They could actually have fought him. Jaina could have probably frozen him in ice a la Sunreaver style instead of leaving. I
And sometimes a good punch maybe your only option.
He could have told him. “I am not helping you anymore with this blade. I am telling all the men you burned the ships and blamed the mercs”.(let see Arthas get the sword solo) Hell, probably should have knocked him out too.
He was not always evil. Chronicles literally tells you even his state as Lich King was being influenced by his morals when he was still Arthas. You cant be a fallen hero if you were never heroic in the first place!
I dont know. If he did spend a few hundred years in Revendreth they probably get him to repent. They made worse people repent.
And Jaina and Uther could have done more to stop him. Hell ignore he was there king and knock him out then and there.
I would point out Jaina owed him no allegiance as a non Lordearon citizen.
I am not saying he didnt make a ton of stupid choice. I am saying everyone else went along with it until it was too late.
And Muradin said nothing. Hell, could have tattled on Arthas then and there or had outright refused to burn the ship.
Everyone likes to blame Arthas, but I think there was plenty of blame to go around for how events transpired the way they did.
And if Thrall’s novel had one good thing to say, it was that Arthas turning into the Lich King was never a pre determined thing. That had events gone slightly different he and Jaina would be married now and with a kid.
And that makes me hate the Bronze and their holier then thou attitude to the timeline until it suddenly affect them and they are willing to bend time.
I honestly think the argument that people should have stopped him is not a good one. In the end, Arthas made those decisions, him being forcebly stopped would not change what happened internally for him, he had a twisted moral at that point already. They couls have stopped the outcome but not what Arthas was going through, because that was his call alone.
And again, attacking a crown prince or a close one isnt something you do easily.
I dont believe he was beyond redemption, but the first point of redemption is regret, one he pretty much lacked the entire time.
And I disagree on this. The Arthas book made it quite clear a portion of his soul regretted what happened. Who knows, if we had either stolen his heart or broken Frostmorne and he didnt get kill he might have gone the Sylvanas route.
And yet people could have done it. If being good was easy, everyone would do it. The fate of Stratholme was as much a moral failing on Uther and Jaina’s part as anyone else.
That’s a modern concept. In the time period that Warcraft plays with one of the customary gestures of declaring war was sending home the heads of the other country’s ambassadors.
Diplomats had no such immunity save the fear of the consequences of annoying a foreign monarch.
And in said time period in Warcraft, the Alliance has literally been willing to violate rules of soverenity if it was for the benefit of the Alliance. (See Alterac)
Regardless, Jaina is a family friend/Terenas is a reasonable person. If she did freeze him in a block of ice, brought him to Terenas and explained what happened he would probably side with Jaina. Or if Uther knocked him out and did the same.
A lot of head canon assumptions from you, when we know what actually did happen.
Whether Jaina would have diplomatic immunity or not, it was within Lordaeron, and subject to his rule. Uther and Jaina objected, and walked away - if they tried to stop Arthas then and there, we do not know if the soldiers would have turned around and captured or slain both Uther and Jaina, out of loyalty to the crown. Seeing as the soldiers stayed and followed Arthas’s orders, they likely would have defended their prince.
And arthas is subject to Alliance rules. Simply going about and killing Citizens is not generally the Alliance way.
Worse case it would have been a brawl. Enough of the Silver Hand did not agree with Arthas. The very elite fighting force of Lordearon. I am not sure if Arthas’ men could have beaten them/they might have second thought if they had to fight the silver hand
Regardless, Jaina and Uther had other choices. They chose to leave and let Arthas continue, if they truly believed Arthas was wrong they could have tried to stopped him and I dont agree in Uther platitude that he and Jaina had nothing to do with Stratholme or more precisely, they should be blame for not doing anything and just leaving.
They were massacred by the undead. Not Arthas’ forces. Which conviniently would not arise or might have been controlled better if Arthas never went to Northrend
I know there was a mission where Arthas and the scourge killed a few of the remaining Silver Hand paladins. I think it was during the one where you had slaughter the civilians that were trying to escape
Yes, that was when they were killed off. The theoretical confrontation I am talking about is if Jaina/Uther and the rest of the order decided to confront Arthas during Stratholme.
Most of the media has been obsessed with subversion for the past 40-50 years, the expansion particularly strong in the 90’s and 2010’s.
Soon, it’ll be subversive to play things straight. Good-looking heroes vs hideous villains or monsters. A conflict where one side is clearly right and one is clearly wrong (can’t have grey without black and white in the first place) without that 90s-esque “bad is good and good is bad” veneer.
To say someone is irredeemable or redeemable, you need objective morality, something sorely lacking in the WoW setting as of late (even Shadowlands only skimmed the surface at best).
(I’m not challenging your position; I’m pointing out a trait of the setting that has caused a lot of problems).
No… you simply need a common standard of ethics. Or someone can decide very subjectively that someone deserves redemtion, such as Matrix did with by most standards irreedemable Linda Danvers… the whole concept of DC’s Earth Angel was the redemption of someone who didn’t deserve it.
That is the ending morale after all in Gaiman’s Lucifer… that everyone in Hell is ultimately redeemable.