>>126601
>Isn't she a maneater? Accidentally.
First, a warning, I might be misremembering some details here and there. There are like, 2.5+ versions of her lore at this point. Anyway...
Yeah, so the answer is yes, but the context changes pretty big depending on whether you go with the old lore or the new lore.
By the old lore, she's pretty much just a literal Kumiho. A fox that ate the essence/soul of a dying hunter, gained humanoid form, and got such a high from all his memories, experiences and emotions that she went around everywhere to feast on the dying (but offering them comfort as they died via replaying their fondest memories), but with her becoming more human with each soul consumed and eventually developing guilt for it. Which is why she went to the Summoner's Rift, so she can feed without permanently killing anyone and eventually become human.
By the new lore, she's a Vastaya of a near extinct sub-species/tribe with the inherent ability to consume and manipulate essence, which seems to be the substance of the soul (though, there might be more to the soul than just essence, it's unclear) and mind. She was left in the wild by her parents many centuries ago, presumptively to avoid whatever ill-fate found them given she's been searching for centuries and hasn't found the faintest sign of them.
So she was essentially a feral child, growing up for most of her youth without language to organize her thoughts or any peers besides a pack of ice foxes (foxes attuned to the element of ice native to Ionia's tundra, vaguely implied to fill the same econological niche as wolves). She'd lull prey into a stupor with her essence manipulation, and she'd devour their essence while the pack and her devoured the creature's flesh.
This went on for years until she eventually ended up running into a dying human hunter. She instinctively did the same as she did to lthe animals, replaying memories of the best and most comforting moments of the man's life to keep the dying man from noticing that she was consuming his essence (though, I'd not that it's also specified that she only noticed him because his essence was leaking out into the surroundings, which kinda implies essence ≠ soul given how souls work in LoL's modern lore, but eh). This gave her all of his memories, experiences, emotions and knowledge. So she now had language with which to describe the world, and all the strong feelings and bonds humans experience.
This was pretty much the biggest high in her life up to that point, and she became obsessive on it, leaving her pack to go around feeding on the life essence of humans. Eventually though she built up a reputation as a monster, and when she went to devour the essence of one who had heard the stories of her, it terrified and shamed her. She wanted to stop, but realized that her hunger wasn't just an addiction, but an actual need. She'd not only loose her power, but also her life if she went too long without feeding.
So she entered a state of self-loathing until she met a young artist. The man didn't reject her, falling in love on sight, and the two were, despite her feeling undeserving and afraid she'd harm him, happy together. But he contracted a terminal illness that Ahri couldn't heal, and knowing that she'd continue on living for centuries (if not indefinitely, which due to Spirit Blossom and general Vastaya lore we now is the most probable outcome), he wanted her to devour his essence/soul, so that she'd always carry a part of him with her, never forgetting. She...did not take this well and refused. He seemed to accept this, but in actuality decided to force the issue, and in one of their couplings (well, its implied to be that, though I don't think it's explicit that they were fucking) and he essentially riled her up enough that she'd falter and consume his essence.
This traumatized her enough, not being used to experiencing her own grief, that she tried to get some magic evil plants to eat her memories so the pain would stop, but she got buyer's remorse and managed to escape with an unspecified but substantial amount of her memories of her first love and their painfully short time together.
From there she oriented her life towards trying to figure out who her parents and race were, with the goal of A. Finding a way to get rid of her hunger for essence and B. Finding out why she was abandoned in the wild as a child.
The Ruined King game actually has her getting some of the answers she's looking for, but needing to give up ever actually learning most of them so they can defeat Viego. What we do learn is that at some point her race was enslaved, possibley by Viego Santiarul Molach vol Kalah Heigaar. Regardless, they were present on what would become the Shadow Isles when Viego put his wife's rotting corpse in the not-Well-of-Eternity, and turned the massive font of life-energy into an equally massive font of death-energy, killing everything on the island and trapping their souls there in eternal torment (Viego was just a dumabass on this part, Thresh explicitly planned it).
But the basic jist is that Ahri learns that her people were perfectly able to be decent, good and normal people by just...having basic self-control and not starving themselves to the point they'll instinctively gorge themselves the moment their control slips, instead consuming essence in small but regular portions so they don't permanently harm others. And she accepts that she's not fated to be a murderous monster, that she can be more than that without being a suicidal martyr.
Also, her Noxian policy back in the War was to just kill them on sight. Which is incredibly based. Stinking pigfucking Noxian whoresons.