So this is a bit of a point of confusion for me.
After the defeat of the Lich King, Sylvanas committed suicide. The Val’kyr took Sylvanas’ soul into “limbo” before her eventual destination. The 9 Val’kyr were shieldmaidens who unwillingly served the Lich King and they showed her visions of the future of the Forsaken under Garrosh. They were being slaughtered in combat as Garrosh saw them as expendable. Some were even jumping into bonfires to prevent being captured and executed. She told them she had made her choice and she didn’t care.
Annhylde raised a hand to quiet her younger sister-in-arms. “Hush, Agatha. She does not know. She must see more.” The Val’kyr leader directed her luminous green eyes to Sylvanas, their edges rimmed with sadness. “Sylvanas Windrunner, the oblivion you seek is yours. We will not stop you.”
Annhylde’s eyes closed, and at once the figures vanished into their faceless spectral forms.
Then Sylvanas felt herself being pulled away, her senses reeling. Everything disappeared, and time stopped.
“She is lost!” Agatha wailed.
From there she fell into the Maw. She saw only darkness. Then she felt her soul as a whole for the first time since she was raised, but only to feel agony, to suffer pain, cold, hopelessness, and fear. She even felt Arthas there - which fits since after his death Uther tossed him into the Maw. He was a “scared little blond child, reaping the aftermath of a lifetime of mistakes.” Then others began gleefully tormenting her, tearing at her consciousness, and delighting in her suffering.
The Val’kyr arrived in the Maw then and offered her a choice.They wanted freedom from the Lich King and wanted to serve someone who understood life and death; someone who understood light and darkness. They bound themselves to her so that she would live as long as they live.
Then things got tied to Shadowlands. The Lich King, through the Helm of Domination, actually served the Jailer, so by a transitive property the Val’kyr served the Jailer. According to the devs, Sylvanas’ pact occurs during Edge of Night (the story above) and it would seem that the Jailer used the Val’kyr to court Sylvanas. It’s not really clear when Sylvanas knew of the Jailer himself, so her pact may have been of a transitive nature initially.
This doesn’t cause any big issues. But it does raise the question of what actually happened to Sylvanas. Uther, as a Kyrian, broke bad by tossing Arthas into the Maw (instead of dropping him off for the Arbiter to judge). It’s unclear if the Val’kyr did the same or if she was simply dropped to the Arbiter who judged her fate. It’s likely the former simply because very few were ever sentenced to the Maw, and even fewer directly to the Maw (but we really don’t know).
In the cinematic “No More Lies” - she begins to explain her rationale:
- “You know the truth. Nothing is fair, not life, not death.”
- “We’re breaking a system that has always been flawed and remaking it into one that is just.”
- “From our first breath, to our last, every decision is made for us. Then the afterlife decides what eternity we must endure. We can’t even choose who we…”
- “We’ve never had free will little lion, but that is about to change.”
Some have speculated she was going to say “who we love” but I think it is “who we serve.” At this point my position regarding Sylvanas upsets Night Elf fans. She was a Ranger-General who died in combat defending her home. Then, against her will, she was raised into undeath to serve the Lich King. Her soul was imperfectly attached to her body limiting her feelings and emotions. After breaking from his control, she sought her vengeance against his evil and got it, before deciding to be done with this world. In death, she was sent to the Maw (an eternity in hell), unless she agreed to a pact with the Val’kyr. She literally didn’t have the freedom to kill herself.
From her point of view, I would absolutely agree this is a broken system. People may argue that it’s broken because the Jailer broke it - which is fair as an outsider. He’s responsible for the Lich King. But that fact doesn’t change her reality. She spent a lifetime living a “good” life, followed by a lifetime of tortured undeath forced upon her, which would be followed by being forced into an eternity of torment. It doesn’t change the reality that the system is susceptible to being broken so easily that Uther grabbed a soul and dropped it in the Maw.
Sylvanas doesn’t appear to be naive. She watches the Jailer craft Shalamourne and she knows what he’s responsible for. She offers Anduin the choice to join their cause or be made to serve and Anduin rightly points out it is a choice she never had, but he has no idea about the depths of it. Sylvanas’ only hope - at this point - is to find a way to destroy the system (one way or another) that has stolen every bit of free will from her. If the Jailer wins, then the system is remade. The new system could be better or it could be worse (likely worse, but I’m not exactly much of a fan of the current system). If the Jailer loses, then the system continues but hopefully without the Jailer able to exercise power.
Either way, perhaps she’ll have the chance to do something, anything, of her own volition.
The only way it seems she “lost hope” is she has lost hope that the status quo is sustainable.
