The following are excerpts from the Sylvanas novel. Sylvanas’ autobiographical telling of her life story she was spinning to Anduin in the book is really only relevant to why Sylvanas chose Anduin to be the Jailer’s puppet, given Sylvanas didn’t manage to sell Anduin on anything through it.
The only thing Anduin took from Sylvanas' ramblings, a.k.a. the final Interlude.
- “I know the rest of the story,” Anduin said. She could not read his expression. “You sent the Val’kyr for us. Tested us to find the soul you needed to use as your weapon. And it was me.”
Sylvanas nodded.
“And it’s been me…all along, hasn’t it? Except not me, really.”
“What do you mean?”
“The war council to fight the Legion,” he said. “The many chances you had to kill me. The words you used in the throne room. ‘The boy’s playing soldier,’ you said. I thought you were just trying to get under my skin, make me lose focus. But that wasn’t it.”
Sylvanas suddenly felt as if she were the one in the prison. She did not want to hear what he had to say next.
“You were thinking of someone else. Someone who looked like me, who thought much like I do. Someone you didn’t want playing soldier.”
“No,” she said. “No.”
“It all makes sense, now. There was no real reason to not simply use Domination magic and turn me right away, if that was what the Jailer wanted. But instead…here you are, telling me things you have likely not shared with anyone…trying to save my life. You see him in me, Sylvanas. You see Lirath.”
Sylvanas clenched a fist at her side. So this was it—all he had taken away from their time in this place—something he could twist to manipulate her into saving him.
“You wanted me to know you didn’t betray my father,” he continued, not letting her speak. He was pacing now, agitated, the plate armor clanking. “What was it you said? ‘Varian Wrynn’s destiny was set in stone, Little Lion.’ Because you truly believed that it was. That there was no free will.”
“You have no—”
He uttered a short bark of laughter. “Even what you call me, Sylvanas. Little Lion. Just like your Little Lord Sun.”
Sylvanas did not want to believe it. She had laid her cards on the table, done all she could to lead him to the right choice. But Anduin was correct in one regard—she had given him something that she hadn’t given Lirath. She’d been transparent with him, granted him the wisdom to walk the right path. She hadn’t trained Lirath to prevent the atrocities he would face, but she’d hoped to at least spare Anduin the bitter fate that awaited him.
“I am not your brother, Sylvanas,” Anduin said now, stepping as close to the barrier as he could. “But I can still help you. If you feel this strongly about him, about me—then your mortality is still with you. I once said that I thought you were lost. But I know better now.”
She dragged her gaze up to his, still disbelieving.
“Let me go. We can leave this place. And I will help you. Your goal is worthy. But not the way the Jailer intends to achieve it. Never like that.”
Something inside her shattered. “You are a fool, Anduin Wrynn. And you have made one of me as well. Have you been angling to get my sympathy this entire time, to trick me into releasing you? To make me think that I have lost my perspective? That I would turn on the Jailer just because your face resembles someone I once loved?”
She shook her head angrily. “I am done,” she said. “I am done with all of this. I leave you to your fate, Anduin.”
There’s my Lady Moon!
And there’s my Little Lord Sun!
Fury made her tremble, and fury gave her speed as she stalked out. He called after her, but she did not halt. Did not look back.
If she did, she was afraid that everything she was would come apart.
The results of that, from the Epilogue.
- The Jailer had taken Shalamayne, the blade that had cut her, the blade of Anduin’s father, and forged it into a mourneblade greater even than Frostmourne. Kingsmourne, it had been named. And with the now corrupted blade of kings, Sylvanas had forced the same fate upon Anduin that Arthas had on her. Sylvanas had stolen his free will, and had watched it slip away, bit by bit. She had been too greatly in the Jailer’s thrall to stop it; too mortal for it not to wound her. And somehow, foolishly, she had clung to the hope that his suffering and hers would truly be worth the dread cost.
More importantly, these are the excerpts that put final context into all the lies Sylvanas was telling Saurfang and what Sylvanas was actually thinking when talking to Delaryn.
The first Interlude.
- “Your life,” Anduin said, quietly, “was filled with riches. Riches I’ve never known. Your world was one of safety and certainty. Of harmless pranks and easy forgiveness. You knew both of your parents. You had sisters and a brother. Your youth was filled with grace and laughter, beauty and love and support, and friendship. And yes—I know that world is no more—for any of us. But at least, you had the chance to taste it before it was gone.”
Sylvanas rose now, too. “Do not envy me, Little Lion. You have lost much, certainly. But it is nothing compared with what I have lost.”
“Is it nothing compared with what the night elves lost? Or should I say, what you took from them?”
And there it was: the burning of Teldrassil. Sylvanas knew he would throw it at her but had not expected he would do so just yet. “I did what I did for a reason. For the greatest reason of all.” Her voice rose before she could properly guard its cadence.
“You became a butcher, Sylvanas, slaughtering innocents, all in the name of self-righteous lies!”
It was not the petulant cry of a child, but the just fury of what the world would see as a good man. She could not rely on his empathy, not yet. She wondered if Anduin had chosen the word butcher deliberately, but even now, after all that had been done to him, she did not think him that cruel.
They stared at each other for a long minute. Sylvanas tamped down her anger. “I will speak of that in due time.”
Chapter Twenty-eight, part I, a.k.a. A Good War.
- War
could kill two birds with one stone. Of course, many of her own people would fall. War was never without cost. But in the end, every casualty would advance the ultimate goal of a new reality for everyone. They would all be soldiers dying for the best cause possible, although they would not have the comfort of knowing that.
It would give both sides something to focus on. Something to hate, to become reckless for. Peace would not speed the process to which Sylvanas now devoted herself.
She would reach out to High Overlord Varok Saurfang, a tactician with a mind as sharp as her own when it came to strategy, and devise a plan of attack.
—
Sylvanas knew her goals were far different from the story she wove for Saurfang, yet the strategy—shifting from a direct attack on Stormwind to taking Darnassus and holding it hostage—satisfied the orc’s martial plan and her own, far more complex one.
They met daily, refining their tactics, and at one point Sylvanas found herself standing over a map of the world, a wave of something like weariness sweeping over her. She had been a master of strategy before her death, and a master of manipulation afterward. But brilliant as a plan might be, it was always possible that the unexpected could derail everything. She was tired of maintaining the façade that she cared about the Horde—or, if she was being honest, even the Forsaken. She wanted to finally leave this prison behind. Shed what trapped her. Tear it all down. Rebuild, with every step right and just.
Under Saurfang’s plan, the road to Stormwind would take years to walk. Sylvanas was undead; she could wait for years. As for Zovaal—he had existed since…possibly before time, he could wait a little longer, too. It was so very mortal of her to be impatient, but she could not deny that she was.
The plan she and Saurfang had concocted was flawed, if freeing the Jailer was the ultimate goal. It would take too long. What Sylvanas had come to realize was that she wanted Saurfang to design a plan that helped her accomplish her true goal, and she could not do that without confiding in him. She tamped down the impatience and said nothing…for now.
“Have you noticed how much of our history revolves around choices—and the lack thereof?” Sylvanas said. Her voice was soft, soothing, inviting conversation. “Fighting for free will…and being denied. Making choices and dying for them—dying even if you did not make the choice, or chose something different. There are times when it seems so terribly unfair. Unjust. Innocents die, while their murderers flourish. If you could change something, Varok—bring your son back, whole and healthy, or even remake existence—would you?”
Saurfang stared at the table. His gaze traveled to Stormwind, to Orgrimmar, to Darnassus. And to Northrend, where it lingered. Where his son had fallen and been turned by the Lich King.
“No one should have that power,” Saurfang said. “Even if they wished to use it for good causes…who am I, who is anyone, to determine what is best, or right, or wrong? I cannot see all ends, nor can you, Sylvanas.” He looked at her then, with his small, dark eyes. His lips curved around his tusks in a bitter chuckle. “Do not worry. I am not engaging in a secret coup, if that is what you are trying to get from me.”
So, she hadn’t quite deceived him. He’d figured out something was behind this conversation—though he could not possibly guess at the truth. Fair enough.
Sylvanas smiled self-deprecatingly. “I fear I was being too obvious. Thank you for answering my questions. It is only that so much is at stake now, I must be absolutely certain I can trust those with whom I share my secrets.”
“The goal is a worthy one, Warchief.”
Ah, Saurfang, you have no idea.
Chapter Twenty-eight, part II, a.k.a. Sylvanas: Warbringer.
- She was issuing orders as flames crackled around her, and the screams of the wounded filled the smoky air.
Yet somehow in that cacophony, the soft voice of a dying kaldorei caught her attention. “Why?” the young huntress whispered, blood pumping from her body as she drew harsh, quick breaths. “Only innocents remain in the tree.”
“This is war,” Sylvanas said in a cool, clipped tone.
“No,” the stubborn night elf persisted, struggling with every breath. “This is hatred…rage…Windrunner. You were… defender of your people!”
The reminder stung, unexpectedly. It was true. She had once been like this elf, dying, trying to defend the land she loved from an invader intent on destroying it.
“I remember a fool,” she said. And she had been. How small the ranger-general seemed now, how tiny and insular her focus. Unaware of the trap that life was; always striving, never winning.
“Life is pain,” Sylvanas told the elf. Bleak, purposeless, useless pain, the worst kind—without meaning or sense. “Hope fails.” It did. It needed to. Hope clouded the judgment, the comprehension.
Only an uncaring heart will turn away from the trap baited with hope, for hope is the worst illusion of them all.
To her surprise, the kaldorei’s eyes welled with tears, shimmering and radiant blue.
Impulsively Sylvanas wiped the tears away. “Don’t grieve,” she said. And then she revealed a promise; a secret that the night elf would not understand, not now, but would, one day. “You’ll soon be with your loved ones.”
All lives ended, eventually. All souls must go to some afterlife, unless something untoward happened to chain them to a mortal plane. And in a way, the lives the Jailer had asked Sylvanas to deliver were ending a threat. Righting the grievous wrong the makers had done to all that existed.
Wars were always fought for ideals, after all. No one fought a war simply to kill, and neither did Sylvanas. She was waging a war against an eternity of injustice and coldness. Soldiers signed up to battle and lost their lives for far lesser things: money, land, nations, birth order…
There would be pain. There would be grief, and loss, and blood, and death. So very much of it.
And for a while, after death, there would be terrible torment. This young hunter would taste that soon.
But all things ended, and in a very short time even the Maw would cease to be.
“You have made life your enemy,” the kaldorei whispered. But she could not know that life was everyone’s enemy. This elf simply did not understand that yet, but Sylvanas did, and knew it to be a foe—just like death—that had to be defied. And despite the ranger’s words, both forces could and would be defeated.
“You cannot kill hope.” The voice was fading now.
But Sylvanas could. It was better, and kinder, in a way, that she did. Better that she move boldly.
Arthas’s voice floated back to her, still sharp and cruel as the sword with which he took her life. Kill the innocent first.
For the first time, Sylvanas did not balk at the recollection. It did not matter where a useful thing came from, only that it was useful. Arthas had been right. But he had also failed. He was a weak vessel in the end, but Sylvanas and Zovaal would succeed where he and the Lich King had not.
And so, certain in her knowledge that the suffering was finite and the joy that awaited them was infinite, Sylvanas Windrunner ordered the World Tree set aflame, and countless numbers of souls surged forward to the Maw, the Jailer, and true freedom.
The screams would fade, the fires die, but the goal was closer than ever. “In the end, it will have been worth it,” she whispered, for her ears alone, then turned to face the anguished confusion and fury of Varok Saurfang, who did not, and would not, understand.
In the end, as she had told Vol’jin, death would claim them all.
And it would be she and Zovaal who would remake them.
Chapter Twenty-nine, a.k.a. Siege of Orgrimmar II: Electric Boogaloo.
- The battle between Horde and Alliance raged, and Sylvanas was single-minded of purpose throughout all the events of the Fourth War. She had blighted her own
city, though she found herself, perhaps foolishly, unwilling to kill its inhabitants and instead saw to their evacuation. She confronted the young king, so like Lirath, but the enemy nonetheless, in the Lordaeron throne room. Continents joined in the fray, the casualties adding to the swell of anima the Jailer received. And as Sylvanas had anticipated, Saurfang turned traitor and allied with Anduin and the Alliance.
Sylvanas appreciated the faith her loyalists had shown to her. They did not know her plans, but still they followed her, trusting in her actions even when what she did must have seemed like senseless carnage; casual cruelty for sheer sport.
She was fully aware the list of her sins was nearly endless. Teldrassil, of course. The spark that lit the gunpowder keg. Death for the sake of death, or for spite, or simply burning the Great Tree because she could. That was how it had to have seemed. Unleashing the blight Putress had created in his slaughterhouse and torture chamber of a laboratory upon her own people as well as the enemy—unthinkable hitherto. But still they followed her.
As her goal grew closer, Sylvanas grew bolder. Her deeds grew objectively darker, more filled with bloodlust and senseless cruelty. She understood the repugnance the rest of this world had for her. Had she stood where they did now, Sylvanas would likely hold the same opinion as they.
But she did not.
And now, it had come to this: The Alliance and the Horde rebels were marching, united, on Orgrimmar. The war had at last come to her door.
She reached to touch the wound on her still-beautiful face. The mark of Shalamayne. The double-bladed sword of Varian Wrynn, who had once hurled such bitter, vicious words of hatred toward her. Who had come to a war council, and had agreed they could trust each other to defend their world.
She saw the king’s weapon again, in the hand of a boy facing brutal realities who strode into Lordaeron clad in golden, glinting armor, the double blades dripping blood on a floor that had been painted in years past with that of yet another king whose bright-haired son had marched through those doors. A pattern of violent death and loss that repeated, unending. She felt again the strange outrage at seeing a gentle soul forced to shed blood. To put himself in danger.
Shalamayne’s journey continued, gifted by the young lion to the old soldier. It was Saurfang who had demanded the mak’gora, whom Sylvanas beat handily, and yet somehow, somehow, though the sword never touched her till that last blow, when he had pulled the blades apart—one strike missed.
The other…
Sylvanas felt again the burst of fury, frustration, and resentment she had felt outside the gates of Orgrimmar. From almost every moment of her existence, she had been trying to help. To save. Alleria and the springpaw. Lirath, from naïveté and idealization that became lethal to him. The quel’dorei, the Forsaken. And now she was trying to save every last ignorant, pathetic creature that walked, swam, flew, or crawled on any world that ever existed.
They would have called her mad. Accused her of lying. At best, accused her of gullibility. But they had not seen what Sylvanas had, or knew what she knew.
The Horde, Saurfang had shouted at her, again and again. The Horde. As if it was anything of consequence. As if shouting wishes about something made them true.
It was nothing, nothing at all, and still seething from the hot pain of Shalamayne’s bite, she told him so.
For a moment, watching Saurfang gloat, as if he had won, as if winning a foolish duel had saved anything worth saving, Sylvanas could have wished the words back. She was not quite ready for the next stage, but the old orc had forced her hand.
Sylvanas was done with it all. Done with pretending she cared about anything except a better fate than the one all of them would receive, with restraining her usage of the dark power the Jailer had given her. Done with Azeroth altogether.
She straightened and told them the bitter truth. You are all nothing.
In conclusion: the Epilogue, a.k.a. Sylvanas' Judgement.
- Sylvanas had turned to the night elf leader, Tyrande Whisperwind, for her judgment, because she knew no matter how cruel it was, Tyrande’s punishment would be just. And so it was.
Tyrande, rigid with rage tightly leashed, had led Sylvanas to the edge of the Maw. It was in this place, Tyrande decreed, that her penance would begin. Every soul lost in its depths, betrayed or condemned, you shall find and send forth to the Arbiter.
Both women knew the task was all but impossible. Souls had been entering the Maw since the very creation of the machine of death. Tyrande smiled coldly as she saw the realization on Sylvanas’s face.
You will toil there, the high priestess had said, savoring the words, scouring every darkened reach, until the final soul is free, and you are all that remains. This is how you shall bring renewal to your victims, and my people.
However long it takes, Sylvanas had replied, it shall be done.
Even in the somberness and the shame of her judgment, there had been moments that had moved Sylvanas deeply. She had been allowed to say farewell to Alleria and Vereesa. Now that she was, if not entirely whole, at least some of who she had once been, Sylvanas could see that there was love there, still; awkward and alien to her, but precious. Now that the Jailer was destroyed and the covenants of the Shadowlands were working together once more, there was a slim chance that, one day, she might be able to see her parents…and Lirath…as well.
Sylvanas had not quite understood how enduring a tether her brother’s memory had been for her; binding her, despite all challenges, not just to her mortality, but to all that was good and true. Its tenacity had enabled her to cling to who she was without realizing it. In death, as in life, Lirath had supported and loved her. It had been the source of her greatest pain, this inability to let go, but now she was fiercely glad of every painful moment.
She could not see the Jailer’s true face until the moment he chose to reveal it. She had convinced herself that she wanted justice for all beings who lived and died, when she knew in her heart of hearts that what she truly desired was base and small —to do anything to stave off the darkness that she believed awaited her, and to be with those she loved. But then…was not that a desire shared by everyone? That was not the sin. The sin, as Anduin had said, was in how she attempted to realize that desire.
Underlined emphasis mine. Italicization by Golden.
