Name Meaning:
"Blossom” or “To bloom” in Swahili

Pride Affiliation:
Rogue (birth), Pridelands (adoption), Outlands (exile), Pridelands (return)

Generation:
10

Relations:
Daughter to Hatari and Bia
Sister to Zira, Kifo and Kimya
Semi-mate to ???
Mother to Laika and Shabaha

Fate:
Old age

Voice Actor:
TBA

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Kuchanua and her littermate Kimya are born posthumously to the rogue Hatari, conceived from his desire to have at least one son. Shortly after they are weaned, their mother Bia sadly passes away from an illness and their older sister Zira ends up bringing them into their new home, the Pridelands. Kuchanua and her littermate sister Kimya spend their early childhood growing up in the Pridelands, and when they are approaching adolescence, the pride's king Mufasa and his son Simba are killed in a stampede, leaving Scar to take the throne. He and Zira have a son named Kamili who is destined to be Scar's heir, but this never comes to pass as he suddenly disappears as a young teen.

After Kamili's disappearance, Scar tries to produce new heirs with Zira, which results in her nephew Nukato and nieces Vitani and Shetani, none of which showed as much promise as Kamili had. Around the same time her nieces are born, her littermate Kimya has a cub named Kheri whom she hands over to Zira when she's unable to nurse him. To everyone's surprise, Scar ends up naming the little cub his new heir and gives him the new name “Kovu”. After Simba returns and overthrows Scar, Zira and the rest of his followers are banished from the Pridelands after Zira tries to attack him. Not wanting to leave her sister and baby nephew, Kuchanua follows them into exile.

While not interested in finding a mate, Kuchanua does want to have cubs of her own to raise. And after breeding with a passing rogue, she ends up bearing two daughters named Laika and Shabaha. While her daughters are still very young, Kuchanua gets up for a drink one night to find Zira chasing after Kimya, who was trying to flee from the Outlands with the toddler-aged Kovu. During the scuffle between the two, Zira manages to wrestle the cub out of Kimya’s grip and throws her against a large rock, killing her instantly.

And Kuchanua was right there to witness it all.

Once Zira notices that she had seen everything, Zira pins Kuchanua to the ground and tells her to not say a word of this to anyone. Kuchanua refuses, but is forced to comply when Zira implies that something could happen to her daughters if she did. As Kovu grows up, Zira tells him that he was an orphan that Scar selflessly took in, and makes sure that Kuchanua doesn't breathe a word about who his mother really was. Kuchanua tried to convince herself that Zira could've been bluffing, but as time went by, Zira's mental state gets worse and she gradually becomes more aggressive, once beating a lioness within an inch of her life when she dares to say that Scar probably wasn't a good king. That was proof enough for Kuchanua. Zira could hurt her daughters if she dared say anything about what happened to Kimya.

Following a failed ambush on Simba that results in Nuka's death, Zira leads the Outsiders into battle to finally take him down. Fortunately, Kiara and Kovu show up to put a stop to all the fighting before Simba could be killed, but Zira refuses to let things go and makes one final attempt to kill him, which results in her falling to her death in the nearby rapids. Kuchanua is sad to see her go, but having witnessed her older sister's descent into madness, she felt that maybe it was better this way and that she could finally be at peace.

After the Outsiders are integrated into the Pridelands, Kuchanua is finally free to tell Kovu- no, Kheri, the truth about his origins.

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And here's one of Zira's sisters! Kuchanua is intended to be the cave painting of one of the Outsiders seen leaving the Pridelands with her in the TLG episode “Lions of the Outlands”. I referenced her pose from this TLK2 screenshot.

The Lion King belongs to Disney
Art is by me