Darius Crowley should be the king of Gilneas (played out storytelling trend continues in 10.2.5))

Lore Story Forum
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I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as disappointed with the WoW story as I am today. I don’t want to sound vitriolic or mad that my version of the story didn’t come true, but this trend has gone on too long and I think has to be addressed.

Before you write this off as a Darius Crowley fan post, I promise you Gilneas is a symptom of a much larger problem with how the story team has been handling race/faction leaders and that’s what this post is about.

Darius Crowley should be king of Gilneas, and there is no reason why he’s not.

Genn stepping aside to make Tess the queen on Gilneas was a horrible decision. Not because Tess is a bad character, and not because Genn is the best king, but because of the reasoning behind it.

Imagine this if you will:
Genn Greymane, after years of strife and suffering, feels he’s made poor decisions as a king. The weight of not having his kingdom is finally lifted from his shoulders, and for the first time in years he can finally grieve Liam. He decides he wants to spend his twilight years with his family. But who can rule the kingdom? Genn turns to his good friend and political dissenter, a man who stood up to him despite their friendship, someone who may have made the right call where he didn’t. Darius Crowley, the man who lead a rebellion for the good of Gilneas, the man who met Belysra and saved us from the Worgen curse, the guy who kept fighting for Gilneas even after Genn left for Darnassus, is now the King of Gilneas. The Greymane dynasty has ended, but with the Crowley’s in charge, there’s hope for a new future with a leader who’s proven time and time again he’ll do what’s right even if it’s not popular.

I’m not patting myself on the back, to me this seems like an obvious choice. This would evoke the same feelings as Thrall turning the Horde over to Vol’jin. They’re not the same, but you trust both of them. It also adds a dynamic twist to the story.

Here’s the thing, from a storytelling perspective there’s not too much of a reason for Genn to actually step down. This was a creative choice by the lore team. No matter your feelings on Genn, his potential has been wasted by not having a kingdom for 15 years. Now we have a fresh start with Gilneas to shake some things up.

So basically we have three choices:
-Make Genn a better leader now that he has a throne.
-Have Genn hand over Gilneas to a competent political adversary, creating a wonderfully symbolic gesture that Greymane’s time is over and that while time’s are changing, we’re in good hands.
-Give the kingdom to a 20 year old with equally as little character development as Genn. (this is the one we went with)

I say this without a shred of doubt, but the thinking by the story team here was “The old ways and leadership were bad. We need a hip, young, new leader who gets it. Someone who wants peace and is with the times. Their arc could be about learning to be a leader, it’ll be great.” You know, like Andiun, Merithra, Rhonin, Shandris, and Jarrod Shadowsong. You could argue that these are great characters, and you’d be correct. But not only is this repetitive, it is absolutely unearned and contrived with Tess.

I cannot stress enough that the reasoning is the problem here. We’ve seen it pop up in the nelf heritage quest, the reclaiming of Lorderon, etc. It’s this idea that old is bad, and that hip new people are good even if they don’t know how to lead or have any character development up to this point. We are essentially stocking up our roster to be a bunch of kids we know nothing about.

The worst of it is that i feel bad for Tess. Whatever character development she might have had is now out the window. She’ll either have to be a Mary Sue and somehow be a great leader even though she’s basically grown up in the woods or Darnassus, or she’ll be super vulnerable and have to grow but without the same ‘oomph’ as Anduin or Merithra.

I would’ve loved a world where we take Gilneas back and get some time to grow with Tess. Have her struggle to be a princess and quest around the world with us. I would’ve also loved it if we ended up with a more ballsy leader, one who is more willing to take action for Gilneas with Darius.

Instead, after 14 years of waiting to see my kingdom get back together, our payoff was an unnecessary roster change. And why? Because the story team wanted Tess to be queen, with no other reason or consideration for the story, players, or characters :frowning:

Sucks man

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I feel you.

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I read your post right before I made my own homie. Extremely well put together. It makes me happy to know other people feel this way but sad for us as a fanbase.

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Absolutely! I was just thinking of this today how cool of a concept it would be if Crowley took over considering the whole civil war.

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That’s not how kingship is transmitted, though.

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She was already 18 years old at least when they left Gilneas! She was raised in Gilneas!

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Someone mentioned Tess was in the Rogue Order Hall.

So she is an Uncrowned who is crowned.

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She was more of an “unofficial” member. So no, she truly isnt uncrowned but now crowned Queen.

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Where do you see her being unofficially involved? Seems as officially involved as anyone. And Gamepedia has The Uncrowned listed as her affiliation.

It goes on to describe her as “now one of the Uncrowned”

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My mistake. I was thinking of Matthias apperently.

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With Liam’s death and both Genn and Mia being too old to safely conceive new children Tess was the only possible choice.
Genn is 77 he simply abdicated to his heir before he became incapable of ruling, that worgen curse is only going to keep him active for so long

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IIRC, a dev made a post/"x"thing… about cross race/species kids and how magic could enable couples to have kids.

Like most such statements they fail to understand just how much of a hole they just ripped open because that also enables things like Mia or even Genn to carry children to term safely “because magic”.

Personally, I prefer a more grounded approach to magic. Like needing to first set the bone, hold the tissues together, or understanding what kind of disease it is before just magicking it away.

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Why do royalty in Azeroth have so few children?

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Dead Queen Syndrome.

Magni wanted a son, but Eimear died before they could have another child. Tiffin died while Anduin was an infant. I’ve got no idea about the mother of Kael’thas, but the Queen of Quel’Thalas has never been brought up or discussed at all. Ever. In any medium. Kinda weird.

Genn had two children, Daelin had three (not counting a possible half-elf daughter that is soft-retconned, but probably is full retconned), and Terenas had two. Note that those three had/have living Queens (or Queen adjacent figures in the case of Katherine Proudmoore).

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I mean IRL this phenomenon was typically do to just staggering amounts of inbreeding that made their mutant offspring pretty much doomed from the start.

Which would be funny to implement but they seem to be going for a legitimate divine right of kings thing were royal blood just makes you naturally better than the common folk and their hideous healthy infants.

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I mean, not necessarily. Much as in history, those of higher birth simply have more resources at their disposal to be better. Jaina Proudmoore may have been a prodigy, but if she had been born the daughter of some lowly fisherman, would she ever have had the opportunity to study magic at all?

There’s a story I wouldn’t mind seeing explored: all the potential geniuses, the archmages, the highlords and powerful warriors who never were because the culture of the human kingdoms denied them the means to achieve greatness.

I’d say it’d be interesting to see this explored via the Bronze dragonflight, but alas, this expansion is at its conclusion. Would be kind of interesting if in another timeline Little Timmy from Lordaeron became Highlord of the Silverhand, the greatest Paladin to have ever lived, for example.

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There’s an old quote I’ll paraphase, I forget from whom which I’d usually bother to dig up but feel is apropos to the topic;

“While impressed with minds like Einstein’s I often wonder how many of his caliber were wasted away in cotton fields, iron mines and sweat shops over the years”

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That one came to mind as well. I thought Einstein himself had said something to the effect. Either way, I think it’d be an interesting story to explore; the potential that had been left to rot. Most societies will suffer that to greater or lesser extents, but if we have to focus on humans, that’s a story I wouldn’t mind seeing.

Who knows? Maybe as sympathetic antagonists. Imagine an organization transcending the borders of the human kingdoms, recruiting and training those with extreme potential. They’d be antagonists for wanting to shake up the established order. That’d be a good time to give players agency in either supporting the kingdoms as they exist, or such a group seeking societal reform.

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The Forsaken toy with this which is why most of my undead characters are people who find themselves in power because their ability.

But the flipside of that is competence and a thirst for power often isnt synonymous. There’s a reason history won’t shut up about like the three dozen or so people who in ten thousand years of history managed to be both interested in and good at warfare and governance.

And that’s an aspect I’d love to explore particularly with the Forsaken. I feel the death of youth is when you realize nobody knows what they’re doing, and adulthood is when you accept you’re a part of this but at least are desperately trying to figure out what you’re doing.

The true curse of the Forsaken isn’t their hunger for flesh but rather that they can’t just die and have others take the weight for them. Especially now with the Banshee Queen gone. They actually have to know what theyre doing. Which is made extra difficult by the reality their newborns are resurrected people with pointed questions and not infants inherently impressed by your ability to jingle keys.

And you’d think some of this would be alleviated by their closeness with the functionally immortal Sin’Dorei. But turns out most of them were just getting wine drunk at park concerts and sending literal children to hunt down Autumnal jaguars to staff their military command, and that went catastrophically wrong because of course it did.

Azeroth is basically a coalition of the stupidest mfers to ever have a brain cell accidentally killing Cthulu, Hel, Set and Yahwee. The fact it tries to be about the grander scheme of things remains criminal.

I want to know more about the omnicidal confederacy of dunces, thank you.

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Yoo, so Rhonin is dead and Shandris is actually 10,000+ years old and has been leading the sentinels for most of that. Like, they had their character growth, it was … Well, it was WoW-tastic and it’s nothing out there.

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