Uther is fine, you guys are just mean

Lore Story Forum
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Since WC3 Reforged is out today (HYPE!) I think it’s only fitting to defend that beacon of the Holy Light, the one and only, the man, the myth, the legend, you know him, you love him: Uther the Lightbringer.

He tends to get a lot of flak for what happened at Stratholme, so (unless Blizzard retconed events with the Reforged edition that I haven’t yet jumped into), I’m here to defend him.

The major complaint I see people slinging at him is that if he truly cared for the people of Stratholme or was a real paladin, he would have fought Arthas right then and there instead of sulking away to King Terenas.

Incorrect, and here’s why: Instead of being lawful dumb and causing conflict within the party for moral beliefs, Uther realized that there was no changing Arthas’s mind. The young Prince was dead set (ha ha) on purging the city. The only thing that could possibly be worse than allowing Arthas to do that would be to attack or psychically confront him. If he and those who refuse to slay innocents walked away, they could go to the King, explain the situation, and resolve things with a modicum of peace and order. If he starts a rumble, soldiers and paladins start injuring and killing each other, and then the little semblance of order and unity they still have intact is broken; also, it’s very possible that himself or Arthas is killed (fights can from from restrained to all out in the blink of an eye, intentions go out the window when you’re staring death in the face), and he obviously didn’t want that. The path of least resistance is the best outcome for the aftermath of that day’s events. He saw Arthas would not be dissuaded, so he immediately began planning for the future.

Secondly, people defend Arthas because he made the right call by purging. Yes…but NOT in the moment. It amazes me how people write his actions here off as totally okay. At the time Arthas decided that purging the city was the only reasonable course of action, he had no idea if a cure for the plague was possible. For all he knew, it was a portal to Dalaran and a 30 minute chemistry project to bake up an antidote. Now we know in hindsight that there is no cure, and he probably saved lives by purging, but in the thick of it, when everything was going down, Arthas was motivated purely by fear and impatience. He went straight to a final solution and didn’t want to consider alternatives. He was acting rashly. Uther kept a level head and tried to talk him down, then got his rank and his order suspended for trying. I love Arthas, he is thematically a great character, but he was totally, 100% in the wrong in his reasoning about Stratholme’s purge.

Another thing people tend to say is that Uther was a coward who was hiding away, guarding Terenas’s ashes while the scourge ran unkempt through Lordaeron. Also wrong. Arthas confronts Uther in Andorhol, which was where the Silver Hand was based in their defenses, for example, this is where Gavinrad is guarding Kel’Thuzad’s remains; also it was the heart of the plague’s uprising. Andorhol was pretty much the most logical place to be, at least in starting to fight back. What would going out and confronting Arthas solve? He’s not the Lich King yet, and even if Uther knew he was in command, it’s not like the mindless hordes just fall down and surrender if Arthas is taken out. They only fought because Arthas came for the urn, and Uther did his duty to defend it.

TL;DR Uther did the best he could with the awful hand he was dealt (much like Arthas). He was thoughtful and strategic about how to handle the crisis, and took the best options given to him that he could see. Was he perfect? Goodness no, but for a mortal, fallible man, I think he really earned his moniker of Lightbringer. He’s still an inspirational figure, and rightly so. He was a brave paladin, a loyal soldier, and a good man who cared deeply about his nation and its rulers.

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Except they were literally about to be transformed into Undead monstrosities and join the already rising numbers of the Scourge, there was no time to be ‘‘diplomatic’’ purging was the best choice and Uther simply walked away. I think it’s worst to knowingly and indirectly let people die than killing them and saving them a horrible fate (at least trying to, since it seemed kinda inevitable).

I am pretty sure Arthas at least delayed the Undead for a bit that’s better than simply letting them loose and free to join the Scourge, so that’s a bit subjective on your part.

That’s a crapload of headcanon and speculation, Jaina was there, read the novel if you so please, things were more complicated than ‘‘bake an antidote’’.

As any normal person would in facing such a crisis.

Really?

‘‘How can you even consider that? There’s got to be some other way’’

Sounds pretty stubborn to me

But let’s agree he was for the sake of the argument.

What? He literally just said ‘‘there has to be another way’’ then proceeded to leave.

You sound a bit too biased my buddy. Specially on a topic debated to death since ages past.

Not to mention he came back to check things and THEN decided to inform Terenas

Damn that boy! I’ve got to inform King Terenas about this. Don’t be too hard on yourself, girl. You had nothing to do with this… slaughter.

And also one condescending bastard, with a tad of superior morality complex it’d seem.

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true paladin would purge the city

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Nah.

Uther was a coward who didn’t want to sully his precious reputation.

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Uther was fine, and Arthas was also fine. They both had conflicting points of view on how to deal with Stratholme. Two different angles, mutually exclusive but, with what the characters knew at the time (and not what we know), both valid theories that had yet to be proven wrong.

Uther and Jaina preached caution, and valued the lives of the innocent inside the city as much as those outside the city. If they could save anyone from Sratholme, they couldn’t just cut them down without knowing anything more about the plague. This is at its inception. Incubation period, how fast it acts, how fast is spreads, this is all unknown to them, because it’s happening now. Could there have been a cure, given time? Maybe. Maybe not. There have been a few cures developped during the two Naxxramas Scourge invasions during Classic and Wrath. Could they have worked? Could they even have been produced, or was it too early? We don’t know. We’ll never know. But while Uther would kill orcs or undead if they threatened his liege and kingdom, he couldn’t bring himself to condemn people who may not even be affected by the plague, condemned to die by his own hand simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, which many were. Would they be doomed to die at the hands of the undead anyways? Is that a just reason to kill them, that they’d be doomed either way whether to the plague or the undead? Is that how a paladin should act?

Arthas preached for immediate action to stop the threat now, no matter the cost. The lives of the innocent of Stratholme, any who didn’t eat the plagued grain, were a terrible loss to him, but one he could not see how he could possibly save without endangering those outside the city. He faced the Scourge head-on multiple times while Uther and Jaina were away, and though it pained him, he couldn’t let an army the size of a city grow from the dead of Stratholme. He also had the weight of the crown pressing upon him. As the prince, as the future king, these were his people. If he couldn’t deal with this, if he couldn’t protect his people and his lands, what kind of king would he be?

They both acted as their consciences told them to, how they believed a paladin should act. Did the ends justify the means? Do the needs of the many outweigh those of the few? Would caution have prove wiser, or would Lordaeron have been an undead wasteland that much sooner if action hadn’t been taken?

That’s rhetorical, because we know culling Stratholme slowed the Scourge down significantly. We know that even if Jaina left immediately for Dalaran there would be no cure for the people in time, not in the time it took for Mal’ganis to start making his undead army, not in the time it took to cull the city. We know this because it’s what happened, it’s meta knowledge. If Uther had somehow been proven correct instead but the city still purged, we’d likely instead be talking about how Arthas was too rash, too impulsive in his decision to purge the city and how he should have listened to him. And maybe there’d be some who still say that it worked and that’s what mattered. But that’s idle speculation, because we’ll never know what would’ve happened if that had been the direction Blizzard instead took.

Arthas, Jaina and Uther knew nothing but what they saw with their own eyes and they acted upon what they knew, by their moral codes that they lived by for years. They all had the people’s best intentions on their mind in spite of the difference in method, and that is why I don’t cast retroactive judgement based on our current information, which all but states that Stratholme was doomed either way, and that Arthas’ fate had already been sealed by Ner’zhul’s machinations. They couldn’t have known.

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Arthas was insane for making the choice so easily.

like… why he is so sure? does he even cares about his people? the men,woman and children that he killed in cold blood?.

but at the same time i understand where he was coming from.
and that the 3 characters acted accordenly to their personalities and the information they had at the time. i call that good writting, a shame that we don’t see many of that recently.

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Agreed, to use the train track morality question: pull the proverbial lever, it’s the right thing to do. If you don’t you’re a coward, you still kill the 5 on the main track through inaction if you don’t.

First thing I find questionable from Arthas is burning the boats. 2nd was grabbing the sword. After that it’s all True Neutral from Arthas because it’s involving mind magic and that doesn’t count. I think he technically died when he grabbed the thing.

Guy wasn’t irredeemably evil in the choices he made, he never got a fair shake in the first place. After the blade, he didn’t have a choice.

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Burning the boats should have been done on arrival and as dramatically as possible! The men hadn’t grown weary of Undead by then and wouldn’t have held it against Arthas.

If Arthas had dramatically burned the boats and sent a Gryphon he took with him to send a message to Terenas the King would have no choice but to send backup just as Varian had no choice but to send backup to Pandaria when Anduin went missing there!

Arthas fell because he lacked the vision to understand what Uther was capable of.

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Arthas wasn’t right to kill Stratholme. He did nothing other than make the dead rise more quickly.

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Hmm, how do I corrupt this thread until someone declares that Garithos did nothing wrong?

…Oh hell, did I type that out loud again? Damn.

But for realsies, when was Uther being bad the topic du jour? He’s basically episode 4 Obi Wan. He even dies and gets a cool ghost body.

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I’ve always preferred Tirion.
:man_shrugging:

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Huh? Define alot… I didn’t think there was much mention of Uther at all, except tangentially touching subjects like Arthas or Paladins in general.

Yeah. I have heard and read a lot of mudslinging towards characters and various plot points. But I was not aware of this undercurrent of Uther hate.

Is it? Eh. Unless he could 1 shot Arthas and then bubble hearth, it would have been folly to try.

I do not blame Uther and Jaina for simply walking away and refusing to fight against Arthas. Perhaps after they left they could have been more vigilant about spreading the word about what transpired… but that is merely nitpicking.

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I don’t think it’s hate.

For example I don’t hate him, but what I do hate is trying to paint him as a pure saint, incapable of mistake, much like what the OP is trying to portray him as.

Stuff like:

Purely speculation, that is not only that but also baseless one, or at least that it seems was put up together so fast they forgot to add coherence.

Also the OP mentioned:

I still am waiting for links to at least, 3 posts. And that’s still not enough to be able to say ‘‘major complaint’’, cuz we lack the data.

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  1. we saw Culling of Stratholme, even perfectly healthy looking people were being killed!
  2. Medivh literally warned him just a few hours ago the harder he killed the quicker the Scourge won.
  3. we saw an alternate timeline already where Jaina helped Arthas, short story, the world was worse off because of it!

If Arthas did not execute the purge, he might have not gone to Northrend and ultimately not fallen for the Lich King’s trap.

True paladins defend the innocent not spill them!

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They’re not innocent anymore, they’re five minutes from becoming zombie army

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Not all of them. In fact as per chronicles “the blood of the innocents cobblestone ran thick along the cobblestone path”. Also them potentially becoming zombies does not mean they are not innocents, they were victims of the scourge!

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he cured them from plague only way he could.

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That was not a cure, and not everyone in the city was infected, you can see perfectly healthy humans running to the gates of Stratholme be killed off.

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there still was a dreadlord corrupting rest. If arthas was focused on him - everyone would transform and eat their neighbours. And leaving gates open would let plague spread.

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  1. Arthas was focused on him, at least in our CoT version.
  2. Burning the city did nothing to stop the plague.