The Winter Queen's Sister

 Oddly, when I first did the Ardenweald quests on my main, I missed out on the climactic cutscene in which...

It's a new expansion, let's put a spoiler cut here.

SPOILERS AHEAD

So I missed the cutscene in which the Winter Queen revives Ysera's spirit - seemingly sacrificing some part of herself in the process (we see one of the leaves from her horns fall.) Ysera's spiritual survival is something of a relief after the utter loss of Ursoc, but the cutscene also brings with it some interesting lore hints:

The Winter Queen believes Ysera to be her "sister's" pet, and seems surprised that she should sacrifice to allow this creature to survive - it's only after Moonberry and Ara'lon talk to her that she's convinced to help Ysera avoid the fate of so many other nature spirits.

So who is her sister?

First off, I think we should remember that while Ardenweald is a realm of the Shadowlands, it's also considered a sort of twin realm of the Emerald Dream. Given that in earlier lore, we saw the Shadowlands entire as a mirror of the Dream (I had previously compared it to D&D's Feywild and Shadowfell) but if Ardenweald is just one realm among many in the Shadowlands, is the Emerald Dream just one part of a larger "Lightlands"?

Sidenote: I don't think the Shadowlands are tied in any serious way to "The Shadow" (aka the Void,) and that it's probably just a name. Thus the "Lightlands" would probably be better called the "Lifelands," as a realm tied to the primordial force of life in the way the Shadowlands are tied to death.

Now, to be frank, I think the answer to the question of who the Winter Queen's sister is is almost certainly Elune. I can't think of any other entity that could claim Ysera - basically a demigod - as a pet.

But what does that imply of Elune?

"Sister" could be literal or figurative. If Elune (assuming it's Elune, which I'm going to do so for the rest of the post) is effectively the "Summer Queen," ruling over the Emerald Dream, that would make a direct counterpart to the Winter Queen. On the other hand, she might be a sister in the same way that Alexstrasza and Ysera are - not actually blood relatives, but such deep friends that the relationship is like that. I don't know if the Winter Queen would consider the other Eternals - like the Archon or the Primus - to be siblings (we're talking about basically gods, so it gets a little wishy-washy.)

Another interpretation could be that Elune might have originally been one of these Eternals. The tone with which the Winter Queen mentions here actually seems to carry a little bit of spite - like Elune might have abandoned them at some point.

Elune is a really enigmatic figure - we've seen her tied to the Titans, to the Naaru, and now, it seems, to the Shadowlands. She's always been associated with the Night Elves and their nature-worship (Cenarius, who brought druidism to Azeroth, is her son,) which could place her with Life as a primal force, but on the other hand, her power usually manifests as light - Holy Light used by priests (and how the hell do we not have Night Elf paladins after literally two of the Paladin class champions were Night Elves?) but also called down by druids.

To go a little crazy for a moment - the moonlight spells that druids use do Arcane damage, rather than Holy (their sun-spells do nature damage). In the Shadowlands, despite the fact that the Kyrians look like and basically are angels, their magic tends to be of the Arcane school, rather than Holy. Now, that sort of makes sense if holy damage is specifically the Holy Light only, given that the Kyrians, despite appearances, are ultimately using death magic. Does this mean literally anything? I don't know.

Ironically, Elune actually shares something with what is implied to be the Nathrezim.

Ok - to go on a tangent - a journal found in Revendreth suggests that some sort of agents have been infiltrating every major power of the universe, reporting back to, one assumes, Sire Denathrius. This implies a lot of crazy things - including that the Nathreizm might have intentionally led to the creation of the Burning Legion, and that Lothraxion isn't "reformed" and is instead in deep cover - but so was Varimathras (holy crap, is that why they were torturing him? To find out what he knew?) and all the other Dreadlords.

Elune has her hand in many pies - the Light, Order, Life, and maybe even Death? Indeed, one wonders a lot about the Night Warrior - is its use of darkness actually an invocation of the Void? (Remember that part of the ritual Tyrande underwent to become the Night Warrior involved chucking an orc's severed head into a moonwell.)

I suspect we might actually be in a position to get some answers regarding Elune this expansion, and I'm here for it!