I have a hypothesis!
So - a sentiment I’ve felt is that forsaken are supposed to be evil - that that’s their whole thing. Evil, heartless, cruel - for no discernable reason other than to do so. Thus, when there are forsaken npcs that act otherwise - there appears to be confusion.
My thinking is that we’re merely watching a civilization slowly come out of it’s shared trauma - and that this trauma is responsible for the initial cruelty and hatred that saturated their culture for decades.
Going through classic, the forsaken take an almost morbid glee in inflicting suffering upon other humans. Some even want to inflict the same plague they perished from unto others, to bring all to their level of existence.
And…I don’t know - I’m hardly a psychologist but that does sound like a rather textbook response to a highly traumatic event - such as…well, dying horrifically, being raised, and then committing more horrific acts. You’ve essentially got an entire population of people that experienced all of this - and for years went without aid, without help. Just from my own life experiences…I feel like there’s usually two directions people go to. One either tries to avoid the original trauma and to an extent protect others from it, or they end up endeavoring to share said trauma out of a need to either expel pent up emotion, or to be understood.
Thinking about people like Lilian Voss…I feel like she took the former route. She didn’t take out her anger on the living so much as those who had done her, and others like her, wrong. She holds no hatred or jealousy for the living, as some have turned to - but she holds no hatred for her own kind either. In a way she watches out for them in a way Sylvanas never could.
I feel as though Calia is an example of an undead with a support structure - which…may be infuriating for some forsaken. Calia was raised in an environment where she wasn’t shamed, and didn’t have to experience the horrors of being part of the scourge. She’s…simply Calia. Becoming undead has it’s own trauma’s for sure, but simply being undead does not create what we’ll call the Sylvanas mindset.
I would summarize this as a general envy for what the living haven’t had to experience - and an inability to rationalize the pain of their own experiences, thus leading to a projection of that pain onto others, to various extents. In the case of some, they take the inhumane things done unto them and commit them themselves, perhaps in the effort to gain some control over their own situations. Some characters I would lump under this mindset are: Apothacary Putress, Sylvanas Windrunner, Deathguard Samsa, and others.
What we’re seeing recently though is a change in the mindset of the world. I imagine as things have gone on there’s been progress in living/forsaken relations - such as the gathering at Arathi. One of the biggest wrongs inflicted upon them all was the fact that they were made out to the aggressors after being raised, even though they were still suffering from the things done to them.
Does this excuse the horrific deeds carried out by many forsaken? No. I feel that it puts it in context however, and reframes that the solution to the Sylvanas Mindset is a program of outreach, instead of outright extermination.
Frankly I’m hoping to see more empathetic undead. I feel like these characters have the capacity for an immense amount of empathy and understanding - they’ve gone through more than most on Azeroth, and frankly could end up being emotional anchors for a lot of people.
