Mothers of Azeroth

I'm not the only one who has noticed a major theme of death, necromancy, and even several references - from the extremely subtle to the explicit - references to Arthas in Battle for Azeroth. But there's something else I don't see a lot of people talking about:

Notice how there are mothers everywhere?

Now, that statement is perhaps kind of an odd one, given that one presumes that any population of, you know, living entities is going to have lots of mothers.

But Warcraft actually has a weird history with mothers. While the game series has long been popular with folks on either side of the gender spectrum (and those in the middle,) it's not terribly hard to see that it was conceived of by a bunch of dudes. There are plenty of stories about fathers and sons within it - Garrosh reckoning with (and taking the worst lessons from) the story of Grommash. Varian, traumatized by his experiences when his own father died, struggling to be a parent to Anduin, and then Anduin having the burden of living up to Varian's legacy. We've got Vol'jin taking over after the death of his father Sen'jin. We've got Arthas murdering his father Terenas. We've got Genn consumed with grief and rage over the death of his son Liam.

Yet over several expansions, there were very few actual living mother characters we had met. Other than Thrall, a lot of characters whose fathers played prominent roles in their characterization barely got any mention of their mothers, and often their mothers went without names.

It's true that we've had some mythological figures who are mothers of a sort - Elune is sometimes referred to by the Night Elves as Mother Moon. The Tauren worship the Earthmother, and while there was some speculation that this might have actually been Therazane the Stonemother, the Elemental Lord of Earth, it seems far more likely that the Earthmother is, in fact, the Titan Azeroth, though the Tauren may not have made that association until learning about this part of the Titanic life cycle.

Still, Battle for Azeroth seems to be pushing the Mother theme a lot, and in different directions.

The first aspect of this that comes to mind if Katherine Proudmoore - Jaina's internal conflict is so tied up in the way she let her father die that he has overshadowed Katherine in her mind. Yet it is Katherine who is allowed to see what Jaina has gone through (ironically through visions of memories that seem meant to torment Jaina) and realize why Jaina had done what she did, and thus is able to forgive her.

Not all mothers are that great, though. We encounter Lucile Waycrest in Drustvar at a gallows about to be hanged as a witch (nice bit of historical accuracy there - at least in Salem, they didn't burn accused witches.) The trial is clearly meant to demonstrate the absurdity of real-world witch trials, but being a fantasy game, Drustvar has this cake and eats it too. The irony is that while Lucile Waycrest is totally innocent of any evil witchcraft, her mother is actually the leader of the Heartsbane Coven, and has zombified Lord Waycrest in order to make him her puppet. The daughter in this case must stand up to her mother, and has this dark legacy to burden her now that she is the head of her house.

What's interesting about the Heartsbane Coven is that it actually sort of zigzags one of the problematic aspects of the "evil hag" trope in fantasy. The trope is obviously born out of a misogynistic and agist tendency in our culture. But by making the Coven actually the work of the male Gorak Tul, it seems as if this is more of a co-opted type of feminine power, and that the true matriarchs are our heroes - Lucile and, elsewhere in Kul Tiras, Katherine and Jaina.

Meanwhile, over in Nazmir, the Blood Trolls have a distinctly matriarchal system, and one that has a lot of parallels with the Heartsbane Coven (I really think of there as being three sets of paired zones between the continents - Drustvar and Nazmir are dark and spooky zones with a supernatural cult spreading corruption through the land, Vol'dun and Stormsong Valley are both areas that seem to be one thing, but actually have some kind of ancient connection to the Old Gods, and Tiragarde and Vol'dun are the zones of political intrigue and plots against those in power.) Anyway, the Blood Trolls are led by Ma'das, which I assume to be at least based on the word "Mother."

A couple other, less central but still kind of interesting references:

One of the bosses in Uldir is M.O.T.H.E.R., a Titanforged guardian who is meant to keep the place sealed (and may be a reference to the Nostromo's onboard computer in Alien, which is of course also about an extraterrestrial menace that is also a biohazard of sorts.)

Then we also have the MOTHERLODE!! dungeon, though the connection here might be as simple as someone at Blizzard saying they wanted a "Mother" theme and realizing that in an expansion about an important mineral, this mining term would work quite well.

Ultimately, I think that this all ties into Azeroth herself. It's odd - Azeroth is, by Titan standards, not even an infant yet - she has yet to be born. But to all our player characters, Azeroth has been the font of life (granted, only relatively recently for Draenei and Orc characters.) As, if I interpret the Tauren religious beliefs correctly, Azeroth is the Earthmother, then this is an expansion about trying to save our mother.

On a personal note, I lost my mother about a year ago to cancer. So having a grand adventure in which we are fighting desperately to save our ultimate mother resonates quite well with me (though I have no idea how stuffing her crystallized blood into a necklace is going to do that.)