Leona and Home

Leona’s attitude towards his homeland is one of many examples we receive of how rarely Leona’s words match his actions: despite introducing his home as “pointless” and “a real dump,” Kalim points out that Leona is “always talking about complicated stuff like his country’s future.”

Leona says that they are “sittin’ on a mountain of resources, but they don’t think to dig ’em up” and are instead sitting back to watch their country fall into decline. 

Kifaji argues that it “would be foolish to destroy (their) own land simply for economic gain,” but it seems that Leona might be trying to carry on his father’s vision: Leona says that the city began to develop under the king’s rule, “while he was still in good health, anyway.”

This development possibly included a “proper network of roads” in the capital city, though Leona explains that a lot of them aren’t paved, and “once you get out of the city, it’s just savanna. Which means everything’s off-road…and all the dust blowin’ around tends to lead to engine trouble.”

For his 4th-year internship Leona applies to a mining and energy business in Sunset Savanna (Trey: “Did you know where you wanted to apply from the start?” – Leona: “Maybe, maybe not”).

Leona claims that there will be no way an organization in his own country will be calling their own prince incompetent whether he is useful or not (“So I’m gonna let my homeland serve ME”), but from what we have seen he seems to actually have a legitimate interest in developing local infrastructure that he is maybe just not interested in discussing with the other students.

Trey explains, “For all that Leona said, only a small fraction of students with really high grades qualify to apply for that mining and energy internship.”

Ortho says that Sunset Savanna’s current government maintains constant dialogue with its citizens, many of whom oppose developments like land cultivation and mining in favor of more traditional lifestyles.

Idia observes, “So that’s why Leona is interning at a mining and energy research institute. It must be rough being part of a government that can’t run things from the top down. Just thinking about it gives me a major headache.”

And for all of his interest in development, when Vil observes that Sunset Savana really does prioritize the environment Leona responds, “’Bout the only thing it’s got goin’ for it,” as though agreeing that it is a positive aspect of his home.

In a line that was edited in the EN game (retained in the official EN manga) Leona says that he is hated back home, with his overblot monologue touching upon how people will find fault in everything he does in order to praise Falena in comparison.

We have not seen very much of Leona interacting with the locals where he is from, with a palace guard greeting him with “Prince Leona… It has been some time” during Cloudcalling, but otherwise no one except Kifaji and Cheka ever speaking to him.

(Leona has a clubwear line of, “I don’t mind bein’ booed. Feels good; means they’re scared of us. I welcome their hatred.”)

It seems, however, that there are some attendants at the palace who might respect Leona: during the Cloudcalling tournament Cheka’s attendants form the final team that are to stand against the NRC group, declaring that they worked countless hours to achieve their dream of winning but it was for nothing, as they never received guardian lessons from Leona to truly call themselves Sunset Warriors.

It is a little unclear if their priority is just becoming Sunset Warriors and they are ambivalent towards who the second prince actually is as long as they are able to go through the proper procedures, but the hyena beast-person and leader of the team seems satisfied after Leona beats him and says not to rely on others’ teachings, but to dedicate himself to making it on his own: “That strength… It all makes sense now…Hehe… We may have lost, but it seems we still got our lesson after all. No regrets.”