How We Ranked Them
This list ranks ten League of Legends champions by the power their own canon gives them in Runeterra, the world the game is set in. It is not about who would win a fight, and fan theories, titles and game stats don't count.
The lower spots are ranked on recorded deeds: whole cities devoured, World Runes bound away, an empire undone, an afterlife built from souls, and the Void, the nothingness beyond the mortal world, held back. From #5 up, the canon records few deeds, so those spots rank what it says these beings are: an Aspect who walks through time, the oldest fear, the twin essences of death, a being older than the first stars, and a dragon who forges stars. An Aspect is a celestial being joined to a mortal host. Where a step up is our judgement, the spot says "our read." Each spot rests on a passage quoted from Riot's canon, and Zilean gets an honorable mention after #1.
#10. Bel'Veth
Bel'Veth is the Empress of the Void, the leader the Void grew for itself. Her biography says the Void "craved a leader" who could speak to humans and "harvest their emotions and memories as they fought a bitter, fruitless war until the last fires of civilization died."
She feeds by "devouring whole cities and their populations before repurposing the information into a sprawling alien landscape known as the Lavender Sea." She was made the same way:
A terrifying empress born from the combined memories, experiences, and emotions of an entire devoured port city and its outlying ocean—Bel’Veth’s mind contains millions of years of perfectly preserved knowledge, giving her near-omniscience as she prepares to destroy both Runeterra and the domain of her progenitors, the Watchers.
— Bel’Veth - Biography
From Bel’Veth - Biography
The Watchers are the monstrous Void beings that her biography calls "her progenitors." In her teaser Bel'Veth's Warning, she tells Vel'Koz, the Eye of the Void, "Your Watchers are incapable of understanding. I am the Void and I will remake all of Runeterra."
She opens the list because her largest act is still ahead of her. She has devoured cities, but the end of Runeterra is something her biography says she "prepares" for.
#9. Ryze
Ryze is the Rune Mage, a sorcerer who keeps the World Runes. His biography calls them "the arcane powers that had shaped the world." He was an apprentice to Tyrus, a sorcerer in an ancient order sworn to gather and protect the most dangerous artifacts in Runeterra, when the Rune Wars began, the wars fought with those powers.
Tyrus later came into possession of "not one Rune, but two" and said common mortals were like reckless children he had to stop. Ryze saw that "now he had the means to bring about the end of all things," and killed him. "A moment later, Tyrus’s corpse lay smoldering on the floor." Ryze took on his master's work:
Ryze now understood the task he had inherited—as long as any World Rune remained unsecured, Runeterra was surely doomed. This knowledge was to become a lonely burden indeed, for ever since that day he has scoured the world in search of the last remaining Runes. He continues to reject the promise of power within each one, choosing instead to bind them in secret locations, far from prying and greedy eyes.
— Ryze - Biography
From Ryze - Biography
Ryze ranks above Bel'Veth on what he holds back. Bel'Veth is still preparing to destroy the world. Ryze has spent his life binding away the powers that shaped it, and he refuses to use them himself. Our read: keeping that power out of every hand, his own included, is the larger power.
#8. Xerath
Xerath, a magus of ancient Shurima, the desert empire, is now "a being of arcane energy writhing in the broken shards of a magical sarcophagus." Born a slave, he rose to be the right hand of the emperor Azir. On the day Azir was to become one of the Ascended, Shurima's immortal god-warriors, beneath the Sun Disc, the great disc that raised them, Xerath blasted him from the dais and took his place. "The unbound power of the sun all but destroyed Shurima," and Renekton and Nasus, two god-warrior brothers, rushed to stop him.
They threw him into a magical sarcophagus and sealed it with "blessed chains and powerful sigils of binding." The seal did not hold him.
Xerath’s power had been great as a mortal, and that power - combined with the gift of Ascension - made him all but invincible. He shattered the sarcophagus, though its shards and chains remained bound to him. Renekton and Nasus hurled themselves at Xerath, but such was his newfound strength that he fought them both to a standstill. The battle raged throughout the collapsing city, destroying what had not already sunk beneath the sands.
— Xerath - Biography
From Xerath - Biography
Renekton wrestled him into the Tomb of Emperors, a vault that "answered only to the blood of emperors," and Nasus sealed them both inside.
Xerath ranks above Ryze because Ryze keeps his power bound and unused, while Xerath used the power he stole, and his biography says "an empire built by generations of emperors was undone in a single day."
#7. Mordekaiser
Mordekaiser is the Iron Revenant, a dead warlord who was once a man named Sahn-Uzal. In life he "rampaged across the northern wildlands," crushed every tribe and settlement in his path and forged "an empire in blood and death," sure he had earned a seat at the gods' table in the Hall of Bones, the afterlife his dark faith promised.
When he died, he found only "an empty, gray wasteland." A coven of sorcerers brought him back in iron armor, and he killed them and took their army. As Mordekaiser he conquered again, and "Entire generations perished under his relentless campaigns." He built a second empire around his fortress, the Immortal Bastion, until the Noxii tribes and traitors in his inner circle cut his soul from his armor.
He had planned for that. Back in "the once empty wasteland," everyone who had died under his latest reign was waiting, their spirits "perverted by dark sorcery" so they would never fade.
The strongest became his devout, eternal army, bound to his will… but even the weak were given purpose. From the subtle matter of their souls, Mordekaiser would forge a new empire. They would be the building blocks and mortar of his Afterworld.
— Mordekaiser - Biography
Xerath's stolen power undid one empire in a day. Mordekaiser built two in the mortal world and a third, his Afterworld, out of the souls of everyone who died under his reign, so he ranks above Xerath.
#6. Aatrox
Aatrox is the Darkin Blade, once a champion of Shurima who was "brought before the Sun Disc to become the avatar for a now forgotten celestial ideal" and remade as one of the Ascended. When the rebels of Icathia, a land inside the empire, set the Void loose, it "quickly overwhelmed its Icathian masters, and began the grinding annihilation of all life it encountered." Aatrox and the other god-warriors went to war against it:
After many years of desperate battle, Aatrox and his brethren finally halted the Void’s perverse advance, and seared the largest rifts shut.
— Aatrox - Biography
From Aatrox - Biography
After Shurima fell, the surviving Ascended turned on each other, and mortals began calling them the darkin. In the war against them, "a force greater than a thousand dead suns" pulled Aatrox into his own sword. He now wants to drive "all of creation into a final, apocalyptic battle" in the hope that he and the blade will also cease to exist.
The biography of Pantheon records the day Aatrox fought the Aspect of War, one of the celestial beings that take mortal hosts: "The Darkin’s god-killing blade was driven into Pantheon’s chest, a blow that carved the constellation of War from the heavens." The Aspect faded. Its mortal host, Atreus, survived, later cut off Aatrox's sword arm and saw his namesake star return to the sky.
Aatrox ranks above Mordekaiser because Mordekaiser's power built empires out of mortals, while Aatrox helped hold back the Void and struck down an Aspect. Our read: those deeds reached further.
#5. Zoe
Zoe is the Aspect of Twilight. She was "a normal girl, seemingly chosen at random from among the Rakkor," a people of Targon. Zoe was skipping her lessons when the Aspect of Twilight put six objects in front of her, five of which could have got her out of trouble. She picked the toy ball. Delighted, it opened a portal to the top of the mountain, and she dived in and merged with it.
This transcendence was unique—in fact, it was unheard of in all the myths and legends of Targon. Yet Zoe did not trouble herself with why the rules that govern Aspects had been changed just for her. She didn’t trouble herself with rules at all. Instead, she journeyed to dimensions of reality at the very edge of mortal comprehension, playing with powers seen by few before or since.
— Zoe - Biography
From Zoe - Biography
Back in Runeterra she found that centuries had passed, and "she could traverse the streams of time with only a thought." She also found Aurelion Sol, the star dragon at #1, and learned that her fellow Aspects had crowned him "with a cursed artifact to siphon away his power." She vowed to do what she could to protect him.
Aatrox's biography says "it is said that the Aspect of Twilight gave mortals the knowledge to trap the darkin." That was the Aspect Zoe now carries, long before she did, not Zoe herself; her own biography says its last host "heralded the end of the Great Darkin War." Our read: the being she merged with is the one said to have given mortals the means to trap him, and she crosses realms and time at will, so she ranks above him.
#4. Fiddlesticks
Fiddlesticks is the Ancient Fear, an old horror in the shape of a scarecrow that, in its biography's words, "stalks places thick with fear." Every region of Runeterra tells stories about it, from a monster that rises out of untended graves to a farmhand fed to the crows who came back as a demon. Its biography calls those fables, then says "the truth is far worse."
It has woken again in Demacia, a kingdom whose rural protectorates are now "emptying in mere days", and survivors talk of a scarecrow "that croaks in the stolen voices of the dead."
An evil gone from the world for numberless centuries—long enough that the warnings of a nascent humanity passed into rumor, then myth, then legend… until all that remained were simple fables. An entity so utterly alien that it defies almost all contemporary knowledge of magic. So impossibly ancient that it has always been.
— Fiddlesticks - Biography
Its biography also passes on an older legend: a being "that has no form, no thoughts, and no understanding of the world it inhabits," called "The terror of all living things, given life in that first terrible scream of creation. A demon before demons were known." It frames that as a legend and ends, "At least, that’s what the stories say."
Fiddlesticks ranks above Zoe on what it is. Zoe is a mortal girl who became an Aspect recently by her own clock: for her, "barely a year had passed" before she came home. Fiddlesticks, by its biography, "has always been," and is feared so widely that even animals grow nervous at its name. Our read: a fear that old outranks a new Aspect.
#3. Kindred
Kindred are the Eternal Hunters, Lamb and Wolf, two beings who are always together:
Separate, but never parted, Kindred represents the twin essences of death. Lamb’s bow offers a swift release from the mortal realm for those who accept their fate. Wolf hunts down those who run from their end, delivering violent finality within his crushing jaws. Though interpretations of Kindred’s nature vary across Runeterra, every mortal must choose the true face of their death.
— Kindred - Biography
From Kindred - Biography
Each people of Valoran, the main continent of Runeterra, meets them in its own way: "it is said a true Demacian will turn to Lamb, taking the arrow, while through the shadowed streets of Noxus, Wolf leads the hunt." Even the few who escape them gain nothing. "Kindred waits for those locked in the undeath of the Shadow Isles, for they know all will eventually fall to Lamb’s bow or Wolf’s teeth."
Kindred ranks above Fiddlesticks because Fiddlesticks stalks the places where fear runs high, while Kindred comes for "every mortal." Our read: the end every life meets is the larger power.
#2. Bard
Bard is a celestial being, "a troubadour as enigmatic as he is eternal," who hears the celestial realm, the realm of the stars, as music. His biography starts before the stars:
In the beginning, Bard had drifted without purpose or perspective through a silent cosmos, but with a deep sense of anticipation that something miraculous would eventually come to fill it. Fate did not disappoint, and with the forging of the first stars, the silence was broken and the first rapturous notes of creation rang in Bard’s ear.
— Bard - Biography
From Bard - Biography
In time he heard a dissonance and traced it to Runeterra, whose song "had gone far beyond a mere counterpoint to the celestial whole, and was becoming destructive." He came down in Ionia and "fashioned himself a simple body from the trinkets and fabrics of a traveling shawm-player’s wagon."
Since then he has found objects of "wild and unpredictable power" that don't belong in the world and returned them "to where it can do no further harm." His biography says this "may also be the only way this world can be saved from what lies beyond it," and that he sees "a great conflict approaching—one fought not in any single realm, but in all."
Bard ranks above Kindred because Kindred has stalked Valoran "for as long as its people have known death," while Bard was already drifting through the cosmos before the first stars, and his biography says his work may be "the first step in bringing the universe back in tune." Our read.
#1. Aurelion Sol
Aurelion Sol is the Star Forger, a celestial dragon who makes stars. His biography opens on how old he is:
The almighty being known as Aurelion Sol was already ancient before the rise of the mortal races of Runeterra. Born in the first breath of creation, he and those like him roamed the vast nothingness of a pristine celestial realm, seeking to fill this canvas of incalculable breadth with marvels whose twinkling spectra would bring fulfillment and delight to all who witnessed them.
— Aurelion Sol - Biography
He found this world "bathed in the light of a fairly unremarkable sun he had crafted eons earlier." The Aspects drew him down to Targon, where mortals gave him a crown. It clamped onto his head, let "intelligences vastly inferior to his own" steal "his knowledge of the sun and its creation," and "hurled him back into the heavens."
With his stolen power, the Aspects had the mortals build "a great, gleaming disc" to "raise up immortal god-warriors." His biography calls it the Sun Disc, the disc that raised Aatrox and that Xerath stole Ascension from. From the sky he watched other stars fade "for lack of care and maintenance," and his biography says why that mattered: "It was he who had birthed their light into the universe!"
Aurelion Sol takes #1 over Bard because Bard's biography has him waiting in a silent cosmos until the first stars were forged, while Aurelion Sol makes suns, and even the power stolen from him was enough to raise the god-warriors. Our read.
Honorable Mention: Zilean
Zilean is the Chronokeeper, a mage of Icathia, the land whose council turned to the Void to win its freedom from Shurima. He opposed it: he "would rather his homeland’s revolution be crushed, than to let this abomination be set loose." When the Void broke loose and "Hundreds of thousands of innocents would die," he acted:
In desperation, Zilean urged as many as he could to take refuge in his tower, and did the impossible. He removed the entire structure from time.
— Zilean - Biography
From Zilean - Biography
The Void "was halted, but only within those walls," and outside, "where Icathia once stood, there was nothing." He has since learned to move "back and forth along" the strands of time, and his biography says he "now exists everywhere, and always has."
He sits outside the ten on our read. His power over time could put him near the top, but the one deed his canon records saved a single tower, and he "didn’t know how to undo what he had done to achieve it."
Your Verdict
Vote for the one whose canon you think shows the most power.
Who do you think is the most powerful being in the lore?
