HOME | DD

Description

Name: Vitani (meaning "flax" in Swahili)

Parents: Zira & Lāja

Sibling(s): Kovu (younger twin brother), Nuka (half-brother), Afua (half-brother)

Mate(s): [TBA; LOVESICK spoilers ]

Cub(s): [TBA; also LOVESICK spoilers XD]

--

EDIT (8/2/23): Cleaned up some grammar in description and expanded on some bits.

--

Vitani was born as a result of a well-coordinated fling between the matriarch of the Outlands Zira and a rogue named Lāja (Nepali for "shame"), alongside her younger twin brother, Kovu. Unlike her brother whose uncanny appearance to Scar earned him his name, Vitani was not immediately named. Truth be told, Zira didn't have much taste for a daughter; what she'd wanted was a son to enact her revenge against Simba, a boy to act as the reincarnation of the lion she once loved to obsessive ends. But she supposed she could keep her around to be yet another grunt. Due to her lack of significance to Zira early on, it wasn't any desire for certain qualities that earned Vitani her name, but simply the unique color of her eyes. Whereas Kovu had inherited their father's dark coat (just as Zira had been wanting), it seemed his only gift to Vitani was his purple-blue eyes, similar to the flax blossom.

From the moment she could move she was a rough and tumble cub, tussling with everything that moved. As a cub, her very favorite passtime was sparring and wrestling with other cubs, a quality that Zira more preferred Kovu have. Kovu had been a more apprehensive and soft cub in comparison. Where Vitani would attack every termite she saw, Kovu opted more for mercy. So much of Zira's attention went towards Kovu, hyping him up as the prophesized son she believed him to be, while simultaneously attempting to shatter his sensitive nature to toughen him up.

Kovu and Vitani were quite close as cubs. More often than not, Zira's harsh upbringing would cause the soft-spoken twin to break down, but Vitani had always been there to pick him back up. Zira's influence and favoring of Kovu aside, she fostered a very kind and genuine love for her younger brother, naturally understanding him and feeling the need to protect him. She would never cross her mother, having always been the first to support her decisions, but she frequently played the part that Zira was supposed to, lending a kind hand.

As Vitani grew, it became clear just how well she could be made into a tool for Zira's plan. Slowly, Zira began to bend her to her will and form her into the perfect grunt, the perfect soldier. It was through Vitani's bond with Kovu that he was actually able to learn to fight through their childhood tussles, it was her avid support (along with Nuka's) that convinced him to go through with his training, despite his reluctance, it was her steadfast love for their mother that soothed Kovu's doubts toward Zira. Despite this, the twins' respective training drove an unfortunate wedge between them, leading them to become more acquaintances and colleagues as their family morphed into military. While Kovu trained and began to change from the kind cub to a cruel avenger, Vitani threw herself into her own training and rose up within Zira's ranks like no other lion had ever done. She was much like a demon, winning every sparring match, leading the most succesful hunts (though the bar was often low anyway), guarding the Outlands from rogues so fiercely and so easily she earned herself a platoon of other lionesses. She would also earn the nickname "Shetani" -- meaning "devil") for her feral, vicious, and almost sadistic prowess on the battlefield.

Though she was slowly hardening into the monster Zira wanted her to be, a teenager can only bottle up their brewing feelings for so long. You see, from cubhood, Vitani had always known there was something...off about her. She never quite found any interest in the male cubs her age, nor had any interest in having cubs of her own like the other female cubs did. She never stared starry-eyed at her own mother and longed to be a matriarch like her. Instead, sometimes, her eyes would linger on a female friend and feel a tug in her chest that she could never decipher, think sometimes at night that maybe it'd be nice to stay with her pridesisters forever and ever, feelings that she never knew the meanings of -- until Kuuma.

Kuuma was a fellow child soldier in Zira's sick army, the child of one of her original followers from Pride Rock. Among the cruel community of the Outlands, Kuuma was almost defiantly kind to Vitani. She sought her out at meals just to lie with chew roots with her, tag along with her platoon just to spend time with her, joke and nudge her just to get her to crack a smile. Anything she did to get a reaction out of Vitani, it worked. It worked every time, butterflies bursting in Vitani's stomach and making her legs shake as she stood. Kuuma would cuddle against Vitani's side at night and soon enough, Vitani understood everything, as if Kuuma held all the answers to the universe.

Zira could see it from a mile away. Saw the way Vitani's eyes lingered, saw her mask fall while around Kuuma. Saw her softness. It wouldn't be tolerated.

She took care of Kuuma herself, made sure Vitani found the body. Immediately, she understood the message. It was a lesson. Never stray. Never love. In this world, love means weakness and the weak do not survive.

From there, Vitani was jaded and cold, devoting herself to her mother's cause and acting as her sole confidante, just as she wanted. Everything Zira wanted, so did Vitani. She became a shadow of her mother, heartless and unkind, to the point of betraying her baby brother.

As Zira's plan is at last carried out, it all goes awry when Kovu, soft Kovu, falls in love. The moment she saw Kovu spare Simba after the goo-goo eyes he'd been making at that flowery princess, Vitani was resentful. After all their struggles and strife, he thinks he can just fall in love like a coward just like that? And with his target no less? What did Vitani get? Punishment, grief, trauma, a dead partner that never was. Her mother was right. Love is for the weak, and that's just what Kovu is; always has been. She reported back to her mother.

It wasn't till Nuka died that Vitani would feel doubt. It was small, a pang in her heart as she grieved her brother, but it was there. He did nothing but devote himself to Zira. He spent every waking hour grovelling at her feet, making sure she ate through her obsession with revenge, and loving her so unconditionally that not even through her vicious abuse could he ever find any reason to hate her. No one, not even Vitani obeyed Zira more than Nuka. And this was where he ended up. It felt like a sign.

Still, Vitani followed her mother into war, hatred burning in name of her lost brothers, becoming faceless in the shroud of mud and rain. She tore through countless lionesses but they happened to live on prosperous land, healthier, larger. Somewhere along the way, she knew they'd lose and her pridesisters would die.

In a flash of lightning, Kovu and Kiara were there to separate Zira and Simba.

Vitani laid eyes on her brother, standing up to their mother for the first time in their entire lives, and realized he was much stronger than her; he always had been. But it was Kiara who had made her cast away any necessity Vitani placed on this stupid war. The princess sneered at her own father, the boogeyman of her childhood, bigger and stronger even than her monster of a mother, and defended the Outlanders, the lions sent to destroy her, placing just as much value upon them as her own pride. Her courage moved Vitani greatly.

Zira, of course, didn't take kindly to Vitani switching sides and standing with her brother again. Her second time defying her mother and this time she could tell it to her face.

"No, Mother! Kiara's right...Enough."

"If you will not fight, then you will die as well."

And there it was. It was the one time Vitani pleaded with her mother, hoped more than anything that she could find it within her to love her children more than she hated Simba, and not even here, could she let it go. She'd let her down, cast her aside. Vitani had done everything right, been her top soldier, killed for her, spied for her, been a tool for her since her plan formulated...and not once could Zira show an ounce of remorse, hesitation, love towards her. Internally, Vitani was devastated. Beside her, Kovu was disgusted -- and he wasn't the only one.

Her pridesisters were what Zira was not -- a family. Similar to Vitani, they'd also fostered doubts and this whole war has made them see that none of their training had be worth it.

They were all glad to see her gone. In the end, it was only Kovu who gave a reaction to Zira's plunge into the river: a long-suffering sigh, and nothing more.

Vitani would spend a while estranged from everyone else, roaming the edges of the Pridelands as she had in the Outlands, visiting only occassionally to see her younger brother. The two attempted to ease back into relationship, but it surely wouldn't be easy, considering all the trauma their mother had caused.

Still, they had one another -- always have, always will.

--

Quite the doozy of a description. As we all know, Vitani's my favorite character, so I do the most thinking about her and her character. There's obviously more to her story, but I wanted to limit these character profiles to the bounds of canon.

As I was writing this, I was like "Isn't this a bit Kovu-centric for Vitani's biography?" But then I realized, "Dang, her life was probably a bit Kovu-centric." It's always been super clear to me that Vitani has a genuine love for her brother, just from the way she immediately tried to play with him while he was clearly in trouble after being caught with Kiara and also the way she caressed his head in Zira's villain song, almost admiringly. In the latter, she could've easily treated him like shit like Nuka had if she didn't really love him, and it really reminded me of how an older sibling would do to a younger one they have a soft spot for. When you connect this with her standing with him in the end, it makes for a heartwarming dynamic that can only really be seen in the background.

I don't know why I linger on it so much -- maybe it's because I'm surprised that a character that's otherwise shown to be ferocious and brutish could show to have that soft spot, maybe it reminds me of how I'd interact with my own younger brother. Either way, it's something I really wish people paid more attention to! It's such an interesting facet of her character.

You've all heard me bellyache about the common depictions of Vitani by the fandom. Often she's one-note -- either she's over-feminized beyond the point of recognition and made into a lovey-dovey housewife for a milquetoaste guy, or she's just bland and used to prove a point because people think they're sticking it to people who take issue with how others characterize her. I hardly see many versions of her where people actually consider her as her own character. She's always sort of used for someone else's development; shockingly, The Lion Guard is no different, making her into a much more feminine, nearly unrecognizable version of herself.

Another thing I wanna address is that no, Kopa is not a part of her backstory. That's WEIRD. To those unaware, it's a very common headcanon to have Vitani and Kopa be friends in cubhood, the friendship gets terminated by Zira, who "kills" Kopa, only for him to survive, Vitani cries because "waahh, my adolescent boyfriend," and he comes back all "cool" and scarred and Sasuke-like, they reunite, fall in love, and have a heterosexual wedding with face paint that fetishizes every Indigenous culture in the book, and have heterosexual babies, living happily ever after heterosexually. Obviously, if you've read my Kopa backstory, you know he's much older than Vitani, is already out of the picture by the events of the sequel, and hardly even crossed paths with Zira. Though, I'm sure many can see some semblance of that common trope in Kuuma, but instead a) showing how ruthless and cruel Zira was and b) giving insight to the sheer impact Zira had on her.

In the end, what I wanted to do was, like my other profiles, give insight to where she falls in the clusterfuck of canon. I hope it all makes sense! As the middle child in a brood of three, the only girl in a dysfunctional family, and a tomboy as a kid, I relate to her like CRAZY. I won't go into the nuances of this (because I've done it already; go find the post yourself >:U) but yes, to me, Vitani is queer, a lesbian, and masculine as fuck! It just fits her! Fight me!!!

RE: HER NAME: I know the origins of Vitani's name are a bit lame and mundane but I figured I'd address the fact that Vitani doesn't actually mean "war" the way people thought for years -- it's "Vita" that means "war" but "Vitani" as a word means "flax" -- and it just so happened to be a coincidence that flax flowers are a purpleish-blue color. I couldn't pass up the opportunity!

I'm sure y'all will be curious about Kovu and Vitani's dad (whose name is Nepali, not Swahili :3c) and why the heck Afua is in here, but in due time, they'll get their own spotlights.

ANYWAY, design stuff:

- The adult design here is how she appears in LOVESICK! So she's healthier and more filled out, while still being lean. And of course, her Lion Guard mark and scars from the war are there. No worries, I plan to make a small one for how she appears in TLK2, just for comparison sake!

- I know it's a common thing for people to match her cheek fluff between cub and adult, but I honestly kinda like that she has two different kinds between cubhood and adulthood. I always figured, hey, maybe she just kept growing but her cheek fluff didn't. idk lol

- She's super scruffy! This isn't an Outlander trait (well, some of it might be, but), she got it from her dad! Same with Kovu. Inspired by @/Silver-Wolf-17's version of Vitani.

- As an added bit: as Vitani gets older, she starts to look more and more like her mom. Her sharp features, her long snout, her devious grin. Trauma for later down the road

--

If you like what I do, I have a KO-FI where you can donate small amounts of money. I'm gonna be moving soon, so every bit helps while things get situated!!

Description

Name: Vitani (meaning "flax" in Swahili)

Parents: Zira & Lāja

Sibling(s): Kovu (younger twin brother), Nuka (half-brother), Afua (half-brother)

Mate(s): [TBA; LOVESICK spoilers ]

Cub(s): [TBA; also LOVESICK spoilers XD]

--

EDIT (8/2/23): Cleaned up some grammar in description and expanded on some bits.

--

Vitani was born as a result of a well-coordinated fling between the matriarch of the Outlands Zira and a rogue named Lāja (Nepali for "shame"), alongside her younger twin brother, Kovu. Unlike her brother whose uncanny appearance to Scar earned him his name, Vitani was not immediately named. Truth be told, Zira didn't have much taste for a daughter; what she'd wanted was a son to enact her revenge against Simba, a boy to act as the reincarnation of the lion she once loved to obsessive ends. But she supposed she could keep her around to be yet another grunt. Due to her lack of significance to Zira early on, it wasn't any desire for certain qualities that earned Vitani her name, but simply the unique color of her eyes. Whereas Kovu had inherited their father's dark coat (just as Zira had been wanting), it seemed his only gift to Vitani was his purple-blue eyes, similar to the flax blossom.

From the moment she could move she was a rough and tumble cub, tussling with everything that moved. As a cub, her very favorite passtime was sparring and wrestling with other cubs, a quality that Zira more preferred Kovu have. Kovu had been a more apprehensive and soft cub in comparison. Where Vitani would attack every termite she saw, Kovu opted more for mercy. So much of Zira's attention went towards Kovu, hyping him up as the prophesized son she believed him to be, while simultaneously attempting to shatter his sensitive nature to toughen him up.

Kovu and Vitani were quite close as cubs. More often than not, Zira's harsh upbringing would cause the soft-spoken twin to break down, but Vitani had always been there to pick him back up. Zira's influence and favoring of Kovu aside, she fostered a very kind and genuine love for her younger brother, naturally understanding him and feeling the need to protect him. She would never cross her mother, having always been the first to support her decisions, but she frequently played the part that Zira was supposed to, lending a kind hand.

As Vitani grew, it became clear just how well she could be made into a tool for Zira's plan. Slowly, Zira began to bend her to her will and form her into the perfect grunt, the perfect soldier. It was through Vitani's bond with Kovu that he was actually able to learn to fight through their childhood tussles, it was her avid support (along with Nuka's) that convinced him to go through with his training, despite his reluctance, it was her steadfast love for their mother that soothed Kovu's doubts toward Zira. Despite this, the twins' respective training drove an unfortunate wedge between them, leading them to become more acquaintances and colleagues as their family morphed into military. While Kovu trained and began to change from the kind cub to a cruel avenger, Vitani threw herself into her own training and rose up within Zira's ranks like no other lion had ever done. She was much like a demon, winning every sparring match, leading the most succesful hunts (though the bar was often low anyway), guarding the Outlands from rogues so fiercely and so easily she earned herself a platoon of other lionesses. She would also earn the nickname "Shetani" -- meaning "devil") for her feral, vicious, and almost sadistic prowess on the battlefield.

Though she was slowly hardening into the monster Zira wanted her to be, a teenager can only bottle up their brewing feelings for so long. You see, from cubhood, Vitani had always known there was something...off about her. She never quite found any interest in the male cubs her age, nor had any interest in having cubs of her own like the other female cubs did. She never stared starry-eyed at her own mother and longed to be a matriarch like her. Instead, sometimes, her eyes would linger on a female friend and feel a tug in her chest that she could never decipher, think sometimes at night that maybe it'd be nice to stay with her pridesisters forever and ever, feelings that she never knew the meanings of -- until Kuuma.

Kuuma was a fellow child soldier in Zira's sick army, the child of one of her original followers from Pride Rock. Among the cruel community of the Outlands, Kuuma was almost defiantly kind to Vitani. She sought her out at meals just to lie with chew roots with her, tag along with her platoon just to spend time with her, joke and nudge her just to get her to crack a smile. Anything she did to get a reaction out of Vitani, it worked. It worked every time, butterflies bursting in Vitani's stomach and making her legs shake as she stood. Kuuma would cuddle against Vitani's side at night and soon enough, Vitani understood everything, as if Kuuma held all the answers to the universe.

Zira could see it from a mile away. Saw the way Vitani's eyes lingered, saw her mask fall while around Kuuma. Saw her softness. It wouldn't be tolerated.

She took care of Kuuma herself, made sure Vitani found the body. Immediately, she understood the message. It was a lesson. Never stray. Never love. In this world, love means weakness and the weak do not survive.

From there, Vitani was jaded and cold, devoting herself to her mother's cause and acting as her sole confidante, just as she wanted. Everything Zira wanted, so did Vitani. She became a shadow of her mother, heartless and unkind, to the point of betraying her baby brother.

As Zira's plan is at last carried out, it all goes awry when Kovu, soft Kovu, falls in love. The moment she saw Kovu spare Simba after the goo-goo eyes he'd been making at that flowery princess, Vitani was resentful. After all their struggles and strife, he thinks he can just fall in love like a coward just like that? And with his target no less? What did Vitani get? Punishment, grief, trauma, a dead partner that never was. Her mother was right. Love is for the weak, and that's just what Kovu is; always has been. She reported back to her mother.

It wasn't till Nuka died that Vitani would feel doubt. It was small, a pang in her heart as she grieved her brother, but it was there. He did nothing but devote himself to Zira. He spent every waking hour grovelling at her feet, making sure she ate through her obsession with revenge, and loving her so unconditionally that not even through her vicious abuse could he ever find any reason to hate her. No one, not even Vitani obeyed Zira more than Nuka. And this was where he ended up. It felt like a sign.

Still, Vitani followed her mother into war, hatred burning in name of her lost brothers, becoming faceless in the shroud of mud and rain. She tore through countless lionesses but they happened to live on prosperous land, healthier, larger. Somewhere along the way, she knew they'd lose and her pridesisters would die.

In a flash of lightning, Kovu and Kiara were there to separate Zira and Simba.

Vitani laid eyes on her brother, standing up to their mother for the first time in their entire lives, and realized he was much stronger than her; he always had been. But it was Kiara who had made her cast away any necessity Vitani placed on this stupid war. The princess sneered at her own father, the boogeyman of her childhood, bigger and stronger even than her monster of a mother, and defended the Outlanders, the lions sent to destroy her, placing just as much value upon them as her own pride. Her courage moved Vitani greatly.

Zira, of course, didn't take kindly to Vitani switching sides and standing with her brother again. Her second time defying her mother and this time she could tell it to her face.

"No, Mother! Kiara's right...Enough."

"If you will not fight, then you will die as well."

And there it was. It was the one time Vitani pleaded with her mother, hoped more than anything that she could find it within her to love her children more than she hated Simba, and not even here, could she let it go. She'd let her down, cast her aside. Vitani had done everything right, been her top soldier, killed for her, spied for her, been a tool for her since her plan formulated...and not once could Zira show an ounce of remorse, hesitation, love towards her. Internally, Vitani was devastated. Beside her, Kovu was disgusted -- and he wasn't the only one.

Her pridesisters were what Zira was not -- a family. Similar to Vitani, they'd also fostered doubts and this whole war has made them see that none of their training had be worth it.

They were all glad to see her gone. In the end, it was only Kovu who gave a reaction to Zira's plunge into the river: a long-suffering sigh, and nothing more.

Vitani would spend a while estranged from everyone else, roaming the edges of the Pridelands as she had in the Outlands, visiting only occassionally to see her younger brother. The two attempted to ease back into relationship, but it surely wouldn't be easy, considering all the trauma their mother had caused.

Still, they had one another -- always have, always will.

--

Quite the doozy of a description. As we all know, Vitani's my favorite character, so I do the most thinking about her and her character. There's obviously more to her story, but I wanted to limit these character profiles to the bounds of canon.

As I was writing this, I was like "Isn't this a bit Kovu-centric for Vitani's biography?" But then I realized, "Dang, her life was probably a bit Kovu-centric." It's always been super clear to me that Vitani has a genuine love for her brother, just from the way she immediately tried to play with him while he was clearly in trouble after being caught with Kiara and also the way she caressed his head in Zira's villain song, almost admiringly. In the latter, she could've easily treated him like shit like Nuka had if she didn't really love him, and it really reminded me of how an older sibling would do to a younger one they have a soft spot for. When you connect this with her standing with him in the end, it makes for a heartwarming dynamic that can only really be seen in the background.

I don't know why I linger on it so much -- maybe it's because I'm surprised that a character that's otherwise shown to be ferocious and brutish could show to have that soft spot, maybe it reminds me of how I'd interact with my own younger brother. Either way, it's something I really wish people paid more attention to! It's such an interesting facet of her character.

You've all heard me bellyache about the common depictions of Vitani by the fandom. Often she's one-note -- either she's over-feminized beyond the point of recognition and made into a lovey-dovey housewife for a milquetoaste guy, or she's just bland and used to prove a point because people think they're sticking it to people who take issue with how others characterize her. I hardly see many versions of her where people actually consider her as her own character. She's always sort of used for someone else's development; shockingly, The Lion Guard is no different, making her into a much more feminine, nearly unrecognizable version of herself.

Another thing I wanna address is that no, Kopa is not a part of her backstory. That's WEIRD. To those unaware, it's a very common headcanon to have Vitani and Kopa be friends in cubhood, the friendship gets terminated by Zira, who "kills" Kopa, only for him to survive, Vitani cries because "waahh, my adolescent boyfriend," and he comes back all "cool" and scarred and Sasuke-like, they reunite, fall in love, and have a heterosexual wedding with face paint that fetishizes every Indigenous culture in the book, and have heterosexual babies, living happily ever after heterosexually. Obviously, if you've read my Kopa backstory, you know he's much older than Vitani, is already out of the picture by the events of the sequel, and hardly even crossed paths with Zira. Though, I'm sure many can see some semblance of that common trope in Kuuma, but instead a) showing how ruthless and cruel Zira was and b) giving insight to the sheer impact Zira had on her.

In the end, what I wanted to do was, like my other profiles, give insight to where she falls in the clusterfuck of canon. I hope it all makes sense! As the middle child in a brood of three, the only girl in a dysfunctional family, and a tomboy as a kid, I relate to her like CRAZY. I won't go into the nuances of this (because I've done it already; go find the post yourself >:U) but yes, to me, Vitani is queer, a lesbian, and masculine as fuck! It just fits her! Fight me!!!

RE: HER NAME: I know the origins of Vitani's name are a bit lame and mundane but I figured I'd address the fact that Vitani doesn't actually mean "war" the way people thought for years -- it's "Vita" that means "war" but "Vitani" as a word means "flax" -- and it just so happened to be a coincidence that flax flowers are a purpleish-blue color. I couldn't pass up the opportunity!

I'm sure y'all will be curious about Kovu and Vitani's dad (whose name is Nepali, not Swahili :3c) and why the heck Afua is in here, but in due time, they'll get their own spotlights.

ANYWAY, design stuff:

- The adult design here is how she appears in LOVESICK! So she's healthier and more filled out, while still being lean. And of course, her Lion Guard mark and scars from the war are there. No worries, I plan to make a small one for how she appears in TLK2, just for comparison sake!

- I know it's a common thing for people to match her cheek fluff between cub and adult, but I honestly kinda like that she has two different kinds between cubhood and adulthood. I always figured, hey, maybe she just kept growing but her cheek fluff didn't. idk lol

- She's super scruffy! This isn't an Outlander trait (well, some of it might be, but), she got it from her dad! Same with Kovu. Inspired by @/Silver-Wolf-17's version of Vitani.

- As an added bit: as Vitani gets older, she starts to look more and more like her mom. Her sharp features, her long snout, her devious grin. Trauma for later down the road

--

If you like what I do, I have a KO-FI where you can donate small amounts of money. I'm gonna be moving soon, so every bit helps while things get situated!!