Sylvanas was in control of her actions and emotions plus had access to her memories, despite missing part of her soul.
Being abused by someone doesn’t justify or excuse you hurting others. Neither Zovaal or Arthas forced or possessed Sylvanas to make her use the Scourge Blight, plague bomb villages, abandon the fight against the Burning Legion to chase a “Get out of The Maw Free” card, burn Teldrassil…
Uther, Gunther Arcanus and most Death Knights – especially Thassarian – went through an experience like Sylvanas’ and they didn’t turn into genocidal monsters and/or go on a nihilistic cosmic rampage.
Is it me, or are the writers trying to conflate punishment for crimes with cruelty and unfairness in that exchange between Uther and Pelagos?
Arthas was a man who was willing to do anything to save his people. He was committed to his Kingdom and regularly risked his own life to save others.
His main evil acts before Frostmourne were to cull Stratholme, and to kill the mercenaries he’d hired in Northrend.
In the case of Stratholme, he chose to kill the people there because they had fallen to the plague. He had no other choice. Even now we know of no in-universe cure to the Plague of Undeath. Uther and Jaina’s moral stance was naive, as they would’ve been faced by a huge Scourge army had they waited. Furthermore In both the Warcraft 3 campaign, AND the World of Warcraft dungeon that represents this event, most of the people there had already turned into zombies by the time Arthas was actively killing them.
In the second case, it’s worth looking at why he betrayed those mercenaries. He was so utterly driven by a desire to kill Mal’ganis (who’d wiped out Andorhal and Stratholme). His father had publicly ordered a retreat. He had to look at the lesser of two evils. Kill the man who he had been led to believe was the mastermind of the Scourge itself, or go home and risk the rest of his Kingdom falling to Mal’ganis’ schemes. In the end, while killing those innocent mercenaries was certainly not a good act, it can be understood to have the right motives behind it.
Exactly. The whole point was a lose lose situation.
Ner’zhul needed Arthas to pick up Frostmourne, not only for his own plans but to keep up the illusion that he was a willing pawn for the Legion. He had convinced Archimonde and Kil’jaeden that corrupting the Prince was the best way to subvert the Humans and remove them from the game. With them gone, invading Quel’thalas to give Kel’thuzad the power boost he needs to summon Archimonde would be a lot easier. After that the only threat left in Lordaeron would be Dalaran. As they held the book of medivh.
It is why Arthas’ downfall was well planned out. Ner’zhul knew how to make Arthas tick and pressed those buttons to do so. Like how a certain insidious individual did it to “the chosen one” in a galaxy far far away. Anyone could in theory be made to become something or someone they are not if you press the right buttons. Sometimes it works (see Arthas or Anakin), other times it doesn’t (James Gordon in the The Killing Joke comic or Obi-wan in The Clone Wars Season 5).
He really was a selfish little evil twerp who never thought about, or took responsibility, for his actions.
The list of examples are endless. He had to euthanize Invincible because he wanted to go for a ride in the snow and jump some logs. He hated the ceremony where he was honored by being made a member of the prestigious Silver Hand. He lead Jaina on and dumped her because he was too afraid to make a real commitment. He wouldn’t listen to good advice at Stratheholme and named Uther a traitor, He stole his father’s fleet and sailed to Northrend where he burned his own ships to prevent his own marines from leaving him. He doesn’t listen to the warnings of his mentor that Frostmourne was cursed and picked it up anyway causing his mentors death. He decides he wants to be Lich King and kills the rest of his soul and any last remanence of good left in him. One terrible selfish decision after another never learning from his mistakes or caring about their consequences.
My read of it was Uther feeling sorry for becoming a vigilante in his own view. (Effectively, WoW Alliance uses Anglo-Saxon legal theory. Have to leave judgement to the Authority for it.)
But re-invoking casting Arthas into the Maw, after it had a cutscene, suggests they intend to torment Uther with it somehow serving the Jailer in the end. (“Devos led me down a dark path.”)
Their pushing Arthas’ soul going to the Maw is part of why I think it’s in Kingsmourne.
Uther does show guilt and remorse for doing so. So he isn’t 100% blaming it all on Devos. He recognizes that Devos did put him on that path, but his actions were still his own. Unlike say a certain orc who tried to blame it all on Thrall…
Fair enough. I just felt that it could have been worded somewhat better. My recollection is that he wanted revenge, but was a bit hesitant when it came to the act itself. But the statement just comes off as a bit unreasonable self exoneration.
In defense of Garrosh. I believe Thrall said something like ‘he’s not the leader the horde deserves but one it needs’ (quoting batman I guess). To me that’s always suggested he put Garrosh in that position to do precisely the kind of things he did short of eating on old gods heart and instigating a civil war.
Do note that his compassion only really came up after putting him back together. So we have a deliberate chain of events to get him back to Uther the Lightbringer who felt what he did was wrong.
He had hesitation, yes. When Devos told him to take his revenge, he corrected it to justice, before dropping Arthas.
They deliberately placed the lack of who he was in the past into the story. Then they pushed him back to who he was.
I’m assuming currently, if this was a thought out story arc:
The Light did “save” his soul to get him to Bastion.
However it wasn’t really for him. It had to have known his soul was damaged. He became the vector for subverting Devos to help the Jailer.
The other view, which is easy to accept:
He’s just a plot device for: Yes, we’re bringing Sylvanas back. There are reasons that she wasn’t herself.
This isn’t exclusive with the other concept above. So I think it’s both at once.
Ironically this is what I’d consider the weird part of Sylvanas staying in Revendreth, presumably her ‘whole soul’ will predispose her to regret everything she’s done anyway so a big part of the Venthyr’s job wouldn’t even be necessary.
In that scenario what she’d need is a ‘service in recompense’ instead of trying to make her aware of bad tendencies she’s already aware of.
This was a quote to show that generals do have to make those calls, where you know soldiers will die for victory to be possible. It’s not saying she was callous or evil when she was alive.
Had the shield actually worked it would’ve been the best decision for her to make at the time.
Not 100% on board on with Sylvanas being “the victim” but with how the afterlife has treated her I might make an exception. Some how the powers that be sent her to the maw and yet the Arbiter and her infinite wisdom deemed Garrosh worthy enough for redemption (and we seen how that turned out) and Kael’Thas. It has also been heavily suggested Arthas wasn’t bad enough for the maw. And it just disgust me how some people will accept a Garrosh and Arthas redemption despite how they were both were awful people long before forstmourne or Old God corruption, but a Sylvanas redemption is out of the question.
They split that actually. IIRC it’s Edge of Night where we first get a literary glimpse at her initial death. In that she is sent somewhere that isn’t the Maw before being made into a banshee by Arthas.
It’s when the Nine carry her off from the Icecrown scene after Arthas is dead that she seems to have first encountered the Maw.
So for the story timeline she was apparently judged by the Arbiter, and sent to a pleasant afterlife.
I think it is very heavily implied that Sylvanas was never considered as beyond redemption or destined for the Maw either. It was just her bad luck that the Jailer made her believe that she was. ( as it was Arthas’ bad luck that Uther and Devos circumvented the Arbiter’s judgement, and Garrosh’s that he was used as an infinite anima battery by Denathrius rather than getting a real chance at redemption.)
The only “lucky one” here seems to be Kael’thas who was freed and placed under the the Accuser’s personal care.
I don’t think you’ll find many people here who would seriously claim Arthas and Garrosh were innocent while placing the full blame of her deeds on Sylvanas. A major difference is though that the former two have both paid for their crimes, and they’re both dead. No matter what happens to Arthas’ soul after we defeat the Jailer, he won’t return in any capacity, and Garrosh’s soul has been obliterated completely.
Sylvanas however is still alive and there’s a high chance that she will be redeemed or even stay a part of the story. And while I understand that this would make her considerable fanbase happy, it is also understandable that a huge chunk of the playerbase would not welcome such a development for obvious reasons.
Edit: Personally I’m past caring either way at this point. I just think it isn’t fair to apply double standards based on which character we like more.
I think the real life comparison breaks down because we can’t easily repair the criminally insane. Sylvanas’s situation is more akin to the Terminator: Suppose the Terminator is a misanthrope bent on murdering John Carpenter, but then you install a morality module and teach it to defend John Carpenter. Now it acts a paragon for humanity. Although the Terminator has a single body with a continuous history, the break in its software / “mind” is so dramatic and transformative that you can’t really treat version 2 as having responsibility for what version 1 did. Or at least you could argue plausibly for that imo.
As a Sylvie “fan” (I guess? take that super loosely), I hate that direction, though. Treating Sylvanas as a vessel that we can unplug and plug morality modules into is deeply dehumanizing. I’d rather just see her punished.
I see it more like someone having brain damage more then insanity.
Someone who has had Traumatic brain injury can experience complete personality shifts, loss of the ability to tell right from wrong, and no sense of empathy.
It’s not totally their fault but at the same time, their actions are their own regardless as well as their responsibility.
What happened to Sylvanas was like having a soul-limbotomy. Now that piece of her has been forced back into her. She has our sympathy but that doesn’t mean she’s forgiven.
One thing that kinda gets me it how Blizzard is treating what happened to Arthas.
I mean Arthas was cast into the Maw. A piece of Uther’s soul went into the Maw. So we go out of way to get the later and its all, “well that solves everything”
These are weak examples; the only one that comes remotely close to what Sylvanas went through is Uther, even then Uther never got had his soul tortured and twisted a 2nd time.
Uther went off to golden pastures for what could have been eons to prepare his soul for the bastion all the while having his personal Paragon therapist. Meanwhile Sylvanas gets her soul torn asunder, only to have it further twisted and tortured by Arthas.
IMO Sylvanas soul was tortured/twisted more than Uther but for so far we’re are experiencing a story in which Uther has a team helping him with restoring/mending his soul. Meanwhile Sylvanas is continually getting beat down by the person that’s responsible for tearing her soul asunder; his last act was to abruptly restore her soul.
I have more sympathy for what is happening to her than Uther, but he somehow got lucky enough to book the best therapist in the universe. Apparently all she needed was luck…/derpface