At the current end of the Alliance war campaign, Jaina says that she pitied sylvanas for what Arthas did to her - but that now there is nothing left of the hero she once was. This implies that she’s changed over time - certainly there were heroic aspects to her character earlier in WoW’s story.
However…something has certainly changed. My question is…what? What is driving this cruelty, this brutality? Is it hatred? A drive to endure? N’zoth? Mue’zallah? I hope we’ll find out.
Well, seeing everything you love and care for be destroyed, then you are killed, resurrected in a horrific way, turned into a puppet unable to resist your master’s commands, forced to do horrific stuff against your own people and innocents, then finally freeing yourself and spending years hellbent on vengeance, only to find yourself empty of purpose once your target is dead, so you take the suicide route but you can’t die because a horrific afterlife is waiting for you… well, that changes people. A lot.
To make matters worse, she’s undead. Being undead do not feel the same as being alive. The sensations are all different, your needs are different, and Sylvanas has no reason to have any hope or empathy for anyone else. For her, existing is painful, life has no purpose, everyone around her is going to die anyway. Her unlife is torment, so why should she care if anyone around her suffers? Nothing will ever compare to her own suffering.
Sylvanas is a person broken beyond reckognition. She became what she despised the most, and is now a dangerous psychopath that has no regards for life. All she cares about is one thing: herself. Anything that threatens her existance is a menace that must be stopped in any way available. Everyone around her is either a pawn or an enemy.
Could be undeath itself. Imagine wanting the peace of death, but never being able to have it: only a gruelingly slow decay as maggots feast upon you and everyone around you from the inside out until “beauty” is a foreign word. Even if death is finally found through external means, the only thing that awaits is damnation.
It really could just be a tale of envy. A sort of spin on Revelation 9:6.
She’s incredibly selfish and manipulative…and with good reason. When the Gilnean nobles she brought back almost sent her to her permanent death, she saw the same damnation waiting for her that Arthas currently enjoys in his afterlife.
Everything she’s done since then has been geared towards creating as many Forsaken as possible and securing a safe space for them to serve as a buffer between her and the fate that awaits her when she finally kicks the bucket for good.
I mean, that’s certain one way to look at it. Her people can’t procreate, not all resurrect, and they have fought in wars since they have existed.
To say she doesn’t serve their interests as much as her own is wrong. The problem is a recent one, an easy out for drama.
She has always struck me as perhaps the most caring (in her own way) racial leader, when initially she didn’t chose to be. She rose to the challenge and I think honestly her ruthlessness is the only thing that has helped her people to survive.
By rights, they may be the smallest population in Azeroth at this point. They have to bite harder and faster than everyone else to survive.
I’d tell you, but I don’t want to spoil Maleficent for those who haven’t seen it yet.
I was always curious about the forsaken wanting to keep going.
If I was turned into a zombie against my will, the broke free I don’t think I would wish it on anyone else.
I also would probably be grateful for the end of it all. But if what sylvanas saw is what awaits all forsaken, that makes her even worse. She has killed a lot of forsaken lately.
Well… as far as I know the “choice” to be forsaken only comes after one is turned into a forsaken, right?
If a human was killed by arthas and turned into a forsaken against their will then they later escaped his control that’s one thing. That’s how I understand the history.
Keeping it going though? Dead person (and there’s no humans on the horde as far as I know, so any new ones would be enemies or random people) raised as forsaken aren’t probably given a choice to join this “club” until after theyre raised. They can go back to being super dead or just amble along as undead.
Giving forsaken a way to continue to exist when they were raised against their will is one thing. Making more and trying to keep the “culture” going when I can’t see any living person choosing it? Uh ok. Yeah sounds like a very caring leader to me.
Undeath and the fear of dying a final time is her primary motivation in all things.
Figuring out what comes after death is a question everyone asks. Sylvanas knows what is coming for her, and so regardless of her feelings being a decaying corpse she hates the alternative a little more.
In the event that Sylvanas does die at the end of this I am sure some redeeming quality of the new Lightforged Undead will come up and allow Sylvanas to pass without being damned, something she will likely be skeptical of but will come to embrace as she is truly dying.