Sylvanas: Is she naive or has she just lost hope?

Lore Story Forum
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Sylvanas joining the Jailer just never really made sense to me besides the ‘chose your fate’ schtick.

With the knowledge that he was the true architect and driving force behind the Lich King, you’d think she’d want him dead more than anyone else as he is literally responsible for her death and the near extinction of her people.

As well, we know she knows about the existence of the other covenants so unless she’s completely bought into the Jailer’s propaganda it’s hard to believe she thinks the afterlife is ‘unfair.’

She now has to know the vision of her future fate within the Maw was nothing but a lie concocted by the Jailer to break her and ultimately conscript her as his primary agent on Azeroth. Nobody just goes straight to the Maw but at most is given a final path to redemption under the ministrations of Revendreth.

Sure the realms of the Shadowlands are currently in chaos and innocent souls are paying for it, but again all of it can be laid squarely at the feet of the Jailer whose agents and influence fractured what used to be a pretty effective system.

Everything she has done on his behalf seems to have only benefited him in the end and for what? After his calm dismissal of Denathrius’ fate, does she truly believe he holds any true loyalty for her own service and doesn’t view her as simply another pawn to be discarded once it had served its purpose?

Ultimately, her primary motivation seems to be about choice and it just seems…pathetic.

She laments how she couldn’t get the choice of an afterlife that she felt she deserved, but I have to wonder if she’s being willfully naive here.

Despite her propaganda, the Arbiter did in fact seem to put people where their actions in life would best serve them. Did she truly believe that all she had done as the Banshee Queen warranted her a place in a paradise of her own choosing?

That seems a remarkably arrogant assumption even for her to believe her own mortal whims should dictate how Death itself should function. To me, it’s not the Shadowlands that are at fault in this regard but her own insufferable sense of entitlement and nigh psychopathic need for control.

But…it’s also possible that I’m being too harsh on her in this regard and see a psychopath when it could in fact be just a front for a tortured soul that has endured so much torment and horror that it has finally broken her and seen her all but give up on existence itself.

Perhaps a part of her does know the Jailer is responsible for all her pain in life and in death and is simply using her as a pawn but just doesn’t care anymore.

Perhaps she now helps the Jailer out of some nihilistic desire to watch the universe burn even if she will burn with it because at least then she will have her twisted revenge on a system that she believes is fundamentally broken for inflicting such unfair suffering upon her.

Perhaps Anduin is right in that she has all but given up on life and just wants it to end. Perhaps, even in such a dark place, a withered part of her is still, in spite of herself, looking for a reason to hope again.

What do you think?

Can she be forgiven? No, her crimes are simply too numerous and monstrous for her to be granted any true clemency.

Can she be redeemed and truly understand how very wrong she was and take responsibility for the horrors she committed? Yes, and I think this will be the limit of what the developers ultimately intend for her.

Whether she will live with such guilt or meet her end having accepted such a punishment as justice for her many crimes, that’s up to the developers going forward.

Personally I believe it will be the latter, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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She’s a dinghy broad, that’s what she is. She even remembers herself as a fool.

I do wonder what Blizzard has up their sleeve. Arthas made Sylvanas devalue choice, while Anduin taught her to choose?

Oi vey. I don’t know where it is going, but it appears she is naive and lost hope. So, both. It would seem she only needed Anduin to lecture her in order to hope again. Unless she stabs him in the face.

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She’s broken. Her world got flipped upside down when her rightful afterlife was stolen from her and she was mercilessly tortured and violated.

She’s not being rational about this. She’s lashing out at what she (wrongfully) sees as the reason she’s miserable.

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To answer the question of the topic: she is not naive, she is just a narrative tool to push the story somewhere IMO.

If you take a look at the Breaking the Arbiter cinematic, you can see that even before she gone “offline” some souls, although very few, were sent straight to the Maw.

Honestly - whatever. It depends on the execution. Given the track record of Windrunners I would not be surprised if she would fade out of the story with Anduin, who might return eventually™ in his “aged form” from Son of the Wolf comic. Could be done well, and show her realisation or her actions, or torment that undead can feel in constant presence of Light. Could be done like
:man_facepalming:

Too early to tell. What if the Jailer is not a villain because evil, but there is more to the story, and despite him and other Eternal Ones seeing each other as betrayers both sides have something to hide? We’ll see. Eventually™

gl hf

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She stole it from herself her rightful afterlife is torment

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She’s dumb AF, that’s what she is.

“I don’t trust the Arbiter but I’m gonna trust this guy who is clearly evil and owns torture towers and willing to throw away his own allies who played their part, and im gonna trust the valkyr who raised me, who were probably on his side, since that’s when I made contact with him.”

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Sylvanas is a plot device used to cause problems

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I just hope this end with her Dead by raid party or her as the New jailer of maw so we never see traitor of horde gone for good

but truth be told I feel she naive because heroes of azeroth (us) hath proven to beat things way bigger and meaner then jailer (we Kill literal Gods and jailer do not seem be a god tire threat on outside)

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Writers lost hope and just started to write completely new character under Sylvanas name

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I think he’s referring to when Sylvanas died in Silvermoon. She would’ve went to a happy place were it not for Arthas.

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She wrongfully believes that because she was a victim of something horrible herself it gives her free reign to brutalize and victimize others. She thinks that she was predestined to be sent to the Maw, but the reality is she deserves this fate because of who she is underneath all the trauma she hides behind. After she regained her free will from Arthas she made her choices willingly and without regrets. Plague, treason, torture, invasions, and mass murder.

Of course the mass murderer would take issue with the system that is designed to punish mass murderers. She belongs in a spot next to Arthas in Warcraft Hell. Because unlike Arthas, she should have known how awful her crimes were. She was a victim afterall, that makes her victimization of others even worse. She knows how much it hurts, but goes on hurting others anyway.

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I can tell you what she has lost.

My faith in her being a compelling character with respectable motives.

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She would have still gone to that happy place if she didn’t do all the bad things she did for revenge

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You and I disagree 90% and I almost agree with you 40% of the time. This is the 40%.

I think it trolling when posters try to paint Ranger General Sylvanas as some despicable person.

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If it looks like a duck…

You can be a complicated character and still be despicable from the actions you engage in. Whether or not there is some greater good Sylvanas is after, I don’t think you’ll find one soul lost to the flames of Teldrassil and delivered to the tender mercies of the Maw that will think that her price was worth paying.

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Let’s note, Blizzard has even Uther working for the Jailer.

Clearly he is being presented as have a persuasive argument. Hard to judge since we don’t know what it is.

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OK, you can continue your “I hate Sylvanas” fest. But this wrong in lore.

Nobody is suppose to get straight to the maw. Ever. No matter what they did.

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To be fair, Uther didn’t know he was working for the Jailer and when he was finally confronted with the truth by Lysonia, he and the other Forsworn were horrified.

Plus, Uther was a particularly tormented soul whose acute emotional and spiritual vulnerability were taken advantage of first by Devos and then Lysonia for their own ends.

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Maybe. It’d make for a much cleaner and more believable story if they emphasized this, and went with a story where the Jailer turns out to be like, the greatest orator and logician that has ever lived, and is capable of convincing anyone given a couple of hours and an armchair. His rhetoric is so good, he’s like an intelligent infohazard. Then the fear of him is from the fact that if gets your full attention for a few minutes, you risk being converted to his side.

In fact, that’d be kind of cool, and somewhat creepy.

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I don’t see her being naive or having lost hope at this point.

I think at this point, only arrogance, a firm belief that everything she has suffered though has to mean -something- remains.

She has been shown to be smart enough to know the jailer will toss her aside if she becomes a problem to the plan… however… be it a firm belief in her own abilities ensuring she never becomes a problem, or that unshakeable need for what she endured to have a higher meaning, she is willing to work with him regardless of the risks.

She has suffered, and for that, the world must suffer. Her pain needs a reason to it, because otherwise, the ranger general who lost her life defending her home and was denied her spot in the afterlife… died and suffered for nothing.

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