Her only claim is in blood.
Anything else is just non-existent.
She was more so only to be wed to a noble or something.
Deathwing being that something if he got away with it.
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“Once or twice, Parqual had sneaked into his former lodgings, smuggling books into the Undercity. But he had been caught once and admonished. His books had been confiscated. There is no need to remember the human history of this place, he had been told. Only the history of the Undercity matters now.” - Before The Storm
Sylvanas Windrunner literally pulled a 1984 and confiscated books.
Sylvanas told you to reject your past. It was her final and most essential command.
She’s literally big brother.
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Sad they have to ruin the Forsaken with terrible characters like Calia
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It’s messed up and gross that a bunch of steadily decomposing walking corpses aren’t super happy with that situation?
Y’all are ridiculous lol
She got a leadership position because she helped facilitate the re-taking of Lordaeron/Undercity by personally wading into the plague to get a sample, because she then went to Maldraxxus and got them to help actually get rid of said plague, and then because she insisted that she had no intention of taking back her throne and just wanted to help.
But sure, it’s because of her last name 
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Considering I’m talking about the arguments people make in favor of Calia, yes.
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She’s a smart one. Declined to retake the throne, but do heroic acts and allow your subjects to give it back to you instead.
Then also bag yourself a Proudmoore, something your brother failed to do.
Calia is taking notes from Charlie Sheen #Winning.
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I hate this so much.
In the very beginning of Cataclysm, you could see that she was actually trying to make a place for her people. She had come to accept her role as a leader, and was actually looking out for them. She explicitly seemed concerned that because they couldn’t procreate, they would die out.
That made it seem like she had, you know. Post traumatic growth. She had found a reason to get up in the morning. That’s something that’s narratively satisfying, and also has parallels to real life situations. Finding a purpose is something we can all relate to.
She was a person.
But, nah, bump that. Let’s make her so unnecessarily evil that she stops caring about everything, and that whole thing we wrote? Pointless. No, she’s been trying to kill everything all along, this whole time.
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Actually, I think the biggest problem with her doesn’t even come from the story. She’s a Menethil, most Forsaken are (I understand) the fallen humans from Lordaeron. It would make sense for her to have an important role, regardless of her lack of accomplishments.
The problem lies in how little she fits the concept of the Forsaken for the players.
Forsaken are presented as this “metal” race. Quite literally, in some of its animations. They’re intended to be these brutal zombies, with visible bones and morbid features.
While the concept of a beautiful princess/queen is not strange to this “metal” imagery, it’s still expected for the leader to be somewhat brutal. At least to haver her being pragmatic in a cold way.
In other words, she’s too “Alliance” to fit as the Forsakens leader.
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“Re-taking” the ruins after a battle is an odd use of words. Her using the power of light to go into the plague to get a sample because no one else could, was terrible writing that was desperately trying to give her some form of saviour moment.
It felt forced and fell flat.
Her ‘helping out’ as she is just doing just doesn’t live up to the standard of a leader of the Forsaken. She just hasn’t earned it by doing errands and playing friends with everyone.
Something bigger is needed to cement it, and frankly dare I say at least distance her a bit from her attachments in the Alliance, that seem far more relevant to her.
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I agree that this is more an issue of player expectations than lore issues. Lorewise, she is literally the sovereign leader of the people of Lordaeron, which, yes, most Forsaken are.
But, that does create a clash with expectations.
To be clear? I completely understand where the Forsaken are coming from. I think a lot of them seem and feel ‘metal’ (I’m hip, kids. I understand the slang) because that is literally how the people who designed the game keep presenting them.
It would be like if there was suddenly a goblin leader being presented who was against a lot of wholesale consumerism and explosive research. Even if he had the best reason (greed nearly destroyed the planet, and explosives have caused too much problems), and had a strong lore tie-in? Like finding out this is the person who first distributed kaja’mite to the goblins?
It’s still going to feel weird. You spend over a decade telling us the goblins are one thing, then suddenly want us to accept an almost polar opposite.
I get it.
It would be like having a high elf leader who didn’t care about fashion. That…pains me to even write.
But I think that’s one of the reasons why Calia isn’t supposed to be the de facto leader of the Forsaken, but a seat on the council. I think the point of the Desoate Council is that they’re not supposed to have one person just telling them what to do, since they come from all walks.
That Calia is being compared to Sylvanas is, hopefully, just a holdover because the Forsaken had spent so long directly underneath the control of Sylvanas. I want to think that they’re going to showcase that this is a whole new system.
Hopefully.
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You’re completely right.
However, as a game in which there’s plenty of races, each race ends up needing a “face”. Regardless of how you explain it in the lore, in-game you’re going to need a race leader. And it seems Calia is being presented as that, or being set up as such.
The Horde already has a council. They’re gonna need a character that the players easily identify as the Forsaken leader to use for cutscenes and such.
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Yeah, she’s a bad character, which is why she spent all of Shadowlands standing in the exact same spot doing exactly nothing.
She didn’t earn her position on the council, she just kind of showed up day one at a job and decided she’d be CEO of a company and literally no one tried to tell her no.
I personally can’t stand her, she’s boring and poorly written. She’s an obvious attempt by Blizzard writers to take the Forsaken in a direction that THEY like, not that WE would like… she’s horrible, just horrible.
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She has birthright.
But that’s still true, yes.
The forsaken will lose ther evilness sooner or later.
I don’t at all disagree.
I’m just hoping it ends up being something like, well…the dwarves, for example. In a cutscene, if you see Muradin, Falstad, or Moira? You know that’s kind of Ironforge.
…of course, that would involve the writers actually, you know. Involving the dwarves in anything. Which they seem averse to do.
Actually, the Council of the Three Hammers is kind of analogous to this situation. Different people who had been at odds with each other, forming a council to try to unite and forge a new future.
I think the Forsaken could use that, yeah. Their old philosophy wasn’t really tenable for the long term. Even back when the game was released, Undercity wasn’t friendly with Orgrimmar, Darkspear, or Thunder Bluff. It’s hard to be a united faction if people can’t trust each other.
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Council of Three hammer is the dumbest thing that happened to dwarf lore. We’re playing in a land of kings and queens. The princess gets “kidnapped” and runs away from her toxic father, then marries a sweet guy who treats her right. She then becomes queen consort to the Dark Irons, hears her dad is gone, goes back to Ironforge to claim her birthright…
The dwarves are like “Yeah, she’s the princess and is the new queen.”
BUT NO… Varian Wyrnn gets upset because Moira kept Andean a little too long, and he goes to Ironforge, takes a knife to Queen Moira’s throat and tells her, and the dwarves (who already accepted her as Queen) that nope… he gets to decide she isn’t worthy of being Queen.
What?!
Can we just once… just once get a princess who become queen? Talanji got to become queen. No one cares about her though because she’s a troll. But human kingdoms following rite of succession? Nope.
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she’s a monster and antithesis of what average forsaken is
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The idea?
Disagree!
It’s nice to have the dwarves reunited after the War of the Three Hammers. It was an idea with a time that’s come. Lorewise, it makes sense.
The execution?
Agree!
Even if he did have some kind of right to speak towards other nations, the dwarves had suffered more transgressions from the Dark Iron than the humans. If they’re cool with it, that should say something. Especially considering dwarves have a reputation for grudges.
It was a decent idea handled kinda stupidly.
…
…look, I’m not saying that this game tends to do that a lot, but, I’m not saying I’m completely surprised, y’know?
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The only thing I like about Calia is not necessarily her character as it currently stands… but her being the last Menethil solidifies the Forsaken’s claim to Lordaeron from all the naysayers. The Forsaken are, by and large, literally the people of Lordaeron raised into undeath. There may be some outliers from other kingdoms here and there, but a vast majority of the Forsaken are native Lordaeronians.
But that didn’t stop the MHP’s from constantly coming on to the forums calling them squatters, usurpers who don’t belong there, Lordaeron belongs to the Alliance, blah blah blah.
Well, now they turned the last remaining Menethil into an undead and placed her on the Desolate Council. So now y’all MHPs can sit down and be quiet. Lordaeron belongs to the Forsaken.
What they (the writers) need to do with Calia now is have her endure some event that makes her realize what it means to be a Forsaken. Some moment where she tries to do something nice and good, and it blows up in her face. She needs to see just how anti-undead certain groups are and why her people have called themselves “forsaken” for the last 20 years or so.
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That’s how she died. She tried to reunite Forsaken and their humans families, then Sylvanas came and murdered her.
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Very bland character, like Queen Whatsherface of the Zandalari. In fact, you could swap their character templates and nobody would even notice.