Why would you reward her for all she has done?
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Call Arthas a villain all you want, he was still the only reason why the Lich King did not destroy all life on Azeroth entirely. The last shred of humanity he had left fought back the Lich King’s control long enough for us and Tirion to kill him setting him free from his own self inflicted prison. Notice how the first thing he says to his father when he is free is “is it over?” odd choice of words for someone supposedly hell bent on destroying everyone and everything on Azeroth. Odd how he didn’t curse our very existence for stopping his plan if he was fully in control during his time as the Lich King. Take from that what you will.
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Indeed.
Even Jaina and Lorthemar acknowledge that she was a hero when she lived. The inscription on Alleria’s statue was written by Sylvanas, which means she was pretty well regarded herself.
When she lived, she was respected, revered, and even after all she has done, she is recognised as being a hero before Arthas raised her from the dead.
Jaina says that there remains nothing of that hero. But that hero did exist, even by Jaina’s account.
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Live Sylvanas was exactly the type of person you need to fight a true monster like Arthas. Someone with their heart in the right place, but a head that can make hard decisions.
She lost because she was wildly outmatched, and the Quel’thalas defense was utterly gutted by betrayal.
And (and this is me reading in to it a bit) the thing is? Arthas isn’t a fool. In fact, before his fall, he had some of those same traits. Arthas would have known that Sylvanas was outplaying him and out fighting him, and that he won because he was several weight classes above her, as well as having someone stabbing her in the back.
Which explains his fury and torment towards her.
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This is ture. He was vexed by her. He expected to just plow through Quel’thalas but Sylvanas managed to actually slow him down through gorilla warfare. But in the end she was outnumbered 1000 to 1 there was just to many undead.
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I mean, he’s pretty clearly a villain. What else would we call him?
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… he’s a villain. “Take from that what you will,” wh~? He killed people in mass and tormented people’s souls by stripping their free will away. Don’t pretend Arthas deserves anything less than damnation.
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According to the WoW wiki page, even in death she still considered herself one of the foremost protectors of Quel’thalas and did continue to offer aid. Honestly, I feel that the only reason she ever went over the edge was because the writing team changed, her character was just assassinated over the years by to many people having very different visions of what she was supposed to be, where in cata she started to show many different inconsistencys.
Anti-hero maybe? We shall see.
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Sylvanas was a cool character but she was so horribly butchered that she is nothing but one of those smug arrogant villains you can’t wait to see tumble down their throne into absolute despair and suffering.
Sylvanas is now one of those characters.
You don’t redeem a character like that.
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Now, she is. It is hard to argue that point.
They lost the thread when they didn’t have her at the end in some way with Arthas. She deserved to be there even more than Jaina, certainly more than Tirion. And she just… wasn’t.
So they wrote edge of night, and she just went more and more whole hog baddie, and here we are.
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I don’t understand how people are not okay with this idea and yet are okay with the idea of Sylvanas actually ending up in the Maw. A realm of eternal torture. Eternity is a long long long time and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Ffs, even Kaelthas who damned his entire world and another to the Legion didn’t go into the Maw. I don’t even think Arthas should, because his original intentions were for his people but Frostmourne stole his soul.
I think the Maw is awful for anyone to be in for all eternity, except maybe Gul’dan I guess. Nearly every other example was heroic at some point and only turned evil out of desperation. Either way, I’m hoping we atleast overthrow the entire Shadowlands structure when this is over.
I feel like this thread sheds a light on Blizzard’s habit of having female characters go craaaaazy and evil following severe trauma, then killing them (or having a male character prove how wrong and foolish they are for not reacting well to this trauma).
For instance: call it abuse or not, but Sylvanas was murdered, tortured, and enslaved by Arthas, then forced to take part in slaughtering her own people until only 10% of their former population remained. Blizzard has taken great pains to emphasize how Sylvanas’s descent into darkness is ~just like Arthas~, because it’s sooo poetic and not tone deaf for a trauma survivor to turn into a selfish b!tch and become just as bad as the man who inflicted her trauma, right?
Another instance: Jaina, whose trauma following Theramore basically turned her into just as bad of a genocidal maniac as Garrosh. I’ll admit, Jaina’s story at the start of BfA (reconciling with her mother and actually facing her trauma in a sympathetic way by forgiving herself for surviving it and her perceived fault) repaired this problem a little bit, but the other problems with her character are too lengthy to list here.
Tyrande’s treading into dangerous territory as well, plus obviously Delaryn and Sira Moonwarden, who both enjoyed the Sylvanas treatment and yet for some reason instead of doing what Sylvanas did with Arthas and hating her, they like her and stay to help genocide their own people? Ok Blizzard.
Having female characters go through a face/heel turn following major trauma is practically a Blizzard trope at this point.
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Because there is a difference between being placed in jail for life, and then being placed in jail for life with the person who traumatized you previously hardcore.
At that point even if you hate the person being sent to jail you can’t help but think, lowkey the judge or guard who’d allowed that is sadistic by wanting to inflict even more pain on top of things.
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Ner’zul!
People always want to mess with a masterpiece.
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I never said he didn’t. I said the last shred of his own humanity was what held the Lich King back from killing everyone on Azeroth which Chris Metzen stated he could have done very easily if so he wished. Arthas was driven mad by countless people as well as Frostmourne when he actually took the thing up. You see how long you stay sane for when you have Ner’zhul, Kel’Thuzad, Mal’Ganis, and the countless souls of Frostmourne in your head.
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When the crime is especially bad most law enforcement actually tell the other inmates what the guy is in there for and the other prisoners make life for this person absolutely nightmarish.
Thats what Sylvanas deserves. Nothing more and nothing less.
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This thread title makes me chuckle.
And this…
Kinda makes you think. To me, Arthas was irredeemably evil once he became a death knight. But I do have to wonder if this was his eternal fate, and if there was some way he could’ve escaped it.
I do remember that in an alternate timeline, he eventually becomes king and marries Jaina- they then have a child. It’s too bad he couldn’t hire Dr. Strange to choose the one correct path for him to take to not end up getting screwed over by the Burning Legion.
I always took his “is it over?” as evidence of a certain degree of self loathing and a deep insecurity. It fits with his constant bravado and attitude as a paladin, pre fall.
That the Lich King chose him because it recognized the exploitable nature of his personality. His need for validation, his need to have the devotion of his people, things that could be twisted into a true tyrant.
So, he existed in a state of constant personal, emotional torment and stress. Not that this lessens his crimes by any measure, it makes him a more interesting villain, and all the more wretched a creature. So, when he finally died, the emotional prison of his own creation, before he was ever damned, finally collapsed.
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Just like with Garrosh I think Arthas was always destined to be corrupted and become the Lich King in our timeline whereas in another he, as you said became King, married Jaina, had a child and ruled as King much the same way in every timeline except ours Garrosh led the Horde to greatness. Or it could all be crap and no matter what Arthas was always destined down the path he took. Who knows.
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…loooook, it’s easy to fall into the mental trap of valuing what Sylvanas did more than what Arthas did because what she did happened at a more recent time in a personal MMO space rather than a more abstract RTS one.
But Arthas killed a ridiculously large amount of people and loved every second of it. The first mission of the Undead Frozen Throne campaign is all about him gleefully stopping escape routes out of Lordaeron so he can kill more civilians.
Just because we saw Sylv’s crimes up close doesn’t mean they were worse.
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