Secrets
Day keeps his illness a secret from June for most of Champion, because he doesn’t want to scare her and wants her to focus on the war and the Republic. The secrets that Metias kept from June while he was alive come back to haunt her throughout the book, specifically in the form of Thomas, who reminds her of everything her brother loved and lost.
The Presence of the Dead
As Day spends more time with his younger brother, Eden, throughout Champion, he is reminded of his parents, who died years before. He wonders if they would be proud of him and thinks of them often as he fights to end inequality in the Republic. Metias also haunts June throughout the book, because she interacts with Thomas and remembers how much he fought when alive. Even in the epilogue, ten years after the war has ended, she thinks of him on her birthday and realizes that she is older than he will ever be. Throughout Champion, the characters are constantly reminded of the characters they loved and lost.
Changing Alliances
Although initially marked as a traitor, Thomas proves himself to be more morally grey throughout the novel, as he explains to June his complicated feelings towards Metias and his actions against Commander Jameson. June works against Anden throughout Prodigy, but at the beginning of Champion, they become each other’s alliances and close friends. While Day and June oppose the Republic regime throughout the series, but by the end of Champion, they have all aligned with the new government of the Republic to ensure their country’s survival against the Colonies.
The Impossibility of True Happiness
Champion is a novel about war, and a constant theme over the course of the book is that there is no possibility of happiness on all sides. For the Republic to succeed, the Colonies must be defeated, which inevitably means the deaths of innocent civilians on their side. June feels questionable about having Thomas killed, but she also knows that for the new Republic to succeed, those loyal to the old Republic have to die. Throughout the entire war, Day knows that he’ll likely die of disease once the fighting is over, meaning that even if he survives the war, he’ll die anyway. Even when he survives both illness and fighting, he loses his memories, and comes back to June a broken, changed person. Champion explores how, in war, there’s no such thing as a true happy ending.
