Anduin did not support what Greymane did. He probably didn’t do enough to punish him, but he never expressed approval of the attack. The proper way to deal with that was to at least attempt diplomacy, rather then to kick off a literal World War.
As per Edge of Night, when the Forsaken are finally defeated at Undercity they are holed up underground while the Alliance marches in to execute them, many of them choose to burn themselves alive rather then face their executioners. Granted this is a vision of what could be, rather then what is.
However Varians attitude towards the Forsaken is blunt, he considers their execution a mercy killing. His troops don’t take prisoners, and his soldiers appear to be pushing in from the major locations where Edge of Nights vision of the future takes place. Part of the problem with the narrative is that the Alliance is said to, has internal thoughts confirming, and even in this case has a vision that SHOWS them killing a population for being undead. However because the Alliance lose those battles we only see it take place on the small scale.
Blizzard also couldn’t help themselves but double down on him being reasonable about it. He was a former slave who waded through pools of dead civilians the Forsaken had experimented on, just after his life long friend had been murdered by (he believed at the time) the Forsaken, and was still talked out of declaring war then.
Blizz made him the embodiment of it, and then immediately toned him down. He’s patient zero for everything wrong with the current passive Alliance characterization. They couldn’t just let us be paranoid and judgmental. Right and wrong 50/50, and make the Horde equally right and wrong about what they saw going on.
We have this story where the Horde describe themselves as defensive as they initiate war. They are beating a dying man with the arm they pulled from his body in cold blood, and are asking him why he’s such a jerk. Sylvanas right now, the way she’s being portrayed in particular over mongering a war out of fear that war may some day be mongered, is this schizophrenic concept embodied.
What this story needs is for Sylvanas to go the way of Varian and have them both be effigies for the flanderization of the story that they both represented. We need a reset. Badly.
It says “I won’t do it myself but if YOU do it, I won’t stop you. Btw, here’s some stuff that would allow you to be very successful if you did do it.”
it’s a clear message of approval without the deniability even being plausible.
Yeah, Stormheim paints Anduin as either being stupid or malicious.
Perhaps both.
You know, given what Blizzard said about that Son of the Wolf comic, I don’t know how much faith I have in that vision. But fine. I like it, at least with regards to the Forsaken racial identity of being shunned by their former compatriots. However, I still have to circle back to the original point. I do not, as a matter of principal, believe that the Horde has the right to invade Night Elf land because an infamously insane banshee had a vision of a potential future genocide. In my opinion, that is just crazy.
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And even after Genn tried it, he is rewarded with an entire kingdom, should something happen to Anduin. In Bts, he says he wants Genn to rule in his stead if anything were to happen to him.
Okay, how about this: Varian was moving troops into key positions in Andorhal and reinforcing the Stormpike north of Hillsbrad foothills, who were of course planning to take Tarren Mill. This was done under the idea that Westfall was now a barren wasteland, so he was going to transport farmers there. Farmers who mind you, would be able to feed an army.
The Alliance had also opened up negotiations with a ‘redeemed’ element of the Scatrlet Crusade led by Joseph the Awakened(Later Joseph the Insane.) who they planned to stage a coup on the Scarlet Monastery. The idea was to turn this place, which was owned by an xenophobic group of psychopaths who did, and to be honest probably still do, want to murder all Forsaken…into a paladin training ground, explicitly to help retake Lordaeron.
Those mages in Ambermill? Allied with the Alliance, and then retconned into being Alliance mages aiding the forces in Silverpine for their invasion. Gilneas just ‘happened’ to line up with all these movements around Undercity and start pouring troops into their territory.
Varian states that being a champion of the Forsaken is an abomination and being killed is a release. His troops have explicit orders to take no prisoners, all those movements look like him circling around our territory, he’s just off a massive economic failure in Northrend that he is explicitly trying to solve through our conquest, and as a cherry on top in BtS it’s stated that while some humans hate Forsaken for what Sylvanas did…plenty of them hate Forsaken just for being undead, and it seems like even the leaders of the Alliance don’t know what a Forsaken really is considering Tuyalon was about to put his sword through a defenseless old mans head.
You can think i’m crazy for seeing all these things pointing towards a genocide, I think you’re crazy for not seeing all these things as pointing to EXACTLY THAT.
Which was not entirely Anduin’s fault, if as a rogue you’ve done the Legion class campaign. The Legion was working overtime behind the scenes, fanning the flames of tension, impersonating Shaw, whispering in his ear.
And even so, Anduin didn’t exactly declare war
Attacking the leader of a faction directly is a reason for war at least to me. Genn should be respond for his actions.
More on topic, I think we are probably looking to deep at the reasons why the landscape looks like that when The Horde has control over it. At the end we need to look “villainous” at the eyes of the Alliance. My money is on the rule of “cool”.
I think that was part of it, but letting Varian die was the breaking point to him, you saw how he gave a roar as he saw the fel explosion from Gul’dan destroy him. And that was Jaina’s tipping point as well. He didn’t openly object to working with her forces on the Shore, but worgen are very emotional beings and probably don’t take being abandoned on the battlefield (for whatever reason) too well. And let’s face it, it’s not inconceivable for Sylvanas to be shady and have ulterior motives, even if it wasn’t the case here.
TBH, on another note, Forsaken remind me of the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor, except in this case, they also did the Hiroshima + Nagasaki immediately afterwards (just b/c their enemy was a POTENTIAL threat to them). Which is kinda not that great
Attacking someones world leader for emotions is probably a good reason to invade you, no matter how shady you think our leader is. Hence Stormheim is our Pearl Harbor imo, and Darnassus is Sylvanas being Curtis Lemay.
When you frame it in that historical lens, it’s actually painfully obvious what they were going for.
I’d change that to “just because the enemy was a proven threat”
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There is nothing immoral about sending reinforcements to your allies. And there is nothing immoral about wanting to attack Tarren Mill after what the Forsaken did to Southshore.
It isn’t genocide to recruit the enemy of your enemy to help you fight your mutual foe. Its the sort of strategic decision Sylvanas herself would laud if the shoe were on the other foot.
Obviously, most Alliance citizens don’t have a very tolerant view towards the Forsaken. I understand why Forsaken feel threatened, and I understand them taking steps to defend themselves. Heck, if the Blight were used purely as a deterrent against the very thing they fear, I honestly wouldn’t care about that. But they don’t. They say they fear genocide, yet they commit mass killings themselves. They wiped out Southshore, and they would have done the same to the Gilneans, had they not fled. I’m not exactly overwhelmed with sympathy when the Forsaken feel threatened, when they themselves are such a menace.
And no. None of the things you mentioned justify the War of Thorns. At least not for anyone that isn’t Forsaken.
if genn deserved to respond for stormheilm that’s fair.
now i have to ask, did sylvanas ever tried to demand that the alliance bring him to justice?
if the answer is no then stormheilm is not the reason of the war.
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Whetehr it’s THE reason for war or not, it is a VALID reason for war. We do know that it was a reason for some of her followers.
of course is a valid reason, but we have another example of this scenario.
The AU draenie are going to war with the AU orcs to lightforge them,but is not a war for revenge for the atrocities committed by the iron horde while that would be the perfect excuse, but that isn’t the case.
so if sylvanas really wanted genn’s head she should have offered those terms of surrender to the nelfs/alliance, but that was never the case. in fact, she didn’t cared.
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I’m pretty sure the Forsaken wouldn’t be as eager to do things like Southshore if you just STOPPED attacking them constantly, then maybe they wouldn’t develop into an ultraviolent nation bent on your destruction. There is also no way in heaven above that you can convince me the Scarlets weren’t going to murder us at every opportunity.
Secondly: The only reason why the Gilneans were allowed to flee, minus the evacuees who we didn’t know about in the Worgen starting zone, is because Sylvanas explicitly keeps her word and let’s the GLF fallback. It is framed in no uncertain terms that after every battle in Silverpine the GLF has lost, this is their swan song, if we wanted to ethnically cleanse you, we would of just hosed you with blight as you retreated.
We don’t care about you, we want to survive and if that takes your land then so be it, but we’ve got better things to do with our time then hunt every last one of you down. The idea that i’m supposed to believe they aren’t going to kill me after all the things I just stated is complete nonsense, the only thing that would confirm genocide to you after that point is the Alliance actually COMPLETING the genocide.
I’m sorry, i’m not going to bare my throat to see if you’d murder me or not. Ya’ll fudged up, now you’re paying for it in blood.
She didn’t care. The Horde represented by Saurfang did. It was actually a stated reason for agreeing to the war. Not like your example where it could have been a reason but wasn’t.
edit: So, what we have is that while it may not have been the reason Sylvanas went to war, it wa the reason the horde went to war.