[quote="zerodix"]i found a fan blog with the perfect explanation of the different storylines on deviantart. that is the one i will base my fan theory on from now on.
after the lion king movie in 1994. the 6 new adventures books were released. in those books simba and nala have 1 cub, a son named Kopa. He looks exactly like his father but with a mane tuft.
the team that worked on that books did not know about simbas pride beeing in production, and vice versa. that is why the SP producers didnt know about the storyline with Kopa. The cub at the end of the 1st movie was called fluffy by the makers of the first movie. In early SP productions the cub was supposed to be a male called Chaka. That concept didnt make it to the final production and Kiara was then the only cub of Simba and Nala...according to disney. real fans did offcourse know about both books and movies, and fan art with both kopa and kiara as royal cubs appeared. Kopa as the older brother since the books were before SP. then TLG comes and disney holds on to Kiara as an existing royal cub and makes Kion the 2nd born, which would be logical ik Kiara appeared as an adult and/or with Kovu. Since apparently she is a cub again things got turned around leaving us with questions: plot holes! where is Kovu... where did these 3 hyenas come from? where is Zira and the outlanders? Where are the prideland lionesses etc? i also do not have this answers. maybe it will he revealed in the series.[/quote]
Um, not exactly
When the SNA books were made, SP was NOT in the works. It came years after the original movie. SNA are not that important as everyone think they are. They are just generic spin-off books just like all the comics and activties in child magazines. There are comics where Ed talks and where Timon&Pumbaa are Simba's childhood friends at the time he was living in Pridelands, yet nobody ever considers them canon. SNA is not different - it's just someone's fanfic released on license to make more money, and it's not even worldwide. Believing in Kopa is not what "true TLK fans do". True fans can tell apart what's canon and what is not.
That's why nobody in Disney production cared about some licensed spinoff story like tons of other licensed spinoff stories released over the years. It was never said that the cub at the end of TLK was supposed to be Chaka. TLK was never meant to have a sequel, so the cub they added is a plain Simba-clone, because it was meant to be a symbol of Cirle Of Life, not actual "sequel-preview" character.
kovu is going to appear. The fact that TLG has Kiara, Kovu and his siblings proves that they don't want to dump SP completely. Just wait for the episode and maybe they will explain everything better.
*rant over*
Also everyone who say Kion was born some time after Kiara - pregnancy is not THAT short. They look about the same age. If he was born later, then at the time he reaches his TLG age, Kiara should be a teen/young adult already.
Theory that they are littermates makes more sense.
I think TLG takes place between events in SP, after Kiara's cubhood part, where Kiara is a bit older and more mature.
About Kion being gone during SP:
The whole plot with Kovu appearing in Pridelands and the final battle takes place within a few days.
In the scene with Vitani and Nuka lighting up sticks in volcano, Nuka says that hyenas "ran away".
I think they ran away recently, chased off by Kion and maybe Kion and the Guard want after them for whatever reason and bacause of that they were gone for a few days when the events of SP took place.
Also about the "Outlands", we can see that both TLG and SP "outlands" are two different places. Lions like in open plains with termite mounds while hyenas live in canyons, volcano and Elephant Grraveyard. Maybe "Outlands" are just various dry areas outside Pridelands borders with the same name.