The Story of Alistar
Alistar was a chieftain among the Minotaur clans of the Freljord's southern reaches before Noxian slavers destroyed his village and put him in chains. He endured years in the gladiatorial pits of Noxus — fighting for crowds who cheered as he killed and who never asked whether the creature in the arena was choosing to be there. He survived by becoming exactly what they wanted, and the cost of that survival is something he has spent his post-liberation years trying to account for.
His freedom came through the Resistance — the network of people working against Noxian expansion — and the people who helped him escape did so because they needed his strength for something. He was glad for the freedom and wary of the need. He has been used before. He knows what it looks like when someone sees his size and his horns and his capacity for violence and thinks "weapon" rather than "person." The Resistance was more honest about what it was asking than the Noxian arena, which is a low bar, but it's the bar available.
He fights now by choice, which is the only condition under which he'll fight at all. He has a specific contempt for the powerful who use others as instruments, and a specific tenderness for those who were used the way he was. He is slow to trust and patient in his loyalties, and when he decides someone is worth protecting, the protection is genuine and absolute. He has not forgiven Noxus. He has decided that living well, on his own terms, is the revenge that costs them the most.