I can’t argue with that. It’s clear that she got away with murder.
She does even better with the narrative, since the writers of WoW have determined that she is a hero and therefore not only will there be no legal consequences for her actions, the story will always pretend it never happened. Frankly, Blizzard should just make it non-canon for the sake of character integrity.
That’s where the dejure vs defacto part of my earlier post comes into play.
Sure, but my whole argument was responding to the premise of this thread, to explore what happens in WoW if there is a constant expectation of due process. In that scenario, Jaina is in prison for life for the Purge of Dalaran.
She wouldn’t be alone, mind you. I just thought her example was particularly egregious given the juxtaposition between what she actually did and how she is normally portrayed as a lawful good hero.
Hey now, they didn’t completely sweep her brutal crimes under the rug. They allowed a single npc to be kinda grumpy with her during the war scenario.
Yeah, and he’s the villain.
Just like the Blood elf who got killed by Malfurion in the prepatch who had an entirely valid grievance with the Night elves.
I’ve always seen her written up as chaotic good evolving towards neutral if you’re going to insist on fitting her into a d20 box.
Hmmm…in this case, I would say “valid” is a point of view. The Jaina case is a lot more clear-cut. Lorash comes off as kind of a fanatic.
I’m not insisting; it was a figure of speech that seems popular on this forum. Shorthand for goody-two-shoes. Although to be fair she oscillates between that and vengeful trauma survivor (a Blizzard classic). I would say that she is currently evolving back towards the former, what with her recent Thrall moment.
Wide spread acceptance of due process as fundamental right that all people have is fairly modern. The Magna Carta is important because it the start of of the modern concept in the UK. But it was very limited (only a few things were covered and, even then, only for the nobility). And it was still mostly a restriction the British noblity were able to force on a weak king. Not some accepted standard. It took quite a while for it to evolve.
Im quite confused as to why you dont think Jaina committed murder in that scene. She had no need to kill the guards, as she could have taken them all alive to her prison. Thus any justification used goes out the window, because the killing was entirely avoidable on her part.
I’m now interested in seeing if I can come up with a defence for Jaina, because that just seems like more fun.
Okay, let’s put on our amateur defence attorney hats.
Prosecution is going to argue that she had a clear motive - she was enraged at Aethas in particular and the Sunreavers in general, and blamed them for both the recent theft of the divine bell and for the destruction of Theramore. They will argue that she didn’t need to kill the guards because she was never in imminent danger, and furthermore that she had a non-lethal option available.
What’s out best defence?
We could argue that she had good reason to believe that Aethas was leading an active insurgency in Dalaran, and thus posed an imminent danger. The guards may not have posed much threat on their own, but they could have gotten lucky, and moreover Aethas is a powerful archmage in his own right so it was imperative to neutralize him immediately.
This would frankly be a much easier defence if she had killed all the guards at once. Leaving two until the end makes it hard to argue that she felt seriously threatened by them, and indicates that they were unwilling to attack.
I think the best bet is to argue that she felt this was an active insurgency led by Aethas, and so the guards were de facto enemy combatants who had no right to expect any kind of due process. The fact that she almost certainly killed them when she didn’t have to is still going to be a serious problem, but we could argue that the Violet Hold couldn’t handle that many powerful mages alongside Aethas, maybe? Thus, she erred on the side of caution by killing them?
Governments work in various ways. Sometimes they have various checks and balances. Sometimes they are fascist systems. You haven’t really given lore to support either.
Ready to strike someone in melee range. How is this supposed to be a direct and immediate threat to someone standing halfway across the room? Like I said, they are preparing to defend if someone else attacks, not threatening to attack unprovoked.
Ehhh, from the angle the video is shot from, it looks more “less” than “more” to me, but that’s getting into individual perception, so I won’t pursue it.
So you admit they didn’t try to melee with Jaina, and yet you still call them “aggressive”? I get the feeling that “aggressive” to you just means “prepared to fight,” which isn’t the same as “actively attacking.” It doesn’t make Jaina’s killing of them self-defense.
If her authority was so absolute and her rights were so clear, you’d think she would just order them to lower their weapons, but she didn’t. Instead, she went straight to lethal force.
Could be. If so, then the guards were presumably capable of casting spells, so they would have ranged attack options that they made no move to use.
This is undermined by the fact that she then goes out into the streets of Dalaran, teleporting every blood elf in sight (after all, we’re assured that the part where she killed some of them with her blizzards is a bug and never really happened, despite the fact that no one’s ever been able to find the tweet or whatever that supposedly confirmed this).
I thought of that but you could argue that the guards were trained fighters and thus posed a substantially greater threat than random civilians.
Edit: Make your best case to get her out of it.
Edit: I kind of want to do more of these: If there was due process on Azeroth, explain how you would defend X.
Example: If there was due process on Azeroth, how do you defend the player character for killing Harpy eggs?
Tyrande was on fire during that entire trial, imagine the disrespect she felt when her Night Lawyer training meant nothing in the end.
Target for what? Murder? No. It also still doesn’t make him a combatant. If anything, it would just make the CO sit down with the elder about whats going on. This is actually one of the biggest issues in the “War on Terrorism” for us.
Literally one Sunreaver was a traitor to the rest of the organization. That doesn’t make the Sunreavers breaking neutrality as an organization, and Aethas only knew that he had a traitor and then was subsequently threatened with the genocide of this race, and thus kept his role as neutral and did little to nothing about it.
It’d be more apt to say that a single villager, and you don’t know which one, supplied WMDs to your enemy. In which case, yes - it is. You can see this in the Mai Lai massacre, actually.
It’s not an aggressive stance at all, and they literally did nothing to Jaina. If anything, a real world parrable would be the low-ready for firearms. Ready to do something if need be, but not outright brandishing your weapon.
Not sure why the “stance” of Aethas guard matter. When someone suddenly teleports into the room of the person you are guarding, being prepared to fight is your job, not a capital crime.
Preparing to strike, yes. That’s an aggressive stance.
They’re melee fighters so of course they’re waiting til someone enters their range.
And I get the Feeling that you think someone actually has to attack you first before they can be deemed Hostile.
The fact that they were taking an aggressive stance made them “red named” to Jaina, which defines them as a Threat. The point that she was Ranged against a Melee who choose to stand back to guard their target doesn’t make them any less hostile.
They already demonstrated that they weren’t following her orders at all when they stood between her and Aethas.
Wasn’t murder.
Yeah, that’ll solve it. 
Exactly. Aethas KNEW and DID NOTHING
That makes him Guilty of being complicit by not coming forth with what he knew.
If the Village Elder in question knew someone in his village was dealing weapons, it would be his duty to stop them, and if that wasn’t possible, then to notify the next higher authorities. But doing nothing and letting it happen would make him just as guilty.
Mai Lai was a FAR worse case because they didn’t even try to investigate.
“Brandishing” their weapons is exactly what they did.
As it’s pointed out, their stance is exactly the same as in game when we take an aggressive stance in game to melee sometime. Just because that target is not within melee range doesn’t make it “non-aggressive.” It still puts us “in combat” even if no combat has yet taken place.