Sylvannas divided Soul

Lore Story Forum
122

I was never suggesting anything about Sylvanas’ fans in light of those dev’s crimes or trying to conflate the two groups, nor should they be.

You’re right about not holding those writers’ crimes against Sylvanas (and I thought Christie just did the books and had no role in the decision-making about Sylvanas’ story).

That was a hold-over from the time and thread when people were suggesting editing the story to remove some of Afrasiabi’s works as a gesture of conciliation (even though it sounds like Afrasiabi deserves jail time… what’s happening with that, has Afrasaiabi been arrested?)

123

I know you wern’t im just saying you are walking a slippery slope, you may not go there but others have and will based on your comment.

Like Kyalin saying Sylvanas should be completely removed from the narrative, for her own selfish reasons.

124

I think he basically turned her into the elf she was in life. She is now held accountable for her actions and will be judged by the heroes of Azeroth.

125

Fair point. Now anyone who sees my comment will also see me denounce such an approach.

I just want Sylvanas’ story to end without her crimes being swept under the rug or rewarded. I don’t want her retconned out of the story.

126

The question now is does she deserved to be judged as the elf she was before? Or the Banshee Queen who did what she did under mind control?

Thadeus that’s also a fair point and I don’t think Sylvanas fans want that either. We also want justice for what the jailer did to Sylvanas. As an Arthas fan I think in that regard you and I are of the same mind.

Fair justice, all things considered in life and in death. Even if the scales come out balanced.

As a catholic i’m sure you understand that the greatest sacrifice that earns a way into heaven in christanity is self sacrifice. Sylvanas earned that by dying for her people. Does she deserve eternal damnation now for destroying a people? Or are these instances which cancel eachother out? If she sacrifices herself again is that enough for redemption? Do two rights make up for one wrong?

It’s a good moral question. I hope you don’t misunderstand it as just sweeping her crimes under the rug.

1 Like
127

The writing is very sparse with time, so we often can’t make good judgements about how long an event was.
That part of EoN read to me as really trying to push Sylvanas’ desire to protect her “people”, the Forsaken, from the supremacist-chauvinist Garrosh’s casual disdain for their lives. Which is also a callback and reinforcement of protecting Silvermoon, and that side of the character.
It itself represents an opening for the writing team to assert Zovaal’s knowledge of her mind to pressure her, since she was shown them being used and thrown away.

“…Aye, there’s the rub…” By removing the physicality of the mortal plane, and its natural Decay (over time!), time becomes…nothing. The soul is not a physicality, though it is a thing.
We’re in Hamlet’s Undiscovered Country. How’s this dream working out, exactly what he was afraid of.
Honestly this is a concept problem right now in the game, things just seem so real. They needed more “don’t trust your senses” reminders.

I really think the retcon here is around The Nine. She was carried off to the Maw. There she was easily convinced that it was the only afterlife; for undead or all isn’t clear. Painting her short visit, before being brought back by Arthas, as a dream would have been an easy sell at that moment in the story.
They’re putting her in the box of being captive to the Jailer’s claims. And the Eternal Ones made a great cover for him to do so.
People need to be careful about what characters in-timeline know and don’t know. As bad as I think the writers have done with plot exposition, the players know more than the lore characters in general. (For instance: Sylvanas wasn’t restoring memories to the Runercarver, she didn’t get that information.)

She’s also in a the Shadowlands where there’s a Loom of Fates, Fatescribe’s, and Fate is a major focus of the powers that be. Zovaal’s ability to manipulate should not be underestimated.
As I’ve brought up separately: We seem very locked in the Mortals Against the Whims of Fate cycle.

It could be! I’d expect the WoW team to go opposite again, however. Think Galaxy Quest, back in time to fix a mistake.

Don’t be surprised if they go the Fate used by Zovaal route, and make what amounts to an in-universe Temporary Insanity defense.

In this vein: I’d talked about the tactical removal of memories being crueler than the total. If the writers wanted, they can shoehorn in that certain memories and concepts were removed when Sylvanas was made into a Banshee.
That would fundamentally pervert her free-will, locking her further into a Fate cycle she couldn’t escape from, until those were restored.
What did the Jailer do at the end of the raid?

3 Likes
128

In Christianity - including Catholicism, it’s Christ’s sacrifice that paid the price. Our actions can’t do that, even if we die for someone or something else. That is part of the core of Christianity, Jesus died for our sins. He, and only He, made the way for redemption, not us or anything we did.

Christianity isn’t in the Warcraft universe, and Sylvanas has thus far shown no remorse, no desire to repent or offered any atonement for her many crimes… and in this state does not qualify for redemption.

That “one wrong” harmed a lot of people, and that was far from Sylvanas’ only “wrong”.

The Jailer gave back the piece of Sylvanas’ soul he took, but as of the latest lore the only difference that made is she can now fully feel emotions. She could feel emotions before she got that piece of her soul back; she felt contempt then later respect when Vol’jin was made Warchief, she expressed sadness when Vereesa refused her offer in “War Crimes”, she expressed dismay when Tyrande revealed Nathanos’ fate during their duel in Ardenweald…

Sylvanas is more responsible for her actions than many of her fans and some of the writers want to admit. She didn’t lose her memory, her intellect or permanently lose her free will by becoming undead (as I proved with the numerous Sylvanas quotes I provided).

1 Like
129

Given that we’re talking about a soul, memories in WoW must be in the soul.

Thus a change of emotional perception means memories were removed.
Doing that is an impairment of pretty much all learned things. But in this conversation would be an impaired moral sense no longer matching what that very person would have believed.

Now, that’s actually logical enough, to raise someone to be an undead and do bad things to the living…requires they no longer have the same emotional and moral range of life. Leave them intact and you have a monster on the outside who won’t do the desired things.
The person so impaired is going to continue to try and fit things into the words matching the emotional and moral ideas, but they will be hampered in the reality of the ideas.

It then follows, returning a missing piece of the soul in WoW would cause the original emotional and moral capacity to return.

Does this leave us at the writers trying for: “we are our own worst judges.”?

Mechanically, I would not assume there could be an Arbiter re-judge of Sylvanas. Her mortal life was judged once, and that is the machine process.

Now, Sylvanas as written over the years has things that don’t reconcile with impaired emotions. But, even saying that, it’s important to note how horribly contextual feelings and morals are if something damages a normally developed experiential thought process like we’re talking about here.

Ultimately, fictional characters are what their writers make of them. And it is our freedom of thought to fit what we see presented into our experience and decide what we think of it.

1 Like
130

We are all agree that she had, intellect, free-will, and memories. I am saying its all being processed with whatever inhibitors Zovaal and Arthas placed on her by twisting her soul.

Going “welll splitting and twisting souls really isn’t thhaaaattt bad” likely isn’t the reaction cdev is going for. I don’t think that’s the right approach.

2 Likes
131

Though she isn’t same person as she was with both parts of her soul.

If insanity is enough that a person can’t be held responsible, it hard to see how having half you should removed wouldn’t be.

1 Like
132

This^^

The Arbiter should be omnipotent and benevolent enough to recognize a broken/twisted soul and judge them accordingly. However, the denizens of Azeroth, not so much. At this point Jaina may be the only one that knows about the soul splitting. This makes me wonder if Sylvanas is on the chopping block will she get the happy ending she deserves. The ending could be tragic but satisfying.

A fully restored Sylvanas will likely want to return to the happy ending she remembered before being twisted by Arthas and Zovaal without protest.

Of course this would be after she has finished being the awesome hero that we need!

133

In this vein, rereading my previous post; I didn’t convey how little has to be changed in Sylvanas’ memories.

So for those that remember Babylon 5, I’d remind you of the scene with Bester when he’s telling another telepath to program Garibaldi. The other telepath is surprised Bester doesn’t want him simply reprogrammed. Bester tells him…“unnecessary”, and goes on to explain his personality and how simply enhancing that gets the result.

That’s where Sylvanas is. To fundamentally change her decision process when events occur doesn’t take a massive removal of memory.
Just very specific memories which are key underpinnings, or connections, in the “synthetical” thought process of using old experiences to respond to new experiences.

The right memory, let’s say of a discomfort, or a hurt; can be removed to impair her compassion. Suddenly, something she would never do while alive, she will do as Banshee Queen because the foundation for “that’s not right” is no longer connected and simply isn’t even considered.

You don’t want to go too far, delete everything and the undead wouldn’t even react to each other being attacked. She needed her desire to protect her people. Her still being, in the main, Sylvanas, was a weapon itself when Arthas raised her.

But with a broader power behind (Zovaal), and with a much longer vision (now being alleged to be basically behind everything). The depth of that twisting of the soul, how far out they can start to pre-program events, despite tiny changes, is actually fairly breathtaking.

A just system would have to figure out the depth of those other hands’ malice before much could be fairly known or decided.

134

But as we’ve seen, Sylvanas has shown no signs of memory loss. Even if she had, a change in emotional perception doesn’t equal memory loss. Morals are also not inherently conjoined with emotions.

Arthas’ manipulation of Sylvanas’ soul was making her undead, and controlling her actions but leaving her mind intact. Nothing more. Sylvanas saw and understood her actions as she attacked Silvermoon, but was unable to stop herself, that was one of Arthas’ tortures of her. But the changes and twists Arthas did were removed as he lost his power prior to fusing with Ner’zhul; Sylvanas herself even says so. “For some reason I no longer hear the Lich King’s voice in my head. My will is my own once again.”

Fictional characters are what the writers make of them, but if the writers have to go back and change the story after it’s been released to fit the current plot they want, they’ve done a poor job.

Soul splitting wasn’t a thing until Burning Crusade, and then it was a Jekyll/Hyde product of Fel and/or Void (Shade of Akama). Then it didn’t show up again until Legion (again, Shade of Akama, and depending on choices in the Demon Hunter quest) and only went beyond him in Shadowlands.

Large scale soul-splitting was a last-minute retcon in Shadowlands to try and make people swallow Sylvanas’ redemption arc (with other big-name characters getting retconned to being soul-split to justify this new attempt to whitewash Sylvanas).

1 Like
135

I clarified my meaning just above your post.

I’ve never argued the writing team did a good job. Nor would I.

My discussing what the pieces can do doesn’t have a relation to my perception of the quality of the work at hand. I’ve deliberately kept my opinion on that to a minimum. I could quote the things I remember saying about that if you want.

136

I see now that you weren’t arguing for the quality of the work and concede.

Having said that, there is still no evidence of memory manipulation in Sylvanas, even at a small level comparable to the example you cited from Babylon 5. While it’s possible Zovaal can do that, we have no indicator that he specifically did that; the most we have in canon is that he took one piece of Sylvanas’ soul and that it dulled some of her emotions.

137

At this point I think there is evidence for jumbled memories, lack of positive traits such as morality and dulled emotions such as compassion and empathy. Even individually all of these suck, Zovaal and Arthas did a heck of job twisting and manipulating her soul.

1 Like
138

I would assume this thread thought about this question much more than the writers did.

Zovaal, and the story plot, is just so…something, it’s a concept blob.
Our hard story data is so limited that them trying to twist it into: “well, actually, the Eternal Ones are the bad ones, and Zovaal’s right”, wouldn’t surprise me at all. (IIRC, Danuser even joked in that direction at the announcing Blizzcon. Gameplay note: and that could be a cover for unlocking Covenant transmogs at the end of the Xpac.)

They needed to know where they were going in the future, and they didn’t really. They also needed to not use exploitative writing methods. They’ve pushed the emotion buttons of the audience so much that interpretations are fixed; and I don’t think the story has the room it needs for people, as a group, to want to turn the page and find out what’s next.

139

It would be cool if Sylvanas could be restored/resurrected as a HighElf again, and she could be the faction leader of the BloodElves

1 Like
141

There are a lot of things they haven’t shown, but we are forced to accept at face value. The soul shard thing is just a device for them to handwave even Teldrasil away. Wether they will try that remains to be seen.

1 Like
142

the blood elves already have a racial leader and we love him

1 Like