Sylvanas’ motivations make no sense

Lore Story Forum
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From what I understand the mechanism of Death seems to have broken relatively recently given that Ursoc and Ysera were sent to Ardenweald as early as Legion which seems to imply the Arbiter was still in charge and sifting souls to covenants at that point.

So I guess my biggest question is why is Sylvanas still working with the Jailer after learning the truth about her fate? Namely that she was NOT doomed to the Maw upon her death?

Contrary to what we now know to be a false vision of her future afterlife after her suicide at Icecrown Citadel, we know souls don’t just go straight to the Maw except in the particular case of Arthas who was claimed by Devos/Uther immediately upon his death to bypass the Arbiter’s judgment.

And even if she just went straight to the Maw to meet back up with the Jailer, we know she has to know about the covenant system given how many representatives thereof the Maw Walkers have rescued and I just refuse to believe she was unaware of them.

From what we’ve heard her say so far, she wants alongside the Jailer to break the whole unfair system. But as we’ve seen, it seemed pretty…fair up until the Arbiter was incapacitated and all the souls started streaming straight to the Maw due to the Jailer’s shenanigans.

Prior to her suicide and subsequent pact with the Jailer, Sylvanas very likely would have been sent to Maldraxxus due to her cunning and warrior spirit. At worst, she might have had to spend a bit of time in Revandreth first to cleanse herself of some of her more questionable actions, but she was certainly not Maw material.

So why is she still helping the Jailer? Is she still somehow unaware that he lied to her? Has she gone mad with power and simply wants to rule the system regardless? Or is this all leading to yet another totally boring and predictable redemption arc where she is yet again playing 4 dimensional chess with everyone in order to ‘save’ us from ourselves?

This is one of the reasons I just don’t like characters like Batman in comics very much anymore, they just know everything to the point it isn’t interesting because it’s just so unrealistic.

Now Batman the Animated Series? Heck yeah! He’s smart but he’s still fallible, he doesn’t know everything before someone even thinks it, and he makes mistakes. He’s HUMAN and therefore relatable.

Sylvanas is just not relatable at all anymore. Nobody is THAT smart and it just gets annoying to constantly dance to the tune of someone who was never some super genius.

Anyways, rant over. So what do you think, is she really just ignorant, power mad, or being set up for another hamfisted redemption?

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In certain it’s because she’s wanting power, power to determine what actually is just and unjust probably due to her death at arthas’ hands. That’s the only reason I can come up with, it’s not a moral one but is motivated by a sort of greed.

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I’m not opposed to a redemption arc for sylvanas though, if it’s done reasonably well. I just don’t want them to pull a Kerrigan and essentially make her a Goddess in the process.

From what we know so far though? Sylvanas seems to think she was legitimately destined for the Maw, and that’s her excuse for wanting to break the system. She doesn’t want people to end up like her, a twisted soul with no choice in how their afterlife goes, because someone else turned them into a twisted/evil version of themselves.

I don’t blame her for thinking that though, she’s not necessarily wrong in wanting a fair chance at going to a afterlife she would’ve ended up in had certain things not gone the way they did.

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None of the above.

I think it was intended for Death to come off as an unfair system. Just looking at the Kyrians and how they exist, or the Venthyr and how so many of them have stopped even attempting to redeem souls and are just farming anima, as well as Maldraxxus’ civil war, it all seems like symptoms of an old, bloated system that is falling apart.

Can something be fair if it no longer works properly?

The problem is, when you look at all of that with a magnifying lens, it was never unfair to begin with.

If Sylvanas has a deeper understanding of how the Shadowlands works, I think she’s in denial that she was sent to a fair and just afterlife (assuming she was ever in the Maw at all).

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Ysera got a 1st class ticket to Ardenweld because of divine intervention.

:pancakes:

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Because she couldn’t even choose who she-

Sigh

She couldn’t. Control. Anything.

But through the Jailer, control of her fate will at last be possible.

Meaning the Jailer’s gonna be her wingman, helping her get that Anduin.

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This is really just her trying to get that “little Lion” :wink:

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Is it really unfair though? Most of the problems in the Shadowlands only started as a direct result of the Jailer’s shenanigans and only relatively recently.

Kyrians had some issues in wanting to cleanse all their memories sure, but as we’ve seen with Devos and Uther holding onto bad memories just makes the problem far worse. There’s room for compromise, but the Forsworn ruined their potential when they became violent rebels.

Considering their vital role in the afterlife, I can understand the Archon saying objectivity is important. When Devos stopped being objective, she dropped someone straight into the Maw instead of letting the Arbiter judge him properly. It wasn’t her job or her right, just imagine the chaos that could result if that kind of thinking was allowed and even mandated by the Forsworn. Would you want YOUR eternal fate decided for you by an irrational and emotion driven child with the power of judge, jury, and executioner?

Ardenweald was getting along rather well until the anima drought started forcing the Winter Queen to make some very hard choices to preserve the Heart of the Forest which kept the Jailer chained to the Maw.

Most of the problems in Revandreth can be laid squarely at the foot of Sire Denathrius who was allied with Jailer. Many strayed from their role of redemption due to his influence as well as Denathrius’ tacit approval of their indiscretions.

And Maldraxxus’ troubles only started when the Jailer took the Primus’ unifying influence out of the picture, destroyed the House of Plagues, and used the House of Rituals to help steer Maldraxxus into civil war.

So it’s a bit unfair to call the afterlife unfair when the Shadowlands as a whole actually ran very well for untold millennia until the Jailer’s influence and agents grew strong enough to start breaking it.

If not for him, Sylvanas would have gone to an afterlife properly befitting her and it wouldn’t have been the Maw. Her wanting absolute control over her own fate in both life and death is HER destructive flaw, not the Shadowland’s.

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100000% agree with your assessment here.

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Do we know if the vision of her going to the maw was fake to begin with? I was under the impression that she really did go to the maw just so the jailer could show her that he could, which comes with the implicit threat that if she doesn’t do what he tells her, he’ll drag her back and keep her there.

Admittedly that’s just supposition on my part.

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Sylvanas is our Queen and savior.

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Considering every realm we’ve seen in the Shadowlands focuses on either eternal service or torment, maybe she just wants to break it all so that she can, like, rest?

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All the ones we see, even though there are infinite afterlives that would actually be peaceful.

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Even if there are infinite afterlives, who is to say any of them are peaceful? Not to mention she could even choose them if they were. It would just be some floaty space machine that would decide if you are “worthy” of having peace.

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In all Honesty with all Syl did leading up to wrath? Peace was far from the cards for her IMO, sure she died for a noble cause but we learn how prideful and arrogant of a person she was, she betrayed an ally (garithos who totally deserved to die) she created a blight that destroys all life for many years and tested it thoroughly on horde and alliance captured in the UC in classic.

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Agreed. Actions have consequences. For some reason, this is something a lot of players seem to ignore.

Granted I don’t think Sylvanas’ actions were severe enough to warrant a one-way trip to the Maw. Revendreth possibly. Maldraxxus probably would’ve been an even better fit, truth be told. I could see her absolutely dominating in the House of Eyes and becoming the Margrave in a matter of days. Given her level of personal skill and power, as well as her lifetime of military service, experience in command and combat as well, I really can’t see how she wouldn’t be prime material for Maldraxxus.

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Nah I’m certain the Val’kyr took her to the maw at the jailer behest just so he could get his new pawn, honestly that’s how I view it they pulled a devos on her.

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Honestly, if I was to be truly objective I don’t think pre-Wrath Sylvanas would have rated rehabilitation in Revandreth.

Killing Garithos and slaughtering his forces after using their help was evil certainly, but it was a necessary evil if she and her people were going to survive. Without what would become Undercity as a base of power, they would be slowly picked off by the Scourge. And if she had given back the capital to Garithos as promised, I have no doubt he would still try to hunt them down as just another dangerous group of undead.

It was a damned if she did damned if she didn’t situation, so she chose the one that would allow her and her people to live.

Experimenting on innocents to create a plague? Evil certainly, but again context was important. Even with the entire Horde at her back, the Scourge was just too large and powerful to destroy and represented an existential threat to not only their continued survival but all of Azeroth’s as well.

To level the playing field, she needed something like the Plague to give them a chance at not only surviving but eventually winning.

The only hiccup here I could see is the Wrathgate debacle since the developers have implied she intended for it to happen in order to not only test the Plague’s potency on both the living and the dead but also force Varimathras’ rebellion to show its hand.

But again, this too could tentatively fall under the auspices of necessity. She made a literal devil’s bargain with a Dreadlord in order to be able to take out his brothers as his intel proved critical in their downfall. But over time, he steadily began corrupting aspects of Forsaken society against her.

If she moved against them, it could bring more sympathizers to their side as well as force them into greater secrecy if she didn’t nab all of them. Plus, she had no proof of how widespread his influence had grown.

Something drastic had to be done in order to preserve her rule and prevent the Forsaken from becoming a pawn of the Legion as the Blood Elves recently were under Kael’thas.

So she used the plague to tempt Varimathras into exposing his rebellion openly. And it worked, although she probably didn’t anticipate it being as large as it was.

Ultimately, with the Horde and Alliance’s help, the Legion plot was crushed before it became untenable.

So yes, while many of her actions prior to her Icecrown Citadel suicide were demonstratively evil, most were in fact necessary to some degree or the other.

Taking it all into account, I feel like the Arbiter would have sent her to Maldraxxus especially if Vashj is anything to go by. It would have been a natural fit for her as she very much epitomized the Primus’ creed of brutal cunning and the strength to defeat ones enemies.

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Until the story is told, we literally do not know. I do think that she has bought into a Thanos-style crusade, but who’s leading who is up to question.

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I think everyone is trying a little too hard to assign a common thread to her motivations when the most likely answer is that whatever motivation she had was what was most convenient for the writing team at that time.

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