Malfurion banished Illidan from his lands so he could no longer hurt the Night Elf people.
Maiev ignores this and pursues her released prisoner for her own selfish goals, going against the wishes of her heads of state.
She puts her own soldiers and people at risk in the pursuit of her character-defining obsession, Illidan. Ends up getting countless of them killed, including Naisha, in the unlawful pursuit of a released prisoner.
Tries to get Tyrande killed by raging undead by lying to Malfurion.
Instead of using the resources at her disposal for a more noble cause like the betterment of the Night Elf people, decides to continue SIMPing after Illidan through to Outlands.
She’s the caricature stereotype of a horribly incompetent, emotionally crazy woman who cannot bear the idea of her love obsession living without her.
If it were up to her in RoC, Illidan would have never been released and the entirety of Ashenvale would look like Felwood. And Sargeras probably just wins in the Legion expansion - game over for Azeroth. Thank the gods Tyrande and Malfurion were in charge. Tyrande released him, and after he defeated Tichondrius, Malfurion exiled him instead of trying to re-imprison him.
I’m not even going to get into the books or cataclysm questline where she’s full villain antagonist.
How so many lore fans admire and love her character is beyond me. She’s basically Sylvanas-lite
People like her for the same reason they like Boba Fett. She looks cool. Her personality is secondary to this.
However, you’re misrepresenting some things here in a way I can only assume is willful in order to troll her fans.
This is your interpretation of these events, not the facts. We don’t know how independent the wardens are in their operations from the Night Elves and we don’t know if she was acting against their wishes in trying to bring him back to his cell.
Illidan’s naga were pillaging night elf villages along the coast, she does a fair bit of good for her people in the process of hunting him down by taking them out. Her obsession with him also doesn’t begin until he kills Naisha, before then she’s just doing her job and trying to bring her prisoner back. Naisha and the other elves’ deaths at the hands of Illidan is what makes it personal for her.
Again, this is your interpretation. It’s not hard to joke about Maiev just being a yandere obsessed with Illidan, the Heroes of the Storm writers do the exact same thing, [Removed]
This is what I’m talking about with willful misinterpretation. Malfurion was very much against letting Illidan out of his cage. He would be as responsible as Maiev, here.
Blizzard almost seems to go out of its way to pretend the books written by Richard Knaak don’t exist. Again, this was also poked fun at in Heroes of the Storm. The events of this book are only ever addressed once, in a bit of dialogue where Maiev laments having done what she did.
I think it’s fair to say that villain is not the direction that Blizzard wants to go with her character at this point.
OP didn’t even mention where she murdered an innocent dude because of her xenophobia and tried to murder Malfurion and her own brother.
She did successfully murder that guy, I guess, but on the other hand that ultimately wound up pushing the Elves closer to the Alliance, Highborne, and Worgen, so…yeah. Pretty incompetent villain, too.
“Obsession” is the correct word. “Love” is not part of Maiev’s make up. Her one job for 13,000 years was to make sure that Illidan Stormrage served his eternal sentence or die. There is absolutely nothing sexual between either of them. Illidan’s thoughts were only of Tyrande, but his notion of affection was selfishly grounded which is why she chose his brother instead.
Lore fans love Maiev’s story because it’s a wonderful tale of a duty-bound warden descending into zealotry, obsession, and self-destroying vengeance. It’s not a hero’s tale in the slightest. It’s a tale about how hatred can blind a person and destroy everyone around them. It’s not meant to be uplifting. She’s not meant to be a good person. She’s meant to be a deeply flawed individual who, despite her best intentions, gets it wrong way more often than she gets it right.
She’s a perfect foil for Illidan; where he misses the trees for the forest, she misses the forest for the trees. They complement each other well as nemeses.
Tbh, nothing you said is upsetting in the slightest as a Maiev fan. Because with a few exceptions, your post is completely lore accurate. Because it’s not Maiev’s competency that makes her appealing as a character. Rather, it’s the context surrounding her failures, and how those failures drive her down an ever-deepening descent into madness. And only after her complete fall is she finally able to accept that she might have been wrong about some of those things.
She’s perhaps one of the best representations of a truly mentally ill character we have in WoW. Not someone who’s just “lol, crazy”. She’s not the most evil character. She’s not the most destructive character. She doesn’t even have the most warped sense of morality. But she is most definitely mentally ill.
I would love to go into this more, if you want. I’m not trying to make you like the character, by any means. But I want to explain how I, as a fan, have come to love the character so much. I can quote as many sources as you wish to support my conclusions.
Can anyone figure out why this post got flagged? Whether someone agrees or disagrees with it, I’m not sure what rule it’s breaking to have been reported enough to auto-censor.
See if you’re willing to own up to these things and still appreciate her for them, I can simply agree to disagree with you regarding her likability. What I don’t understand are some other posters who seem to have an entirely different take on the character than you.
Honestly the only thing I dislike about your post is how you imply you speak for all Maiev fans. Even in this thread your take seems at odds with the others jumping to defend her. Yours acknowledges the facts while the typical take I see tends to deny or distort them. Others might mean the same thing but just don’t put it as articulately as you did.
I don’t really have any issue with most of the rest of what you said.
Your take actually makes me loathe her a little less as a character. And more importantly, I can actually understand why you love the character so much.
Sorry, I wasn’t really intending to speak for all Maiev fans. But I do know there are a lot out there who love her for the same reasons I do. I’ve spoken with many of them at length over it.
I respect different character preferences. I get a little up in arms when people distort or deny aspects of canon to support objective statements about the character’s quality (trying to argue she’s static or 1-dimensional, for instance. Both objectively false claims that can easily be refuted with source material.) But that’s a completely different thing from character preference.
I’d never get along with Maiev irl. But I really appreciate a lot of aspects about her character and story.
Take post’s like Kat’s, for instance. It’s objectively wrong. In fact, right up until Illidan’s death each of Maiev’s landmark moments down the path of madness was precipitated by someone she cared about being threatened or killed. Jarod in WotC, Naisha in TFT, the last of her watchers at Guldan’s Fist; every death of a subordinate under her command she has felt deeply. She knew such guilt over their collective deaths that she couldn’t even sleep within the Warden’s Cage. She kept hearing their voices and seeing their accusing faces.
Maiev absolutely cares about others. She’s unequivocally wrong in how she acts on her emotions. But how much she cares about those closest to her can never be questioned. Heck, her caring too much is the whole catalyst for her downfall and zealous outlook on evil.
