So as we, or most of us know, Elves are descended from Trolls and all elves are descents from this first group of elves.
For quite some time there was only the Night Elves, before they broke up into the Naga, High Elves, and Nightborne. All in such a short time that I find it unlikely families could have consolidated even if they wanted to.
Which brings me to my thought/question… How many of these Elves have kin, distant or not, amongst the other Elves? Or has blizzard never played with the idea of the (formerly) immortal Night Elves meeting their distant Blood Elf descendants, or even meeting up with a Nightborne they knew from before the Sundering? And so on…
The Nightborne and Blood Elves in particular have the most opportunity for this, considering they’re both Highborne. There are probably some Nightborne who are like, great aunts and uncles and such of living Blood Elves. You only have to go back a couple generations in Quel’thalas to get to Dath’remar.
It woul be very very few if any because the original Empire was highly stratified. The Kaldorei were essentially the peasant classes and as you might expect, the nobility didn’t exactly mix with them. It’s far more plausible to imagine ties between the two Horde elves and the Voids than either with the Night Elves.
Swiftarrow shows up both as the name of a nelf commander in PVP and on the tomb of a high elf commander during the third war
There are several Dawnrunners in Quel’thalas, one in Suramar, and the ghost of one in Bashal’aran; there’s a quest by her former lover (a druid) to bring her final rest
I could have sworn a few other surnames had overlap but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head besides Valeera and the nightborne/night elf family
First up, I’d like to thank everyone who responded to my inquiry. I really do appreciate it.
Regarding the Highborne… did they never intermingle? Or leave that caste? That seems very strange from a psychology perspective… certainly some would have. I’d also imagine at least some of the Kaldorei would have not hated the Highborne as well.
Then again this is WoW and it’s got a habit of treating races/factions as pillars and the individuals as if they only harbor those ideals of their race/faction.
Did nobles take sexual favors from the help? Yes, but it would have been scandalous to acknowledge the result. Nobilty married nobility and to do otherwise was unheard of. No one voluntarily left the noble class to become “lowborne”. Doing that meant stripping noble status from your heirs as well.
To be blunt… where you have been? This has been true for as long as humanity has existed. There has never been a time in history where this has not been the case.
History is often written with the intentions of presenting an argument that the current ruling party is naturally the best party to rule and often includes references back to making claims about this from the distant past presented as if an unbroken line. This is then sold to the public as inherent truth.
The problem is human psychology doesn’t really fit into this.
History is also full of the exceptions who go against and are punished for it, these examples exist to discourage people from trying to go beyond their caste/station. These examples exist because people were going against the accepted ways and being shamed/hunted by those who did want the status quo to exist.
In short pillars are only truly a historical creation not a true representation of actual humanity…
That isn’t to say there haven’t been examples where people are forced to behave as pillars of an ideal, but those examples usually involve violent and death… and always result in the institution running them failing, it might not fail within a lifetime, but it will fail and more quickly than otherwise.
Really? If you were a member of the well off class, do you really think that it’s that likely that you’d have a Siddhartha moment? Understand how much you’d have to give up.
Me personally? Sure, though I did have to look that reference up, but I’m odd like that. I tend to do a lot of introspection so yeah, for me its normal… but this is also the me of now saying this. Who I could be in another life with a different past I couldn’t say, free of the trauma’s that were clouding my judgment even just a few years ago would potentially have drastic changes in my life and the path I walk.
Is it really giving something up, or is it finding your true self?
To be frank, this is unhinged lunacy, and couldn’t possibly be further from the truth. Many surely realize I don’t hide my left-wing views, but this is some straight-up commune cult brainwashing. Completely divorced from real history.
You’ve projected yourself onto human history. People stay within their castes and always have, for thousands of years. To marry outside your caste is almost unheard of, and in your confusion you’ve mixed your own opposite-world up with reality. You’re living in some kind of fantasy land.
The Highborne don’t mingle with the lowborn Kaldorei, and billionaire CEOs don’t marry high-school dropouts. We don’t say caste anymore, but we have a new word: we call it standards, and everyone has different ones.
Try seeing it this way. You’re giving up your family, your posessions, your wealth, your job, your security, and pretty much everything else that defined your life Not just for you, but your issue as well.
You’re going to tell me with a straight face that you would do so without hesitation?
Oh, I already knew that. However, it still is strange. Why are there no examples of it? There are examples of people giving up their status in history. Just as there are examples of people “rising above” their prior status.