Did you watch the video? Do it! (Look at the previous post.)
So let's talk about what we saw in it, and what we might see of Jaina in BFA. To be clear, we're talking about Beta spoilers here, so I'll put a break in case you want to remain free of such things.
Spoilers Ahoy!
The music in the video is a great unreliable narrator thing that works fantastically in World of Warcraft - it's always good to see how most people on either side of the faction conflict have a very different sense of what is going on.
We see how the Kul Tirans who wrote this shanty have a warped view of the events at Theramore. Even if Jaina regrets what she did given how Garrosh paid her back for it, we should recall that it really looked like she was doing the right thing.
In the Third War, the Alliance and Horde managed to broker a peace in order to fight the Legion, and Jaina was the Alliance leader who made that possible with cooperation from Thrall on the other side. Theramore and Orgrimmar were both born at roughly the same time - the people who had fled the Scourge in Lordaeron each set up nearby cities, and the cooperation between them had been instrumental in defeating this greater foe.
Daelin had no sense of that new camaraderie, and saw only the demon-corrupted Orcs he had lost his son to in the Second War. He had a total racial hatred toward Orcs, and had never seen any Orc leader like Thrall before, assuming that they were all as bloodthirsty as Blackhand or Doomhammer (even if Doomhammer was relatively honorable, he still waged a war of aggression against the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms and willingly employed death knights and allowed his people to enslave red dragons.) On top of that, his only remaining child was now amidst them, and he assumed that this meant that she was in danger from them.
Despite her protests, Daelin wanted to wipe the Orcs out, and Jaina stood up for what she believed - that the Horde was capable of redemption and worthy of a chance at it.
So she opened the gates to her city and let the Horde kill her father in the name of a lasting peace.
Unfortunately, Jaina assumed that leaders like Thrall would be the new normal for the Horde, and Garrosh's ascendence spelled doom for her city.
The Horde has not made it easy for Jaina to like them, and shocking, Theramore was not actually the last straw - it was the use of Dalaran's portal network to steal the Divine Bell that finally made her realize she could not trust anyone loyal to the Warchief. Not only had she allowed her father to be killed, but she had even looked past the destruction of the city she founded to cooperate with Blood Elves in Dalaran, only for those Blood Elves to turn around and use the welcome she had given them as a license to aid the very monster who had murdered her people.
So yes, the Kul Tirans have a rosy view of Daelin's actions, which make Jaina's betrayal of him seem like an act on pointless wickedness. The song itself asks why Jaina would do such a thing - Kul Tirans, like Daelin, have no sense of nuance when it comes to the Horde.
And Jaina has come back around to their way of thinking, but it meant having to suffer through more traumas - Theramore being the biggest one, but also the Divine Bell incident as well as the apparent betrayal of Alliance forces at the Broken Shore (again, a case of missing information breeding hatred - seriously, Sylvanas should have put in some effort at least to explain to the Alliance that they didn't abandon Varian of their own volition. How hard would it have been to say "sorry, we were outflanked and pinned down and Vol'jin was mortally wounded. Surely you can understand why we had to do what we did"?
Now here's what really fascinates me about the short:
The being that shows her Daelin's old flagship is apparently Daelin's ghost himself. We can see her haunted by frightening specters as she passes through Theramore and the various shipwrecks off the coast.
Awesome as it is to see her using her magic to raise the ship, shouldn't we be kind of concerned that she's being visited by the DEAD?
Yes, with the Legion defeated, we can probably rule out demons tricking her, but we're left with possibilities that this specter is actually some kind of projection of the Old Gods, or, if you're willing to take a walk with me: something from the Shadowlands.
See, in the War Campaign quests (I believe,) we find that Jaina has been imprisoned not only on an island, but actually in a place called Thros, the Blighted Lands, where she is tormented by Gorak Tul, the leader of the Drust.
The Drust use death magic and appear to have retreated to the Shadowlands when the Kul Tirans conquered the islands.
We know so little about the Shadowlands, but we do know that there are very powerful entities within it that seem steeped in necromantic energies. Jaina's certainly dealt with necromancy before - remember that she was once engaged to a guy who would later become the Lich King. I suspect that, much as there was a subtle undercurrent of Old God activity in Legion, there might be a sublet undercurrent of Death-magic in BFA. Is it possible that there is some wicked power within the Shadowlands that is manipulating Jaina? Not corrupting her, necessarily, but empowering her in just the right ways to ensure some dire fate befalls Azeroth?
Consider, for example, that another of the Warbringers shorts is going to focus on Sylvanas, who we already practically know is being manipulated by Shadowlands entities. She's undead herself, but we also have the Val'kyr, who have been pushing her toward this "endless resurrection" goal that has enflamed Alliance/Horde tensions and has sewn chaos around the world.
I'll grant that the Azshara one looks far more focused on how the Old Gods transformed her and her people into the Naga, and perhaps it really is Old Gods, and not turtles or Shadowlands entities, all the way down, but I would be really fascinated to discover that this war is being drummed up by something that wants a lot more death on Azeroth.
No comments:
Post a Comment