I know since the Highborne were cast out, perhaps having a noble caste seems unsavory for the night elves. But is there any evidence that there is a new aristocracy in night elven society that replaced the highborne?
Not that I can think of. There are many figures who are very well esteemed but none just have power over others just because of a whim.
Maybe the closest we could think of was Fandral and that was because he was already corrupted by Old Gods and still him being in a place of power came from his merits as a druid and not of bloodline or sorts.
It seems to me that the more power you have in kaldorei society the more you devote yourself to your people and that is essentially the opposite of what Aristcrats do.
If anyone else has a different opinion or has a source of any aristocracy system in modern kaldorei i’d like to know about it.
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I don’t think so. It would seem that the whole caste system was thrown out after the war. Those who hold high ranking positions in the society come from their rank within the Sisterhood, Cenarion Circle which is probably just Malfurion and maybe the other Archdruids, and the Sentinels.
There maybe those who have more wealth than others. With the inclusion of the other Alliance nations, it would have made trade possible. Certain craftsman and inventors could have made some considerable profit from trade.
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We’re talking about forest primitives who live in trees, sleep in caves, and sometimes grow antlers on their heads. They can barely manage the concept of a city, much less the refinement that marks true nobility.
They can’t even speak proper Thalassian, the language of nobility, let alone the decorum that marks one of true noble blood.
Peasants they were, and most of them are still the exact same ignorant, magic blind peasants of long ago. As peasant as their lowborne language.
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Craftsman and laborers are not nobility. Nobility is the blood of leadership, command. Common work is for those less refined.
There is Lord Fallowmere in Stonetalon, who is… well, a Lord. I suppose it could be a military title, but no other commander is a Lord/Lady that I can recall.
The Shen’dralar are also nobility, the rest of the Night Elves probably just don’t treat them as such.
I feel like there was a questgiver in Vanilla that tried to pass themselves off as aristocratic (or, at least just posh) because of their family’s money and mercantilism. But I’m too lazy to play Classic and hunt them down.
Some surviving members of the old non-Highborne nobility (i.e. the Ravencrest and Stareye types) might have retained various degrees of prominence in post-Sundering kaldorei society, but that would probably be achieved by way of proving themselves still competent in positions of leadership in the new order rather than the night elves actually preserving any functioning relevance to the old hereditary stations.
So individuals like Lord Fallowmere might still go by their family titles because their experience as commanders of the old night elf army - itself comprised primarily of the traditional noble families - would allow them to readily earn the same sort of military leadership positions they’d held back before the Sundering.
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men sleep while women do all the work in night elf society
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The blood elf in me is loving the sass.
As for the OP… Like all things, it logically got replaced with some other form of hierarchy (unless you’re one of those types that refuses to believe the logical and proven concept that hierarchies will exist no matter what because you read about one obscure hunter-gatherer society not having a hierarchy in some terrible Anthro 101 textbook).
Take Maiev, for instance. Even if she truly doesn’t respect his authority, she puts on a simpering facade at the very least regarding the “shan’do”.
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Actually, its the non-diverse bloodline of land-owners who struggle to keep property and titles in the family.
Behold, the pinnacle of leadership.
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Now I’m imagining the real reason we don’t see the nobility of Silvermoon in-game, is because they actually look worse than the Vanilla High/Blood Elf model.
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Well technicly and officially NEs abolished aristocracy after the sundering by building a completely new state based in equality.
Even Tyrande despises being called a queen, she hates it.
So no no official nobles. There might be some NEs with more power or influence than others, like every society has. But no official aristocracy.
However as some others have pointed out a few NHighborn from Diremaul are back within the society.
So they kept their title as part of their name but is has no priviledges attached to it.
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Maybe.
Though I’m pretty sure they’re all dead by now.
You may not like it, but this is what peak Thalassian looks like.
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Nobles? Not really, but It seems to be a culturally split society in many ways.
Blizzard shouldn’t have chickened out with the gender stuff. Priests should have been female-only and Druids male-only. God forbid a race gets to have some unique social features.
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Doesn’t work in today’s climate. Even in a fictional, fantasy setting, people will be hopping on Twitter to scream how sexist a company Blizzard is.
While I don’t doubt that that played a role in their decision, I still think it was a misjudgment. As long as they were careful not to suggest that either class was “higher” than the other, it would have been fine.
I mean, even without the political ramifications, people today are demanding that every race be able to play every class. There’s so way a gender divide wouldn’t eventually gather a crowd that uses sexism as an argument to get what they want, no matter how much it makes sense in the lore.
I mean, part of the reason I gave up on TERA pretty early on, even with a friend practically begging me to play with him, was because it got to a point where every new class was genderlocked.
I like choice, and doing whatever I want 
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