Yes, because the correct response to an unwanted people settling in lands you find sacred is to kill first, ask questions never. I’m sorry, violence as the first resort is not the answer. The Amani never attempted diplomacy (not that I think that would’ve helped, mind you).
I’d argue it’s meaning was equal in different measures. For the elves, the leylines represented a resource that held strong cultural meaning for them, which I don’t think is any less valid or important than whatever spiritual significance the ruins held for the Amani.
Besides how were the high/blood elves supposed to know the area that Silvermoon was built on was sacred to the Amani when the Amani never bothered to tell anyone?
When your first act at meeting at new race is violence….well can’t really complain when you get your teeth kicked in for it
I just calls it as I sees it. If you’re making imperialist arguments and using language that reduces a people to the level of animals, (breeding a new army, rationalizing unprovoked attacks against a occupied people and land to make sure they don’t get to uppity, justifying setter colonialism) then you might hold some imperialist views.
Its important to note that at this point it really isn’t a first contact. At this point these were still Highborne stumbling back into Amani lands, the same Highborne that previously ravaged all troll empires and destroyed the world. So this framing of unwarranted violence isn’t the whole truth. It may have been a bit since the Sundering, but clearly something they never forgot. You can criticize the shoot first ask questions later approach but given what ultimately happened and how undeterred the elves were, it certainly can’t be called an objectively wrong choice.
And to this idea that leylines are culturally significant to Highborne, even if they were, this one in particular wasn’t theirs to reclaim. Its been the Amani’s since before the Kaldorei Empire
So much so, they abandoned for years, left it unoccupied and let the ravages of nature and time take its toll on a supposedly important cultural site. The Amani suddenly seemed to care when someone started occupying it
At every corner the lore tells us the Elves fought defensively. The rangers/farstriders were literally founded JUST to protect their people against the troll’s raiding parties. Their purposes evolved over time, and I’m sorry, but calling the Amani an, ‘occupied people,’ is intellectually dishonest. There were no elves marching through their streets, enforcing elven laws. There were no Amani slaves being beaten and worked to death in menial labor for the elves’ advantage.
The sins of the elves amount to settling on vacant land in a territory the Amani were present, and then defending themselves until the Trolls attempted genocide against them, at which point for their own sake they routinely, “mowed the lawn,” to prevent another such attempt from ever reoccurring. The fact of the matter is that the High Elves never went full expansionist, nor did they ever seek genocide.
The entire point of all this, is that Blizzard purposefully created the Amani to be two-dimensional villains, and the High Elves the perfect pretty people being victimized by the trolls. It was as by-the-trope as it got for it’s time.
If you have an issue with the way the lore is written, that’s fine, but resorting to ad hominem against someone just pointing out the lore is beneath you.
So just killing them off is any better? Most native american died to disease and not warfare yet no one denies they were colonized by the european powers.
I’m reading the exact same lore you are, and even agreeing on a few of your own arguments and observations. One of us is simply taking an a decolonial approach to the reading, another an imperialist one.
Did we ever stop to think that maybe the vacant land was vacant because the same people moving in literately shattered the world and likely caused untold amounts of damage to every people living on the planet and they simply haven’t recovered since then? Alternatively even if they had recovered, that any number of sociopolitical factors could result in the abandonment and decay of important institutions or places? We do it to our own neighborhoods, towns, and cities on a regular basis. The point stands that vacancy is not an excuse for occupation.
Also notice you said
The text says
The text gives agency and at least an idea of personhood to the Amani. Population growth can be implied, but the statement centers creation of warbands which can be anything from recruiting more tribes, training, or increasing self sufficiency. You use language that describes them as little more than beasts or animals that just uncontrollably multiply, really embracing your inner Churchill.
You are correct that Blizzard intended to create a two dimensional villain back in 04-06, however in what I’d argue is in classic Blizzard fashion actually failed to do what they intended. Instead they created a more nuanced and sympathetic people with reason as to why they hate their neighbors who by today’s standards actually kinda have a point, or at least a couple.
Sympathetic is a strong choice of words in my opinion. The Amani are simply a hyper aggressive and territorial troll tribe.
Nothing more, nothing less. Just what it is.
If they were like the Zandalari or even the Darkspear and actually had some nuance to them, than I could see the Amani being sympathetic. But as they are currently? They’re just another generic, two dimensional evil troll tribe.
Sympathetic could be strong, I can give you that. However they are seen as sympathetic by some folks. A people who attempted to defend and reclaim their lands, multiple times, and instead failed reducing themselves to a shell of what they use to be. That narrative hits for some folks. It doesn’t help that the Blood Elves see the Amani as little more than beasts that need to be culled too. They don’t even trust the Darkspear ambassador who shows up to Silvermoon.
They are territorial, but it can also be said that they are still organized and strong enough to allowed to be territorial and there is little wrong with resisting or attempting to reclaim what was taken from them. They are aggressors to some, sure, but I wouldnt call them evil. They’re fighting a long time enemy, not eating babies.
The High Elves didn’t leave their homeland to gain power over others. They wanted their own place, after being exiled. And they required somewhere with ley lines to establish their kingdom and harness the magic they need led to survive.
That seems a bit different than a colonial empire. A colonial empire would be conquering for some foreign homeland, where the High Elves were fleeing exile and trying to establish a new land to call their home.
It makes little difference to the Trolls, of course, the results are the same. But do people expect the Elves to just walk into the sea? Maybe become Naga or just die?
It is possible that maybe if the Elves reunify, they could move to Suramar or even Kalimdor. Or maybe Silvermoon will get up and fly away, and leave the dirt for the Trolls.
I honestly think some people expected and wanted the exiled high elves to just crawl into a ball and die after being exiled and not dare to fight back against an enemy who attacked unprovoked and with little warning.
The whole High Elf/Amani situation is a little more complicated than Amani good guys and high elves are colonizers. Both sides did terrible things to one another in the long years they been fighting.
I just hate when people here simplify things into one side being correct and the other not. It’s rarely ever that simplistic
I mean, one of the key reasons they wished to start using arcane magic again was that they needed it to re-establish a grand elven empire and they didn’t think the lowborne had a right to decide that for them.
And then the moment they established Silvermoon they vowed that it would eclipse even the Kaldorei empire. Sounds pretty power hungry to me.
This would be as if a group of imperialists was banished from a nation that used to be an empire, for being radicals. And then they find a place with rich resources that they had to go through many lands to reach, the only issue are the natives are hostile to anyone entering their territory and they view the place as sacred.
I don’t think anyone would deny who’s the bad dude here.
Sure the Amani did bad things, but it pales in comparison to what the high elves did, it’s like comparing camp taurajo to teldrassil, it’s just a different ballpark.
That said, I don’t overall agree with Erevien. But even if he gets something right randomly does not mean that y’all need to support what’s objectively by most real world standards a horrible thing.