Why would Sylvanas send envoys to Alliance after she kills all the Alliance she already allied with?
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They were affiliated with the Alliance but the Alliance hadn’t been doing anything to the Forsaken. The Alliance could barely hold onto a handful of camps north of the Thandol Span, much less wage war on the Forsaken. They were peasant holdings whose only defense was local militias.
The Alliance’s primary and overwhelming concern was with the Scourge.
Oh right I forgot, the sole mention of Garithos’ death by an Alliance character is them going “He deserved even worse, screw that guy.”
Yeah man, they were real broken up about it.
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Actually we dont know what happened to their envoys. For all we know either Onyxia/Varimathras offed them to prevent peace.
Also Varian went to Theramore to make peace with the Horde, which by extension would mean making peace with the Forsaken.
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It doesn’t change the fact that Sylvanas wiped out an entire army of Alliance by betraying them, and that the Alliance knew that it happened.
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Oh that is a pretty good theory. We know he never explicitly worked for Sylvanas.
This is definitely up the alley of dreadlord work
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In fact, Chronicles explicitly said that Sylvanas doubted that the envoys had even made it to the Alliance.
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We don’t actually know how widespread this info is or when it was gained. For all we know Shaw learned of it last Tuesday.
The fundamental reality of the situation is this.
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No Alliance character or NPC ever uses the Forsaken’s slaying of Garithos and his army as justification to wage war on the Forsaken
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They do offer many other justifications, usually some variation of “Undead aren’t people” or “Humans should own Lordaeron again”.
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Nobody ever uses it to justify war on the Forsaken here either. They use it to explain why the Forsaken are enemies and to demonstrate that the Forsaken never had any intention of peace. It’s a repudiation of the insistence that the Alliance is the aggressor in the conflict.
It’s not about Garithos. It’s about what the Forsaken betraying him says about the Forsaken. Garithos being the guy there is only meaningful in that it demonstrates that even the worst of the Alliance was willing to give the Forsaken a chance.
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I mean, in Vanilla, the Alliance was willingly funding the scarlets way past the point where it was known the Forsaken had reason and free will. They only stopped due to the Scarlets becoming bold and crazy enough to go after human settlements.
And while I am willing to assume the Forsaken definitely did their part in ensuring the living remnants and the forsaken couldn’t get along, we do see that the Forsaken were actually willing and able to work with the Argents, indicating that they’re not completely unwilling to let living humans (and dwarves and elves and etc) live in/near their borders.
That because they killed Garithos (belligerent genocidal racist hated even by his fellow humans), thus they must have a genocidal intent for all humanity from the very start is a massive assumption. Pure headcanon.
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Its interesting that Garithos was not even mentioned as what Bad Alliance could be when Andiun was talking to Saurfang.
Instead he mentions Arthas who had already got brainwashed and Daelin… someone the Alliance refused to help 
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No they weren’t. If you’re extrapolating this from the presence of that one Scarlet emissary in the basement of the Cathedral, there’s a quest chain that deals with it and he is just acting as a recruit, and what’s more is unaware of how bad the Scarlets have become.
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It’s the issue with Blizzard downplaying Alliance crimes over time and not putting them in the spotlight - they needed to have Anduin say a name people would recognize. Sure he could wax on and on about the horrors of General Twinbraid but 99% of players don’t know who they are, and probably 60% don’t know who Garithos is, so they had to go with Arthas.
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And according to WoW, Theramore’s role is not primarily to serve as the new home of the Lordaeron Alliance. It’s been the site of multiple attempts to destroy the Horde in Orgrimmar and continued to be the forward staging point out of which foreign Alliance forces operate in Kalimdor.
For what it’s worth, I think both the Horde and Alliance are hegemonic empires that engage in forced removal/genocide of natives as a matter of fact.
The main differences being that the Horde has the various Tauren tribes in it, who have inhabited all central/southern Kalimdor before the dawn of recorded history. The Tauren haven’t invited the Alliance to settle any part of Central/Southern Kailmdor. If the Alliance is so desperate to live in Kalimdor, the Night Elves would surely accept them. Meanwhile, in the EK, the Humans and Dwarves do the same in their own native lands and also want to wipe out the Forsaken who also want to wipe out the Humans in Lordaeron, as both lay claim to the kingdom.
It’s all rather messy and there’s lots of room for nuance and and complexity and good/bad guys on both sides.
But as of late, Blizzard’s been writing things so that it’s only one faction that gets painted as being full of good guys who mind their own business and cleaning up it’s own backyard/save others. And only one faction gets consistently written as conquerors who want to take over the world.
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No, the genocidal intent is established later in Vanilla when you can’t walk five feet without tripping over a Forsaken NPC talking about how much they’re looking forward to doing their genocide.
Betraying Garithos merely established hostility.
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Downplaying would mean something horrible happened but we are pretending it wasn’t as bad as it was.
Its more like Blizzard doesn’t let Alliance do actually something bad at all while they downplay the Horde ones because they need everyone to be friends again.
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It has to be more than naming names. All the rhetorical, thematic and storytelling tools they use to tell us something is bad when the Horde does it? It needs to be shown as just as bad when the Alliance does it- when/if they allow the Alliance to do it.
When Blizzard wants you to think a character is doing a good/bad thing, they’re plenty capable of plainly communicating it.
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I mean, things like the genocide of the Stonespire, the attempted massacre of Goblin refugees by SI:7, the Purge of Dalaran, Umbric hurling still-living Horde envoys into the Void, Dark Irons burning Goblin Laborers alive, Alliance leadership in Kalimdor letting the less-warmongering general die so that they can use his death as justification for a slaughter are definitely all things that did happen. They’re just things that are ignored just as swiftly. They don’t get to become 10 year long character arc drivers we never hear the end of like the Horde’s actions. Lor’themar gets to be annoyed about the Purge for like a patch which is quite long by that standard.
I mean I can find an equal amount of genocidal Alliance quotes, I’m sure. But we’re getting off track - the Forsaken are not colonizers for living in Lordaeron because they are Lordaeronian.
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I mean, in Vanilla, one of the first things you do as a dwarf or gnome is be sent to kill Troll children.
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