Last week, we discovered that, contrary to our earlier theories that the Horde would find Teldrassil aflame and merely be blamed for the actions of another, instead it turns out that Sylvanas ordered the burning, killing off massive numbers of Night Elf civilians, destroying the Alliance's most important foothold in Kalimdor, and escalating the Alliance/Horde war to the highest possible degree. She took what had been a struggle over resources into an existential conflict.
Fan reaction has been intense.
Horde players feel that they are once again being pushed into a villainous role, while many were drawn to the Horde because it allowed them to play as seemingly monstrous races that were actually heroic. Sylvanas has hardly been a good guy basically since she first died, but she has historically always had some kind of justification behind her ruthless behavior. In Cataclysm, she defended raising dead humans as a way to keep the Forsaken going given their lack of ordinary reproduction (for obvious reasons.)
But her smug smirk, in which she responds to the claim that she cannot kill hope with a wry "Can't I?" seems so incredibly over the wall into full on villain territory that it's hard to imagine her finding any sort of redemption barring some reveal that she wasn't actually in control of her body at the time, or that that wasn't actually Sylvanas there - neither of which seem very likely.
But there's another question, which is whether the decision made sense strategically.
The mission presented to the Horde was conquest - they would take Teldrassil and occupy it, holding the Night Elf population there as hostages to prevent the Alliance from moving in on the Azerite emerging in Silithus. It would be a way to secure Kalimdor for the Horde.
If this had gone the way she sold the mission, we would now be seeing Horde soldiers occupying Darnassus and the Night Elves would most likely be waging some kind of resistance. Such a thing would almost certainly be bloody and filled with brutal suppression, but for the Alliance, it would certainly be preferable to a total massacre that did happen.
The Horde, on the other hand, is primarily paying a moral cost. In burning Teldrassil, the Horde does not need to commit resources to occupy it, and the threat of the Night Elves' bastion has been totally eliminated.
Now, I would imagine that this does not remove the Night Elf presence in Kalimdor. Teldrassil is a relatively new thing for a population that has inhabited (in many cases individually) the forests for ten thousand years. Night Elves in Kalimdor are more motivated than ever to strike back at the Horde, and I would be shocked if we didn't see Kaldorei guerrilla units attempting to strike at any Horde targets - military or civilian - throughout the Horde's northern territories.
Still, comparing guerrilla remnants to the fully-backed Alliance military, the Horde can likely weather the storm of the angered Night Elves, but it won't be without a cost.
Indeed, the Horde military is probably going to have to dedicate some of its power to holding off guerrilla attacks by extremely angry Night Elves, many of whom have nothing to lose and no reason to hold back.
The obvious consequence of this action is the attack on Undercity, due to arrive tomorrow if I'm not mistaken. Here, the main force of the Alliance military has an advantage in terms of logistics (notice how every expansion, the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor seem to get farther away from one another?) We of course know that the Alliance will be cutting a swath across Tirisfal Glades and besieging Undercity.
If you haven't played the Beta and don't want tomorrow spoiled, I'll do a cut here.
The Alliance is in a dominant position by the time they get to Undercity. In the scenario, Alliance players march from the northern beaches through a totally blasted land until they assemble in the utterly shattered ruins of Brill.
The battle does have a back-and-forth aspect to it to keep the tension up, but the Alliance has plenty of resources. On the other hand, the Horde is using the Fabian strategy - constant tactical retreats.
Ultimately, the battle ends when Sylvanas has led the Alliance into the center of the city, then seems to jump out via portal with her remaining forces before detonating a plague-bomb to leave Undercity uninhabitable.
The strategy is to sacrifice a key foothold in the Eastern Kingdoms in an effort to decapitate Alliance leadership. But this doesn't seem to work (we're missing cutscenes in the Beta, but I'd assume Jaina is able to port everyone out to safety.)
So on a tactical level, both Teldrassil and Undercity seem like wins, of a sort, for Sylvanas. By burning Teldrassil she has removed a major threat in Kalimdor, and by sacrificing Undercity, she has guaranteed the Alliance siege has been a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Does this mean Sylvanas is on top? Well, maybe for now. But she has created some problems for herself:
First is that her attempt to decapitate the Alliance is a failure. Genn, Anduin, and Jaina are all still alive after the battle, and the Alliance is hardly out of troops at this point. She does manage to prevent the Alliance from gaining the Undercity as their own stronghold, but she does lose it herself. And given that this is her city - the Warchief's own preferred capital - it's a pretty demoralizing loss for the people who have supported her most loyally.
It does not appear the loss of Undercity is as much of a population loss as Teldrassil - the city is evacuated in the early stages of the battle by Horde players, and not in the "quest you're intended to fail" manner that happens with Teldrassil. But the manner in which she has waged the battle during the siege is reason for the Horde to be unhappy with how things are going.
The moment in the cinematic is a little ambiguous when it comes to where it falls in the scenario. I suspect it's before players arrive, but given that Sylvanas and Saurfang wind up back on the walls before players get there, it's a little ambiguous.
Still, what's notable is that after Sylvanas' big "For the Horde" rallying cry, she then orders the blight sprayed over the battlefield, killing her own troops along with the Alliance to fight as skeletal soldiers.
Sylvanas might be succeeding militarily, but she is trashing any credibility she has as a leader of the Horde. She pushes Saurfang to the breaking point, and by the end of the Siege, he is captured by the Alliance. The parts of the Horde that aren't down with wanton civilian murder and the ones who maybe, you know, liked living in Undercity, not to mention anyone who might be wondering "um, Sylvanas, where are all those people who went to that peace summit in Arathi Highlands?" are going to start seeing Sylvanas as less of a leader than a tyrant, and one who wouldn't think twice about letting them get killed if it meant furthering her strategies.
Not to mention that the Alliance is extremely motivated to kill her.
Hell, not just in the sense that the Alliance wants to defeat the Horde - that's probably going to be part of it, but as the Horde shows signs of fracturing like it did under Garrosh, you just know that the Alliance, and particularly the Alliance under Anduin, is going to leverage any kind of disunity within the Horde to weaken its ability to fend off the Alliance.
Much is said about how Anduin is too soft and too peace-loving to defeat the Horde. But if you actually look at history, diplomats can be more effective in wars than generals. A deft political move can change the course of history.
To take a real-world example, consider the Emancipation Proclamation. We remember it as the act that freed the slaves, and as a gesture, it was one of the most important acts an American president has ever done. But it was also a huge diplomatic coup. At the time, both England and France were considering entering the Civil War, and there was worry that they might take the side of the South. But slavery had been abolished in both countries and both saw it as a politically unacceptable institution. Lincoln had campaigned to be President on a platform that did not include abolition despite the fact that he was an abolitionist himself. He saw the potential for a civil war and wanted to avoid taking that position for fear of provoking the South.
The Southerners rebelled anyway, believing the Lincoln would eventually try to push for abolition anyway. But even as the war flared up, some stats in which slavery was legal did not rebel, and lest he lose their support, Lincoln declared the war to be simply to preserve the union so as to prevent outside influences from controlling American destiny - to keep a strong and united U.S.A. that could hold its own against those great European powers. And that, of course, was a reason for the war that could make countries like France and England wish to see the Union lose.
But with the Emancipation Proclamation, which only legally freed slaves in rebelling states, technically as a punishment for their rebellion and not officially for moral reasons, he changed the narrative. This was no longer about individual states versus the federal government. It was about freedom and equality and human dignity.
And with that change, Lincoln made it clear that there was a good and an evil side to the conflict, and foreign powers couldn't side with the South without clearly being on the side of evil.
The South didn't stand a chance of winning without foreign intervention, and by making an unenforceable proclamation that wasn't even directed at those foreign powers, Lincoln cut off any chance for the South to have any allies.
Now, to step back into the realm of fantasy:
The Horde has always maintained that its is governed by honor, and that the Alliance is cowardly and dishonorable. But Sylvanas' actions cannot be described as honorable or just or brave. Yes, a soldier sacrificing himself to defeat the foe is honorable, but a leader slaughtering their own troops to raise as undead minions is not - there's no agency to the "hero" in that situation. Honor also means fighting a worthy foe, and slaughtering a bunch of civilians and children in Teldrassil is nothing of the sort.
The Horde has been down this road all too recently with Garrosh. They don't want to be there again.
So if Anduin is smart, he'll make use of that.
Anduin could easily say "hey Horde, I'm happy to make peace. You remove Sylvanas, you hand her over or you give us her head, and we go back to peace," and there would be keen ears on the Horde side listening to it.
Again, Sylvanas is winning in military terms, but she has painted herself into a corner politically. Short of wiping out the Alliance entirely (which can't happen for gameplay reasons, and frankly, narrative ones) she's never going to know peace.
One of the meta-narrative frustrations about the current story is how we've been here before with Garrosh. In learning about the Thunder King, Lorewalker Cho made a really insightful comment: if you are a leader who rules entirely based on fear, you're only going to be in power so long as your people are not brave.
Now, there is a wrinkle. We saw it in the Old Soldier cinematic. Sylvanas has rallied the Horde together out of the promise that the Alliance is so consumed with anger that they will attack relentlessly. Why would the Horde rally to Sylvanas' side at Undercity unless they feared the Alliance was coming for all of them, not just her.
That will work to keep the Horde unified under her, but again, the moment that Anduin starts extending clemency to those people within the Horde who step away from Sylvanas, the sooner we're going to start seeing the Horde fall apart.
We know that Saurfang refuses to go back with the Horde player when they raid the Stormwind stockade. At least in the Alpha, he mentioned going to speak to Anduin - something the stockade's guards allow him to do without question. It seems as if Saurfang is the first person to split off from Sylvanas.
Where that plot goes, I really don't know. But I do think it's a problem Sylvanas is going to have to deal with if she wants to stay in power.
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