Does Arthas deserve a "happy" ending?

I’ve been reading them all and am patiently awaiting your answer.
Because one would have to believe that she hadn’t a choice to actually pin anything resembling guilt upon Arthas for anything that she did.

Then that’s that, and Arthas is not guilty of anything she went on to do.

Wrong, because Sylvanas could have chosen not to do the things that she did and, having that choice, is thus the only one guilty of anything she did after she regained her agency.

And it was still her soul.
Ergo they were still her actions, her choices, her decisions, and she ultimately accepted the guilt therefor in the denouement of Shadowlands.

I’m not arguing that she didn’t have her entire soul, it’s a fact. There’s nothing “full” about having “part” of something, no matter how hard you try to twist logic.

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You said you read all my posts, and you’re still arguing against something I’ve not only never said, I’ve actively pointed that it is not what I’m arguing.

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Yes, actions, choices and decisions based off the fact that she only had PART of her soul.
Having part of her soul violently stripped away was much more than waking up and mixing up blue contacts with the red ones.

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And I did, I think I just confused myself because I was arguing with multiple people at once and got their positions confused.
So then we agree for the most part, that Arthas is responsible for what Arthas did and Sylvanas is responsible for what Sylvanas did. Probably disagree on the proportion of Arthas’ responsibility for how Sylvanas turned out, but that’s probably a philosophical difference.

Not based upon her only having half of her soul, but based upon her own soul’s reasoning. It’s still Sylvanas, they’re still her decisions, she’s still responsible.

Guys, all I did was cut your brakes, it was your choice to plow into that family of four at 80 mph…

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Sylvanas isn’t a car, she’s a person, and it was her choice to lapse into and wallow as the monstrosity she became rather than to overcome it.

Possible, just basically when you massively screw up someone’s brain through abuse, you have helped shape the person they are going forward. It gets into a weird spot where I at least don’t have the words to completely explain without any confusion, but basically while her misdeeds are her misdeeds, his influence is there in background like a dark piece of inspiration.

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Her soul’s reasoning with only access to part of her soul isn’t full agency. I think it bears repeating that having part of her soul violently split is much more than a change of eye color.

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It is, because it’s still Sylvanas at the reins of her corporeal form.
What of her is in there still has full agency to act as she wishes, while the other lies dormant elsewhere. The guilt for the actions she takes remains her own, because in the end it was still Sylvanas who performed them.

I’m making a joke about the concept of cause and effect.

You seem to have “Effect” down pretty well, its “Cause” that’s the problem.

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The trouble with that is human beings are rarely so simple an issue of cause and effect.

It’s still PART of sylvanas at the reins of her corporeal form.

You’re arguing that the part of soul that remains dormant elsewhere is simply her ability to remember to change her eye color. It seems to you, that violently ripping someone’s soul is comparable to mixing up your contact lenses.

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We have no idea as far as I’m aware how much of her soul was severed and how much in her remains.
However, because she was still able to act in accordance with her own will she still had agency, and because the soul inhabiting her and controlling her was that of Sylvanas the responsibility for what she did upon her shoulders remains.

No, that’s on you.
I’ve never said it had anything to do with the color of her eyes, only that she was Sylvanas and she had personal agency and the capacity to choose not to become a monster.

We do have an idea though. I’m sure we all have an idea on what parts were severed from Sylvanas soul. The second half of Shadowlands and passages in the Sylvanas novel goes into detail about what was taken away from her when her soul was split.

One thing for sure is that having your soul sundered in Warcraft is no walk in the park and it’s much more than a cosmetic change. I’m not saying that she was controlled, I’m saying the “leftovers,” doesn’t constituent full agency. Full agency ended when she only had access to part of her soul and returned once her soul was whole again.

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It does, because nobody but that portion of Sylvanas’ soul was in control.
Because nothing else had control, because nothing else was in command of her will at the time, the Sylvanas that made the choices she did had full agency.

This is akin to someone in WoW becoming lobotomized by cutting out some certain emotions and memories and blaming the lobotomized person for making poor choices. The lobotomized person still has 100% ability to reason and to choose, but the reason is based on a select few emotions. This is not full agency.

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I hesitate to call attempted genocide, persistent warmongering and working for Turbo Satan mere poor choices, and that aside she’s still of sound mind when she made the choices she did, had reasons for them and was able to articulate them.

Perhaps that part of her that was on another plane of existence may have reined her in, but on that we can only speculate because that same portion of her soul which was shorn never went through aught she did in her undead existence, and so it’s as likely she’d have done the same things she ended up doing even if she had that part as it is that she wouldn’t.

Considering the Sylvanas novel says she was getting more apathetic to the cause by the minute as her emotions started dulling(obviously due to the Darkness inside her growing to fill the void in her Soul) I would say that having the rest of her Soul would have made her more receptive to the idea of aiding Zovaal not less(ironic how the Darkness in her Soul was making her less receptive eh?).

After having thought about it for a year or two (necro thread after all) I don’t think Arthas needed a happy ending but a cathartic ending. Something that would give closure rather than simply a puff of smoke and he’s gone. I would argue that he had that in the Wrath of the Lich King but if he were brought back through Shadowlands I would have played up the idea of shards of souls empowering the Jailor. And in order to defeat the Jailor we would need to find shards of souls that could counterbalance those used by the Jailor.

Most need not be named but a few, like Arthas, could have an entire quest chain where we work with Sylvanas to find any shards of his soul that was not corrupted. Sylvanas would be tempted to just destroy this shard but chooses not to. In the confrontation with the Jailor those soul shards would aid us in defeating him by weakening him during the fight and destroying the shards that the Jailor holds. After the battle this good shard of Arthas’s soul would linger just long enough to apologize for everything before fading away. Passing to whatever lays beyond the Shadowlands.