In the real world, cooperation doesn't always lead to good relations between world powers. Consider, for example, the relationship between the United States and its allies in the West to the Soviet Union. It was very clear that Germany had to be stopped, and so, despite huge political and economic differences, you had the West and the East team up to deal with the great and monstrous evil coming out of Central Europe. But shortly thereafter, without the threat of the Axis powers to threaten them, the US and the USSR began to engage in the 45-year struggle of the Cold War. Yes, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and transformed into the Russian Federation (and several ex-Soviet republics,) and there was perhaps some hope that we might see a true alliance form between these former adversaries, but you don't have to read the news too closely to realize that those old rivalries have not gone away.
That's how I see the Alliance and the Horde.
It's clear, if you play World of Warcraft, that both factions could exist peacefully together on Azeroth if there was sufficient will on the part of all the major players. Your average Joe Orgrimmar and your average Jane Stromwind just want to live their lives, raise a family, and feel safe where they are.
But there are agitators who are not satisfied with the lines as drawn. Some want revenge, and some simply don't trust the other side to maintain the peace. Indeed, this is latter reason is probably the number one cause of all violent conflict in the world - people strike preemptively on the assumption that if they don't, the other side will.
How can we summarize the positions of the two factions? Obviously, each faction is a coalition of different groups of people, some of whom have very different goals than others within their own faction.
The Alliance is often forced to play defense. One could actually make the argument that the first Alliance/Horde conflict was, retroactively, the Horde's genocidal war against the Draenei on Draenor. There's an interesting irony that we'll get to shortly here, which is that the Draenei were the recent visitors to the world. And yet, the Draenei brought with them the structures of what we might call an advanced society. Orcs, at the time, were not urban dwellers with firmly established territories and borders. But the Draenei, who had had countless ages on Argus living in massive metropolises like Mac'aree, very quickly set about putting down roots. Shattrath, Karabor, and arguably Auchindoun were all very clearly permanent establishments that the Draenei intended to inhabit long-term.
Likewise, if we look at Alliance lands, much of it is long-established territory. Stormwind, Ironforge, Gilneas city - all of these places are thousands of years old. Teldrassil and Darnassus are relatively new, but they are an outgrowth of an over-ten-thousand-year history within the forests of northern Kalimdor for the Night Elves. The only really new territory the Alliance has as a home base are Azuremyst and Bloodmyst isles, but while the Draenei are new to these places, the Night Elves have an established history with them.
As such, we can ascribe, perhaps, a certain desire to maintain the status quo for the Alliance. Most of its people have a place in the world, and the threat that they perceive is that of outside invaders coming to take what has always been theirs. Families that had lived in, say, Goldshire for generations were forced to uproot their lives and flee north, only to then have to flee south as the Scourge rampaged through what was thought to have been the safest of the human kingdoms.
So we can imagine that an ideal peace for the Alliance would be to see their homes safeguarded and restored - they wish to be close to their historical roots and ensure that life can go on as it has.
The Horde, on the other hand, has little to defend. There is only one Horde city that has existed in its current form for more than a couple decades. Silvermoon was ravaged by the Scourge and the Blood Elves are perhaps more similar in motivation to the Alliance - trying to restore and safeguard their ancient home (which is perhaps not that odd given that they are a former Alliance race.)
But the rest of the Horde's territory is new. Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff were only built after the victory in the Third War. And while Mulgore is idyllic, the Orcs have always struggled with the scarcity of resources of Durotar and the Barrens. The Horde has always sought to find a way to provide for its population. In fact, by founding Orgrimmar where they did, they actually picked a part of the world that should not have caused much conflict - the Night Elves only bothered with territory as far south as Ashenvale, and south of there was a mostly untamed wilderness. But the reason that the territory was unclaimed was probably because of the lack of resources, and while in the short term, settling there allowed the Horde to avoid conflict, in the long term, it left them starving for resources like lumber, which has pushed them into conflict up north.
Despite its strength, the Horde is in a constant struggle for survival, and this desperation has encouraged a more aggressive military culture. Not being able to simply exploit the lush forests of Durotar (given that they don't exist,) they push north into Ashenvale. They're a lot better at military invasions than they are at longterm environmental manipulation, and so this naturally pushes them into conflict with the Night Elves.
The Forsaken have it even worse.
First off, there's a major identity crisis amongst the Forsaken - are they simply the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Lordaeron, proud humans who have lived in these lands for millennia? Or are they a totally new thing that needs to do whatever it takes to secure themselves in their territory? The fact that humanity's general reaction to them has been abject horror and loathing, and also that their leader is not a former human but a former High Elf, has pushed their culture more toward this latter identity.
But if the Orcs struggle with resources for building and feeding their people, the Undead struggle with the resource of people.
The Forsaken can't simply make new people the way the other races do, and that means that, if they don't want to die off as the simple attrition of life in a dangerous world assails them, they need dead people to raise. And while I could perhaps imagine a very small number of people voluntarily becoming Forsaken after they die of natural causes, generally the strategy has been to make war and raise your fallen enemies.
But given how this tactic robs people of their free will (even if the newly risen Forsaken aren't magically mind-controlled, there's definitely a kind of cultural brainwashing at work,) it puts the Forsaken in a position where they are forced to choose between extinction and atrocity.
The Horde in general, I think, would see an ideal peace as one in which the Alliance ceded enough territory on Azeroth to ensure the Horde had enough resources to thrive. While the Orcs are the flagship race of the Horde, and you could argue that the Orcs don't deserve much territory on Azeroth considering what they did to their previous world, the fact is that the Horde is actually primarily composed of other Azeroth natives, and the Horde does deserve a place on Azeroth.
The most obvious problem with that is who gets to decide how much is "enough." This is, of course, the kind of thing that diplomats work out in peace treaties. It's clear that the Horde is going to need more to be satisfied, but from an Alliance perspective, one might be concerned that the Horde, given its warrior culture, might never be satisfied. Why appease the Horde by recognizing their claim to Azshara if the Horde is just going to see that as an opportunity to protect its own flank as it marches on Ashenvale?
In terms of fairness, you might only be able to achieve balance if the Alliance cedes territory to the Horde. But the Horde, in turn, would have to be satisfied with that. However, one of the biggest hurdles here is that, while an Orc or Troll Warchief could push the Forsaken question to the side, establishing an initial peace deal before settling the Undead question, the current Warchief is also the leader of the Forsaken, and that means that this thorniest of Alliance/Horde conflicts must be front-and-center in any kind of deal to make peace. Sylvanas might not want war because she can't be sure she'll win it, but she also needs war in order to perpetuate her people. One can see why she's looking for other solutions, like making her deal with Helya. If she could raise her own people from the dead, you'd have a much better solution. Ironically, Genn's sabotage of Sylvanas' admittedly underhanded and perhaps even blasphemous plan might have actually hurt the Alliance long-term. But as an old man with little left to achieve in life beyond revenge, I don't imagine Genn would care all that much (I think his longterm peace plan is to wipe the Forsaken out entirely, anyway.)
Now, one of the ironies of the new Allied Races is that we're getting a bit of a flip of the typical characters for each faction.
Both the Nightborne and the Highmountain Tauren are firmly established in their home territories. The Nightborne have literally inhabited the same city for ten thousand years, and while the Legion ravaged it, Suramar is now canonically free again. The Highmountain, unlike their Kalimdor brethren, have resided on their mountain for a similar ten thousand years, with a firmly, well-established order to their territory.
On the flip side, you have the Lightforged Draenei, who have literally spent 25,000 (or, if you account for time dilation due to being around Argus, 1,000,000) years in a strictly regimented military organization that has primarily inhabited a large ship. The Xenedar was shot down when we arrived on Argus, and so that means that you have an elite military force with no real home to speak of that has been unleashed on Azeroth. The Void Elves, on the other hand, are exiles from Quel'thalas, having flipped twice between factions. The Void Elves aren't even sure who they are anymore, and I suspect that it's going to be a good long while before they're fully integrated into Alliance society.
Quel'thalas is actually a particularly interesting sticking point regarding a potential peace between the factions. The High Elves are Alliance, but there's apparently been a certain understanding between them and the Blood Elves, allowing access to the Sunwell. But while the Blood Elves graciously accept the High Elves, the Void Elves are considered far too dangerous. Peace between the factions would likely benefit Silvermoon more than any city, but the question of the Ren'dorei would be a pretty big one to resolve. We're not even sure how the High Elves feel about the Void Elves yet.
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