Reckoning with Sylvanas

Sylvanas is the closest thing to a singular villain we have in Battle for Azeroth.

Now, I'm still largely convinced that N'zoth will turn out to be its true big bad - we could discover that many of the ills of the expansion are his doing or we might simply find that he's the biggest threat rather than the singular one - much as the Lich King had little to do with Yogg-Saron or Malygos.

But we have this issue:

Sylvanas is evil. Sure, she might feel she's justified in her actions and might have some kind of protective motivation for what she is doing, but at the end of the day, she has killed a massive number of people who very easily could have been left alone.

The Horde has this odd identity crisis: when interacting with anyone other than the Alliance, they are clear heroes - yes, you sometimes see them do shady stuff, but it's almost always as a way to get a leg up on the Alliance. They have no problem championing the weak and fighting to save the world, but their tactics against the Alliance and their obsessive desire to fight them turns them into aggressors and warmongers in only this one type of conflict.

But while the Horde is a largely good organization except when dealing with the Alliance, their current Warchief struggles to have any redeeming qualities.

Sylvanas doesn't have to be evil. Yes, she was raised as a banshee by Arthas and forced to serve the Scourge for a time, but when she regained her free will, she was mostly restored to the same high elf personality she had once had.

One thing I think would be interesting to consider is how much of the Forsaken psychology is inherent and how much is psychosomatic. Are they truly incapable of experiencing positive emotions, or has their state afflicted them with a powerful depression - one that is certainly not easy to cure (as it is in real life) but one that is not inextricable from their unlife.

Sylvanas uses her undead to justify a lot of horrible things.

Her worldview appears to be roughly the following:

1. The undead will never be accepted by the living. The Horde barely tolerates them as allies, and the Humans want nothing more than to destroy them.

2. The undead must perpetuate themselves in order to defend themselves - they cannot be allowed to simply die off gradually because once the Forsaken population begins to decline, the remaining few will be unable to defend themselves against a world that wishes to see them exterminated.

3. Because humanity - one of Azeroth's most populous races - seeks to have their undead kin exterminated, the only way in which to prevent them from doing so is to turn them undead, making all of humanity into Forsaken (and then possibly the rest of Azeroth.)

All three of these premises are shown to be false, but Sylvanas cannot admit that because A: her entire power structure is based on them and B: she would have to admit to the fact that she has done so many terrible things for no real purpose.

Sylvanas had plenty of blood on her hands before this expansion, but after Teldrassil it really doesn't seem there could be any justice if she doesn't meet some kind of punishment.

The obvious choice would be death - that she is overthrown in a rebellion or a successful campaign by the Alliance. But not only would that be a repeat (roughly) of the Garrosh story, it would also seem to justify her - proving that death was the only thing her enemies ever wanted for her and allowing her to die for what she believes in (even if what she believes in is a horrible lie.)

But let's consider another option:

What if Sylvanas were restored to life?

I became a big Buffy fan when I was in college (right after the show had ended, actually.) One of the main characters, who got his own spinoff after the third season, was the vampire named Angel. His story was that for about a hundred years he had been one of the most vicious and horrible vampires in the world, but after killing the wrong person, he was afflicted with a "gypsy curse," (the show's politics were in the well-meaning-but-problematic range) which - as a punishment - restored his soul to him, forcing him to feel guilt for his actions and empathy for his victims, which did put him on a road to redemption eventually but first drove him into a deep, self-loathing depression (and also ruined his relationships with his fellow murderous bloodsuckers who had become something of a family.)

So when I think of the meanest thing you could do to Sylvanas, it would be to make her alive again.

Presumably this would first mean that any emotions she had muted in undeath would come thundering back to her. Now, living people can be cruel and callous, but I suspect that the defenses she has built up around her emotions were largely based on her undead nature - she would no longer have that as an excuse to rationalize her behavior away.

But more than that, she has spent a great deal of effort trying to convince the Forsaken that you just can't trust the living, and that they are a wholly different nation and people from those who are free of the undead curse. By making her live again, she is alienated from the Forsaken, now being the very thing she has taught her people to hate.

Where does she go? Would she become a Blood Elf? Does she now have to grovel before Lor'themar Theron to be allowed back into Quel'thalas? Or does she adopt a High Elf affiliation and attempt to reconnect with her Alliance-bound sisters?

Meanwhile, is she still running the Horde?

If we assume that this process makes her horrified (or at least far more aware of her culpability) at what she has done, will she falter? Will it change how she runs things, and if so, will people turn on her?

Frankly, I think a far more interesting arc for Sylvanas is not to see her become a raid boss, but instead see her become an NPC that has gone into hiding. She could play more of an Illidan role - someone who is useful to us but also very dangerous.

Plus I think that the Forsaken would have some interesting stuff to deal with - theoretically they originally were hoping for a cure to undeath, but Sylvanas beat into them that they should be both proud of their undead status and also mistrustful of the living. But if Sylvanas is truly cured, might the Forsaken reorient themselves toward a similar treatment, or perhaps seeing what happens to Sylvanas as a result, they might evolve her undead-nationalist philosophy to be even more extreme.