Except for the part where he tried to murder Lord Illidan while screaming, “YOU’VE DOOMED US ALL, BETRAYER!!!”
Turalyon has always been a Light-crazed zealot—that behavior goes all the way back to the original Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness novel.
Turalyon is almost immediately siding with Illidan again right after.
That’s a normal reaction to watching a demon infused nightelf immolate the leader you been following for thousands of years. It was a heat of the moment anger
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Sheathing his sword and refraining from striking Illidan down hardly qualifies as “siding with.”
At best, it’s (very reluctant) tolerance.
The same leader that locked his wife away for resorting to Void magic? To save his life?
No, it’s a normal reaction for someone who’s so convinced that “Light = Right” that he’ll resort to violence against anyone said naaru directs him against, without a single thought for himself.
The fact that he was willing to overlook the fact that Xe’ra clearly didn’t believe in free will—which was already evident from what she did to Alleria—is proof enough of this.
Exactly but i bet garrosh didnt had a sewage system in mind when he remade orgrimmar, it could explain talanji’s haughtiness when she came to orgrimmar.
Orcs are canonically stinky
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One other thing that used to characterize the Alliance was petty politicking. The various kingdoms, and later the House of Nobles, maneuvering against each other and getting in each other’s way. How about bringing back more of that?
I personally don’t think that having some clearly wrong/bad characters in a faction is villain batting as long as (1) there are also clearly good characters and (2) the wrong/bad characters don’t lead the entire faction into villainous territory. Point (2) is where Blizzard has failed the Horde.
So? In the first place, those people are probably a minority; if most players thought Garithos and Daelin represented the entire Alliance, we wouldn’t have all these threads complaining that the Alliance are too perfect. And in the second place, you’ll never stop some people from overgeneralizing. But anyone who actually gets to know the Alliance can see that it’s not true.
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You’ll have to ask Baalsamael if the point was to have the Alliance as a whole be racist or just some characters that would be, as I already covered a list of very such characters that have existed.
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I mean, again, I’m happy to provide you with a list of reading materials on the original Alliance of Lordaeron:
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Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (novel)
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Day of the Dragon (novel)
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Of Blood and Honor (novella)
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Arthas: Rise of the Lich King (novel)
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Lord of the Clans (novel)
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Genn Greymane: Lord of His Pack (short story)
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Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, specifically the campaigns “Curse of the Blood Elves” and “Old Hatreds”
We’re given example after example of how the majority, not the minority, of the leaders of the Alliance of Lordaeron, which included men like Othmar Garithos, Adelas Blackmoore, Genn Greymane, and Daelin Proudmoore, all of whom were in positions of power and authority, were human-supremacist (read: racist), politically power-hungry, warmongering bureaucrats. Even Kael’thas and the Quel’dorei considered orcs to be monsters who needed to be put down.
Literally the only exceptions to this rule included Jaina Proudmoore, Tirion Fordring, and Taretha Foxton. Even King Llane of Stormwind could have been considered more open-minded, given that he literally allowed a half-orc (Garona) into his throne room.
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The Alliance as a whole being racist is just lazy. Honestly, racism for the sake of hate is lazy.
If you want racism to be a theme in the Alliance, I would rather it be done in an interesting way, not just a bunch of Garithos clones.
Like, make it more about culture conflicts, rather than racial ones. The identity of the Alliance is already tied with human culture, that no doubt should cause conflict with the non-human members, especially the Kaldorei.
You can have hate based racism easily enough. Night Elves hate orcs… Why? Because most of the interactions Nelves have had with orcs have been negative, and have involved war.
You can have culture based racism easily enough. Nelves are frustrated with their human allies… Why? Because their High King is a teenager and yet thinks he should be of higher command than thousand-year old Nelf officers. Because the flag of the Alliance is also the flag of Stormwind, and nelves don’t want to fly a foreign flag. Nelves feel as if they are a vassal state rather than an ally.
The interesting part of it is those are very sympathetic reasons. Garithos yelling “Inhuman!” is so villainous and cartoonishly evil that there is no way anyone could by sympathetic towards him.
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A follow up thought to your post that also came up before: Of the minor Alliance characters that were racist (the captain that wanted to sink the Bilgewater’s slave boat, the captain that tried to frame an innocent Tauren druid, Ambassador Gaines, etc.) they usually get killed off, most often by the Horde.
Naturally, over time, literally culling the Alliance’s racists is going to skew the Alliance towards the remaining less flawed members and leadership.
If the original Alliance had been written as being just “racist for the sake of hate,” I would agree.
It wasn’t.
That’s exactly how it used to be.
Nobody sympathized with him, that’s the point—Daelin Proudmoore is far more sympathetic, even with his outright bigotry.
But it is worth pointing out that:
A) Garithos was not the only Alliance leader who was racially-prejudiced, but he was in a position of authority
B) More importantly, he was allowed a position of authority because of the system/society that had been in place prior to Arthas’ destruction of Lordaeron.
Which was very much institutionally-racist.
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Garithos was only in a position of authority due to nepotism (his fathers achievements in fighting orcs before his family was killed by orcs) and him being literally the only official remaining commander of lordaerons military which became a conscripted military at that point.
Aldo I did post Garithos reasonings for his disdain for elves at least, he was definitely a human centric guy who was definitely a racist.
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Great, so we’re in agreement.
I’m not denying any of what you said. What I am saying is that it was made possible for someone like Garithos to attain a position like that in the Alliance military—despite very clearly being human-supremacist/racist—because the original Alliance of Lordaeron advocated such prejudice in the first place—look at Adelas Blackmoore having his own fortress with a full staff of servants, for example.
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Why? No offense meant to you or him, but I made my point before he made his. I’ve been talking to you on this particular subject, not him.
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I have often thought that the Alliance v. Horde conflict should be positioned more along the lines of an Order v Chaos axis. Or possibly civilization v. liberty. Play up the imperialist aspect of the Alliance. The Alliance wants to push its version of civilization to all corners of Azeroth. And they are going to “help” the Horde whether the Horde wants help or not. The Horde fights back to preserve their cultural traditions of freedom and self-determination.
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Garithos
Garithos
But he was the main catalyst for the Blood Elves leaving the Alliance.
Daelin’s bigotry ultimately didn’t play a role in Alliance Storytelling. He was made a villain for the Horde.
Well the mistake there is thinking racism is ever rationale. This is why fantasy is maybe the worst genre to try to do an allegory about IRL bigotry. And it’s sort of funny to me the humans are European coded when if you do want some historical allusions to invaders from a far off land blindsiding kingdoms because their world is extraordinarily more deadly, well…
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Terenas actually was trying to be merciful to orcs when every other nation wanted to just kill them, also I don’t remember blackmoore being racially motivated cause he wanted to harness the horde to conquer Lordaeron and the other kingdoms hence raising Thrall as he did.
Because I posted this thread in response to posters who would want the Alliance racist in general, who Baalsamael is currently representing.
If what you want is for minor racist characters to flesh out stories, as I’ve already responded multiple times now, those already exist.
But it does not seem that this fulfills you in our conversations, either.