Does Pandaria need a new Emperor?

Lore Story Forum
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Hello. This is something I’ve been considering for a bit, but haven’t really come to a solid opinion on, so I’d like to hear your guys’ take.

Shaohao, as the last Emperor, more or less shielded Pandaria from most great threats to the kingdom - the Serpent’s Spine defended from threats to the west (like the Mantid), and the mists protected the land as a whole from the Burning Legion and the Sundering that followed. According to Dave Kosak, this caused power in Pandaria to shift to a localized level since there was no longer a need for an Emperor.

However, after ten thousand years, the mists have parted and Pandaria is exposed to the world again. Since then, the continent has come under heavy assault from several forces - the Zandalari, True Horde, Legion, and N’Zoth to name a few. And that’s not to mention the threats in-house, such as the reformed Mantid swarm and the unified Mogu clans. While they did manage to repel these threats (albeit with outside help), it does pose a question worth asking:

Should Pandaria return to a ruling Emperor, or at least a centralized body of government to better answer such threats (perhaps a council)? Or is it sustainable with the current localized rules?

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As it stands, there seems to be a sort of pecking order of who has authority in Pandaria.

#1 is the Celestials.
#2 is the Golden Lotus.
#3 is the Shado-Pan (arguably on par with the Golden Lotus).
#4 are more localized forms of government.

Placing an emperor where the Celestials now sit would likely alleviate whatever authority they employ, but they seem largely “hands off” until the threats grow sufficiently dire or petitioners come directly to them for aid, as compared to an emperor where being hands-on with the goings-on of Pandaria would pretty much be their job.

As it stands, I think the decentralized nature of pandaren governance is actually a benefit to them, given the nature of most of the threats they tend to face. Old Gods, Sha, etc. A mortal emperor would be a singular, tempting prize to sway in their favor, whereas multiple ruling bodies (none of which have absolute authority over the others) require more effort on the part of potential corruptors or assassins. Contrarily, an emperor might be of benefit in times of mortal war, such as the Horde/Alliance conflict on Pandaria so you don’t have pandaren turned against one another vying for either faction’s favor.

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Don’t know who could possibly be Pandaren Emperor. Maybe Chen could be elevated to Emperor and have Aysa and Ji be the two Prime Counselors, with the Shadopan functioning like a Shogun. But that’d be weird imo.

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If the story never goes back there, the answer is yes it is.

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Well yeah, but that’s true of anything in the game. If the Forsaken never showed up again, we probably could just assume things are going swimmingly without a leader, but we all know that’s most definitely untrue.

Despite Warcraft’s tendency to tell bottlenecked stories, these locations and peoples don’t stop existing in the universe when our point of focus isn’t on them.

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For all intents and purposes… they do. :slight_smile:

After all one can’t define an event without an observer. That’s basic Heisenberg.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo4cFViNLes

Obligatory.

Replace palpatine with Taran zhu. and let the imagination play for the others :P.

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I don’t think they do, no. They handled themselves for years with the local systems thing they have going on. The Shado-Pan and Celestials have authority when it’s needed, but for the most part it doesn’t seem needed. All the problems faced in MoP were from outside aggressors, not any local breakdown.

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No, but event still occurs even if no one sees it happen. Many things happened in Pandaria when we weren’t looking - the Vale healed in full and a Mantid swarm reformed under a new empress. While TECHNICALLY Pandaria does not exist autonomously when someone is not writing it (as a fictional world), through the lens of the story, Pandaria does still exist and things are occurring in it.

That’s like if someone asked where the living prisoners in Torghast were getting their food, and it’s answered with “as long as we don’t see THEM, they don’t go hungry.” Yeah, sure, that’s true, but that does literally nothing to answer the question.

Yes, I understand that if the narrative never refocuses on Pandaria that there will essentially be no need (or lack thereof) for a new emperor. But that’s a meta statement, and a redundant one at that. If we’re going to limit ourselves to discussing things the story focuses on in the current plot, the Warcraft universe is going to become very small very fast.

TL;DR - while what you said may be true, it’s not really relevant to what I asked.

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It actually is that small. Remember that Wild West town the telepathic lizards sent Kirk and his crew in “Spectre of the Gun” full of half or quarter finished buildings? That’s essentially the World of Warcraft as we experience it.

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Were it not a fantasy MMO where player-controlled superheroes steer the direction of global politics, I’d say they definitely should. Historically IRL something like an entire continent with lots of resources that’s split between numerous different groups, lacks a professional standing army and isn’t governed by a strong central authority is basically an invitation for far more organized and aggressive foreign colonizers to swoop in and start carving off regions for their own purposes without fear of a centralize local authority mounting any organized resistance. Heck, a number of nations throughout the real world’s history were expressly unified under a single sovereign or governing polity as a means of trying to present a strong front against foreign encroachment, in order to prevent them all being compromised by singular provinces or territories being conquered alone or bought off by the invaders.

Garrosh started to try some militaristic conquest there, but once the players put the kibosh on that, Pandaria got relegated to the same “forgotten continent” bin as Northrend, i.e. the fate of any resource-rich landmasses that the factions ignore after an expansion ends, even as they go back to fighting over resources on their own continents.

In particular, one would think that in the sprint for Azerite, places like Northrend and Pandaria would have been priority targets, since unlike the already-contested regions of Kalimdor and the EK, the other two continents would generally lack coherent governments to mount effective retaliations if the Alliance or Horde started drilling there under military protection.

WoW being WoW, while changes do happen in our absence, on the whole those things largely amount to a restoration of the status quo from before our presence, that only gets temporarily upset again when it’s time to revisit them. We’ve really had yet to liberate a land from its local terrors and invading threats, only to come back years later and find out that a whole new form of government or nation arose after we left in direct response to the events surrounding our involvement there before.

Which one would expect to eventually happen IRL. There would logically be at least some segments of the pandaren and other Pandarian races wondering if maybe there should be a regular standing army answering to a leader in case some hostile invader from outside their lands shows up again that’s more than the highly specialized and numerically limited Shado-pan and Golden Lotus can handle. As things stand, had they both been aggressive conquerors and not been distracted by the open war between them at the time, the Alliance and Horde could have likely steamrolled into Pandaria with their armies, carving it up between them, and it’s unlikely that the extremely specialized defenders the locals rely on could have done very much about it.

As it exists in WoW though, I suspect Pandaria will be able to just remain the same idyllic, minimally governed collection of borderline stateless regions that just manage to “work,” and which are left alone by anyone outside their lands who could readily invade and conquer them for all those juicy resources under such an arrangement.

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the panda leader will remove term limits

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You’re not hearing me.

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One of the Hozen.

:pancakes:

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This is a great write up!

To add to this, Pandaria can potentially be the ‘solution’ to a lot of the problems going on (or supposedly going on) for the Horde and Alliance. With Westfall still heavily damaged by the Cataclysm, and the Horde having suffered under a few Famines in recent history a large agriculturally rich land as Pandaria should be able to make huge economic impact on the world, simply if they can organize themselves and figure out how to sell their many products to the larger world.

Jade, Windwool Silk, Crops, Kaffa, and their other unique resources (like bamboo) should all command high prices in other regions, and be highly sought after. While having an Emperor may be one option, another is that Pandaria unifies under some sort of Mercantile state that is fairly free form in laws / regulations, but helps to negotiate trade with the other powers and protect its own territory. Pandaria could become a very economically powerful nation indeed with the right investments, exports, and treaties with the other factions, especially the Horde.

Not to mention, they should unify for exactly the reasons expressed above. With the Forest Hozen still a member of the Horde (appearing as armed members as of BFA), and the Pearlfin Jinyu potentially being members of, or extremely friendly to the Alliance (I don’t recall any Pearlfin Jinyu serving in the Alliance since Pandaria) the two superpowers already have footholds in the Pandaren continent. Combine that with the East/Westwind Rest, and their Karasang Jungle bases and both factions have substantial claims to Pandaria already. With the Zandalari joining as well, the Isle of Giants to the North may well still serve as a breeding ground for the Dinospeakers of Zandalar, and with threats to the West, Pandaria could well find itself surrounded on their own continent by foreign interests.

In that sense, forming a nation may be the best way to let them start influencing their own continent in a unified manner that they never could on their own, and establish the strong economic base needed to build them up.

To be honest, I’d really like to see Pandaria become sort of a ‘third-power’ on the World stage, while perhaps lacking the military, land, and Technology of the Horde and Alliance, it would bring to bear a rich economy, and resource rich lands, and a powerful enough defense force to let them maintain their hegemony.

Sadly, that would require some effort being put into the World Building beyond “Oooh look at the Shiny new Threat!”

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That’s pretty much the only reason to explore a new land. Developers aren’t going to go through the considerable expense to revamp Pandaria to make it anything other than a new Hellscape.

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That reminds me, having Pandaria be ruled by a Celestial Council of:

  • Ghost of Shaohao (“Jade Emperor”)
  • 4 August Celestials (in their humanoid form)
  • Loremaster Cho - wise old man archetype
  • Chen - drunk fighter
  • Monkey King - err, monkey king
  • Elder Lushaan - water-based immortal
  • Taran Zhu - ninja martial art expert theme

Sort of a mix and match of the Eight Immortals with the and the Four Symbols, have the August Celestials grant all of them immortality.

But there’s too many “councils” nowadays and WoW doesn’t have the range :confused:

but if they ever do WoW 2 or some RPG WoW revamp would be cool

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No, in any case an Emperor would be a step back from their current society that seems to work fine by itself

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While the Pandaren towns and organizations on Pandaria are in harmony with each other, they don’t seem to consider them selves all part of the same polity anymore. Installing a Emperor to rule them all might be difficult. Howver, creating a centralized council, with each member representing a town or organization, might work.

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Probably a council concluding of speakers of the prime powers of Pandaria, such as a speaker of the Shado-Pan, a speaker of the Golden Lotus, and so forth, along with a Horde & Alliance Pandaren representative to ensure connections are afloat should a threat larger than they can handle arise (Or simply for damage control, lol).