>>52513219I'm pretty sure Lance was the Champion, the Elite 4 included the Champion for some reason.
I could be mistaken but I think LGPE even makes note of Kanto having many past Champions, with it being implied that Red and Blue are two of them. LGPE shifts events slightly so that Red and Blue started their journey early, before Oak could give them a PokeDex.
Given we see the Indigo Plateau in the Gen 2 games, my assumption is that it works like this:
[E4a]
[E4b]
[E4c]
[E4d (Lance)]
[Champion]
But whenever the current Champion-holder is not fit to represent the league, such as them being a rando 10 year old, said Champion steps down, Lance can take their place until someone else replaces him.
When Lance is Champ, it's possible another E4 member can join the team to round out the squad. In Gen 2, we see Koga in such a position, so we have essentially two possibilities.
>Blue beat Koga/Or mystery trainer as part of the E4, then beat Champion Lance>Koga/or mystery trainer as such steps down and you never see themor
>Blue beat a previously unseen Champion who swiftly left, as alluded to in LGPE and how other Pokémon games/regions seem to workThe only third option is you simply catch the E4 in an awkward transitionary period where they really only ever had 4 members, including the Champ for whatever reason, because on a meta level GF never planned for future games where 5 battles would have to be the standard, but that's the lamest answer so I suggest picking from the first two.
