Sylvanas has not been a full "good guy" since she was alive. As the Ranger-General of Quel'thalas, taking over after her sister Alleria disappeared with the closing of the Dark Portal, she was nothing but a noble, serious, professional defender of her people. It was the wicked cruelty of Arthas - his soul lost to Frostmourne and replaced with a callous and murderous will to serve the Lich King that he would one day become - that robbed her of her life, transforming her into a Banshee. Even while still a part of the Scourge, she would reclaim her body, taking the form she currently has (let's all forget her old Night Elf model that oddly lasted through BC after they'd added Blood Elves.)
Oddly, Sylvanas owes Illidan Stormrage for her liberation from the Scourge. It was his actions - coerced by the Kil'jaeden, who had lost control of a Lich King that was far more willful than anticipated - that caused the Frozen Throne to be damaged, and the leaking power of that crystalline structure suddenly restored to half the Scourge in the Plaguelands their free will and minds.
Sylvanas rallied these free undead to her side - having been one of Arthas' chief lieutenants, she was the highest ranking former Scourge person in the Plaguelands, and she swiftly gathered some of her liberated fellow banshees to attempt to assassinate Arthas. It was only the intervention of Kel'thuzad that prevented her from taking Arthas out when he was still merely the Scourge's top Death Knight.
From there, she waged a campaign against both the Scourge and those undead that were being brought under control by the Dreadlords - primarily Balnazaar, Mephistroph, and Varimathras. After cornering the latter, Varimathras submitted to her and became her majordomo, turning on his fellows and leaving the Legion's presence in the Plaguelands severely compromised.
And that's where we joined her in vanilla WoW. Balnazaar had infiltrated the Scarlet Crusade from the moment of its inception, transforming a rather practical order of undead-fighting paladins, priests, and other humans into a fanatical group of zealots who refused to recognize the difference between the Forsaken and the Scourge. The Crusade had representatives in Stormwind, and most of the Alliance believed them to have good intentions, except for a few heroes who heard from ex-Crusaders about the Scarlets' depravity.
This disconnect - the Alliance's credulity toward the Crusade - may well have been what prevented the Forsaken from re-joining the Alliance, which if you think about it, would have been the logical move. Sylvanas was an undead High Elf, leading a bunch of undead Humans. They had all been part of the Alliance, and had there been a better effort to understand what exactly these Forsaken were (and a better effort on the part of the Forsaken to explain themselves,) it's likely that both Undercity and Silvermoon would be firmly in the hands of the Alliance.
But while they are former Alliance, the Forsaken are also former Scourge, and they have retained a great number of their practices.
Having Varimathras as a lieutenant also wound up creating greater chaos. At the beginning of Wrath, the Alliance and Horde have about as good a relationship as ever - there are quests in Borean Tundra where, as a Horde player, you escort Alliance deserters to an officer out of Valiance Keep for punishment. There's a somewhat begrudging cooperation in these efforts, to the extent that there's even friendly banter between Draenosh Saurfang and Bolvar Fordragon at the Wrath Gate.
But the Wrath Gate is where it all changes.
The problem is that, being former Scourge, the Forsaken have been working for years on their Blight - a biological weapon capable of slaying any foe - living or undead - en masse. The stated purpose was to use as a weapon against the Scourge, though they were happy to use it against the Scarlet Crusade as well.
Ultimately, though, Varimathras, working with Grand Apothecary Putress, bombarded Scourge, Alliance, and Horde alike with the Blight at the Wrath Gate. The intention was a coup d'etat at the Undercity, where Varimathras nearly killed Sylvanas (not unlike what she had done to Arthas, actually) and sent her briefly into exile. Varimathras had clearly meant to use Undercity as the launching point for a renewed Burning Legion invasion, and actually managed to summon a great number of demons before we took him out. The Horde rallied to take the city back, while at the same time the Alliance invaded to punish those responsible for the attack.
While Varimathras was defeated and Sylvanas restored to her throne, the conflict was not over. Varian, newly restored king of Stormwind, looked on the workings of the Undercity and decided that if the Horde was willing to condone what was done here, there could be no peace. Yes, the Blight had been used by treacherous usurpers, but the Forsaken had, with full endorsement of Sylvanas and Thrall, created the Blight in the first place, torturing and murdering people in order to do so.
One could argue that it was Varian's attack on Thrall here that really started the war that ended with the Siege of Orgrimmar.
Yet, following the death of Arthas, Sylvanas has gone down a darker path still. She has now endorsed the raising of slain enemies as Forsaken, and basically telling them that they can either follow her or die. The campaign in Gilneas was brutal, and the depravities visited upon places like Hillsbrad are shocking.
When Vol'jin was mortally wounded, he used his last breath to name Sylvanas as his successor. Many, including Sylvanas, it would seem, were baffled by this decision, even as he acknowledged that people would not understand why he did so.
And her record has not been great. In the midst of the Legion's invasion, Sylvanas pursued a rather reckless and selfless mission to enslave the Val'kyr Eyir, making a deal with Helya, the terms of which we have yet to totally understand.
And following the arduous and costly war against the Legion, she made a brutal preemptive strike against the Alliance that climaxed with a massacre of civilians - and act that has made many in the Horde question their loyalty, such that even Saurfang, when taken as a prisoner of war, refused to be rescued while she was still in charge. Meanwhile, the Alliance's retaliation left Tirisfal devastated and the Undercity destroyed - at Sylvanas' hands - losing the Horde its biggest foothold in the Eastern Kingdoms.
So why the hell did the Loa tell Vol'jin to put this person in charge of the Horde, when every decision she has made as Warchief seems to weaken them or invite greater bloodshed?
SPOILERS AHOY?
Short answer: They didn't.
See, it turns out that maybe letting a guy who is bleeding out from a fel-cursed stab wound and listening to a bunch of voices choose his successor is a bad idea.
In 8.1, as datamined, we're getting a continuation of the Vol'jin storyline that starts once you hit revered with the Zandalari Empire. As with all things datamined, take it with a grain of salt. But this is also big enough story stuff that either Blizzard is seriously trolling us (no pun intended) or it has to be part of the longterm goal of the story.
Vol'jin, perhaps only in spirit form, is back in the land of the living. There are two mysteries: who brought him back, and who told him to name Sylvanas his successor. We eventually determine that these are two separate entities, but we don't really know what either are (though Eyir mentions the Hand of Valor taking Vol'jin and making him into something greater than a mere dead troll's spirit.)
That's a big mystery to be sure - there's all sorts of speculation on just what might have wanted Sylvanas to be Warchief. N'zoth is of course a good possibility, as he seems like just the sort of entity to take such an opportunity to sow chaos. Or it might be some as-yet-unrevealed death-god in the Shadowlands, like the thing that took Odyn's eye.
But let's set that aside for now:
What about Sylvanas?
Sylvanas is not a good person, but she generally has some kind of logical justification for her actions. The Burning of Teldrassil is probably the worst thing she has ever done, but there was an internal logic (even if it doesn't hold up to objective scrutiny.) The original intention of the battle was to kill Malfurion in order to demoralize the Night Elves and then occupy Teldrassil to hold its as sort of hostages to keep the Alliance out of Kalimdor.
The longterm goal was to destroy the Alliance - the idea being that Anduin would risk losing the loyalty of the Night Elves if he didn't send people to liberate Teldrassil (which would be a very costly move) and he would risk losing the loyalty of the Gilneans if he tried to liberate Teldrassil before taking back Gilneas.
There are flaws to this notion, mind you, like the fact that most Gilneans lived on Teldrassil anyway, so I think Genn would be perfectly happy to liberate both his people and the people that rescued his people, but the logic was that if she could strip Anduin of one major ally, the push south to take Stormwind (and probably kill everyone and raise them as Forsaken) would be way easier. Let's also remember that this kind of logic is exactly what lost the Horde the Second War - Doomhammer sought out Anduin Lothar and killed him in a one-on-one fight, thinking this would demoralize the Alliance, but all it did is rally them and imbue Turalyon with enough holy fury to beat the crap out of him.
But being Warchief has always been odd for Sylvanas. She spent so long worshipped as something of a demigod by her own people, and now she is in a very diverse Horde that are not all in on the cult of personality.
I don't think she wanted to be Warchief. As a military leader, she was the logical choice, but as we've seen with Garrosh, Warchiefs can't just be military leaders.
So I'll operate under the assumption that, at least before she was named, she did not want the job.
What happens if we tell her that Vol'jin had been in error, and she shouldn't be Warchief?
I suspect that she's not going to simply step down without a fuss. Now that she is in this position, she has made it her own, for good or mostly ill. Also, she might face punishment for her actions as Warchief, and greater scrutiny of her behavior. If she steps down, the next Warchief could very well demand that she explain her entire deal with Helya, for example, and there's a good chance she did some questionable things to secure it.
She also doesn't have Undercity to go back to - her isolation from the rest of the Horde had given her a great deal of freedom to conduct herself and her people in her own (super creepy) style. So by stepping down she would also need to beg a home of her superiors.
But it would also be really horrifying to discover that you were elevated to a position of power because some malevolent force wanted you to do the job terribly. If N'zoth was the one whispering to Vol'jin, how do you think it would feel for some ancient monstrosity to say "yeah, I know exactly who to put in a position of power if I want to foment chaos and death" and you're that person?
I think a full-on redemption for Sylvanas is unlikely, but I do think it would be cool to see her grapple with the way that she has descended into such depths of villainy. Is she capable of regret? Is she capable of stopping this downward slide?
Sylvanas becoming a raid boss would simply feel like Garrosh 2.0, and I really have to think they don't want to do that. But what kind of chaos would fall upon the Horde if they discover that their Warchief's claim to power is illegitimate?
No comments:
Post a Comment