Leona’s Age

While Grim calls Leona “a putz who’s already gotten held back a year,” Leona was not held back for poor grades—having learned all of NRC’s curriculum before he even enrolled—but for poor attendance.

While it is never stated explicitly, it was possibly a calculated decision he made because he does not want to go home: he has several lines about how being at the school is more relaxing than being with his family, how the country is better off with him gone and how he can “barely stand going home at all.”

Leona also enrolled at the age of 17 instead of 16, as most students do, as he had ignored his letter of acceptance until Cheka was born and he decided to leave, making him two years older than others in his grade.

When asked what he hopes to do in the next year Leona responds, “Avoid getting held back. The end,” so It seems that Leona does not wish to repeat another year at NRC.

In the novels it is specified that Leona repeated his second year, but this information has maybe yet to reach the game version of the story:

“Jack had thought that his letter of acceptance from Night Raven College had been a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity. He had never considered the possibility that he may compete with Leona one day due to their age difference, but then Leona had repeated his second year.” – Twst Novel

Something being canon to the novels does not make it canon to the game and a lesson line he has of “I did this last year, too,” is sometimes pointed to as proof that he may have repeated his third-year in game, but how canon the lesson lines are meant to be is a little unclear (he also says “learned something new” and “caught a bird”).

It is also possible that Leona was doing 3rd-year curriculum in his second year much in the same way that Azul creates a potion from third-year final exams, and—in his third year—will be able to say, “I did this last year, too,” without having to repeat a year, so which year exactly it was that Leona repeated can maybe still be considered unspecified in game canon.

Despite Leona’s desire to move onto his fourth year Ruggie says “Leona’s been cuttin’ class so much that he’s in danger of being held back again this year,” and his participation in Master Chef and the lantern event is explained as for class credit.

We see an example of Leona skipping class in his fifth birthday vignette where he stays up through the night reading a history book and then sleeps until noon, waking up shortly before the lunch bell, and considers attending afternoon classes.