Over the past few months I have seen some criticism of how the Drakonids and Dragonspawn story was handled in Dragonflight, with claims that the questline in which this takes place is poorly made because it reeks of centrism and a hollow desire to be apolitical.
Seeing this, I want to raise a counterpoint, a different interpretation to Alexstrasza’s character in Dragonflight.
I not only do not think that this comes from a place of attempting to be centrist or apolitical, but rather, that the core issues here are actually fairly political in nature.
[The Interpretation]
Starting off with the conclusion and working backwards: I think that Alexstrasza, and by extension, many other Titan-aligned Dragons, can be read as a critique on religious fanaticism and the conflicts that come from extreme belief systems.
[The Parallels]
In the “Cause without a Rebel” quest chain, the conflict stems from the fact that while the Dragonflights have been absent from the Isles, the Drakonids and Dragonspawn that remained lived their own lives without the Aspects interference. Now that the Aspects have returned, they dislike the lack of agency they have been presented with.
The issues come in when the problem is resolved by Alexstrasza sending you to find out what the rebelling Drakonids and Dragonspawn want, with Alexstrasza legitimately not realizing how their treatment of these races was affecting them.
To many this reads as a hollow centrist “just ask for rights”. It can also be read as Alexstrasza literally not realizing this as a result of her strong pro-Titan beliefs.
The Titans created the Keepers, the Earthen, Vrykul, Mogu, etc. with the purpose of tending the world that they ordered in their absense. Similarly, the Flights created the Drakonid with the purpose of being loyal servants like the Titans before them.
So when the Drakonids and Dragonspawn start having dissenting opinions, Alexstrasza is taken off guard, this isn’t exactly how its supposed to go. With her view of the Titans, she likely sees the process in a very romanticized light and assumes that all beings made by the Titans willingly serve them.
This again ties to the themes of religious fanaticism, as the idea of a god-like being either creating or raising up a group of people to follow them should not be a foreign concept to most.
When this viewpoint is challenged, however, she is taken aback; she morally doesn’t want to force the Dragonkin and Dragonspawn to serve her, but also didn’t see this coming due to how her beliefs frame things.
Even this situation of someone’s morals and beliefs not aligning when placed under scrutiny, lines up with this interpretation, as there are many situations in a religion such as Christianity, where if you presented someone with a situation from the Bible but replaced the god that they believe in with something that they don’t, they would likely be morally against said narrative.
Alexstrasza makes these exceptions because her gods are the Titans, we can see this again in her interaction with Vyranoth.
Vyranoth says that Alexstrasza wouldn’t force the Titan’s will on them, but that she breached this agreement when the eggs were infused with Order by the Titans. Alexstrasza says she doesn’t agree with this having happened, but regardless, she still retains her belief in the Titans.
This again, lines up with her being an allegory for religious fanaticism, as even when her beliefs end up causing something that she personally disagrees with, she moves past the issue rather than addressing the systematic cause of it, that being the Titan’s will.
She shows regret that Vyranoth is no longer with her, but from Vyranoth’s perspective, she was the one abandoned. Even this lines up easily with this reading of Alexstrasza’s character, with her lamenting that these beliefs caused a wedge in their friendship, but not viewing the belief system as a whole as the issue that lead to it.
[Tying it all together]
Alexstrasza reads like a character whose faith in her extreme beliefs is being challenged from all angles, as the gods she looked up to turn out to not be as perfect as she believed that they were.
While threats like the Primalists themselves serve as something that she and the other dragons can look at and affirm to themselves that they are correct in their beliefs, situations such as the Drakonid/Dragonspawn Rebellion and her talk with Vyranoth challenge her views on a more fundamental level.
Even though in isolation she may heavily disagree with the extents that the Titans and their Order will go to, she doesn’t acknowledge this out of her faith and loyalty to the ideals of the Titans and their Keepers that rose her and her brethren up and aided them in defending Azeroth for thousands of years.
