Baine isn’t Cairne but he was explicitly embraced and commended by Cairne in the Tauren Heritage chain so he’s probably doing something right… I don’t understand the cognitive dissonance that comes with saying Baine is worse than Cairne and Cairne would never do X or Y when the only lore advance the Tauren have gotten in the last while literally has Cairne patting Baine in the back and saying he’s on the right path.
On topic, I really do hope Blizzard remembers that the Forsaken have the executor line of succession… they probably won’t but that’s the best solution, it allows for new leadership without tossing off Forsaken themes. At most they should be brought back to their pre-Cata themes, with Calia just being used to affirm that they have full claim over Lordaeron, and any inferences otherwise aren’t legal.
All that said, I’m still convinced Calia isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and that she’s going to, along with Turalyon, be the Light side, with Xal’atath and Alleria being the Void side, in the Light versus Void expansion. Calia’s design is not the design of an angelic figure, it’s an almost gothic/vampiric design, and I’m hoping that’s the case because a character that manages to be affable while also being ruthless is one that’s new to WoW and I think it could be really fun.
I mean, it’s basically because Blizz don’t use Baine for much else than being the One Horde Race most Alliance tolerate. If he did more stuff, I think he’d be better, because he does generally embody a lot of the traits that make Tauren valuable to the Horde. They were a balancing force to the Horde, helping the Orcs refind their way. He only really seemed to do any pushing back in Cata, and since then, not much.
I mean, this issue happens a lot to most of the races. Trolls had Vol’jin, but without him, they couldn’t figure out a new rep, so they added in the Zandalari, who are just ALL the trolls ever united. Problem solved! Dwarves dealing with internal politics? Just put them on a council! That being said, I’ll let the Horde Council pass because quite frankly they keep screwing it up with the Warchief stuff, so I’ll take anything that stops killing the important characters we have, because god knows we’re not getting any good replacements.
On the whole though, I do agree that there is some homogeny going on here, making factions more similar to make things easier to write. It hurts the Alliance arguably less because they are generally quite similar. The Horde is a lot more rag-tag, and I just don’t think Blizz really know what to do with that. That’s why they do so much stuff with the belves, because they generally operate in a way they like and find easier to write around. You get two or three important belves and just focus on them. Tribes and clans need a lot of important NPCs to keep them all fleshed out.
I’d say it hurts Alliance more, honestly, because everyone slowly gets swallowed up by Stormwind stuff. The Horde by nature is supposed to be a more unified front, and many of the races sort of intersect in terms of their themes, having similar societal structure and beliefs, that being shamanistic, with the two elven races and the Forsaken sort of being common ground as well, though… well, Forsaken are kind of the odd ones out since Blood Elves are now basically just High Elves again and the Nightborne apparently are made up of… only the nice Shal’dorei and not the backstabby ladder climbing ones.
Alliance, meanwhile, is made up of races that don’t have too much common cultural ground, and are supposed to be more distinct and separate, but aren’t. Night Elves straight up have a different religion and flushed their last monarch down Azeroth’s toilet, Draenei worship the Light same as humans but that’s where any cultural similarity ends, Dwarves have a monarchy but it’s kept in check by a Senate, Gnomes have a completely different society from humans right down to a literal merit based democracy, and so on. Yet they’re all wrapped up in Stormwind, which has also been sanded down of all nuance and simplified.
Part of me wishes they’d go back to making the world the main character… and another part of me is terrified of what they’d do to the lore if they did so.
I suppose so, but from day one the Alliance has been very strongly tied to Stormwind. The Alliance flag is Stormwind’s flag (and yeah, I know the Horde symbol is just a slightly modified Orc symbol, but the fact that it is modified is something, right?). I’d also argue that with the outlier of the nelves, the Alliance generally are relatively similar. Maybe different political structures, but they are quite similar in their culture and values. It’s generally quite wonky, in my opinion, because the Alliance was always kind of one of convenience. Realistically, there’s no reason for them to be so unified in times of peace. So there is definitely a disconnect between what the Alliance should be and how it is portrayed.
Calia has no business leading the Forsaken, but your criticisms of her are very unfair.
She also coward in a ditch for two weeks while the people of Lordaeron were slaughtered by her brother and raised as undead who are now the forsaken.
What else exactly is an untrained civilian non combatant supposed to do when confronted by an other-worldly menace bent on their destruction?
She then runs off and hides out in a temple until everything is over (not exactly what I’d call leadership abilities).
This should really come as no surprise. Arthas was crown prince and heir apparent of Lordaeron. He would have been the one receiving an education in diplomacy, military tactics, and pretty much all other essentials to rule. Calia, like nearly every other princess in a medieval society would never receive much more than a rudimentary political education as she would never be expected to rule. The best thing she quite literally could have done was lay low and hope that a high ranking military individual like Uther could locate her and lead a military campaign in her name to retake the kingdom.
You can hardly blame her for staying in hiding either. Lordaeron was overrun by the Scourge, and later the Forsaken aligned with the Horde. She was the only remaining scion of the old regime (a regime hostile to the Horde, and a pretender to the throne of Undercity). Revealing herself would have only made her a target for assassination (don’ forget that the Forsaken were a cult of personality built around Sylvanas, and Calia is the sister of Arthas).
Later she almost starts a war between the Alliance and Forsaken by revealing herself and trying to recruit Forsaken to Alliance at their very first gathering.
Simply put she’s not a diplomat. She’s a priestess. Her view of the world isn’t tinted by politics, but by her devotion to her religious duties. It was an appropriate reaction for one who’s first response to suffering and injustice isn’t cold political calculations, but an emotional reaction grounded in her faith. It’s part of the reason Voss wants her to lead; the Forsaken have always been pawns to their queen, but Calia by virtue of her character and beliefs could never see her people as such. Voss is hoping Calia can rehumanize the Forsaken so they can see themselves as more than just pawns.
She is unfit to wear that crown.
Her actions were entirely appropriate for one with her background. She’s not any sort of military leader, her connection to her people could only ever be an empathetic one at best, and that is now something that she can excel at and provide as a service to her people. It is extremely unlikely however that she would be so readily accepted by the either the Horde or Forsaken leadership so easily though, especially with Voss being the one vouching for her (Voss wasn’t even Horde until BFA if I recall correctly).
So, was anyone else a bit unnerved in Before the Storm, when Calia started shouting (paraphrasing dramatically for emphasis) “Yes! Come to me! I am your queen, bow before me!” at that moment when the Forsaken at the summit started defecting and running to the Alliance? The weird attitude she had there has never showed up again anywhere else, and it felt like an outburst of… I don’t know, a “true self.”
Maybe I read too much into it, but I can’t get over how strange she acted for just a couple short lines in that book.
That’s a fair take, I suppose. What drew me to the Forsaken story was the philosophical core that it offers. A question of purpose and existence with no certain answer, only one that makes for themselves. And really, I feel history is important for the context when considering something like leadership, especially for the Forsaken, who will live for the length of one lifetime and then go extinct when the reason the society was established for no longer serves its purpose, provided something doesn’t happen where more undead find themselves free of their shackles and in need of somewhere to go.
If she jumped the nest when things went bad, that sort’ve gives the impression that she’s just a fair weather friend that’ll do it again when the going gets tough and that is certainly someone who shouldn’t hold the office, I feel. The same reason why I don’t feel Voss is an ideal candidate for leadership, but at least she actually represents and understands the plight of the Forsaken, having actually lived through their burden, and again pursuing that ageless question that fills the void of purpose for all Forsaken: “who am I, and how do I define myself if my existence can no longer do that?”.
I feel she was the perfect fit for the bill. She lived first-hand through all of their plights, she was a master tactician to help them build a society to protect themselves (as well as her) and a leader with a mind to seek out like-minded allies to help ensure that society’s continued survival, at the exchange of it paying its due diligence to the Horde.
The Forsaken ideology is discovery, yes, you are absolutely correct, but the Forsaken as a society doesn’t exist because it’s a social function (although it certainly has its presence, the Forsaken are still human to some extent and by that measure, social creatures), it’s because the world outside to them is inherently hostile and they are only safe together.
While I do certainly agree that Sylvanas hogged too much screen time for other characters, that is a fault of the story teller, rather than the story itself.
I actually brought this up in an earlier post, but:
While it is entirely sensible for someone to favor self preservation, and while it would had most assuredly been an execution if she stood up to her brother at the height of his newfound power, these people who needed a leader to rally around never got it, and instead died, then came back through unlife and had to essentially fend off both the Scourge and the people that might had even been their own neighbors, once. From the viewpoint of the people who had to live through that reality and essentially rebuild themselves from the ground up to adjust to drastically different boundaries of their new unlife, it is dangerous thinking to embrace someone who has proven through the most extreme conditions that she will run from danger instead of confront it.
And that is what disqualifies her from the position. She doesn’t have the mentality for the political nature of leadership. Doubly so for the Forsaken, who do not have the open door of diplomacy or letting bygones be bygones. It is more liken to a never ending war-time situation, where the presence of outsiders is immediately dangerous. The world is hostile to them, it will not coddle them, and to the outside world, the Forsaken is the Scourge, no matter what’s going on beneath the hood. The Forsaken’s history from where they started to now was a very bitter learning experience to find their footing in the new world order of theirs. Calia has had no time to learn these lessons and there isn’t any second chances to learn from that mistake and carry on.
Even if she represented a kingdom that was once theirs, they’ve drastically changed as a society, with radically different needs.
That’s the whole point of this conversation. With everything that surrounds her, nobody should be welcoming her on any grounds (save for maybe some social graces for those who might respect the old guard), much less near a position of leadership, yet she’s about to become the leader. Voss is sort of in the similar boat, but her story has already demonstrated the Forsaken’s hardships to her and she understands the stakes of what’s at risk, which makes it cringe inducing that she’s in a position of leadership, but less troublesome in the arc that she’s re-aligning herself again.
Which amusingly enough, after getting shot and killed by their previous queen, Calia acknowledges and wishes to both understand and help with in her own way.
But apparently if she’s not drinking the blood of Alliance babies from a bone goblet she’s not worth it apparently…
Now I’m certain she’ll be made the leader or become co-leader with Voss. I’m not that stupid. I just find it endlessly amusing that one of the main things that disqualify Calia from leading the Forsaken is that she’s not Forsaken enough, when one of the major sticking points against Alliance aggression has always been Lordaeron belongs to Lordaeron, but not those Lordaeron only the dead ones. Except this dead one.
Well, I fail to see where she can be of use, in the story. It’s been a long time since she’s been in the picture. All that well wishing, love and peace, hugging it out ideology is fine and dandy in a normal human society, but in a society where people are seen not as human beings but as monsters, where there can be no quarter or parlay, it’s rather detrimental to the reality of the Forsaken’s situation.
I also fail to see how the Forsaken treating its opponents (who, through first contact, have proven that they don’t have noble intentions for them) as though they were actively at war with them, and fortifying military might to deter them from attacking, equates to extremely metal and diabolical frat house initiations.
And, lastly, yes, in a perfect world, they’d lay down their arms, embrace each other as countrymen, build Lordaeron anew and progress towards a society founded on the pursuit of peace and a shrewd but welcoming foreign policy, with policy that’d care for its citizenry. But it isn’t a perfect world. Far from it. The Forsaken are essentially stuck in a situation where there is no way out but earning it through threat of violence.
The other half of Lordaeron, that wants Lordaeron proper, does not see the other half of Lordaeronians as Lordaeronians but monstrous squatters, in which the answer to fix it is the same as handling a vermin population harassing farmland: by dispatching them.
The Forsaken need sound wisdom and military might to purchase the ideal future for them as a society. Calia cannot offer anything in that department and anything she can offer, doesn’t work in a relationship where the two opponents do not see each other as equals.
I’ve said this before, but this is one of the issues where the wants of the players are at odds with the wants of the characters in the lore.
A player that chose to play a Forsaken likely chose it because they wanted to play a dark edgelord or suffering emo.
But from a lore perspective, being undead is pretty much all pain and torment, and the Forsaken HATE it. Their suffering isn’t a part of their identity the choose to identify with, it a circumstance of their existence they learn to exist with because they have no other choice.
But Calia, supposedly, has ways to ease their pain and suffering. Something about her nature, or maybe she’s just the only one trying, they haven’t really explained the details.
So from a player perspective, they don’t want anything to do with Calia, because she threatens to ruin the race fantasy they chose to play. But from the character’s perspective, Calia is someone who can actually HELP THEM make their terrible lives a little less terrible. They’d be GREATFUL for the help and comfort she provides.
Yes! It’s very natural to hate such a grim reality. Nobody of sane standing says “I want to buy my future at the end of a spear point, jabbed into a relative of someone I know/into someone I likely grew up with, or into a stranger who’s in an alliance with someone I was once close with, because they were trying to protect them.”. It is incredibly depressing and humans are far more likely to seek diplomacy than embrace what is essentially a fascist’s wet dream (alienate the outside world, promise peace through power, etc) but, what are they to do?, and how can Calia even help?
The stage is very clearly set. It’s: the enemy across the lake has proven that it does not see them as human beings but as the Scourge and validated in their eyes for context-lacking actions made along the way, will not negotiate with them and has no desired interest in sharing what they claim is theirs.
And what is she going to do? How is she going to un-tangle a situation like that? There are two sides and compromise cannot be won here. If she sides with the Forsaken, her claim is unjust, she is demented and who she once was, is not who stands there now, no matter how opulent and perfect she appears in the image of The Light. She can’t just order them, she has no power to wield, no men at her command, no wealth to distribute and the land she can lay claim to is sort of a major point in the whole conflict to begin with.
It is extremely messy and I’d wager it’s that way by design, since Warcraft’s story revolves around conflict and if they were to ever actually embrace peace and hug it out, it’d be a finale and a conclusion, rather than something to build from.
Calia, in a story point of view from a character angle, is a tempting poison, because she promises better days ahead, but all methods that can be used are ineffective and it’s dangerous to humor something that clearly will not work.