Anduin's War

When World of Warcraft first came out, the King of Stormwind was a young boy of about 7 or 8. In Stormwind Keep, Anduin had a generic human boy model and a little star-shaped wand. He was flanked by Bolvar Fordragon and Lady Katrana Prestor. In quests that I never got around to while it was still possible, Prestor was revealed as the black dragon Onyxia, sewing discord within the kingdom and aiming to weaken the Alliance by creating the environment in which the Defias would come about as well as kidnapping King Varian.

Bolvar Fordragon was Lord Regent while Varian was away, and while it was odd that Anduin would hold the title of King while his father was still alive, it's possible they just assumed Varian was dead. It's this oddity that means that Anduin is now in his second term as king of Stormwind.

But while the child-king Anduin had Bolvar truly running the show - the honorable Paladin may not have prevented all the crises that befell the kingdom, but he could be trusted as a faithful Knight of the Silver Hand - Anduin, now an adult of roughly 20 years, is truly in a position of leadership, even as he governs people who can be as much as over a thousand times his age.

We have not yet seen a great deal of King Anduin - truly king now, with the death of his father - because Legion has focused primarily on the class orders, the Kirin Tor, and the inclusive expedition led by the Draenei. But we can talk about what he has inherited and what challenges lie before him:

The Alliance suffered some heavy losses in the war with Garrosh's Horde, but emerged triumphant by the end of it. Varian allowed Vol'jin to lead the Horde following the war in the hopes that they could forge a lasting peace. He did so largely to honor the vision his son Anduin had for the world.

Anduin did not live through the First or Second Wars, and was relatively safe in Stormwind during the Third War, if he even remembers it (he was a very small child at the time.) He knows that the Horde had committed grave atrocities in the past, but he came of age in a time when figures like Thrall were in charge, and the chance of peace between the factions was at an all-time high. He got to know Baine Bloodhoof, and came to the conclusion that the Horde was ultimately composed of people, not monsters, and that as long as the two sides could see the shared humanity within each other, peace was not impossible.

Anduin has suffered for those beliefs. He attempted to reason with Garrosh, only for the then-Warchief to nearly kill him. Yet he retained his faith even in the face of this event that there was a future in which the two sides of the old conflict could see eye-to-eye.

Varian's offer of peace was, I think, an effective one. While we did have Ashran as a point of conflict between the sides, things slid far back into a mostly-cooperative state, where Alliance and Horde came together to decimate the Iron Horde easily.

The shock of the Broken Shore invasion was that the consistently proven idea that cooperation between the two factions would yield an unstoppable force was finally rebuked. And it cost Anduin his father.

In the Battle for Azeroth cinematic, we watch Anduin lead the Alliance armies in an assault on the Undercity - an assault that will presumably end in victory, given what we know of the fate of the Forsaken capital. As a lifelong advocate for peace, what makes Anduin take up the sword to fight the Horde?

It seems most likely that this is a direct response to the burning of Teldrassil. Such a devastating and probably surprising blow would mean that a swift response was required, and taking the Warchief's own city from her would allow the Alliance to turn a massive defeat into a crucial victory.

Though massive in scale, an attack on Undercity is still a proportional response - if you know about the history of the real-world Cold War, you'll know that this was a sort of policy to deter the other side from doing bad things while carefully avoiding escalation. That being said, destroying Undercity to respond to the destruction of Darnassus is probably too large to let the conflict die down.

And if the conflict does not die down, where does that leave Anduin?

In the Horde's history, there have been two out of six Horde warchiefs that have been capable of making deals with the Alliance. Removing Sylvanas might allow someone with more honor (specifically the kind that allows for binding peace agreements) to take over, but the tricky thing with diplomacy is that the deals you make have to carry through regardless of who is in charge. Vol'jin agreed to a peace treaty, but he only lasted a couple years as Warchief, and his successor seems to have torn that up (at least from the Alliance perspective.) So even if someone else takes over after Sylvanas is removed, what guarantee does Anduin have that her successor won't simply be replaced immediately by a Garrosh-like warmonger?

This is where practicalities get in the way of what I think Anduin really wants to see in the world. Malfurion was dedicated to faction-neutrality when it came to the Cenarion Circle, but that meant he had to stand by while Orcs massacred Night Elves in their native lands. Anduin cannot afford to do such a thing, nor does he have an organization like the Cenarion Circle that he could claim to represent. He is King of Stormwind - there's no one else to stand up for Stormwind.

He also has a rather depressing example of where idealism can lead a person. Jaina Proudmoore once occupied that role of peace advocate - and she paid even more dearly than Anduin did for that ideal. She saw her father killed to preserve the nation of Durotar in its infancy, and her thanks for such a sacrifice was to see her city obliterated at the hands of the same nation. So often has Horde aggression torn apart the peace that she fought for that at this point, she no longer believes in it. What vision she has for the people of the Horde, I can't say, but at this point she does not believe that the Horde as a political structure has a right to continue.

Jaina's anger is proportional to her old faith in peace, because if there was anyone who had made an earnest effort to co-exist peacefully with the Horde, she was that person. Surely if the Horde could not simply leave Jaina in peace, no one is safe.

And yet, for someone like Anduin, this must be so frustrating. There are so many greater cosmic threats that demand a forceful response. The Horde have it within them to be peaceful co-inhabitants of Azeroth, and yet they never seem to do it.

And so, a response is required. We see Anduin leading the assault on Undercity. But where does that war end? What allows the Alliance to declare victory? What does Anduin hope to accomplish? Can it truly be over with Undercity's destruction? Not if Sylvanas remains Warchief. Can it end with Sylvanas' ouster? Well, look at how long-lived the peace after Garrosh's removal lasted. Must it, then, end with the destruction of the Horde and the conquest or scattering of its people?

How, then, does that leave Azeroth prepared to face the greater threats to its existence?

Anduin needs to decide what war it is he wants to win.

And then he has to win it.