… Yes, they absolutely intended to conquer some one. Because that is exactly what they did. Do you think the high elves accidentally invaded Amani territory and built a city on their sacred land?
Also they were composed of women, children, and powerful sorcerers of the arcane that Chronicles describes as “using their magical prowess to decimate any Amani who dared cross their path”.
You keep trying to frame them as poor, wayward refugees searching for a home but they were far from defenseless and the only reason they were heading into Amani territory was to exploit the magical energies of the area.
You’re hugging that “they were ignorant to what they were doing” angle pretty hard. Seems to me you know what they were doing was wrong and are trying to frame it in a way that seems more acceptable.
This is a massive, baseless assumption to again try and fudge the truth to suit your argument.
It is absolutely the fault of the party that willfully walked into someone else’s territory and continued going further inland for years before building a city there.
Seems like it was the trolls responsibility to use diplomacy, and explain their territorial claims, and try to come to an agreement with the Elves, before initiating 2 conflicts they couldn’t win. Not to mention, land has to be settled to be claimed. Otherwise I can just proclaim the entire continent of Antarctica as mine. Anyone who trespasses dies.
Hey that road you drive on in front of your house, yeah thats also mine, stay off or else.
You’ll have to remind me, what exactly in Silvermoon or its surrounding land did the Amani need?
Who decides where the territorial lines are drawn? What lengths should a people take to survive when evicted from their home? Should they just choose to die off there because the place they chose at first isn’t their land? Should they keep searching to find a place? If they’re wandering refugees, do they have the time? And what if everyone has a claim to some place, again, should they choose to just die off there? Should the native race let them take over and just forgive them, just because they’re refugees?
Northern Lordaeron was held by the Amani. The Highborne that would become the High Elves fled Kalimdor in search of a new home after being evicted by the Kaldorei. They settled the region now known as Quel’thalas, wresting the land from the Amani, and built a new nation with a history. If the trolls had managed to wipe them out, all that would have been left of the High Elves would’ve been whatever knowledge of them that the Kaldorei kept.
For the trolls, it was an invasion - a most heinous action that has never been forgiven, and the beginning of their decline as a great empire. A grudge that has festered, that they will never let go.
For the elves, it was an act of survival that became a new beginning for them. Quel’thalas became home to their culture that developed into a fledgling magical society, at the expense of the Amani whose territory became smaller and smaller.
Ultimately, history is written by the victors. Always has been, this should be nothing new. The loser of a conflict will almost always be cast in a darker light than the victor, the negative sides of the enemy emphasized, their own either silenced or downsized. The opposite is true when it comes to the positive traits of each side. If the orcs had won the Second War and taken over the Eastern Kingdoms and reduced humanity to either extinction or refugee populations, both the orcs and the humans would likely be portrayed significantly differently because of who controls the narrative in-universe.
I was actually going to let this bad argument slide because it was attached to a worse argument and I get second hand embarrassment. But given the original purpose of this thread as an examination of sociological forces I actually had some thoughts on this. Don’t worry Rivendel, I’m not talking to you, you’re just an example that’s convenient enough to be on this page.
And that is the tendency by western, or dominate, cultures to devalue cultures that fall outside of that norm. In this case it’s a people jumping to the conclusion that a ruin being left untouched is an example of neglect because they don’t know or care about the cultural significance of those ruins. Where as if those ruins were ruins of Kal’dorei origin, they would probably not think twice about a desire to maintain those ruins in memory of what once was.
My rule of thumb is “when the people who live there now outnumber the people who used to live there.”
Stealing from strangers is bad. Letting your family die is also bad. The trap people fall into is mistaking this decision as “good and bad” when it’s really just “bad and worse.”
No, I agree, I’m not saying that either is good or bad. My point was leading into “history is written by the victors”. It’s dark, it’s cynical and it’s an uncomfortable prospect, but it’s also true that might made right when they successfully settled Quel’thalas. The elves don’t look back in shame on this.
The elves won, and given that the High Elves originated from the Highborne, the higher castes of Kaldorei society, I find it unsurprising that comparing their culture to the trolls, their magic, their very way of life, that they saw themselves as superior to them. And compared to the trolls’ tablets, they have an easy way to propagate information: parchment and magic to write rows upon rows of books that fill libraries up to the very tops of their spires. Generation after generation, the High Elves knew of the trolls as their ancestors wrote of them when they wrote their new nation’s history: a band of brutal, uncultured savages.
Like I said, if the trolls had wiped out the High Elves when they landed, that would’ve been it. I don’t know if they would even be remembered in the Eastern Kingdoms. Maybe a tale about strange pale-skinned pointy-eared invaders on one Amani tablet or another, at most. All that would have been left would be whatever records the Kaldorei had of the Highborne exile. Pretty much forgotten by history, because the trolls would’ve won, and they would have been the ones to write history for that part of the Eastern Kingdoms.
Yeah that’s fair, I don’t think we disagree on this point. But only because we’re both cynical enough to understand that good intentions can have disastrous results and bad intentions can have good results. History, for those who study it, is rarely fair or idealistic.
But the topic is morality, and at the very least we as thinking people looking on these events from afar should be able to acknowledge that stealing land is bad. Even if at the end of the day the results were good because the Blood Elves are cool and the Amani are not.
Uh…what? First of all, the Trolls didnt even try to communicate with the Elves, they just attacked. Secondly, what does Arcane have to do with anything, The Trolls have no anti arcane laws, it wasn’t the reason they attacked the Elves, and the Elves using the ley lines and Sunwell isnt hurting anyone.
Malfurion was just being ignorant when he was afraid of the Arcane, its the magic of the titans, the beings who shaped the world and drove the darkness away.
From a Kantism ethical perspective, I agree. If an action is universally bad, then even if you do it with good intentions and it has good consequences, it remains an immoral action. So even if one says that the High Elves taking the land ultimately had good consequences, as its own action it was still an immoral action, because I’m pretty sure everyone agrees universally that stealing is bad.
On a completely unrelated note, when I studied this back in school I didn’t expect to be discussing it on WoW forums.
Sorry, you seem confused. You wanted the topic to be whether the Amani trolls site of cultural and religious significance was worth the loss of life caused by High Elf colonization. It’s reasonable to hold the High Elves to that same standard.
So don’t try to duck the question with a bunch of post hoc arguments about how mean the trolls are. Was the High Elf culture of arcane mastery worth the loss of lives caused by their colonization?
And that actually is the ethical perspective I most align myself with. Even though it doesn’t actually make my life easy.
There was no colonization. The Trolls started a war of extermination, for racist reasons (they hated all elves since night elf empire times), as well as imperialist reasons, once the trolls lost this fight 2 times, the Elves showed them great mercy, it would have been a simple matter to call down another fire inferno from the sky on Zul’Aman and end the threat forever.
Okay. I’m going to give you a moment to decide whether you really want to lower your credibility further by trying to dispute a value neutral term that objectively applies to the act of a population moving to a new place.
And then I’m going to point out that you’ve ducked the question again.
the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area.
the action of appropriating a place or domain for one’s own use.
The elves, inadvertently at first because of ignorance of the land’s inhabitants, but consciously and willingly afterwards, impeded on Amani territory with the intention of settling the region and removed the Amani from the region they settled to do so. They literally traveled the entirety of the northern continent, marching from Tirisfal up to Quel’thalas. If anything, the elves were the more imperialistic in this scenario, because the Amani had the initial claim on the territory. So yes, the elves colonized the northern peninsula of the Eastern Kingdoms.
That would be the google definition. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is “the act of taking control of an area or a country that is not your own, especially using force, and sending people from your own country to live there.”
You’ll find my definition applies in more places and is more common useage.
So you have opted to duck a simple question a third time and dispute a term that objectively applies to the situation.
In the future you’re going to want to both engage in questions relevant to the argument you’re making, use context to determine the meaning of a word that has multiple definitions since that’s all of them, and also not make a big deal about ‘educating’ someone, since it makes you look like a tool.
You speak of credibility, yet you claim the old horde was a population of refugees. The canonical sources have stated you are incorrect.
You claim the Elves were invaders, when Chronicle uses the word refugees. Chronicle also says the Trolls started the conflict, and were in essence at fault for their own destruction.
All your world play is meaningless, the authors have stated what happened, your headcanon is a cute game, but at the end of the day, means nothing.
Chronicle states the Amani were evil, and caused their own destruction. Case closed.
Three attempts to change the subject and one cringe inducing attempt to close down the discussion in the most narrow minded way imaginable. But no answer to a simple question.
I don’t know if Chronicles call the Amani evil, I doubt it because I don’t trust you to be able to read something accurately and it sounds like a tone that wouldn’t be employed. But I also don’t care. You’ve closed “the case” and so I expect you’ll be done interrupting otherwise interesting discussions of morality. So I’m satisfied.
Non-good faith questions dont get good faith answers. The Elves never killed anyone for “Arcane” as if it were some cult that demanded such. They settled in a place where they would survive, as they had just barely survived a brutal winter. The Elves killed the Amani, because the Amani initiated the conflict.
You’re forgetting the handsome dwarf hunter who was also there after running errands for those humans the entire time and was peeved they were not allowed to fire their weapon at the Horde leaders.