Due to a LONG discussion about high/blood elves we ultimately ended with the discussion about the night elves spying into Quel’thalas. The problem is, I just realized the whole thing might have been retconned. My proof is this:
“I remember centuries of warfare against the trolls,” Lorash continued. “I remember seeing pieces of my childhood friends decorating the huts and villages of the Amani. Trophies, you see. Was it the kaldorei who came to our aid in those days? No. I remember the day death itself marched on our new homeland. When my mother died and was raised into the Lich King’s army, who had to kill her and put her to rest? Was it you, Malfurion, who stood with us as we lost our homeland?”
“My people had just repelled the Burning Legion and, in doing so, lost our homeland,” Malfurion said sharply. “And despite the years of war between our two factions, we never attacked your home.
We have never even dreamed of it.”
Either this was sloppy work on Golden’s part, Malfurion simply not knowing about the whole thing(nor apparently Lorash) or this means the whole night elf spying thing has outright been retconned or at least changed to something more benigned.
You see, writers once foolishly believed that things like research and internal consistency of the lore mattered. But these days, the writing team understands that those trite elements are less important than shock value, and preaching lessons to the audience; lessons like “Alliance good” and “Horde bad.” And because spying on another nation with the intent of possibly staging a military campaign against them could be seen as something less than completely virtuous, well, certainly the Alliance could not have perpetrated such an action, you understand.
I’m honestly starting to feel bad for both factions. It’s not fun being cast repeatedly as a villain, but it’s equally frustrating being relegated to the sort of Lawful Stupid protagonist you used to see in pulp 80’s fantasy.
Even with it being an admitted mistake on the writers part (how everyone missed the second biggest plot thread in the whole belf starting experience, idk), it still makes sense in lore.
Tyrande would have been the one to make the call to invade Belf lands. She’s been shown to do impulsive things on her own before (freeing Illidan by massacring your own people). If she never consulted him nor told him about it, then our favorite senile druid wouldn’t ever know about it. Because the night elf invaders didn’t exactly live to return home and tell anyone about what they did.
Malfurion has always been shown to care far more about the natural world than anything going on in the politics of the world. Him being completely out of touch with anything that doesn’t involve plants or squirrels isn’t even out of character.
It’s sloppy work on the writers part, and not just about this either. While it’s true that they never attacked Quel’Thalas, they did spy on them during BC, an odd choice given that Tyrande had just helped them, and apparently Shandris has worked with them during the Troll Wars. The whole timeline is really a mess.
As others have said, the author admitted it was an oversight. It isn’t exactly a retcon. It is sort of like when Golden wrote that Genn had a tail, and later admitted it was a mistake. I put both those mistakes on the same level. I don’t question it because the writers state they are mistakes. The Night Elves were in Quelthalas and Genn has no tail. Mistakes happen.
But, as others have said, it is entirely possible that had it been that way, Malfurion was unaware of it. Perhaps Tyrande had various scouts all over the place, and reports from all over, and didn’t discuss every detail with him.
I do think the Blood elves have a legit grievance with Malfurion exiling anyone who wasn’t willing to stop using their arcane skills or wasn’t okay with Malfurion forming a Theocratic dictatorship with him and his wife at the head with no oversight.
You eat roadkill, so that doesn’t seem like a great bet.
Having said that - Robert Brooks is the one who made this oversight concerning the Night Elves and later admitted it as such. He wrote A Good War. Golden wrote Elegy.
Golden did make the infamous mistake of adding a tail to Genn in Before the Storm. But that was more of her free style / free association method of lore. I guess the dojo couldn’t say no, and just hoped no one read it anyway.
They admitted that was a mistake. And as Malfurion was snoozing at the time he very easily could’ve missed it.
And like there’s literally a Nelf base in Quel’Thalas. You go there on the Alliance for the Velf unlock quest and everything. At a certain point this is gaslighting.
Ah great, the Tyrande hate rager again. You know she worked well with blood elves in wc3 right? To the point she actively went to sacrifice herself while Maiev wanted to throw them to the wolves? And Kael returned said favor by telling Malfurion where she was stranded.
If Tyrande was so impulsive as you claimed, she would have slaughtered the Highborne in Dire Maul, not go halfway across the world to launch a war. Especially not with a people she worked well with just 3 years previously. Even Tyrande’s impulsiveness had rationality behind it, which her haters love to ignore.
Considering Fandral’s bigotry against other races and Shandris’ zeal against the Highborne, it’s more likely to be one of them.
Even if your headcanon was true, if Tyrande didn’t know about a major military operation that coordinated directly with Alliance intelligence and had major implications for long term diplomacy between a former alliance race and the Alliance, then she’s still an awful leader.
Occam’s razor says she ordered it though, because she’s the head of the Night elf sentinels.
