Yet another Night Elf thread, but this is something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Now the writing of the War of Thorns and the Burning of Teldrassil is that it was a big genocidal event, where potentially thousands of night elves lost their lives, hundreds were injured, and many are still reeling from the trauma of losing loved ones and their home.
Now with Amirdrassil, they have a new home and are expected to just have their grief be magically healed. When realistically, trauma and even grief are a never ending cycle. Somedays are fine, other days you’re reliving events, other days you’re going through the cycle of grief, starting at anger. Five years isn’t long enough to say that you’re healed.
When I lived in Texas, I worked in a part of Plano that had a large number of Bosnian refugees who fled from their homeland during the Bosnian War in 1993. Many of you weren’t alive then, personally I was three when it happened, and didn’t really know much about it until I worked at a retail store and worked with them. Now at the time it had been 21-22 years since the Bosnian War/Bosnian Genocide.
One day one of the managers and an employee got into a heated argument over the subject of forgiveness. I think for whatever reason someone turned on one of those televangelist programs on the tv. Plano while it’s a multicultural and multi-religious city,(There’s a Bah’ai center, a Buddhist Temple, a mosque, a synagouge and two chabad centers) it’s still a mostly Christian city, and for whatever reason that person decided it was appropriate to put that on in the break room. Anyway the televangelist was talking about forgiveness which lead to the manager making a comment about her experience as a refugee and how she at the time didn’t forgive this general that was committed several atrocities. The employee said that she should forgive him, as it would be better.
I don’t remember exactly what was said but I think it’s was along the lines of “You can’t expect me to forgive someone who has done these crimes to several women. It’s not up to you on whether I need to forgive him or not. He needs to face justice for what he has done.”
I remember watching the argument and seeing how angry the manager was. And she was right. You can’t realistically expect someone who has gone through a traumatic experience and likely saw their loved ones killed or even brutally harmed and expect them to forgive someone. Some can. Others cannot. Some of that trauma can even be experienced by generations. While time may heal all wounds however it’s up to the individual to determine how long the healing process has to be and when the appropriate time to forgive someone. It’s not up to the outsider.
The same thing can be said for the night elves themselves. Five years isn’t going to be a long enough time for them to heal. It would have been better if the Horde didn’t get involved with Amirdrassil and were treated as enemies. Heck, it would have been better if Amirdrassil was planted where Teldrassil was. But even then, a new home isn’t going to heal those wounds. It’s not going to heal their grief or the trauma that they have to live through each and every day.
I know that WoW is a fantasy game, but if we’re going to write about genocides, then we should at least include some realistic parameters for healing. Right now, it’s been 30 years since the Bosnian War/Bosnian Genocide, and the generals who perpetrated the acts are in prison. I still think about that manager, and hope that she’s doing well. I moved to a different state and transferred within the company to a different store. I’m sure she still hasn’t forgiven him. But I hope she’s healing. Because again grief and trauma are cycles that truly never go away.