Timelines

The Dragon Raja franchise has multiple revisions and adaptations that span through different types of media such as novels, manhua, video games, animation and live action. This has resulted in multiple continuities, most of them abandoned.

The revised editions of the novels are now the official/central canon of the franchise, which will be the one to see the ending of the story.

## Known timelines / editions

### Serialized booklets

The Dragon Raja series was born in the *Manke's Fiction Illustrated* magazine*,* as a series of serialized chapters that were later compiled into printed books. Many changes were made to the books, specially to the third story, *Black Moon Tide,* which had most of its plot rewritten. The original booklets are not officially available online, but the illustrations have been compiled into an art book.

### Novels - First editions | Original canon

The novel series are books that compile the original serialized chapters with a varying number of changes and additions. They represented the official canon of the story until the release of the revised editions in 2020. After the cancellation of Dragon Raja V, the original canon was left without an ending.

In its fictional universe, the protagonist Lu Mingfei was born in the year 1991, and accepted into Cassell College in 2009.

### Novels - Revised editions | Revised canon

The current central continuity of the franchise. It was introduced in 2020 with the release of the revised editions of Dragon Raja I & II, with the Dragon Raja III books coming out in the following year. Due to copyright Issues, the revisions of Dragon Raja IV & V are being released instead as a sequel series titled "Dragon King".

The new versions add details to the lore, as well as additional character development. The timeline was moved in order to set the story in the early 2020s. It updates the pop culture references in order to connect with a younger generation of readers.

In this version, Lu Mingfei's birth year remains unspecified, although the Gen siblings retain their original birthdays, now being in their 30s instead of their 20s.

### Manhua series

The comic adaptation of the first novel was forced to make multiple changes to the story in order to meet deadlines. In this version, Lu Mingfei started his education in Cassell College around 2011.

While the adaptation of the second novel remained mostly faithful to the book, the third novel was heavily modified, almost entirely omitting Makoto Asou, skipping the prologue in Black Swan Bay and creating additional scenes with Gen Chime, Uesugi Erii and the Mou Kishu to make them more active in the story.

### 2019 Mobile game

Tencent's 2019 game adaptation makes some of the most substantial changes to the original story, now set in an unspecified year in the near future and with a new main character that can be customized by the player. The existence of this timeline and the player character are acknowledged by Lu Mingze, who considers that their presence creates the possibility of resurrecting Erii Uesugi in their timeline.

These changes include:

* A reduced amount of violence, it presents a lighter tone in order to appeal to a wider audience.
* Black Swan Bay is presented as a more pleasant place in the surface, with the orphans being happy at their home and seeing Herzog as a father figure.
* Cassell College tests their new S-Ranks by running a simulation of a Death Servitor attack on the school.
* The protagonist becomes a fourth member of the Ace team, hoping to find a cure for their unstable blood.
* Akira Sakurai is hunted down after the arrival of the aces, and the main character participates in the battle.
* Makoto Asou is a street food vendor and she dies by falling from the top of a building.
* Lu Mingfei witnesses Erii's death.

### Donghua

The animated series remains mostly faithful to the revised editions of the novels, with slight changes and omissions made to improve the pacing of the show.