Sylvanas has been acting out of character - killing her own Forsaken, engaging in mediocre tactics, working with Azshara, making a deal with “Death” and publicly claiming that everyone in the Horde is nothing to her before displaying amped-up powers and ditching the War.
But what if this isn’t, and hasn’t been, our Sylvanas for quite some time? What if she has been held ever since Legion by Helya and was replaced by one of Helya’s upper lieutenant Dark Val’kyr? If everything in BfA was caused by this replacement, it would make a lot more sense.
Sylvanas is cold and calculating, she doesn’t shy from war, and she fights to win. She’s even been extremely brutal and had her people work on a new version of the plague to potentially use on Stormwind. But until BfA she hasn’t ever ditched her own people or murdered them.
This doppelganger Dark Val’kyr could explain a lot of Sylvanas’ questionable or insane decisions. It would be in service to Helya or “Death” in general, and would have no trouble promoting either Azshara or even N’Zoth as long as mass death ensued for her master. And the real Sylvanas could be being held somewhere in the Death-lands awaiting rescue. Thoughts? Would this possibly save the narrative?
No, because it would make the horde look even more stupid for following some evil death entity without questioning anything it does.
The only way to fix this story to an extent is to make Sylvanas die in the hands of Tyrande and Genn with the aid of the horde and make the horde return night elf lands and send their druids to help remove the blight and regrow the lands.
Seperate the horde as far as possible from Sylvanas by showing that they don’t agree with what Sylvanas did. Then it would also make more sense for Anduin to just forgive them
Well, certainly it would still make the rest of the Horde complicit. But it’s not like no one at all questioned Sylvanas or her methods, or had doubts about her leadership during BfA. Loyalty can make people blind to a lot of crazy things.
Actually that has been her character since Vanilla. She’s always going to look out for her first. She’s always been about negative emotions overruling positive ones. She’s always been a liar, she’s always used others to get what she wants. She’s never been a good and decent person.
Look, there’s no doubt that Sylvanas regularly acts with her own interests in mind, but until now those decisions have either been neutral to the Horde or have benefitted her people (specifically the Forsaken) at the same time. I’m not saying that Sylvanas is some misunderstood hero, by any means. But she has been portrayed and has acted as an anti-hero since before Vanilla WoW. Not as a complete villain.
No, Blizzard placed the Forsaken in the game because there are people who want to evil characters. She’s never been an anti-hero. She’s always been evil.
I seem to recall the Forsaken as having two distinct threads: some who clearly were evil and some who regained their free will but were treated so poorly by other humans that they needed to band together (to fight the Scourge/Legion/etc.) The Forsaken have never been one-note evil, not even back before WoW launched. Cold and merciless to their enemies, yes. Not entirely evil, though.
They added them at the last minute to placate those who want to just play an evil character and they were very open about that, just like they were very open about Sylvanas being evil.
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Partly, yes. I’m not disputing that there were some players who wanted the Evil route. But at the same time, Blizzard took lengths to make them compelling and somewhat worthy of compassion. To ay otherwise is to ignore the many story beats that have evolved over WoW pointing out that many are in fact not evil.
Which is why there is a mindless slave walking around Under City. Or why there human/Alliance test subjects for experiments there. Or why there is a field where human test subjects are planted in the ground. I mean, I could go on but you should get the idea. Don’t sugarcoat the Forsaken, it does the Lore a disservice.
And you, don’t rewrite the Lore to fit your headcanon. This show your utter ignorance in Hillsbrad’s questline. Warden Stillwater, the Forsaken responsible for this human “plantation”, has been judged guilty and sentenced to True Death by the Horde PC and Master Apothecary Lydon, envoy of Sylvanas for that matter.
It’s not head cannon. What you said does not counter the rest of it.
I’m not sugarcoating the Forsaken in any way. I’m not denying that they have done some fairly evil things. All of the Azeroth races have had some moments of doing evil things, on all sides. That said, the Forsaken aren’t all evil and you don’t get to gloss over that just because you personally believe they are. I’m not going to sugarcoat them, but you don’t get to ignore their positive lore either.
Also, that isn’t exactly what this thread is about, anyway. It’s fine if you want to disagree with my original post, in whatever way, but this is more about fixing what they have done in BfA to Sylvanas rather than dredging up old mistaken beliefs that the Horde are all evil or that the Forsaken are all evil. They aren’t.
No. but it show your lack of knowledge on the Forsakens questlines throughout Lordaeron.
But I have proven that there a lot of proof that the Forsaken do a lot of evil things. Things that make the other races scoff, or outright shock them.
Not to the extent as the Forsaken. You cannot go into an Alliance settlement and see slaves. There is one settlement that had two gnomes working to cure Lepergnomes without the consent of a Lepergnome. The other Horde races don’t have as much, if at all in terms of this to my knowledge.
You pointed out three elements, one of which is an outright lie. As for the humans test subjects, two things : 1- Can be seen as an attempt to fnd a good psychological warfare on a zealoustry organization that keep coming back up like a vermin on Forsaken turf (Killing them doesn’t see to be a deterant to their recruitment) 2- Pointing this out when every PCs and their mom goes out, genociding every troll tribes we come across, like a stroll in a chilly autumn day? I can do it too. Gnomes are evil. No remorse experimenting on animals to test out their inventions. That’s animal abuse. Your third point, are ya talking about the leper gnomes? Iirc, they came to the Undercity on their own accord.
- Killing her own Forsaken: Mongrel Race of Rotting Corpses
- Engaging in Mediocre Tactics: Capturing Arthas and rather than killing him outright, wanted to torture him … giving him a chance to escape.
- Working with Azshara: Working with Garithos; Datheroc; Verimathras; Heyla…
- Making a Deal with “Death”: Has been attempting to thwart her own hellish eternity for 9 years, can think of worse ways than to go right to the source. I’m also pretty sure she intends to BECOME Death in some capacity.
- Since Legion: Dude, she’s been on this story Arc since “Edge of Night”. While you could argue there was another Sylvie being shown TOO (and it was a coin flip), you cannot argue that this Sylvie wasn’t also present.
- Sylvanas is Cold & Calculating: Well, yeah, except when she makes kneejerk emotional outbursts that screw over her own plans; like she’s been doing since WC3. Also VERY unsure if a person consumed by either a thirst for vengeance or a fear of hell (and that is what drives them) can be considered “cold and calculating”.
- She Fights to Win: By all indications, she got what she wanted out of this conflict and DID win. The entire point of the war was the DEATH TOLL, which she got.
It’s not an outright lie.
This doesn’t help your argument. It just proves how evil the Forsaken are.
You mean the ones who were fighting back from an invasion (the dwarfs) or are you talking about the humans who were being hunted for food?
Animals are not people. Gnomes at the least are doing it to some sort of good. They are after a cure of their people and the retaking of their home. The Forsaken don’t do things for that reason.
They’re POWs.
Make the Old God threat large enough and long lasting enough to shove aside most of the animosity to handle that threat so that they can survive. Have Lorthamar or Baine and Shandris start hunting for Sylvanas.