I mean, I get it, really. I’ll point out the fallacies and try to remain as objective as possible but I do understand, especially when it comes to Sylvanas.
got it, thanks for clearing that up : )
I just had an ideal that could work. My original speculation up to the point is that OG(Banshee Queen) Sylvanas persona would be no more once once her soul is restored to full; OG Sylvanas would dissipate leaving the RG to deal with what her twisted and fractured soul did. Yayyy perfect called it, BUTTT, what if in the processes instead of dissipating and disappearing into nothingness she actually manifest as being of pure OGness(hate and evil) with RG Sylvanas face and all.
Would beheading her and putting her head on a pike satisfy the anti-Sylvanas white hot people that doesn’t care if RG Sylvanas is innocent or not crowd?
Sorry if I didn’t explain this clearly, but feel free to ask follow up questions.
Just send her to revendreth, sadly I do not see sylv coming back as one of my leaders so give her the chance of salvation AND Let us rest from this writing.
Playing horde feels like sheeet With all the leaders being useless husks, if they release wotlk I Will remain there forever.
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I don’t want her head on a pike - not anymore anyway. I am not entirely clear on what the status of her soul is at this moment, but at a minimum there is a part of her that is entirely innocent of what was done even if the evil part is still in there as well.
It wouldn’t be RG Sylvanas, the RG would be the blue eyed undead HE we see today. The Banshee Queen(the one responsible for the atrocities) would be an entirely new being manifested from the dark magic used to fracture RG Sylvanas soul.
I think that destroying that manifested(cloned if I may) entity would sate some fans thirst for blood. I don’t think killing Zovaal will sate that thirst.
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How about combine it all into one package? During the Zovaal fight, he pulls the Banshee Queen part out of RG Sylvanas and uses the Banshee Queen to attack us. We kill the Banshee Queen. We kill Zovaal. Zovaal’s death causes the Maw to explode freeing all of the wrongfully imprisioned souls. Boom! Souls all saved, RG Sylvanas purified, Banshee Queen killed.
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Irrationality concerning Sylvanas has been a theme among a lot of people for awhile now.
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It started way back in TFT when she killed Garithos. A long time is a understatement. Some peeps are just weird like that. 
This might very well be the case, as was brought up in another thread:
We know Sylvanas is going to die somehow to be judged by the Arbiter.
It would make sense if the part “that filled her with darkness” aka dark magic(or w/e it is) is gone. The only thing he would be doing is pulling out a part of RG Sylvanas soul, while we go “not this again.”
How does it not invalidate things?
Her story was that of the broken queen leading the broken people of Lordaeron. Her story was that of the tortured soul. Her story was that of defiance, of not being controlled by Arthas. Her story was that of the person who saw the hell that awaited her and became obsessed with avoiding it.
She sacrificed her valkyrie on multiple occasions to avoid death for that reason. She went to Stormheim to subjugate more because of that. Genn broke the lantern to stop it - he mentions her quest for immortality and tells her “you stole my son’s future, now I have stolen yours”.
Now we’re told that what we were specifically shown regarding her death at ICC “wasn’t everything” and that in reality she was serving this character who’d never been so much as mentioned before.
Now the stuff with the valkyrie and Stormheim seems pointless. If she made a deal with the Jailer then why would she even be terrified of going back? In fact, in Shadowlands she breaks the veil between worlds specifically to go back. It makes that whole interaction with Genn in Stormheim, which was great at the time, seem hollow.
Now her “breaking free” of Arthas seems like a farce. Arthas was influenced by Zorvaal, Sylvanas essentially broke her shackles from Arthas only to waltz right into the dominion of the character that was influencing Arthas.
Now it wasn’t all Sylvanas, she was being influenced by the Jailer and it wasn’t even the whole of Sylvanas either. The “Sylvanas” we came to know has been revealed to just be a fragment, the Sylvanas we have after the unification will not be the Sylvanas we knew as a result but instead a combination of the Sylvanas we knew and one we haven’t dealt with much. We’ve essentially been told "that wasn’t really Sylvanas guys, not the whole character at least.
Can you really not see how this cheapens the character we’ve been with for over a decade now?
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It’s pretty ridiculous.
Like her whole character was centred around breaking free of Arthas? That was a major plot point for her?
But, she actually didn’t? All of that “we will not serve” stuff turned out to be a lie. Not only was she serving the figure that Arthas was influenced by, but the Forsaken who she “freed” were unwittingly serving him as well.
Like yo, what does this mean for the Forsaken? This whole time they’ve never actually been free from the manipulations of the very figure that we’ve now been told was originally responsible for enslaving them? Even though that was the core of their story?
Like…I just…it feels like the people that are okay with this must be the ones that were never really invested in the lore surrounding the Forsaken and Sylvanas
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Only sane poster. Thanks.
It honestly does feel like they took all the negative aspects of Kerrigans character arc in Starcraft and applied it to Sylvanas.
Say what you will about Amon and what not, but at least he was set up in Brood War via the secret mission. The epilogue of Brood War even says that Kerrigan was more concerned about a “growing threat” somewhere else than the protoss, dominion and Jimmy wanting to kill her.
Sylvanas and the Forsaken had been mirroring the actions, ambitions, and tactics of the Scourge since Vanilla at the latest. Questions of “why would she do bad things like the bad things that happened to her” are things that people should have been asking since Vanilla and it’s a shame that it took until BfA for the masses to start to do so.
There are tons of bad interpretations of the cinematic because it’s about Sylvanas and by extension the Forsaken, who have always had a large portion of their fanbase dedicated to willfully misinterpreting them.
Like the idea that the fundamental basis of her story is:
Is simply wrong. But people have internalized it anyway over time which means that they’ve been looking at the story through a warped lens ever since.
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Sylvanas: “Anduin… I’m having your baby…”
Zing! Didn’t see that one coming, did ya?!
Here is my bad interpretation :
The BQ (Banshee Queen) Sylvanas is what the worst and most evil aspects of the RG (Ranger General) Sylvanas would have done. So, the RG Sylvanas rightly feels some responsibility, even if she would never fathom such things as her whole self.
BQ Sylvanas is not so much a lie, but an aspect of RG Sylvanas, under extreme duress, torture, and manipulation of the soul.
RG Sylvanas is aghast, and disgusted. But I don’t think she is off the hook. She isn’t letting herself off the hook.
I am a fan of BQ Sylvanas. I will be sad to see her go. She was like Ma Barker. A crazy dame. The getaway on the blimp was hilariously fun.
I would hate to see the Banshee Queen go away. I hope BQ gets extracted from RG, and runs away as a separate entity, to do more fun stuff! Or at least BQ lies dormant in RG Sylvanas, in case we need to make the Alliance QQ some more. She is good at that. Maybe RG is defending Quelthalas from Alleria, and as she is losing, she unleashes the BQ, while Alleria unleashes the Void.
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We already had that, yes it was largely in novels and not the games when it came to Sylvanas in particular; but the novels are canon.
She was tortured pretty horrendously by Arthas, it is not surprising at all that she’d come out the other end twisted and changed.
This was exacerbated by her experiences at ICC, where she was faced with the horror awaiting her in the afterlife. This made her desperate to avoid it and deepened her mentality of “the ends justify the means”.
As for the Forsaken themselves, it was established in lore that they struggled to feel emotions and pain thanks to their undeath. It was also not only established that dealing with having become undead was a traumatic experience, but that the Forsaken often found themselves at the wrong end of prejudice thanks to the Scourge. Similarly, those who were Forsaken that stemmed from the Scourge had to deal with the atrocities they’d committed.
These were things explored through the likes of the Forsaken starting zone, where you had to help a newly risen Forsaken as they struggled to come to terms with the “monster” they’d become which was causing them significant distress, and the Lillian Voss storyline where we see Forsaken trying to reconnect with their living loved ones only to be dealt with as “monstrosities”. The Forsaken also found themselves under attack by the likes of the Scarlet Crusade, simply for existing. The Wrathgate worsened this as although canonically it was an extremist faction within the Forsaken responsible for it, it caused great distrust in their new allies among the Horde who took steps to tighten control on them such as the installation of Kor’kron guards at Undercity. The Forsaken were treated as monsters by many and so over time became a facsimile of those very monsters.
Lets not pretend that they were always “the Scourge”, or that Sylvanas was “Arthas”. Sylvanas very specifically did not force Forsaken to remain raised in the beginning, in the Forsaken starting zone we saw that newly raised Forsaken were given the choice to return to death, she also released Reigol Valdread after he requested that she do so. She aided Silvermoon in securing the Ghostlands. Putress developed a counter to the plague of undeath being spread by the LK and largely curbed it. The Forsaken aided in the defense of Ogrimmar against the Scourge, she “saved” the Horde at the Broken Shore etc. etc.
So why would we ask questions to things we were given the answers to?
In what capacity is this wrong?
She was the one that rallied the Forsaken, she was the one that led them as they reclaimed their home. She’s such a pivotal aspect of their culture that their banner symbol is literally a symbol of her face. Were it not for Sylvanas, the Forsaken as they are would not exist at all and may have just ended up being torn apart by groups like the Scarlet Crusade. Not only that, but she served as their leader for the bulk of their time in the story thus far and did take steps to preserve her people, such as her plan to use the valkyrie to create new Forsaken as they could not reproduce and her use of the blight in Gilneas to lessen Forsaken casualties. Was blighting Gilneas morally righteous? Not at all, but it exemplified that saving her people from the meat grinder that Garrosh was trying to push them into was more important to her - “the ends justify the means”. Similarly her raising fresh Forsaken was seen in the same light, they’d established themselves as a peoples and if their numbers began to dwindle then their hold on Lordaeron would be lost and their place in the world alongside it, so once again the ends of raising new undead despite the horror that undeath can inflict was seen as justified by her thanks to the potential extinction of her new “peoples”, many of which had come to accept their new life and didn’t necessarily want to die.
She absolutely was a tortured soul, that was quite literally her origin as far as the “Banshee Queen” goes. That suffering is what linked her to the Forsaken despite her not being from Lordaeron and not being the same sort of undead as them. One of her favourite lines was “what are we but slaves to this torment”, that torment was undeath and it was what she shared with those she ruled over.
Her defiance in the face of Arthas was quite literally her core storyline early on. She had been abused by him in ways that not many were and broke free. Destroying Arthas then became a focus for her. In fact soo pivotal was this breaking of Arthas that when she had achieved it, she felt that she no longer needed to continue on living and threw herself from atop ICC.
TLDR: Don’t just say “these people don’t understand but I won’t provide any information and context as to how they don’t understand, if I say so it just must be true”.
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She is not the only person who was horribly hurt by Arthas. Arthas left a multitude of shattered lives with him in his wake, and not just to those who would become undead. I dislike the tendency some have to elevate her suffering over the suffering of Arthas’ other victims (and, eventually, her own victims)
So traumatic that they had no qualms whatsoever inflicting it on others
This was nowhere near as widespread as a lot of Forsaken fans have come to believe, and in fact the Forsaken themselves (including Sylvanas) did plenty of rejecting of their own.
Again, the notion that they were anguished over doing terrible things falls flat when they continued to do terrible things of their own volition.
This topic has been discussed ad nauseum for years and I’m tired of doing people’s homework for them, especially for people who are nominally fans of the Forsaken but don’t seem to actually have a good recollection or understanding of the Forsaken’s origins in Warcraft 3.
If you want me to give you some hooks for where to look, look at Vanilla and Cataclysm Forsaken questing in Hillsbrad, Arathi, and Western Plaguelands. Take a walk around the Apothecarium sometime and take in the sights.
These are the sorts of actions that the Forsaken undertook that people keep on trying to bury or conceal because the contradict the “anguished tortured victim” narrative that they’re addicted to.
This contradiction between what the Forsaken always were and how a lot of their fans RPed them is ultimately responsible for the mess that they are now.
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Did you read the Arthas book? Arthas specifically singled her out for torment thanks to how vigorously she defended Quel’Thalas. Your opinion here is incredibly telling regarding your overall knowledge of the situation.
Her suffering was worse because Arthas intentionally made it worse, that’s the whole canon story. That’s quite literally the entire deal with Sylvanas and Arthas. Yes plenty of others suffered at his hands but none were specifically singled out for torment in the way that Sylvanas was because none had infuriated Arthas to the extent that she did.
Because they had trouble connecting with their emotions, that was established in the lore a long time ago. Judging them by the moral compass of the living is foolhardy, they aren’t the same as they were in life. That’s why the Forsaken have long held a position in the Horde that’s precarious and more of an alliance of convenience than the other factions. They’ve rightfully been mistrusted because they don’t share the same feelings and views as the living.
What rejecting of their own are you referring to? At least provide examples if you wish to make assertions.
A core part of their early storyline was centred around the prejudice they faced, they also regularly faced criticism from other factions for the decisions they made. While that criticism realistically wasn’t misplaced at all times, from the perspective of the Forsaken it was.
How much more do you want it to be a part of their story? If Blizzard specifically spending a good deal of time covering it during the old Forsaken levelling system and the regular mistrust that they’re met with isn’t enough, then what is it you want to feel that they suffered prejudice?
The Forsaken constitutes a wide array of undead, not all who were former Scourge. Many were raised in the wake of it all.
Additionally, you’re acting like one contradicts the other. As part of the ex-Scourge members gaining their freedom they were faced with those atrocities, much like Sylvanas it makes perfect sense for that to twist and change them. They essentially woke up to find themselves flooded with the memories of everything they’d done. Deathknights are similar and have done some pretty questionable things themselves.
Have you ever thought that perhaps they’re not as disturbed by the committing of further atrocities because of a combination of their muted emotions and, when it comes to ex-Scourge, the desensitisation of them to it by the atrocities they’d already committed and had to come to terms with previously?
This isn’t a “gotcha”, it makes sense. It’d make less sense for them to come out at the end of it all the same as they were. It also wasn’t every Forsaken that partook in atrocities. Just like not every Orc was involved in the whole Garrosh supremacy deal.
Already covered this, they don’t have the same morals as the living.
Once again, they can be both. You seem to have this odd view that the two are mutually exclusive.
The Forsaken suffered, the Forsaken also inflicted suffering. Both can coexist. They’re obviously not angels, they were never framed that way. Doesn’t mean that they didn’t suffer. Victims can be perpetrators too.
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