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Kayle, the Righteous
Voiced by:
Zehra Fazal (English)
Noora Louhimo (As the Pentakill vocalist)
Conchi López (European Spanish)
Rebeca Gómez (Mexican Spanish)
Ayumi Tsunematsu (Japanese)
Mariangela Cantú (Brazilian Portuguese)
So-Yeong Lee (Korean)
Olga Kuznetsova (Russian)
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra
"No human is perfect. But I am not human."
Born to a Targonian Aspect at the height of the Rune Wars, Kayle honored her mother’s legacy by fighting for justice on wings of divine flame. She and her twin sister Morgana were the protectors of Demacia for many years—until Kayle became disillusioned with the repeated failings of mortals, and abandoned this realm altogether. Still, legends are told of her punishing the unjust with her fiery swords, and many hope that she will one day return...
Born to a Targonian Aspect at the height of the Rune Wars, Kayle honored her mother’s legacy by fighting for justice on wings of divine flame. She and her twin sister Morgana were the protectors of Demacia for many years—until Kayle became disillusioned with the repeated failings of mortals, and abandoned this realm altogether. Still, legends are told of her punishing the unjust with her fiery swords, and many hope that she will one day return...
Kayle is a Specialist champion who drastically escalates in power and range the longer the game goes on, delivering swift justice upon her foes and divine aid upon her allies.
- Her passive, Divine Ascent, causes Kayle to ascend into a new divine form after she reaches certain levels, changing her appearance and the properties of her basic attacks.
- She starts the game as Zealous and strictly melee, with her basic attacks granting her an attack speed bonus, stacking up to five times. At maximum stacks, Kayle becomes Exalted, gaining bonus movement speed.
- At level six she becomes Arisen, gaining a second set of wings and transitioning from melee to ranged.
- At level eleven she becomes Aflame, losing her helmet and gaining a third set of wings, causing her basic attacks while Exalted to launch waves of fire in the target's direction that damage all enemies in their path.
- At level sixteen she becomes Transcendent, turning her wings golden and splitting her blade in two, becoming permanently Exalted and further increasing the range of her basic attacks.
- Her first ability, Radiant Blast, sends out a blade of light in a target direction that explodes upon hitting an enemy, damaging, slowing and reducing the armor and magic resistance of all enemies caught in the blast.
- With her second ability, Celestial Blessing, Kayle blesses herself and a nearby allied champion, healing both targets and briefly increasing their movement speed.
- Her third ability, Starfire Spellblade, passively causes Kayle's basic attacks to deal bonus magic damage. When activated, her next basic attack becomes a projectile that deals bonus damage based on the target's missing health. After becoming Aflame, the projectile also explodes to damage other foes around the target.
- With her ultimate ability, Divine Judgement, Kayle channels as she bestows divine protection upon herself or a nearby allied champion, making them completely immune to damage for a few seconds. After a brief delay, a barrage of purging swords falls around the target, dealing heavy damage to nearby enemies.
Kayle's skins include Silver Kayle, Viridian Kayle, Transcended Kayle, Battleborn Kayle, Judgement Kayle, Aether Wing Kayle, Riot Kayle, Iron Inquisitor Kayle, Pentakill Kayle, PsyOps Kayle, Dragonslayer Kayle, Pentakill III: Lost Chapter Kayle, Sun-Eater Kayle, Immortal Journey Kayle, Empyrean Kayle, and Prestige Empyrean Kayle.
In season 1 of Teamfight Tactics, Kayle is a Tier 5 Noble Knight. Her ability, Divine Judgement, temporarily makes the ally with lowest health percentage completely immune to damage - on higher star levels, it can affect multiple allies. She was removed in season 2. She returns in season 3 using her Aether Wing Kayle skin as a 4 cost Valkyrie Blademaster. Her ability is Divine Ascent, which causes her attacks to launch waves that deal additional magic damage to enemies hit for the rest of the round. She was removed alongside the other Valkyrie champions in the Return to the Stars mid-set update. She returns in season 4's Festival of Beasts mid-set update as a Tier 4 Divine Executioner using her Transcended Kayle skin. Her ability remains unchanged apart from being renamed to Ascend. In season 5, she uses her Viridian Kayle skin as a Tier 5 Redeemed Verdant Legionnaire. Her ability, while retaining the name Divine Ascent from season 3, is instead a passive that causes Kayle to ascend every few seconds up to four times, giving her a different boost each time. Kayle's first ascension causes her basic attacks to deal bonus true damage based on her attack damage, her second causes her basic attacks to deal her full attack damage and the bonus true damage to enemies around her target, her third causes every fifteenth basic attack to briefly make Kayle immune to damage, and her final ascension makes her basic attacks call down a barrage of swords that deal additional magic damage around her target. She loses her Verdant origin due to the removal of the trait in the Dawn of Heroes mid-set update. She was removed in season 6, returning in season 8 using her PsyOps Kayle skin as a Tier 1 Underground Duelist. Her new Starfire Spellblade ability empowers her next three basic attacks to deal bonus percent attack damage to her target and magic damage in a 1-hex radius around them. In season 9, she returns to using her base skin as a Tier 1 Demacia Slayer. Here, her Divine Ascent ability grants Kayle passive bonuses based on her Tactician's level. At Level 1, Kayle's basic attacks deal bonus magic damage. At Level 6, every third attack launches a wave that deals the bonus magic damage and applies a magic resistance shred to enemies hit. At Level 9, the wave travels farther and every basic attack launches a wave. In season 10, she uses her Pentakill Kayle skin and is a Tier 2 Pentakill Edgelord. Her Fires of Ascension ability causes her basic attacks to deal bonus magic damage in a cone behind her target and shred the magic resist of enemies hit for a few seconds. Once the spell's duration expires, she deals a final burst of magic damage around her current target.
In Legends of Runeterra, Kayle is a 5-mana 1/5 Targon Champion who passively gains +1/+0 for each time an ally has attacked with buffed Power, and grants all allies +1/+0 (+1/+1 if she's levelled up) when she's summoned. Her abilities scale further as her power increases. At 6 power, she gains Quick Attack. At 11 power, she levels up at the start of the round, gaining +1/+1 and Overwhelm and granting allies a further +1/+1. Finally, at 16 power, her Quick Attack upgrades to Double Attack. Her signature spell is Kayle's Divine Judgment.
Kayle has two main incarnations that have existed, her original version from 2009, and her Visual-Gameplay Update from 2019. Both versions will have respective folders with tropes specific to them.
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In General
- Cain and Abel: She's twin sisters with Morgana, and the two have been enemies with one another ever since the dawn of Demacia. .
- Combat Medic: Despite her huge emphasis on damage-dealing, she also has several supporting abilities to heal allies or render them completely invulnerable to damage.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Her ultimate, Intervention, which makes an allied target immune to all damage for a few seconds. Properly timed, this ability can largely nullify the abilities of the enemy team and pretty much the very purpose of the mage and assassin champion archetypes. Communication with her team can pay huge dividends if she coordinates to use Intervention offensively on someone who can wreak havoc on the enemy team with abandon- trying this on someone that's unaware of her intentions will likely just waste it.
- Face Framed in Shadow: Prior to her VGU, Kayle's face was completely hidden in the shadows while wearing her helmet. Initially on the rework, her splash art was designed so that you could faintly see her human face through it, but this has since been undone, and her face is now completely obscured again.
- Flaming Sword: She carries one or both halves of one belonging to her and Morgana’s mother, the Aspect of Justice. Her attacks take on more fiery properties as she evolves.
- Glass Cannon: As immensely powerful as her damage gets, Kayle's biggest weakness throughout all stages of the game is her lack of durability and few escapes. Even with her invincibility ultimate, she can't attack while casting it on herself.
- Good Is Not Soft: She ascribes by the Demacian values of justice (and in fact, was the inspiration behind them back when Demacia was originally just an anti-magic refugee settlement). Case in point, during "In the Fires of Justice", Kayle descends to punish a wicked tyrant from rewriting the laws of his decaying land and planning to Kill the Poor, saving his subjects and allowing them to rebuild in the name of justice and honor... but did so by obliterating the king and his corrupt followers in holy fire, seeing them as utterly irredeemable for their crimes.
- Heal It With Fire: When she's not using it to smite evildoers, Kayle has an ability to heal herself and allies using her celestial fire.
- Lady of War: She carries herself with a stoic reserve and duty to justice. Combined with her beautiful gold and white armor, angelic wings, and glowing BFS, she shows herself to be graceful female paladin.
- Light Is Not Good: In many ways Morgana definitely feels this way about her. Also, at one point she was one of the few purely good champions, but her lore update made her a more conflicted figure.
- Magikarp Power: Post-VGU: Highlighted to a pretty extreme extent with her passive. Kayle in the early game lacks damage and range and must play carefully around her enemies, but her level-based power spikes are crazy (each rank effectively eliminates a core weakness; her first ascension gives her reliable range, her second gives her valuable waveclear, etc.), and by the late game, she'll be able to deal some enormous hybrid DPS and have some additional and powerful support utility at her disposal, becoming a very dangerous monster even if she's behind.
- Meaningful Name: Her name might be derived from caelum ('cale-UHM', Latin: 'sky','heaven') and/or Kelila (Hebrew: 'laurel wreath'), both are very fitting for an angel.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Her Ultimate gives an herself or an ally this for a few seconds.
- Our Angels Are Different: Kayle and Morgana aren't actually angels, post-VGU at least. Prior to their 2019 relaunch, they were indeed winged divine beings, but Riot moved away from this due to cultural connotations that clashed with the setting/story progression. But it continues to be their aesthetic, with Kayle in particular bringing to mind Archangel Michael. She has multiple wings, wields the power of celestial starfire, and is enshrined in beautiful gold and white colors. She also mixes in elements of Valkyrie mythology, being an armored, valiant leader of Demacian armies.
- The Paladin: Kayle still fits traditional criteria for the archetype, from the holy veneer to the mixed offensive and supporting gameplay.
- Really 700 Years Old: She and her sister have been around since the origins of Demacia, making them centuries old. Her old lore went even further; she was fighting in the war in her own world for over ten thousand years.
- Retcon: In the original lore, Kayle and Morgana were angels fighting for dominance over a divine, heavenly realm beyond Runeterra. With her 2019 VGU, both of them were brought much closer to earth, exploring their mortal origins and better detailing Kayle's exact relationship with Morgana.
- Splash Damage Abuse: Holy Fervor, and her new empowered autos and Starfire Spellblade, gives her attacks additional range and an area of effect, making it possible to shred multiple opponents at once by attacking the only one within her reach.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Compared to Morgana, she's seems to be more of a tomboy — she's heavily armored and utilizes her physical attacks more, though both use their abilities heavily as part of their gameplay. Taken to the max with her reveal as the boisterous female vocalist of Pentakill.
- Winged Humanoid: She received wings after first picking up her mother's power, obviously evoking of an angel or valkyrie, with her artwork most commonly being depicted as having two pairs. In-game, she begins with one pair, but gradually escalates as the game goes on, with up to three pairs.
Modern Kayle (Post-VGU)
- Ancestral Weapon: According to Kayle's writer, the swords Kayle summons for her ultimate once belonged to former Aspects of Justice, all being called down to rain truth and justice upon the world.
- Angst? What Angst?: Invoked: she believes she must abandon her human emotions in order to represent Justice. The fact that she is human and she can't do that is the struggle at the core of her characterization.
- Art Evolution: She received a substantial facelift in 2019 with a full VGU, rebuilding her design, animations, VFX, splash artwork, voiceover, etc. from scratch and up to modern standards.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Landing successive attacks is key to unleashing Kayle's full damage potential, as her stats increase once she's Exalted. By the late game, this results in champ that can rain fiery death with auto-attacks alone, since her attacks now strike multiple enemies and scale with her ability power.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Kayle isn't an especially common champion in large part due to having one of the most drastic scaling curves in the game, for better and for worse. On one hand, her late-game strengths are the stuff of nightmares for the enemy team, able to dish out incredible high-DPS hybrid damage while buffing herself and her allies, including making them straight-up invincible at will, making her what is statistically among the deadliest champions in the game. The issue is actually getting to that point — on top of having a pretty sluggish early game (for one, she has to begin in melee until she gets her ultimate), Kayle's major power spikes come not from accumulating gold and getting items (though that is important), but from the personal utility she gets from reaching certain levels, a paradigm that isn't as easy to get a direct advantage in than with gold. Consequently, Kayle lacks the ability to create a definite lead for herself to snowball into a victory as seen with other hypercarries, and what usually ends up happening is that even if she gets a few early kills and a gold advantage, she won't really have a change in gameplay performance until she reaches the crucial levels to give her the features that no enemy wants to fight.
- Balance Buff: Kayle had historically been known to be an almost full Jack of All Trades champion, developing a more specialized reputation as a Combat Medic who fights using relentless ranged auto-attacks and scales like crazy with devastating hybrid damage. However, a lot of this was hampered as her kit had very little options of expression, in turn making her balanced as a skillshot-less beatstick whose efficacy was based entirely around stats, not helped by some of the clunkiness of her abilitiesnote . Her 2019 VGU addressed these problems by shifting these elements into more expressive means; she still has her supporting capabilities (including her invincibility ultimate), she still has armor/magic resistance shred but now tied to a proper skillshot ability, she still has the melee-to-ranged evolution tweaked to now be an automatic process, and she has a much more definitive gameplay curve of "farm safely, level up, demolish the late game teamfights" accentuated by the dynamic evolution of her passive.
- Been There, Shaped History: She and Morgana were part of Demacia and gained their celestial powers back when it was merely a refugee settlement. It's said that Kayle's legend helped shape the culture and law of Demacia into becoming the proud military kingdom by the present day, with her being venerated as "The Winged Protector".
- Being Good Sucks: Make no mistake, while Kayle sees it as her divine duty to carry on the will of the Aspect of Justice, sculpting herself into what she sees fit to best carry it out, she isn't so much relinquishing her humanity to do so as she is sacrificing it for the greater good. As adamant in her quest to seeking divinity as she is, a few of her lines imply she's disappointed in what she's had to give up to do so.
- Black-and-White Morality: Her service as a judicator blessed by the Aspect of Justice's powers has led her to develop this worldview, which combines very dangerously with her..."direct" approach.
- Characterization Marches On: The very original incarnation of Kayle was that of an incorruptibly pure angel; one who was willing to fight, but firmly one of the most morally "good" characters in the entire roster. With her 2019 VGU greatly reinventing her and Morgana's place in the current-day lore, Kayle has since been rewritten as still Lawful good, but in some decisions conflicting paladin, one whose humanity brushes up against her divine duty as a half-Aspect of Justice, and one whose actions in the name of purity and righteousness makes her quite frightening.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: At least in her base skin, Kayle's wings are a blue-ish white by default, which glow a bright red once she becomes Exalted. Once she reaches Transcendent status, they start glowing a bright gold.
- Costume Evolution: Compare to her original armor, which was much heavier and prominently gold, as well as keeping her face obscured at all times, Kayle's new default look is sleeker and has a greater emphasis on white, while retaining some gold accents. She also loses more of the armor as she evolves in-game.
- Darker and Edgier: Her post-VGU characterization is significantly more conflicted than in her prior incarnation, which Riot painted as one of the most pure and "good" champions of the game. With her relaunch, she's not a literal angel whose divinity is universal, but a flawed, if powerful judicator who sees justice as worth fighting for, but finds mortal emotion to be a hindrance, including her own.
- Divergent Character Evolution: A case of a single character across multiple skins. Several of Kayle's earlier skins were merely Palette Swaps, but with her full 2019 VGU, they were all redesigned with unique visual identities in mind. The most notable was her extremely rare Unmasked Kayle (which was merely her base skin with her helmet off, something she now currently does from level 11 onward anyway), which was rebuilt as a completely unique Transcendent Kayle skin.
- Dual Wielding: When she reaches Aflame status, she splits her BFS into twin blades to swing at enemies.
- Emotions vs. Stoicism: One part of the conflict between her and Morgana, with Kayle taking the Stoicism side. She believes that as part of her duty as the Aspect of Justice's legacy, she must eschew mortal emotion in order to best properly define and act upon the guilty. This puts her at a cross with Morgana, who instead believes in atonement and moral complexity, and instead embraces emotions and empathy to help those who she rationalizes deserve it.
- Everyone Has Standards: Being an objectively-operating judicator, she's able to tell that Demacia has strayed far away from what she originally left it as and isn't happy with how it turned out. By this same token, however, she believes that while Sylas was innocent at one point, that point has long since passed.
- Evolving Attack: Divine Ascent greatly affects how her basic attacks work, turning her from a slow melee combatant to a ranged powerhouse with hybrid damage and AoE as she levels up.
- Famed In-Story: Her mark on Demacian history, laws, and values has been well-documented, and she remains venerated as "The Winged Protector".
- Fatal Flaw: Hers according to her writers is her self-righteousness and ability to blind herself to her own flaws and mistakes. While she does believe in her rhetoric, Kayle denies the possibility that she may not be as fit for her position as she believes, and even when she does admit her past failings, she downplays their present effect by emphasizing that they were in the past, as if to insist that she has since overcome them.
- Foil: There is a lot you can analyze by comparing and contrasting Kayle with her twin sister, Morgana. Visually, Kayle is a sword-wielding warrior adorned in gold and whites, evocative of angels and valkyries, while Morgana is a magic-user associated with dark purples, designed more in line with a Fallen Angel or Lady of Black Magic archetype. Personality-wise, Kayle is stoic, impartial, and seeks to fulfill her divine duty serving the Aspect of Justice through retributive justice, whereas Morgana is emotion-based, openly rational, and rejects such a duty in favor of helping the mortals. In gameplay, Kayle is an offensive Combat Medic whose damage scales to incredibly high degrees as the game goes on, while Morgana is a Simple, yet Awesome catcher who specializes in locking down opponents or preventing the same fate for her allies. And Kayle can place a shield on allies that can absorb infinite amounts of damage without breaking, but still leaves them vulnerable to CC effects that can hold them in place until it wears off, while Morgana's shield only prevents a set amount of exclusively magic damage before breaking, but renders the target completely immune to CC effects.
- Gathering Steam: Her passive is a two-parter and while the first part of it is solidly a Magikarp Power — with Kayle unlocking more and more powerful forms as she levels up — the second half falls squarely into this trope, growing in lethality as she engages in combat and fading off again when she isn't. By the time she reaches level 16, she no longer needs to gather steam to fight at her full potential.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: The whole shtick behind Kayle's Divine Ascent is that it's meant to represent a condensed version of her lifetime, where she slowly suppresses her humanity in order to grow more powerful as a divine being.
- God Is Flawed: While Kayle is a capable and powerful descendant of the Aspect of Justice, despite her claims, she is (or at least was) a human who experiences emotion and vices, which unfortunately turns on her at the worst times. She is at least aware of this and wants to overcome her flaws, allowing herself to be the judicator worthy of her mother's power, but a significant emotional attachment still stands to block her path: Morgana.
- Gold and White Are Divine: Gold and white make up the majority of her palette, and accentuate her angelic image.
- Holy Hand Grenade: Her entire kit's theme, though only one of her abilities deals instant damage by itself.
- Hotter and Sexier: Her original character design was so heavily armored that Samus Is a Girl came into play at times, since the only feminine things about her was her voice and somewhat-slim waist. Her current character design is more or less a bodysuit with a few armored portions, which evoked direct comparisons to Zero-Suit Samus. At least part of this is shift was done to better communicate her lack of durability in combat, something her original, bulkier design was a little more misleading in.
- I Am the Noun: When her Aether Wing skin gets a Pentakill:
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Aside from their drastically different outfits and hair color, she and Morgana both share the same improbably spiky hairstyle (each one spiking the opposite direction). Hilariously, while Morgana chides Kayle for keeping hers styled the same way for centuries, Kayle accuses Morgana of copying her.
- Inspector Javert: So much so that she's even been directly compared to the trope namer by her developers.
- Judge, Jury, and Executioner: She finds her duty as inheritor of the Aspect of Justice's power to serve as this, to uphold the laws of Demacia and purge those she recognizes as wicked. It should be noted, however, that she does not believe that All Crimes Are Equal; your punishment will be no more or less than what the law dictates, but to those whose crimes are just that severe, the death penalty is an accepted sentence.
- The Righteous
- Legacy Character: Curiously downplayed. While she does share half of her mother's power, as well as possessing her temperament and motivations, her biography doesn't directly state that she is the new Aspect of Justice following her mother, merely that she's its legacy.
- Like Mother, Like Daughter: She desires to take on her late mother's duty as the Aspect of Justice, but while Kayle represents retribution, Mihira seems to be balance of Retribution and Redemption.
- Love Is a Weakness: A firm believer of this as per her overall philosophy. She's gone as far as to suppress all feelings of love for others, including her own sister.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Starts off very slowly as melee fighter with very limited ranged options, but said options slowly ramp up as she levels up, becoming fully ranged basic attacks by level 6 and onward, to a point that "melee only" item passives stop working on her.
- Missing Mom: Neither Kayle nor Morgana's backstories make clear what happened to their mother that resulted in them receiving her powers, and part of Kayle's centuries-long disappearance at Mount Targon has been spent searching for her.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Her clash with Morgana resulted in their beloved father dying from the collateral damage. From that moment forward, Kayle swore to never let her human emotions rule her again... but also made Morgana into a clear enemy in the process.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: An interesting case where Kayle herself wasn't directly responsible, but rather her protégé, Ronas. Had he not attempted to imprison Morgana — someone Kayle still had a soft spot for but seemingly violated the entire rhetoric of their order — without Kayle's actual consent or even notice, Morgana very likely wouldn't have killed him in self defense, leading to a disastrous rift in their relationship.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted; Kayle's modern Demacian moniker of "The Protector" is comparable to Taric's status as Aspect of the Protector, though the titles are unrelated.
- Pet the Dog: Deconstructed; despite their animosity and Kayle's personal insistence of lacking such feelings, Kayle ultimately harbors some degree of affection towards Morgana, having allowed her sister to practice her own form of empathetic, restorative justice even as she was laying the law of the land in the form of cold, retributive justice. This went awry as it was effectively Kayle and the consequences of her Judicators trying to take out Morgana — seeing her as Kayle's weakness — were disastrous for everyone involved, and the fallout only convinced Kayle to further purge herself of moral vices and becoming the purest divine embodiment of retribution.
- Poor Communication Kills: During her reign in proto-Demacia, Ronas, one of her closest Judicator allies, took the initiative to arrest Morgana for being a threat to their rhetoric without properly informing Kayle. When Morgana ended up killing him in self-defense, Kayle — whose relationship was already straining with her sister — assumed that she deliberately murdered him and broke into a violent, irrational rage against her that proved so destructive it accidentally claimed the life of their father.
- Power Gives You Wings: When her powers first awakened, she sprouted a pair of angelic wings. In-game, Kayle starts out with a single pair of wings due to her divine heritage, but as she levels up her passive makes her transform — and the first two transformations manifest mainly in another pair of wings being added to her frame to signal her increased power.Kayle eagerly snatched up one half of [her mother's sword], feathered wings springing forth from her shoulders, and Morgana cautiously followed her example.The Righteous
- Pragmatic Hero: As the legacy to the Aspect of Justice, Kayle wants to simply cut to the chase in defining the guilty from the innocent so she can smite the wicked from the world, and she doesn't intend there to be a court of appeal.
- Pure Is Not Good: She aspires to be a perfect engine of Justice, punishing the wicked without bias, malice, or remorse. At higher levels, or in her other skins, she appears to have succeeded. This makes her terrifying. However, based on her Lo R apperance, with time she seems to stop denying her emotions and become softer.
- Running Gag: Aside from Morgana, one of the only few things to get Kayle to drop her stoic attitude are yordles, which she repeatedly reacts to not with endearment, amazement, exasperation, or fear, but with utter confusion.(first encountering a yordle champion) "Are you a talking animal? Tiny mortal? Why are you so soft?"
(during her joke emote) "Evil fears only fire. And... yordles, because — what even are they?" - Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: During their days of rule in Demacia, Kayle willingly fudged the rules of judgment and punishment of the guilty to allow Morgana the opportunity to rehabilitate those she personally believed were capable of atonement. Kayle's judicator order, which was entirely built around those upholding those rules to the letter, was not amused.
- Semi-Divine: Neither Kayle or Morgana have properly become one with the Aspect of Justice, but were merely born by it. They each inherited a share of heavenly power, but they are explicitly half-mortal human, half-celestial beings. Because of their unique origins and status, they also have much greater free will as opposed to other Aspects, whose situations are described as two minds merged in a single body.
- Sibling Rivalry: Despite their violent and tragic relationship, around half of their in-game interactions come across as back-and-forth bickering between... well, sisters.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: While Morgana is far more emotionally-driven and empathetic towards individuals seen as outcasts by the law and wanting to help them, Kayle is driven to properly uphold the Aspect of Justice's power, casting judgement and punishment for those at fault, seeing mortal emotion as a hindering complication.
- The Stoic: Kayle seeks to become this as to become a perfect, objective judicator, and generally speaks with a serious and emotionally detached tone. Unfortunately, she's still a victim of human vices that compromise that goal.Morgana: (while attacking Kayle) Feel something! Anything!
Kayle: Why do you think I wear armor, sister? - Sucks at Dancing: Her dance references Elaine's "little kicks" dance from Seinfeld, and it's just as intentionally stiff and awkward-looking as it was in the source material. Given Kayle's personality, this is almost to be expected.
- Sword Beam: Her auto-attacks at full strength become big arcing waves of fire.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: To be expected, she's not exactly happy with Morgana being on her allied team.
- You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Part of her animosity with Morgana is due to how she's chosen to use her half of their mother's celestial power. Kayle believes that it's their divine duty to serve as the fitting legacy to the Aspect of Justice, but is disappointed that Morgana both chooses to devote them for a conflicting and inefficient outlook, as well as for willfully restraining them in an attempt to return to humanity.
Old Kayle (Pre-VGU)
Kayle, the Judicator
Voiced by:
Lisa Lindsley (English)
Noora Louhimo (As the Pentakill vocalist)
Conchi López (European Spanish)
Laura Ayala (Mexican Spanish)
Carla Pompílio (Brazilian Portuguese)
"Justice comes on swift wings."
A great hero and the strongest among her kind, Kayle is an angelic warrior dedicated to purging those beyond redemption. After conflict divided her people, she took up her enchanted armor and flaming sword in the name of order, disowning her very flesh and blood in the process. When Kayle descends upon the field of battle, her justice is swift—for none can escape the light of divine and righteous fury.
A great hero and the strongest among her kind, Kayle is an angelic warrior dedicated to purging those beyond redemption. After conflict divided her people, she took up her enchanted armor and flaming sword in the name of order, disowning her very flesh and blood in the process. When Kayle descends upon the field of battle, her justice is swift—for none can escape the light of divine and righteous fury.
Kayle is a Specialist champion who excels at dealing mixed damage while also supporting her team with her assortment of strong utility spells.
- Her passive, Holy Fervor, causes Kayle's attacks and abilities to reduce the armor and magic resist of enemies they damage, stacking up to five times.
- With her first ability, Reckoning, Kayle smites a nearby enemy with a blast of light, damaging and slowing them.
- Her second ability, Divine Blessing, blesses a nearby allied champion, healing them and granting them a movement speed bonus.
- Her third ability, Righteous Fury, passively causes Kayle's basic attacks to deal bonus magic damage. When activated, Kayle ignites her sword with holy fire for a few seconds, making her basic attacks ranged and causing them to deal even more bonus magic damage that also spreads to enemies around her target.
- With her ultimate ability, [[Intervention, Kayle protects herself or an allied champion with a shield of light, completely blocking all incoming damage to the target for a few seconds.
Kayle's skins include Silver Kayle, Viridian Kayle, Unmasked Kayle, Battleborn Kayle, Judgement Kayle, Aether Wing Kayle, Riot Kayle, Iron Inquisitor Kayle, and Pentakill Kayle.
- Ancient Artifact: Her armor is stated to be enchanted, and the only existing masterpiece of an extinct race of craftsmen.
- Art Evolution: Much of Aether Wing Kayle's art assets were made from scratch, resulting in a much more dynamic model, particle effects, and animations. Her auto-attack animations in specific feel much smoother than the somewhat clunkier ones found in her regular skins, to a point where many Kayle players consider using her Aether Wing skin to be a straight-up buff due to the clarity.
- BFS: One of the largest in the game behind Tryndamere´s and Commando Jarvan. Bonus points for wielding it with one hand.
- Breast Plate: Her old model barely had any feminine features other than a slim waistline. An updated model pushed out her features somewhat. She remains completely covered, but her anatomy is more feminine. Played completely straight by her Battleborn Kayle skin.
- The Faceless: Was always fully-armored with a face-concealing helmet in official pictures of her and in-game. Now there are two skins that can be bought with her helmet off. Her background states she avoids showing her face — this is due to her constant fighting for thousands of years taking a toll on her spirit, and wearing her helmet constantly to fittingly match how she feels the justice she dispenses to be an ugly thing.
- Hidden Buxom: In her classic skin people will often mistake her for a man, but her newer skins show she's definitely not lacking under that armor.
- I Meant to Do That: Her joke with the Aether Wing skin.
- Informed Attractiveness: Was officially described as "incredibly beautiful," but she's also always covered head to toe in official sources...Well◊, she was.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: Seen on her Unmasked and Aether Wing skins, to help her angelic image.
- Jack of All Trades: Kayle used to be literally the only champion in the game who can viably be played in ANY position: top, jungle, mid, ADC or support (although playing her as a primary ADC took some effort since she was only ranged during Righteous Fury, which caused her to push the lane unintentionally, not a good thing during laning). Because of this, she was the only champion in the game that could feasibly make use of any item or build (though obviously this depends on what role she intends to take), leaving her damage options open as to whether to build a hybrid of AP, AD, and/or AS or just focus on AP or AD. As a result, seeing Kayle in the enemy team will tell you very little about what she'll be doing.
- Lethal Harmless Powers: Intervention makes an ally invulnerable for a few seconds, which sounds like the perfect defensive tool to save a teammate. It's suddenly a lot less harmless-looking when a fed ally of hers (which can include herself) uses it offensively to tear through the enemy team with abandon using this window of invulnerability.
- Palette Swap: Her Viridian and Silver Kayle skins were very blatant recolors.
- Samus Is a Girl: Part of the appeal of her original look was the androgyny of her heavy-looking armor, which surprised players when her gender was revealed. Her color scheme is even based on Samus's.
- Shoulders of Doom: She has some pretty big shoulder pads in any skin, especially her Battleborn Kayle skin.
- Theme Song Reveal: Tear of the Goddess reveals Kayle as the newest singer in the Pentakill, adding her angelic voice to the mix of metal and fire.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Her Aether Wing Kayle skin has this as her backstory. The lore also implies this is played COMPLETELY straight and that the utopia is a good thing.