Princess Allura [Voltron: Legendary Defender]

Player: LWP
Character: Princess Allura
Current Canon Point: Season 4, Episode 6
Updated Canon Point: Season 6, Episode 6

Updated Background: (Why do I keep updating Allura two seasons at a time, and why do the Wiki pages not update her background? T-T)

So! The good news from Naxzela is that the giant planet bomb didn’t blow up AND Keith didn’t die! All thanks to… Lotor? Who immediately requests a “discussion” with Team Voltron in exchange. We don’t see this discussion and the first face-to-face meeting between the Paladins of Voltron and the exiled prince (because canon is horrible about skipping over a good third of these big dramatic moments), but when we begin Season Five it’s with Lotor trapped in a cell on the Castle and feeding the paladins information on bases and missions in a bid for freedom. Still, given his penchant for playing the team like fiddles in the past, Allura and Shiro are very slow to trust him. That is, until he offers up an irresistible bit of info: the location of Sam Holt, Pidge and Matt’s father. The Holt siblings and a few rebel allies infiltrate a prison camp for captive scientists and free the prisoners, but it turns out that while Sam WAS there, he’s already been moved. Shortly afterwards, they receive a transmission… from Zarkon: a trade offer of Sam for Lotor. After lots and LOTS of arguing over what to do and ethics vs practicality (including Lotor trying to slip in an offer of a political marriage with Allura at one point, which she ignores and Lance does NOT like at all), eventually Team Voltron decides to take the deal. Shiro and the Holt siblings bring Lotor down to the surface of a designated planet for the hostage exchange, and quelle surprise, Zarkon almost sends them over a hologram and makes off with the real Lotor. But then LEGITIMATE surprise: Shiro slipped the captive Lotor the Black Bayard. There’s a LOT of scuffling, but eventually it ends with Shiro and the Holts rescuing Sam, and Zarkon and Lotor fighting to the death… with Lotor victorious.

Once they’re back on the Castle, Allura is surprised that Lotor- now trusting him just enough to let him be free on the Castle- seems upset after killing his father. Still, she’s not quite as keen as Shiro on the idea of escorting Lotor to the Kral Zera, the rite and competition to crown the new Emperor of the Galra. Not only is it too dangerous to waltz into a gathering of the strongest leaders of their enemies, Allura is unhappy with Shiro’s stunt with the Black Bayard and how it could have compromised the exchange. The team is equally divided on the subject, arguing back and forth with Shiro trying to pull rank and even snapping at Lance for trying to mediate. She and Lance bond later over Lance’s bayard taking the form of an Altean broadsword and assure each other about their use to the team and tensions with Shiro. Things seem to resolve after they fight off a forest-controlling Galra weapon and Shiro and Lance make up. Still, neither Lotor nor Shiro are able to persuade the team that going to the Kral Zera is a smart call. The Black Paladin takes the opposing opinions with the dignified and reasonable response of sneaking Lotor out of the castle in the Black Lion in the middle of the night so they can get him crowned emperor. The other paladins chase after them and arrive just in time to provide Shiro backup to save him from being fired upon by every major flagship in the Galra Empire, and to witness Lotor light the Kral Zera flames.

Surprisingly, Lotor’s first act as emperor is NOT to stab Team Voltron in the back, but to create a formal alliance with them, inviting the team aboard his flagship and even taking Allura for a private tour of Haggar’s archives. Lotor says he brought her here is because he believes that by unlocking the lost art of Altean alchemy, he can provide the Galra with an unlimited supply of quintessence, removing their need to raid other planets for it and ending the war. During their search for anything leading to Oriande- the fabled birthplace of alchemy- Lotor reveals his half-Altean ancestry and Allura suggests that perhaps Honerva- Zarkon’s consort and Lotor’s mother- is actually Haggar. Alongside this new trust between them, they also discover a compass stone containing a map to the real Oriande. The team follows the map to a white hole and discover that only Allura and Lotor have been “chosen” to enter the portal inside; trying to all go in leaves the Lions and the Castle drained of power and with slowly dwindling oxygen. Allura and Lotor enter Oriande, and during the climb up to the mountain temple they bond more over their desires to preserve other cultures and how Lotor wants nothing to do with his father’s way of ruling. They pass the temple’s trials together until they’re separated for their final test: they’re sent to an astral plane against a white lion trying to attack them. Allura dodges as best she can, and she eventually realizes that to learn the secret of life, she needs to offer her own. She lets the lion leap at her, INTO her, and she’s transported to a final plane of existence where her potential is fully unlocked, and she is taught alchemy’s secrets. Lotor, who sees alchemy as a prize to be gained and attacks his lion, is banished to the temple’s entrance. They return to the Castle and Allura restores power to the downed systems before everyone suffocates, and Lotor sincerely congratulates her success.

From then on Allura and Lotor continue working together to improve Lotor’s Sincline ships with alchemy and to garner more support and acceptance of his emperorship from the rest of the splintered empire, developing a romantic chemistry between them. During one mission to protect a Galra outpost from solar flares, Lance pushes Allura out of the way of an energy eruption from a broken piece of radiation shielding, taking the blast himself and either dying or coming VERY close to it. Thankfully Allura is able to reach Red and uses her newfound alchemy to save Lance’s life. Eventually Lance confesses to the mice that he’s in love with her and feels that he can’t measure up to Lotor. Even though the mice pretend to sleep through it, they later report his confession to Allura herself, leaving her confused. Despite the news, however, she continues to treat Lance as a friend- including joining everyone in a game of Monsters and Mana- and work with Lotor, eventually progressing enough in their projects to fly a Sincline ship with the emperor into the interdimensional rift. The experience awes them both, and when they return to the Castle they share a kiss.

The second they step onto the bridge, however, it’s to everyone aboard- including a returned, somehow two-years-older Keith, his mother Krolia, and a space wolf- telling her to step away from Lotor. Allura demands to know what’s going on, when one more face appears: an Altean girl named Romelle. She tells Allura that Lotor had brought refugee Alteans to a hidden settlement after Altea’s destruction, and has been harvesting thousands of Alteans’ quintessence for his research. Lotor tries to defend his actions as an endeavor to save Altean culture, and that the lives he sacrificed were to work towards a better future. Betrayed and disgusted by this reveal, Allura throws Lotor so hard he bounces across the room and is knocked out cold. Just then, though, Lotor’s former generals attack the Castle and Haggar takes full control of Shiro, and all of them escape with Lotor and the Sincline ships. Everyone gets to their Lions- with Keith finally taking command of the Black Lion- but despite their best efforts to pursue the ships, the Lions lose them through a wormhole that only Keith reaches in time. To make matters even worse, Shiro had planted a virus on the Castle to shut down all the systems and would have caused it to explode if Pidge hadn’t managed to counteract it. Everyone sets to work trying to get the Castle operational again, but without a fight to focus on, Allura’s thoughts begin to mire in her guilt for trusting Lotor and her doubt in her own judgement. Lance notices and comforts her, telling her Lotor fooled them all, even him, and that the team still trusts her and needs her. She pulls him into an embrace, and as the words and his support sink in, the grief, trust, and love are all strong enough to pull her back to Verens.


Updated Personality: Things had been going fairly well for Allura at first. Keith still lives, Zarkon is killed and at least part of the Galra empire is now working with them to help stop the war, and she’s able to search for and reclaim an important piece of Altean culture, giving her more closure on her past and hope for the future of the universe. And while Allura displayed quite a bit more caution about Lotor at the start- showing that she’s learning a bit from all the times she’s been duped before- she does warm up to him as he shows himself to be a more serious ally, starting when he shows a bit of remorse for killing his father. (Maybe she felt a bit of sympathy for him, having to do the same with Alfor’s AI.) It’s still slower than she’s warmed up to people before, but she manages to strike a good balance between caution and giving people the benefit of the doubt, two lessons she’s worked hard to learn over the course of the journey. Eventually she and Lotor start opening up to each other about their yearnings to revive parts of Altea’s legacy, Lotor’s struggle against his family and Zarkon’s way of ruling the Empire, and their goals for a peaceful future for the universe. This is someone she has a lot of common with, someone who understands her and who she can work with, someone she might even love. Even learning about Lance’s feelings for her doesn’t slow her down much even though he’s become a much closer friend to her too, most likely because the mice told her so it wasn’t her secret to know (and because the next episode is a filler, so not much time for them to focus on her reactions to things, and the one after THAT is the reveal).

And then she learns that Lotor’s been hiding her people, tricking them into being farmed for quintessence, and hiding it all from her, MINUTES after her first kiss with him! AND she’d been helping basically assemble his own Voltron AND open up the big interdimensional rift that destroyed Daibazaal and turned Zarkon and Honerva into space zombies, AND it turns out Shiro was a sleeper agent clone this whole time and she didn’t even notice! So she has a lot of guilt on her heart when she comes back. The pep talk from Lance helps a bit, and her development in both realities will mean she’s more open to being comforted, but it’s still something she needs to work through a bit more. And on top of all that, she’s now starting to realize she might be returning Lance’s feelings for her, but that’s complicated by not just the heartbreak from Lotor back home but grieving the relationship with Matt she had in Empatheias.


Updated Abilities: SO! Alchemy! For something as important and powerful as this is supposed to be and how much Lotor goes on and on and on about it, it’s… actually not very well defined how it differs from the regular energy/quintessence manipulation that Allura ALREADY has. (Heck, even when she reaches that final alchemy nirvana, all she’s told is that “the power’s already inside you”!) Some notable uses include imbuing Lotor’s comet ships with Voltron-like powers, enhanced manipulation of the quintessence in the Rift which already enhances quintessence abilities, and healing and even soul manipulation (albeit with Shiro still needing a healing pod to make that last bit “stick”), but it’s not quite explained how it works beyond energy transference, if it has any hard limits beyond the users’ knowledge and energy reserves (which also increase significantly), or how exactly it differs from standard Altean powers. All in all, it’s still “Allura touches something, everything glows, cool things happen,” just on a bigger scale than before.

So for the sake of simplicity and keeping her from being even more OP than she is already, I’ll have her alchemy nerfed to just the physical healing, which she wasn’t confirmed to be able to do for non-giant sentient planet lifeforms before. By imbuing a body with quintessence, Allura can heal a lifeform from physical injuries, including resuscitation from near death and/or clinical death (it wasn’t clear which side of that line Lance was on when she healed him). In game, Allura would not be able to resuscitate a person once they’ve died and would not be able to perform feats on the level of head or limb regeneration (sorry, Shiros). Any other limits the mods deem necessary would be followed, and of course major healing with regards to chronic injuries and disease or prevention of death would be discussed with the players involved.

Other: There needs to be some kind of consolation prize for having the Worst First Kiss EVER with someone, because Allura definitely qualifies for it…

Questions: Any other limits you’d like to see for the alchemical healing?