The Desolate Council

Sylvanas is a problematic leader. Not just for the Horde, but for the Forsaken.

Having the advantage of looking on her as a character in a work of fiction, I think she's a fantastic piece of the Warcraft universe and embodies contradictions that make for interesting characters. But if I were a member of the Forsaken, I'd have really mixed feelings about her.

One of the fundamental questions that the Forsaken have to answer is what exactly they are. Formerly members of the Undead Scourge, their free will was returned to them after Illidan cast a spell that cracked the Frozen Throne, weakening the Lich King. But that's first-generation Forsaken. Newer Forsaken were raised by Val'kyr that Sylvanas took from Icecrown after Arthas' defeat.

That's kind of a big difference. For a player character, it was sort of ambiguous in Vanilla how much your character had been actively undead prior to regaining free will - you would awaken in the crypt in Deathknell (post-Cataclysm you awaken in the graveyard,) meaning that you may have simply just come back to life at that point, but with no Val'kyr assisting you, which to me suggests you were probably a mindless zombie who was stuffed into the crypt, or that perhaps you had succumbed to the plague but for some reason had not risen until that connection to the Lich King was already broken.

The point is: if you started your Undead character prior to Cataclysm, then you don't owe Sylvanas for your existence.

So, on the question of what the Forsaken truly are:

Playable Forsaken are former humans. They were the people of Lordaeron (though many might have also been refugees from Stormwind who moved north after the First War,) which was one of the largest human kingdoms.

And the Forsaken remember their lives as humans. They remember living in a far healthier Lordaeron, under the benevolent rule of King Terenas, whose son Arthas was maybe a bit impetuous but seemed likely to be a good king when the time came - he was being trained by Uther the Lightbringer, after all.

Now, they're not exactly human anymore. Undeath mutes emotions, dulls senses. If you were a baker, for example, when you were alive, you're probably going to really lament the fact that your sugary confections would not taste as good as they used to. There's a lot to be bitter about - even if you retain physical strength, every time you look in the mirror you will see a rotted corpse.

And beyond the inner problem, you also have to deal with the fact that the living fear and resent you. If you were one of those Stormwind refugees, you might wish that you could sail south and walk along the streets of your home town, but the fact is that most people there would think you were a threat and probably kill you on the spot - even, or maybe especially, the ones who knew you in life.

So Sylvanas gives the Forsaken another option: to forget about the past and embrace a new future. She gives the Forsaken a new identity that is divorced from the idea of simply being the kingdom of Lordaeron in a new form. As the Forsaken (and let's remember that that's really her term, and that the "Forsaken" as I've been referring to them are really "Free-willed undead,") the expectation of putting everything back to normal when that's fundamentally impossible is let go, and the people can now embrace a new identity. Rather than inhabiting ruins, the Forsaken have torn down the old and built new things that match their new identity - look at how Brill was rebuilt in Cataclysm.

And it does look like the Forsaken have, in general, embraced Sylvanas' ideas about their identity. It's seen a cultural shift, but also a rather alarming political one: Sylvanas is worshipped almost like a goddess, and she rules as an absolute dictator. She's encouraged the use of Scourge tactics, particularly the development of plagues to use as weapons against all enemies. She has even begun to raise other humans from the dead to serve her. And while these people supposedly have free will, the speed with which they declare their loyalty to Sylvanas (sometimes mere minutes after being living humans fighting against her) makes it very hard to believe that's actually true.

And there's one element that we rarely talk about: Sylvanas is an elf.

While the High Elves and the Humans had been allies since the Troll Wars, there was always a little racial resentment between them. The Elves had been very reluctant to share their knowledge of the arcane with the humans, and the humans had dominated the continent of Lordaeron without providing much room for the High Elves to expand. Again, they were still allies, but we saw, for example, with Garrithos' treatment of the Blood Elves after the Third War, that some humans harbored some deep racial hatred toward the elves.

So if you're a Forsaken who holds onto that human identity, it might not be a purely positive thing. You might resent Sylvanas because she's essentially a carpetbagger. Lordaeron should be ruled by a human, not some elf of Quel'thalas.

So that's where we come to the Desolate Council.

In the preview chapter for the new novel, Before the Storm, we learn that Sylvanas has been forced to spend most of her time in Orgrimmar, given her duties as Warchief. In her absence, the Forsaken have created a new local governing body called the Desolate Council.

Now, obviously, there's a good chance that they guys are not going to last long, as we know the Alliance is going to capture and more or less destroy the Undercity. But I still want to know more about these people.

One area in which they dissent from Sylvanas is that they are generally not interested in her goals to enslave Val'kyr or otherwise find a way to perpetuate the Forsaken. After the death of Arthas, Sylvanas found new purpose (after killing herself and getting resurrected by the Val'kyr) in safeguarding the continued existence of the Forsaken.

But to a lot of Forsaken, I imagine the goal was just to be able to live out what extra time they had and then slowly fade away. They don't want to force this existence on others or live perpetually in this half-life.

Sylvanas has basically made the decision for countless people that they will live on, whether they like it or not. But even though most people are generally in favor of, you know, staying alive, this flies in the face of the one thing that defines the Forsaken: Free Will.

Literally, the difference between Scourge zombies and Forsaken undead is that the latter have a choice in how they act. They don't have to attack the living, spread undeath, and serve some powerful overlord. The problem with how Sylvanas has been running things is that she has basically created a culture in which people do those things anyway, with her as the stand-in for the Lich King.

And she has created a narrative in which it was she who freed the Forsaken from the grasp of the Scourge, and thus they owe her their loyalty. But she wasn't. She is a political leader, and free people don't have to embrace the goals and mission of their political leader. At best, Sylvanas waged a successful campaign to push the Scourge out of the Undercity and dominate the land, but that doesn't make her a messiah, it makes her a revolutionary.

So even if they'll only appear in this novel, I'm actually really happy to see a different point of view among the Forsaken. I can see why plenty of them would happily follow Sylvanas to the very gates of hell, but when the literal defining trait of your people is your free will, it seems important to point out that not everyone is hopping on her bandwagon.