and dealing bonus damage based on their missing health. Other enemies in range are knocked away. If he is currently possessing an enemy champion, this ability expels him from it.

Viego's alternate skins include Lunar Beast Viego, Dissonance of Pentakill Viego, Edward Gaming Viego, King Viego, and Soul Fighter Viego.

In season 5 of Teamfight Tactics, Viego is a Tier 5 Forgotten Assassin Skirmisher. His ability, Sovereign's Domination, has Viego channel as he attempts to corrupt his target's soul. While channeling, the target is stunned and takes ramping magic damage over time, while Viego's allies prefer not to target his victim. If the target dies during the channel, they are resurrected on Viego's team with all their stats and items intact, but lose a percentage of their maximum health each second, and only receive the trait bonuses of Viego's team rather than their own. He was removed in season 6, returning in season 8 using his Lunar Beast Viego skin as a Tier 4 Ox Force Renegade. His Heartbreaker ability has Viego become unstoppable before leaping to the largest cluster of enemies and slamming his sword down on the enemy with the lowest health. The primary target takes magic damage while nearby enemies are dealt a lesser amount, and if the ability kills at least one enemy, Viego casts again but with reduced damage. He gains the Heart class in addition to his existing traits in the Glitched Out!! mid-set update. In season 9, he returns to using his base skin as a Tier 1 Shadow Isles Rogue. His Blade of the Ruined King ability stabs his target for magic damage and causes Viego's basic attacks to deal bonus stacking magic damage for the rest of the round. He was removed along with the Shadow Isles origin in the Horizonbound mid-set update, returning in season 10 using his Dissonance of Pentakill Viego skin as a Tier 4 Pentakill Edgelord. His Riff of the Ruined King ability causes him to slam down on a nearby hex, dealing physical damage and marking all enemies within 2 hexes for a few seconds. Marked enemies take increased damage from all sources, and even more damage from Viego's basic attacks.

In Legends of Runeterra, Viego is a 6-mana 6/5 Shadow Isles Champion with Fearsome who summons an Encroaching Mist (a 1/1 Ephemeral follower that grants all allied copies of Viego and all other copies of itself anywhere +1/+1) the first time an allied unit dies each round. When he sees allies with a combined 20+ power die he levels up, gaining +1/+1, summoning an Encroaching Mist the first time any unit dies each round, and stealing control of the strongest enemy unit at the start of each round until the end of the round, or killing it if it's a champion. His signature spell is Viego's Despair.

Viego serves as the Big Bad of the "Ruined King Saga", including the game based on said title.

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A-G

• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the main lore, Viego was a Spare to the Throne who steadily drove his kingdom towards ruin by not carrying out any of his kingly duties in favor of lavishing attention upon Isolde, and eventually his court arranged an assassination attempt that took Isolde’s life by mistake. In the Ruined King game, Viego was instead a powerful magician who was actually beloved by his people. No mention is made of him being an unfit-to-rule Spare to the Throne, and he only began destroying his kingdom following Isolde’s accidental assassination, which was plotted by enemies outside his kingdom and not by his own court. The Ruination novel blends the two by explaining that Viego was a genuinely powerful and popular archmage, but was also not raised or trained to take the throne and held little interest in it. When his older brother died Viego was hastily trained, but everyone around him knew he would not be a good ruler.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the main League lore, Viego is depicted as an obsessive, but devoted lover. For as overwhelming as it might be, his love is genuine and Isolde, by all accounts, seemed to reciprocate it. In Ruined King, Viego is instead depicted as a popular ruler and an insane and abusive Control Freak towards Isolde even in life.
• Adaptational Species Change: Lunar Beast Viego, rather than being an undead wraith, is instead the embittered former leader of the titular squad who got his team and wife killed.
• Age Lift: The Ruined King's first iteration came in the form of "The Lord" of the Twisted Treeline, visually depicted as a 50-something year-old man. As Riot fleshed out his character following the game's reboot, he was aged down a few decades or so as it made more sense to Riot for a young, vain king to be the one to damn the world in a desperate attempt to save his lover.
• All for Nothing: After a millennia of searching, bringing misery and pain to the world in his twisted haze of lovelorn insanity, Viego succeeds in reuniting all of the fetters and making Isolde whole again. Only for Isolde to bluntly tell him she never wanted to come back, that he's insane, she pities what he's become and has Akshan kill her once again so she can rest and revive the Sentinels he slew.
• Ancestral Weapon: Viego's blade is a magical royal weapon passed down from king to king, possessing a portion of a newly-crowned king's soul that would allow them to survive near-fatal injuries in battles.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Viego forgoes the need to worry about mana or any other kind of casting resource, which according to his designer, was specifically done to avoid confusing players with mana management as he jumps between bodies and kits.
  • A slight case of this depending on your outlook: while possessing enemies, he also copies their items from at time of death, but cannot use any of their active abilities or consumables. While this takes away some tools for him, it also removes the concern to quickly figure out how to actually use them in a fight (what items and in which item slots), allowing players to just focus on moveset alone.
• Arc Villain: The titular figure of the "Ruined King Saga" of the 2021 season. Viego was the first champion released that year, and his presence directly influenced the three new champion releases for the rest of the year (Gwen, Akshan, and Vex), all of whom were integral to the story of his return and attempt to spread his biggest Ruination to date across Runeterra.
• Ascended Extra: As a character, Viego's origin goes all the way back to the Blade of the Ruined King item, present in the game since 2012 but with no real lore attached. In late 2014 (around the time of Kalista's launch and Maokai's visual/lore relaunch), the lore of the Shadow Isles was fleshed out, with Riot deciding to expand the Ruined King as a central part of its backstory. As the character's influence grew and grew over the years, Viego was finally introduced in the flesh and became Promoted to Playable.
• Assassination Attempt: After his obsession with Isolde drove the kingdom to ruin and weakness, his court finally had enough and tried having him offed. The knife missed him however, poisoning Isolde. And it went to a whole different level of Hell from there.
• BFS: It's unclear how big the item version of the Blade of the Ruined King is supposed to be, but the version Viego carries is definitely as tall as he is. Its implied weight actually factors into his Q ability's double-striking effect, where the forces of him stabbing his enemies and prying his sword out of them is enough to count as two separate hits.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Viego ultimately serves as this to the entirety of the Shadow Isles, being the man who incited its Ruination and commands the Black Mist's ghastly hauntings across Runeterra. All that champions that seek to free the isles of their curse — Senna, Lucian, Yorick, Maokai, Ryze, etc. — seek his defeat. In particular, he is the primary villain of the Ruination event. However, during the event he is shown to be being manipulated by two outside sources, Vex and Thresh, that are both much more evil than he is- Vex empowers his mist but abandons him as soon as she realizes he's only causing collateral damage as the result of trying to bring back Isolde, while Thresh uses the Sentinels to steal his powers for himself.
• Boring, but Practical: Viego's bodysnatching power gives him a very high skill floor, but his actual base kit is very straightforward for a melee duelist. While he has a few good tricks to work with like a chargeable dash, AoE stealth and a strong executing ultimate, the gameplay pattern as himself is basically just hacking at enemies with on-hit effects until they die and you can possess them, which is where the real potential of his kit is.
• The Caligula: During life, he was so distracted by his pursuit of Isolde that he completely ignored his duties as king, frustrating his allies for his lack of governance and attracting enemies who saw an opportunity to take power away from him. This culminated in an assassination attempt that ended up taking Isolde's life by accident, and things got even worse from there.
• Call-Back: Viego's champion theme repurposes the climax of the Pentakill track "Blade of the Ruined King". This also foreshadows his inclusion in tne Pentakill band.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He completely owns up to being The Ruined King that brought an eternity of damnation to the Isles and brings a bigger threat to all of Runeterra. In his warped mind, it's a trivial description; he doesn't care of the ultimate price of his endeavors, he just wants his lover back and will do everything he can to reclaim her.
• Charged Attack: Spectral Maw's distance and stun time can be increased by holding the ability's button down.
• Critical Hit Class: Heartbreaker's damage actually increases with Viego's crit percent. And since he's already reliant on auto attacks, this means building crit is recommended, resulting in a lot of builds like with Krakenslayer or Immortal Shieldbow that improve his base attack output.
• Connected All Along: Did you know that the Ruined King of the Shadow Isles was Vladimir's nephew?
• Control Freak: Ruined King reveals him to have been one towards Isolde, when Ahri shows him what his rose-colored past was really like.
• Cool Crown: He wears a spectral crown resembling a ring with three spikes in front of it. Whenever he possesses an enemy champion, they wear the same crown.
• Cool Sword:
  • The Blade of the Ruined King is an in-game item that predates not only his playable status, but his formal introduction in canon lore. Granting bonus max-HP-based damage, attack speed, lifesteal, and a movement speed steal, it's often chosen as a strong item for sustained duels, especially against tankier enemies, and considering Viego's own duelist kit, it's clear that Riot intends for players to have him build his own item.
  • The sword Viego wields, also identified as a "Blade of the Ruined King", is a massive zweihänder engulfed with spectral energy, looking like he's attacking with an unholy crucifix. Passively, it gives him even more percent max-health damage and additional strikes to slay foes with.
• The Corrupter: Viego in-lore has the ability to control people through the Black Mist. He attempted to take Darius and Karma. In the game, there is also a skin line based on this idea, and in that universe Karma, Draven, Shyvana, Pantheon and Miss Fortune have all fallen to his influence after a second attack.
• Dash Attack: Spectral Maw serves as Viego's main engage tool, shooting him forward and sending a stunning projectile at his opponent. He can also cancel it if he chooses, giving him a little more flexibility to approach.
• Dashing Hispanic: Riot has cited Camelot and conquistador-era Spain as inspirations for Viego and his kingdom, and through his name, stylish appearance, and accent, he's effectively the Runeterran equivalent of this trope.
• Death from Above: Heartbreaker resembles a sword slam coming down from midair, which sounds like the last thing you'd want to see if you're low on health and in Viego's execute window.
• Demonic Possession: Viego steals the bodies of those he kills, gaining all their abilities minus their ultimate.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Despite already having it on his model, and having a similar effect as one of his passives, most Viego builds typically buys Blade of the Ruined King as one of his first items as it synergizes well with his playstyle.
• Depending on the Writer: Whether Viego was abusive towards Isolde or a good partner in life varies between versions of the story. Discounting the claims from Viego himself (who is not a reliable narrator thanks to the curse of the Black Mist warping his mind), his League lore showed him as doting on Isolde to the point that he was utterly irresponsible and uninterested in ruling his kingdom, breaking down completely when she was murdered, while in Ruined King, Viego has partial flashbacks in which he was shown to be tyrannical and controlling of Isolde, with the implication she was forced to marry him. Ruination met these interpretations halfway: Viego wasn't abusive and Isolde willingly married him, but his rapidly decreasing mental state was leading him to become obsessive and controlling toward Isolde, turning their once-genuine love into Loving a Shadow.
• Destructive Romance: As much as Viego loved his wife, their marriage ultimately ruined the world. And this is before it comes to light that he was an abusive husband who attacked Isolde verbally and possibly even physically.
• Difficult, but Awesome: With his passive ability to copy the items and abilities of any champion he kills or assists in the killing of, optimal Viego play requires the player to be at least competent with every champion in the game. This attained, he has the abilities of six champions in one.
• Ditto Fighter: Viego's main gimmick is to temporarily possess the enemy champions he slays, gaining their moveset, items, and other attributes they had at the time of their death so he can inflict them on their own team. The only major thing he can't copy is their ultimate ability, which is instead replaced by his own Heartbreaker ultimate.
• The Dragon: In the Pentakill skin alternate canon, Viego serves as a villain serving an evil God of Dissonance who, presumably, would bring Isolde back through it's music.
• Entitled to Have You: While it's suggested that Viego and Isolde's love was mutual, Viego fell into this mindset after her death. He will get her back, no matter who says otherwise. Ruined King takes the implications of his temperament in undeath to their natural conclusion, revealing Viego as a Control Freak in life, who eventually lapsed into demanding, abusive behavior when Isolde did not conform to expectations, and possessively engineered her soul's tethering to life via sundry relics without her consent while she was in sickbed.
• Evil Uncle: Kalista is his niece, whom he treated poorly even before the Ruination. She discovered the hidden Blessed Isles herself while searching for a way to save Isolde's life, but when she came back too late, Viego imprisoned her as a traitor to the crown. Once she was strong-armed into leading them back, and the people of the Blessed Isles reiterated that Isolde couldn't be saved, she was ordered by Viego to slaughter them all. She refused, and was promptly executed by Hecarim and the Iron Order. Nowadays, Kalista remains obsessed with revenge thanks to the Black Mist's influence, in turn tying her to Viego's destructive will. He himself has an Evil Uncle in Vladimir, who has successfully cheated death for millenia.
• Fan Disservice: A dashing prince with a chiseled torso who waxes romantic? Pretty hot. He's ghostly white, has a gaping hole his chest, and is a borderline stalker? Not so hot.
• Finishing Move: Heartbreaker is a strong AoE execute that singles out the most vulnerable target hit and inflicts bonus damage per their missing health. Because of how the ultimate resets when hijacking bodies, the ideal teamfight scenario is to execute an enemy, hijack their body, execute another enemy, hijack their body, repeat until the enemy team is dead.
• The Fog of Ages: As detailed in the color story "She", Viego's millennia of existence has long wiped away any memory he had of his original kingdom. The only thing he can recall is Isolde, and even then he can't remember exactly what she looks like anymore.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Viego's launch and the months following were pretty rough for the game due to the technical complexity of his champion-hijacking mechanics^note Riot has described him as the most technically-challenging champion implemented since Sylas, a benchmark they've tried to avoid for this reason, with Viego being the only exception due to him being such an important release needing a crazy signature feature. While most bugs are lightly annoying, if not quite game-breaking (such as visibility issues on certain champions in alternate skins or stats/abilities being unintentionally carried between forms), a few definitely were — for a time, possessing a Rell or using Harrowed Path on player-generated terrain outright crashed the game. Released in January 2021, he was completely absent for the entire first half of the professional 2021 season as Riot wasn't fully confident that he wouldn't tank games just by being in them.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Similar to Mordekaiser, Viego benefits from the game's broad disregard of canon as by the end of the Ruined King saga, he's been defeated and banished away to Camavor.
• Ghost Amnesia: The last thing he remembers before his undeath is dipping his wife into the Blessed Isles' water. He doesn't remember the whole "she turned into a wraith and stabbed him" part at all.
• Glass Cannon: While his abilities do grant him sustain, his base stats ultimately make him into one of these. It's not at all helped by the highly committal nature of his engage which can screw him over if he prioritizes the wrong target or gets trapped by enemy crowd control.
• Goth: The style wasn't like this when he was still alive, but Riot has cited goth Goth Rock and Heavy Metal singers as inspirations for Viego's current "ruined" design. This was taken to its logical extreme with Viego's outright Heavy Metal Dissonance of Pentakill skin.
• Grand Theft Me: Viego's passive allows him to possess the bodies of enemy champions he recently helped kill, temporarily allowing him access to their basic abilities (not their ultimate) and items to turn onto the enemy team. This is a bit different to how his influencing powers works in canon, with the Black Mist more able to brainwash people rather than possess them, though his voice lines during the in-game action indicate that he's more of commanding the overtaken champion than outright hijacking it.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Viego and his actions provide the origin for every single Shadow Isles champion, from Maokai to Kalista to Thresh to Yorick, as well as others like Senna and Lucian. It all leads back to him and his obsession with Isolde.
• Heartbroken Badass: Monstrous as he may be, his love for Isolde was completely real, and her death eternally tears him apart. Everything he does, he does in a desperate attempt to reclaim her. The "heartbreak" aspect also translates somewhat literally, as Black Mist exudes from a hole in his chest where Isolde (or rather, the ghoulish form of Isolde after his seemingly botched attempt to resurrect her) impaled him.
  To most, the Black Mist is a plague, a vector for monstrous, life-sucking wraiths to assault the living and steal them away until the sun dies and the world crumbles into nothing.
  To Viego, it is his great, unending sadness, pouring ceaselessly from his broken heart. A testament to his love, of better days long gone by, and a cruel reminder of what was taken from him so long ago.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Harrowed Mist travels and lingers across all terrain indefinitely, which can be useful for Viego for engaging enemies, but since it's very easy for enemies to notice, it might also accidentally give away his current position. In the Champion Spotlight, Phreak advises players seeking to use the mist for fighting jungle camps to avoid having it touch terrain.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: If you look closely, Viego's titular Blade of the Ruined King, is actually regular greatsword with a cross attached to the base of the hilt that makes it look much larger than it actually is.
• Inadequate Inheritor: The Spare to the Throne for his father's kingdom, Viego found himself in the throne when his older brother died. He quickly proved to be completely unfit for rule, having zero interest in governing and devoting all his time to his obsessive love for Isolde.
• Instant Armor: It's not immediately noticeable from a distance, but while in stealth and during his recall, Viego becomes shrouded in full body armor and a helmet. It doesn't give him any actual defensive bonuses, but it does make him a lot spookier.
• Invincible Villain: Once he finally got off his throne and ushered in the biggest Harrowing Runeterra had ever seen, Viego's efforts to claim Isolde became really effective. While the Sentinel squad manages to get a few decent hits on him here and there, he makes exceptional headway in claiming the fetters of Isolde's soul, corrupting the lands in Ruination, and possessing a few very powerful champions like Pantheon and Karma for good measure.
• It's All About Me: As far as Viego is concerned, he's a romantic hero on a quest to bring back his love. It's not that he doesn't realize that he causes pain and suffering, he just doesn't really care about it because he's the hero.
  "You are not the hero of this tale! You are not anything!"

K-Z

• Kill Streak: Viego gains a free use of Heartbreaker while possessing enemy Champions, finish them off one by one, taking each's body in turn both for the heal and reset cooldowns, and so he can use his ultimate again.
• Life Drain: Blade of the Ruined King's passive lets him restore health from enemies marked by his abilities, making him harder to put down in skirmishes since he heals back for every ability landed. Of course if you can deny him his auto attack, then he can't sustain himself in a fight.
• Love Makes You Crazy: In his original life, he was obsessed with a peasant girl known as Isolde, shirking all his kingly duties to fawn over her. And when she died, it just got worse. Viego's botched attempt to revive her in the Waters Of Life gave birth to the Shadow Isles. And now he's an even crazier, obsessed, and very powerful spectre who will ruin the world if it means he gets her spirit back.
• Love Makes You Evil: Riot has repeatedly described Viego as a "romantic" champion, which carries a very dark connotation. In his attempt to revive his slain love, he brought destruction and death to an entire chain of Isles. Even before her death, Viego was worryingly obsessed with Isolde, shirking all his kingly duties to lavish her with gifts and attention.
  "Isolde was my life... Viego died when she did, and the Ruined King was born..."
  "No price is too great! No atrocity beyond my reach! For her, I. Will. Do. Anything!"
• Love Ruins the Realm: A major example, with Viego's obsessive love for his wife Isolde being responsible not only for the decay of his rule, as he neglected all his duties to lavish attention on her, but the destruction of the Blessed Isles, the creation of the cursed Shadow Isles, and the origin of undeath on Runeterra.
• Magikarp Power: Viego lacks means to stick onto and slay his enemies on his own when he isn't ahead, which makes his early game quite tricky as he has low damage, limited escapes (he has a dash and movement speed buffs, but neither can be used to cross walls; only his ultimate can do that), and no teammates to back him up if an aggressive enemy jungler decides to pounce on him. Once games shift to teamfighting, however, he suddenly gets a lot more opportunities to strike along with his allies, made even more deadly if he manages to get an early headstart in kills and gold.
• Monster from Beyond the Veil: When Viego put his wife Isolde into the Blessed Isle's blessed waters, she did come back for a moment... as a vicious wraith who, in her pain, rage, and confusion, impaled Viego with his own sword.
• Mood-Swinger: Before the Ruination, Viego grew extremely unstable and impulsive, switching quickly between great joy, depressiveness, and violent rage. After becoming the Ruined King, he is just as childish and impulsive, but much more single-minded, as his instability has been replaced with a single-minded focus on reviving Isolde.
• Never My Fault: One thing that holds back Viego from growth is his inability to take responsibility for his actions. His obsessive and entitled love for Isolde is so deep that he sees any obstacle between them as the world unjustly trying to split them apart. The Ruination is merely an extreme extent of his entitlement, with Viego showing no remorse for the lives he destroys trying to revive Isolde.
  • Lunar Beast Viego is also guilty of this. He's projected his guilt for getting both Isolde and his squad killed by the Lunar Beast onto the newest members of the Lunar Ox Squad.
• Not So Similar: As the "Steadfast Heart" comic notes, Lucian and Viego are surprisingly similar. Both are men who found the love of their lives, had that love taken away by cruel fate (Viego's by an assassin's blade, Lucian's by Thresh) and both journeyed to the Isles to reclaim them from death. But while Lucian was cold and logical in his pursuit of his goal, Viego was wrought by his grief and destroyed the Blessed Isles as a result.
• Near-Villain Victory: During the climax of the Ruined King saga, Viego almost gets everything he wants, able to resurrect Isolde, killing Gwen (and in some forms of canon Senna and the Maiden of the Mist) in the process, to say nothing of everyone else taken in the Ruination. He only loses because Isolde rejects his attempt at resurrection, and because Akshan has a powerful Sentinel weapon that allowed her to be put back to peace while simultaneously reviving Viego's latest victims, allowing the Sentinels to land the final blow on him.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: The first portion of his character theme contains a music box section, based around the music box shared between him and Isolde during their wedding day.
• Orcus on His Throne: Initially, he seemed content to dwell wherever he was on the Shadow Isles, letting the Black Mist do his dirty work for him. But with Isolde's spirit located, he finally took action and left the Isles.
• Outside-Context Problem: In an individual sense, while his status as the Ruined King and influence on the Shadow Isles has been known in Runeterra for centuries, Viego himself came from a distant, long-extinct kingdom from a faraway land that otherwise has no connections to the rest of the continent. In a broader sense, Viego's ushering of the biggest Harrowing to date intrudes on realms all across the continent that otherwise never interacted with the ongoing battle against him, thrusting many into a fight for their lives against the Black Mist.
• Parts Unknown: He originally came not from the Blessed Isles, but from a kingdom called Camavor long lost to time. Initially, a hint surrounding Kalista being once called "The Spear of the Argent Throne" suggested that the kingdom was from the Argent Mountains, an area presently controlled by modern Noxus, but when Viego's proper biography was revealed, it stated that he originally came somewhere far east from the Runeterran continent.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Viego had naturally brown hair in life, but being revived as a revenant has turned it white.
• The Power of Love: Subverted horribly. Everything he does is for Isolde. It doesn't make his actions any less monstrous, but it does make The Corruption of the Black Mist harder to resist since there's a spark of genuine love at the heart of it.
• Pretty Boy: For the monstrous ghostly king of an undead horde, Viego has a surprisingly clean, slender, and attractive appearance, embellished by his flowing white hair and lack of a shirt. Compared to more monstrous-looking characters like Thresh and Hecarim, he stands out as one of the most visually unaffected victims of the Ruination.
• Promoted to Playable: The Ruined King was established as a major, if unseen background character in Runeterra's lore following its Continuity Reboot, and he properly revealed (and named) as a playable champion in 2021.
• Psychopathic Manchild: One of the few things shared between Viego's multiple adaptations is his sheer immaturity. Having never been meant for the throne and neglected through his youth, Viego wasn't afforded an opportunity to grow up and, despite starting with a kind heart, quickly let responsibility overwhelm him, causing him to become clingy and develop an infantile obsession with Isolde, the woman he was in love with, that later developed into obsessing over his own perfect image of her. Completely unprepared for her death, Viego then spends the rest of his life childishly and selfishly centered around her, carrying a petulant demeanor during a perpetual pursuit of reviving the person he attached himself to.
• Rage Against the Heavens: He refuses to accept the inevitability of death, and will do anything he can to ensure that eternity is within his and his legion's grasp.
  (taunting Kindred) "Answer for your crimes, death! Answer me!"
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: How he created the Shadow Isles according to the Ruination novel: His sword, Sanctity, rends everything it touches unto complete and utter death by trapping its soul. The Waters of Life resurrect all things without fail. When Isolde stabbed Viego on his own blade in the Waters of Life the contradiction resulted in a paradox that blew up a World Rune and corrupted the Blessed Mist into the Ruination.
• Red Right Hand: Champions possessed by Viego take on the three-pronged floating crown he wears.
• Retcon: The Ruined King had his lore origins based in the Twisted Treeline map, which had two shrines that could empower teams, one for himself as "The Lord", who would encourage Shadow Isles champions to give into their destructive instincts, and one for his wife, "The Lady", who would conversely plead with them to turn away from their path. Following the game's second Continuity Reboot, their story was completely overhauled, with The Ruined King now suggested to be roaming somewhere among the Shadow Isles, and thus the map became deprecated and was eventually removed. The Lord was also implied to have been much older at the time of the Ruination, with his voice sounding like a ghost that died somewhere between their 50s and 70s. Viego doesn’t look a day over 35, if that.
• The Rival: Implied; while it's not clear if they ever interacted in the past, Maokai does mention in one taunt that Mordekaiser was one to the Ruined King, or at least a contemporary.
  Maokai: (taunting an enemy Mordekaiser) "Rival to the Ruined King - in ruin."
  • It has been confirmed in an interview that while Mordekaiser and Viego's powers work differently, if the two were to directly fight, Mordekaiser would very likely win the encounter.
• Royal Brat: Born into royalty, he grew up with the power to let him freely obtain anything he selfishly desired, including Isolde. When he was given the crown after his brother unexpectedly died, he continued to lavish in his self-centered obsessions, much to the detriment of his kingdom, Isolde, and eventually the Blessed Isles and beyond.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: How Viego meets his defeat at the end of the Ruined King saga, although how it manifests differs between the version of the story: in Ruined King, Viego is sealed away in an amulet and stored away by Illaoi to prevent his return, while in most cases (including in the Rise of the Sentinels event), he's bound in the ruins of Camavor by Gwen. Whichever case, Nilah would later reveal that it's a tentative measure, and she's certain that Viego will be able to free himself and endanger the world again someday.
• Seeks Another's Resurrection: Viego's main goal is trying to resurrect his fallen queen. His instability following her death led him to search down the hidden Blessed Isles to exploit their supposed secrets of eternal life, but the attempted resurrection ritual was so botched that he produced a terrifying curse that transformed the lands into the Shadow Isles. From there, he leads his new legion of damned souls in an effort to reclaim and reconstruct his queen's soul so they can be together again, and he's willing to tear apart Runeterra to do so.
• Shadow Archetype: Riot directly positions Viego as reflect several personal traits of the heroes that challenge him:
  • Gwen stands before him as a similar apparition given life by supernatural means, the difference being that Gwen is born out of goodness and loving warmth, while Viego is consumed in eternal undeath because of his cruelty and selfishness. There's also the fact that Gwen was directly created by Isolde — the very woman that Viego is obsessed over — making her an even more blatant opponent towards his evil desires.
  • Both Lucian and Akshan also directly compared to as the mortal "good counterparts" to Viego. All three of them were defined by the love of their lives (romantically for Lucian and Viego, platonically for Akshan) that were ripped away from them by cruel fate, causing them to devote the rest of their lives to avenge them. However, while Lucian and Akshan stuck to their moral guns of righteousness and peace, Viego is so singleminded that he's more than willing to doom the entire world to claim his lover.
• Soul Jar: Viego's blade was passed down the Camavorian monarchy and designed to contain a portion of the reigning king's soul, allowing them to survive wounds in battle, though not enough to completely avoid death. When Isolde fatally stabbed Viego in the heart while in the waters of the Blessed Isles, both healing forces collided violently, creating an unholy feedback loop of undeath that became the Ruination.
• Stalker with a Crush: Viego's admiration of Isolde is greatly implied to have been (or at the very least, presently evolved into) a one-sided affair, making his ardent pursuit of her even more unnerving. Aside from how Isolde's first act after being improperly resurrected was to impale Viego with his own sword (granted, she was in a Freak Out of being revived as a wraith), every action since then, including merging herself into Senna's life force, seems to indicate that she's deliberately avoiding Viego, whose determination knows no bounds.
• Starter Villain: In a sense, Viego is the first narratively active Big Bad the new lore of League of Legends truly has, and while powerful, he is portrayed as both somewhat pathetic in his backstory and less than intelligent, with greater threats looming behind him, such as Mordekaiser and the Watchers. His defeat at the end of the Ruined King saga has a direct knock-on effect in establishing other new threats to the world: Thresh has usurped the Black Mist and now acts as the unbound leader of the Shadow Isles, and comments by Nilah revealed that his Ruinations have written new magic into the world that's causing demonkind to go berserk, agitating their "primeval forebears".
• That Man Is Dead:
  "Isolde was my life. Viego died when she did and the ruined king was born."
• Tragic Villain: Normally a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in most depictions of canon, but the expanded backstory of Ruination puts huge emphasis on just how bad things were for him before he made things worse. Not only was Viego widely seen as an Inadequate Inheritor to the Camavorian throne, he himself agreed, and in spite of his talents and good intentions for his kingdom, he was ultimately insecure, needy, and deeply paranoid, with the early death of his greatest love spiralling him out of control, making it easier for those like Erlok Grael (the future Thresh) to send him into the mad pursuit that formed the Ruination. It also contextualizes Viego's love for Isolde as genuine to a fault, showing just how badly he's unable to accept her death even as Isolde herself does, making his actions trying to save her even more pitiably senseless.
• Undeathly Pallor: Viego is depicted as having had a fairly dark skin tone before the Ruination◊. Nowadays, the influence of undeath has paled his skin into a deathly white.
• Unseen No More: Following his introduction in the lore in 2014, The Ruined King was almost never described in detail, nor was he named, with his backstory only being revealed relative to the backstories of other champions. His visual design was finally revealed in a trailer for Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, and the rest of his backstory was elaborated when he was announced as a playable champion.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Even in life, Viego was easy to manipulate into rash action due to his instability and pride. Kalista and Isolde spent much of their time with him trying to steer him in the right direction.
  • Thresh managed to use Viego for his own means twice. While still Erlok Grael, Thresh used Viego's grief to convince him to invade the Blessed Isles for a shot at reviving Isolde so that Grael himself can find the secret of immortality. Much, much later, Thresh frees Viego and facilitates a worldwide conquest at his hands, using the destruction Viego wreaks to achieve more power through the souls of Viego's slaughter, and open a power divide in the Shadow Isles.
• Uptown Girl: A gender-flipped example, as Viego was the king and Isolde was a lowly seamstress. Very much a deconstruction of this normally-romantic trope, as Viego's obsessive love for her led to all the horror that followed.
• Villainous Breakdown: Breaks down into screaming three instances of Big "NO!" when Isolde voluntarily allows Akshan to kill her once more, having never agreed to be resurrected in the first place.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: He does wear a sinister-looking vest, but when he's not engulfed in a spectral layer of armor, he bares his chest to the world, letting us know that it's rather chiseled. Also lets people see the Black Mist pouring out of his heart, too.
• Warrior Prince: He was trained from a young age to be a swordfighter, and has since put those skills to use in his quest as the Ruined King.
• We Used to Be Friends: He was actually quite close to Kalista when they were young, eventually entrusting her to be his top general and entrusting her to find a cure for Isolde's poison. This took a turn for the worse when Viego turned on her as she objected to using the Waters of Life to revive Isolde. Now as a revenant herself, Kalista has sworn revenge on her uncle for causing both her and her forces' deaths.
• White Hair, Black Heart: A villainous Pretty Boy with white hair, and for bonus points, his heart is the source of the Black Mist.
• Wicked Heart Symbol: Viego's heart is replaced by a vague hollow triangle shape that pours out the Black Mist, symbolizing his broken heart. His possession victims also take on this trait.
• With Us or Against Us: There's two views Viego has for people: Either you're going to assist him in reviving Isolde, or you're a pest in his way to do it and he intends to swat you.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Despite all the horrors he has inflicted upon the world, he does genuinely love Isolde, with all his atrocities being deeply misguided attempts at trying to bring her back from the dead. The only moments of calm with his in-game dialogue are linked to her — his moments of genuine weakness all relate to the possibility that Isolde could be saved. Even his defeat and banishment by the Sentinels is played for as much tragedy as catharsis as it involves her rejecting the monster he spiralled into becoming.
  "All this carnage... do you see?! I do it for you!"
• Yandere: His obsession over Isolde is so single-mindedly potent and undying that it's led to the destruction of multiple kingdoms and threatens to take out the rest of Runeterra.