You know, I don’t think we’re meant to connect
every character in PLA to a existing character. Personally, I think like the idea that everyone has to be an ancestor to someone else we know just feels really forced and unnatural. Like, surely there’s going to be
some faces in this time period that we haven’t seen.
The sense I get is that the characters who are supposed to be ancestral will have some characteristics that are just blatantly similar to their descendants. As a quick rundown:
- Mai: Basically *is* Marley, just in different clothes
- Arezu: Same as above, but for Mars
- Kamado: Is just Rowan with darker hair
- Cyllene: Same hair color, same sunken eyes, no brows, pale skin, stern demeanor, and her name is a dead giveaway
- Colza: Gardenia with a beard, runs a farm (which is evocative of Grass types)
- Rye: Wears a wide-brimmed hat in the same fashion as Riley, has the black hair styled in a side-fringe, uses a Lucario, also Rye-ley
- Charm: Same hairstyle as Agatha/Bertha, uses a Rhydon and a Gengar to gesture at the connection
- Clover: Candice in different clothes
- Coin: Saturn as a girl
- Volo/Cogita: Both have Cynthia’s eye-obscuring fringe, Volo is blond and Cogita wears the teardrop pendant, they both have an interest in/connection to Hisuian mythology
- Beni: Same hairstyle as Wally (with streaks of green; presumably his hair has grayed with age) and uses Gallade and Gardevoir
- Ginter: Same seated posture as Volkner in his artwork, and his hair is the same style on the sides
- Pesselle: Wears her hair in the same style as Mira, and it’s the same color
- Sabi: Same as above but for Cheryl
- Lian: Hair is poofy and brown like Clay’s; they wear the same hat and are both miners
- Anthe: Has black hair with a big gold stripe like Darach
- Choy: Same hairstyle and color as Charon (also Charon was all about money in the end, so Choy running a shop felt like a nod to that to me)
- Sanqua: Same hairstyle and color as Karen
- Gaeric: Same hairline and brow shape as Wulfric, and Wulfric’s mustache comes down into two points on each side similar to Gaeric’s dashes of hair on his chin; also they both love the cold and have a connection to Avalugg
- Zisu: She admittedly feels like the biggest departure from her root character to me, but she has red hair that turns poofy at the end which seems similar to Flint, but really I think there’s supposed to be a gag here because her hair is actually styled like Lopunny’s ears, and which red-haired Sinnoh character is infamous for inexplicably using a Lopunny?
- Then of course you have the Archie / Maxie / Alder ancestor portraits framed up in the Clan settlements and people made those connections real quick because of the identical characteristics.
All that being said, that leaves Laventon, Adaman, Irida, Iscan, Palina, Calaba, and Melli as characters that don’t really have any glaring similarities to existing people, at least in my view. Which I think makes sense - the new professors, two major plot characters who are interlinked to each other, and then a couple of Wardens. It’s a decent little pool of standouts to show that not everyone is an ancestor to someone, and likewise, not every Sinnoh character is going to have an ancestor that we see. That kind of situation would just “shrink” the world, I feel like. But having a mix feels more organic.
(Also, I know some people link Laventon to Leon and Hop, but I see too many differences myself. Yes they’re all brown-skinned Galarians, but Laventon doesn’t have their signature gold eyes, and his concept art reveals that his hair is black. Honestly I think you could make a stronger argument for Laventon being related to Rose/Peony, especially with the Copperajah mention in the Pokédex, but personally I still don’t think that’s what they were going for.)