This has never happened. Mal spent most of the long vigil in the dream and Tyrande lead her people alone. What other things did they put before their people?
If your talking about hat going after Mal, this is completely understandable. Her husband was taken for Elune’s sake. Furthermore when she realized the ruse that Xavius had set up, Tyrande walked away becuase she knew she couldn’t follow him into the dream because Ysera would have destroyed the temple and all of Val’sharah.
Her stance held merrit. The Nightborne like Azshara sided with the legion. For the second time the same group of people nearly opened another portal for Sargeras. Not to mention they put up that barrier and never thought to use their powers to see if there were any survivors. They lived like kings while the rest had to rebuild their lives and fight the legion a second time after Wota.
As mentioned in my post, sending troops to assist Anduin and Varian before him, only to never recieve equal support. In fact, the only time the night elves have needed the Alliance to lend military support, they’ve been left with none or a token handful.
Or Malf’s fixation on the Cenarion Circle, which has passively stood by while two warchiefs rabidly attacked night elf lands. Hell, the first time this happened, Malf was too busy doing Cenarion work to aid his own people. Which… I mean, that was exactly my point so…
When I talked about Malf going off to Val’Sharahj, I was talking about Malf. Going to Val’Sharah.
If I were talking about Tyrande going after Malf, I would have mentioned Tyrande going after Malf, and not Malf going to Val’Sharah.
Only if she has no idea what diplomacy is and wanted to drive a potential long-term ally away. This really shouldn’t even be something defended. It should be common sense that when dealing with a friendly force entranched in an area you want a foothold in, maybe treat them with civility and put the snark away.
She was right though? Right after she spoke out her valid concerns about the Nightborne, they joined the Horde and commited genocide against the Night Elves. The same Night Elves that helped them save themselves and their city.
If anything, the Nightborne are treacherous and evil for doing that. Tyrande was proven totally right about everything she said. Just because she wasn’t kissing their feet and bringing up valid concerns doesn’t mean they have to join the Horde and attempt to wipe the Night Elves out after they received their help.
First, I’m going to say that I don’t necessarily think this is an appropriate way to end Tyrande’s story.
But I do find it interesting that Alliance players frequently are unimpressed when Horde players complain about losing major characters all the time, but still aren’t willing to have it happen to the Alliance.
Right after she pushed them away by talking about how much they sucked, they joined up with the ones who didn’t push them away?
That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t make it right or smart. If I say I’m’a punch Steve because he’s about to get mad, I don’t really get to call it prophetic that he’s mad after I punched him.
So now that’s just the nightborne and not the Horde itself? Did I miss when Sylvannas listened to a nightborne telling her to burn the elftree?
Right, no I didn’t. So no they didn’t genocide the night elves. Point of fact, one of the first people to speak up against what Sylvy’s doing is a nightborne.
If anything, the night elves are petty and vindictive in the face of a world-ending threat.
After realizing their evil leader has basically sold their people to demons, the nightborne reach out for aide. One hand reaching back is saying “we got you sis!” the other is saying “well, serves you right for putting up an anti-evil-crap dome up! Bet you’re all just soo happy to know the Legion’s back! Oh, sucks to be going through the DTs? More like sucks to suck, amirite?!?” All while Sargeras is breathing down everyone’s collective necks.
Because Liadrin told them lies, basically. A weak reason to join the Horde.
They helped do it, that’s all that matters. They are just as involved as the other races.
Yea she should’ve just told them lies like Liadrin did and tell them how great they are and how bad the Horde is (because that’s what she did about the Night Elves, told lies about them to make them look bad and kissed the Nightborne’s feet)
You mean to retrieve the Pillar of Creation to help close the portal that was letting the Legion invade the planet? I’m not sure what your point is here. Sounds like Malfurion was thinking about their people. And everyone’s people for that matter.
On this I will agree with you, though. It’s part of why I hate the Southern Barrens revamp from the Cataclysm, and especially the Northwatch forces in Stonetalon:
Northwatch could really use a powerful <race> like you. We’re taking a beating in the Southern Barrens and need your help! Are you interested in lending the Alliance a hand?
The bomb? Yea, it’s a problem, but Stonetalon isn’t exactly prime real estate. This place was a dump before the Horde sunk their claws into it!
Every time the Alliance sent forces to “help” the Night Elves, their plan is always the same: Lets go for the head of the Horde to win the war; the Night Elves can hold the Horde off while we do that.
Thalyssra remembered this by the time of Nazjatar and convinced Lor’themar to work with them again, an Lor’themar turned out to be far better at diplomacy with Night Elves than Liadrin was.
Be it Horde or Alliance, neither side is allowed to keep characters of significance who are “Pro-War” for very long. Such characters either die (Garrosh), run away and become hostile to both sides(Sylvanas), or give up their hate and become pro-peace(Jaina). It stands to reason Tyrande will likely undergo a similar transformation.
How would I do it? Well, IMO, Alliance’s “hold hands and sing koombaya” level of togetherness when they could have had some pretty good inner friction was always one of the turnoffs for me. I feel like some Alliance civil war would be interesting. Maybe Tyrande and Genn vs Anduin.
K, I’ll grant you that I forgot he ever mentioned it, since he only brings it up at the beginning of the chain. I recall Ysera talking about it a lot and just attributed it all to her. But yes, he does mention it and it does seem to be his main movitation for going there. So I retract my criticism of Malf in Val’sharah.
His focus in Cata remains an issue tho.
It’s why I have never understood why the night elves stick around with their sometimes-allies. Had they just stayed neutral back in the pre-WoW days, I often wonder what the end result would be. Worse case scenario, they’d be exactly where they already are, but without any losses attained fighting to help the Allies. Best case, they would be neutral trade partners with both sides and never need to deal with war.
There was that time when Garrosh got a bunch of magnataur and almost got hold of Ashenvale entirely, and the Alliance with the help of Gilneas is what gave them victory. But that was in a book.
I don’t know, i said before i still like the idea of a sick 1v1 between Tyrande and Sylvanas, where Tyrande just wins, get her vengeance, and gets back to lead the Kaldorei.
Ummm…having Tyrande sacrifice herself to save all of her people is hardly an insulting proposal. Like, that sort of extreme altruism is literally the basis of the world’s largest religion. And these are just characters in stories. They only matter insofar as they can be used to make the narrative better.
My criticism of the proposal isn’t that Tyrande has a heroic sacrifice, it’s that it tracks a bit too closely to how Varian met his end, heroically sacrificing himself to save the Alliance.
Edit: But, I don’t know how I would finish Tyrande’s story arc. I’m not sure that it has to finish, because elves live basically forever and this narrative is ongoing. If I had to finish it, I can think of worse ways than a heroic sacrifice. But, again, repetitive. Her hatred slowly turning her into the thing she hated/feared most is also repetitive. “And she lived happily ever after” is laaaame. I think I like the idea of her ultimately leading a faction of Night Elves out of the Alliance and back to their old ways, while Malfurion regretfully decides to stay with another Night Elf faction that chooses to remain Alliance. Add that bittersweet element.
I’m going to go ahead and give you this becuase it’s true.
In the lore Malfurion was leading the summit and solving thr muders when Garrosh attacked and Tyrande led the fight. He fought in wot. I assume those are the attacks your mentioning.
But he went to figure out the legion connection to the Emerald Dream that was poorly set up in WoD. He needed to be there.
I understand your point but unlike the Sindorei, Tyrande has lived through the first invasion and knows whos responsible, the same caste of people responsible for creating the Nightwell and surfing with the legion. For her it’s history repeating itself. The same people making the same mistakes. They didn’t even help fight while their people were being slaughtered in WotA until a second portal was about to open in the temple.
So you all have us beat by 1, so what. Tyrande has been heavly underutilized and when they did give her some spot light in BfA it was brief and unsatisfying.
The Elves just lost a huge number of people and their home and now they are supposed to lose a leader too?!
It is per the previous statement above.
Varian had a load of character focus. So while his death hurt at least he wasn’t just killed off after 15 years of being put in the corner.
Tyrande’s response to the Nightborne is the most in character she was in nearly a decade and then BfA happened and she went back to being completely out of Character until 8.1 where she started to return her original character but it was coupled with an absolute failure of an execution of the Night Warrior ritual.
Tyrande made it fairly clear from the very start she wasn’t interested in making allies of the Nightborne without seeing where Elune’s wisdom lead the two peoples. Thalyssra apparently can’t handle the idea of answering to her own Goddess again. So instead she went and cried in Liadrin’s lying shoulder.
My stance is that the Nightborne shouldn’t have joined either faction and remained a neutral party at worst and forgotten entirely after Legion at best. But considering what we were handed this was one of the best portrayals of Tyrande to date.
It’s extremely insulting when we just had War of Thorns be the kick off to an entire expansion only to be side lined entirely unless they wanted to throw it in the faces of Night Elf fans again. Then we got the sorry excuse for a “fist pump moment” that was 8.1 where we watch a Human who’s okay with a bow and Two Val’kyr that didn’t exist until that patch go toe to toe with a Goddess Empowered High Priestess and the strongest mortal druid alive and only suffer a single casualty while accomplishing all of their goals for the Horde and then some.
In short yes. It’s a massive insult for Tyrande’s story to end in Shadowlands with her death. Heroic or not.
So, at no point did I say it was out of character for her to be snippy at Thalyssra. I never said it made no sense for her character. I said it was a bad move from a diplomatic POV, and one she should reflect on.
But since people keep justifying this point; The highborne of Dire Maul. She accepted them, and their treachery was more recent. They even had been summoning demons to suckle on. In point of fact, they had until Cata been an actual antagonist. Yet Tyrande understood the value in diplomacy, understood the value in an alliance. Yet in nearly the exact same situation, but with a greater threat before everyone… She can’t be as calm and level-headed? It’s more justified for her to be petty in the face of a world-ending threat she knows all too well, compared to one that broke the damn world?
Tyrande’s first interaction with the Alliance during the last Legion invasion in Wacraft III was to shoot them on the spot and to shut down Malfurion when he suggested they team up with the Alliance and Horde when he saw them fighting the Scourge.
Yet Tyrande indeed welcomed the Draenei, Highborne, Gilneans, and even vouched for the Illidari back into the Alliance.
Tyrande’s sense of diplomacy is as all over the place as Jaina’s love/hate for the Horde is.
In my scenario Tyrande deceives Sylvanas into thinking she killed her thus when she reveals herself for the final battle Sylvanas is legitimated surprised when the Jailer comments on her being alive over another soul within the Shadowlands. This helps rattle Sylvanas and is a key factor in her death at Tyrande’s hands during the ensuring fight. She then aids in the subsequent fight against the Jailer.
With the Shadowlands settled Tyrande thanks to the Night Warrior stuff is able to twist anima into sealing the rift between Azeroth and the Shadowlands. Once arriving to Azeroth she makes it clear that she flat out doesn’t trust the Horde, regardless of if it’s a Council or a Warchief who rules it. To her surprise the Horde simply accepts it, with a character lets say Thrall remarking that they deserve it from her.
This actually gives her pause for a moment before she leaves Northrend with the rest of the Alliance forces. Upon her arrival in Stormwind she refuses to sign the peace treaty and appoints Shandris to co-lead the Night Elves with Malfurion and declares that she’s going to confront Elune for answers and departs Azeroth through Night Warrior ritual/anima based portal.
This concludes Tyrande’s Shadowlands arc and seeds a future story with Tyrande and Elune.
So this is a thing I see a lot when discussing Tyrande, and a thing I agreed with, but at some point my brain broke and I finally started asking myself a question I now pose to you.
If Tyrande only behaved like a badass warrior-priestess who had not a single funk to give to anyone who questioned her in WCIII, and she behaved utterly differently from 1.0.1 to 7.1… Who is to say the bulk of her portrayal is the betrayal?
Don’t get me wrong. I like the Tyrande who will murder her own wardens if it means ensuring she has the best weapon to fight a cataclysmic threat. I like the Tyrande who was a #savage.
But more time has been spent portraying her as the girlfriend to a druid who sits in Darnassus. More time has been spent showing she only gets badass when Malfurion is kidnapped. More time has been spent showing her as the subordinate to Anduin, one of his generals that he can ignore if he wants.
So who is to say which is the “right” or “correct” portrayal? As much as this will taste bad, it sounds about as justified as people saying Sylvannas wasn’t always a genocidal maniac because at one time, in WCIII, she wasn’t.
When do we say the majority of a character’s development outweights the minority?
Nothing about this should be read as a damnation of one view of Tyrande’s character or another. Like her how you like, and the same for other NPCs. It’s more just… Random thoughts.