A man raised in Oakland by nobody, who came back to the country that left him there, won its throne by its own rules, and was not wrong about why he was angry.
Erik Stevens is the son of Prince N’Jobu of Wakanda and an American woman from Oakland. His father was killed by his own brother, the king, for planning to arm oppressed people around the world, and the boy was left where he was, in a country that was not his, by a country that could have taken him.
He grows up, joins the United States Armed Forces, becomes very good at removing governments, and comes home. His claim to the throne is legitimate, he wins the challenge fairly, and his complaint about Wakanda hiding while the world burned is the argument the film cannot answer.
That is why he works. He is not a distortion of the hero’s position. He is the consequence of it, arriving with receipts.
Show detailsThe scars, and the name
Reference material records that the dots covering his chest are self-inflicted scarification, one for each confirmed kill, and that the name Killmonger came from his military career rather than from Wakanda.
The same material gives him two names and does not choose between them: N’Jadaka is recorded as his full or birth name, and Erik Stevens is what the MCU version is called. This catalogue records N’Jadaka, and says so here rather than pretending the question was settled.