#interestingly enough this idea of leona's want for acknowledgement is very useful in analyzing his relationships with cheka and ruggie

[mobagehelllocal]

While reading leona's part in “wendy?” “hello peter pan” i thought for a split second that mc's green eyed daughter was Leona's child and thus that mc didn't know she was pregnant when she left the mirror ! 😯

Oooh! Honestly, I hadn’t really intended it to seem that way.

To really explain this, I have to go into my image of Leona, and why I chose to portray him as is. This will contain spoilers for those who haven’t read “wendy?” “hello peter pan”, so please avert your gaze if you have yet to read it!

This is also lengthy, so if you want, I put a TLDR at the very bottom. HAHAH.

PS: to make something clear, Twisted Wonderland is a work of fiction. Therefore everything—from story to character is truly up to interpretation. I’m just giving a reasoning behind why I chose to write Leona the way I do. At the end of the day, I will not begrudge you for portraying Leona differently from me. I just really want to share the way I understand him. Perhaps this could help, perhaps it won’t—either way it was fun to think about this. ^^

I knew from the start that I wanted the daughter to be the image of what Leona could’ve had.

Here’s something you probably wouldn’t figure out from my writings: I originally disliked Leona.

Now! Before you go clicking off, let me explain.

Savannaclaw’s story is sandwiched between Heartslabyul and Octavinelle--both of which are very emotionally driven narratives. I’ll try not to spend too long on these two houses, but look at it this way.

We can empathize with Riddle because he suffered a lot in the process of upholding his mother’s teachings. He put up with it because it had to be the truth--as if they were false this whole time, then he was suffering for nothing. So when you come in, and prove exactly that--it makes sense for Riddle to lash out the way he does.

Let’s not get started on Azul. We empathize with Azul because we all have that one bully, one person we want to either get even with--or become better than. Azul was bullied extensively in his childhood, and just snapped. He, with nothing in his hands, decided he would take everything away from his bullies. In the process of taking away from his bullies, he would build himself into someone infallible. He distanced himself from his past because he was ashamed of that part of him. So when all that hard work is snatched away by someone more fortunate than him? When even the indestructible version he had built himself to be is beaten? It meant to Azul that he hadn’t changed at all, that he was still that bullied octopus. He snapped. It might’ve been a big middle finger to Azul because it essentially invalidated all the hard work he put into being someone who could.

Then what about Leona?

The emotional drive behind Leona’s Overblot is exhaustion at being seen as the inferior second prince to his brother. In fact, it’s generally his inability to become number one. In Afterglow Savanna, he has to go up against his well-loved and preferred brother. In Night Raven College, he has to go up against Malleus Draconia, the strongest student.

Here’s the thing though, and this is my personal gripe about Leona--which tbh, I would still call him out for.

He doesn’t try.

Or if he did try, we don’t see him do it.

We see him laze about, doing nothing. Yeah sure he comes up with an underhanded strategy that could help them win against Diasomnia--but he actually barely does anything. And the moment it doesn’t work, he just concedes. It pisses him off, but he gives up. Just like that.

It’s also why him turning into the Overblot feels... (personally) so lacking to me. Like, I felt he had no place to get angry, when others (especially like Ruggie) were relying on him to pull it together at the end. Like, we all knew Leona would get the Overblot because he’s the Scar themed character. But narratively speaking? A stronger story would’ve been Ruggie being the Overblot, and Leona reacting to it. (Like do you know, how amazing that would be for Leona’s character to? I want to see it so bad!)

At the end of the day, we got an angry Leona. To me, at that time, his anger felt so entitled. Like, Leona’s always been seen as incredibly smart, skilled PLUS he’s also really wealthy. So to me, I just thought, “how could you be so angry when you’re so lucky to have all of this? In fact, why can’t you use that anger and turn it into a determination to make yourself better? You’re smart, you’re skilled, you have the resources--if you exerted more effort, I think you could get farther.”

I still think the Savannaclaw chapter could’ve been better, but I’ve also realized that it’s because Leona is the way he is, that makes it impossible to resolve his problems the same way Riddle or Azul is able to.

‘Ai, when will you stop bullying Leona?’

Hang on, I’m actually done, and I’ll finally get into why Leona’s story in “wendy?” “hello peter pan” turned out the way it did.

There are two people, aside from me, who actually gets to read these pieces before I post it on tumblr. They  don’t know each other, they’ve never spoken to one another--the most they know about each other is probably from whatever I say to them about the other. And here’s the thing, they both told me this: “Leona is the best one you wrote from “wendy?” “hello peter pan.””  

Of course, I’m instantly confused. I didn’t like Leona when I first wrote anything for Twisted Wonderland, by the time I was writing his piece from the series (he and Riddle were written days ahead of the rest actually) I was 50/50 on him. I was okay with him, but I certainly didn’t like him. So I did a lot of internal introspection about this.

I realized that at the end of the day, I understood what Leona was angry about.

It wasn’t anger about being stuck at second place.

It was anger about never being acknowledged in the first place.

He was never seen as Leona Kingscholar, he was simply The Second Prince of Afterglow Savanna, or Prince Farena’s Younger Brother. He never was acknowledged as his own person.

And here lies another problem. I believe Leona is someone who represses. I think he’s someone who prefers to shut his eyes and sleep, over acknowledging the problem. He decided to sleep instead of confronting Jack’s bullies in that short manga strip, he doesn’t confront Jack’s bullies in the SSR Card Dorm uniform either until he really needs to. He’ll put it off as long as he can, and if it solves itself, then that’s better for him. This ties in with the idea the fact that he’s seen as someone inferior to Farena, how he’s never acknowledged beyond that, and how it’s an opinion he can’t control. So he just decides to let it be, and keeps all his feelings to himself. Because acknowledging ugly feelings are always so exhausting, crying, getting angry--these things are exhausting, and he must’ve felt or had pent up all these emotions so much so that he’s decided the easiest way is to just leave them be. Not acknowledge them, and don’t think too deeply about it.

I had, ironically, written Leona’s piece, while unconsciously knowing this.

Leona’s piece in “wendy?” “hello peter pan” is a result of his own inaction. We all know that Leona’s cool and calm demeanor is what makes him so popular and attractive. That’s why him not expressing his true feelings is something we all, just know he does. Because that’s his character trope. However, it’s because he choses not to share his feelings that the MC leaves, and moves on with her life.

Remember, I said that Leona will “put it off for as long as he can, and if it solves itself, then that’s better for him.” Leona, at the beginning of the piece finally decides to take action. The MC being missing has probably put a toll on his otherwise impeccable control of his emotions. He wants to drag her back, claim her, make her his wife, have children with her--all of it. He realized that he wanted that, and that’s what sends him into action. However, he’s late. Very late.

The third portion of his piece, when he looks at Leona II, and realized what he could have had--the way he visualized that possible future--he lets himself have that because he realized that it’s because he didn’t try harder to hold onto her, that this future was no longer possible.

Making Leona II have features that could’ve looked like him was so intentional on my part. I wanted to confront Leona’s character with this: “this is what you could’ve had if you had been more proactive” because I personally thought, that this was what we were missing from Leona. It’s what we didn’t get in Savannaclaw--a Leona who became more proactive about the things he wanted.

Everyone else had that arc after all. Riddle, a stickler for the rules set up by his mother realized that some rules can be broken for the sake of empathy. Azul, who had denied his past self, learned to accept his past self and mistakes, and moves to become someone even greater.

We don’t get that from Leona, and I think that’s why my piece ended up the way it did.

THIS... became way too long, and I’m really sorry for that. I hope you don’t mind that I really... just... expressed what I thought about Leona and the type of mindspace I go into when I write pieces for him.

If anyone is interested in adding to this discourse, I definitely encourage you--be it if you agree or disagree with me.

TLDR: Yeah, I would’ve never given that moment of “she’s actually your daughter” to Leona because he needed to confront his lack of proactiveness.

Thank you so much for this ask!