There’s a recount of her encounter atop Icecrown with the Valkyir before jumps to her death off Icecrown but it’s interrupted with an Interlude with Anduin.Chatper 21 is all about what happens after she gets to the maw and there is not an interaction with the Arbiter. She like Arthas says all she saw was darkness, then she woke up in the Maw.
can you re-phrase your question about direction of the book? are you asking if it makes her sympathetic?
The torture she experienced in the Maw was not just physical torture but emotional. The book verbatim seems to mirror the experience she had in Edge of Night with slight changes. When she’s ready to make a deal with the Valkyir she yells Enough! and it’s not the white light of the Valkyir that saves her from torment as depicted in Kosak’s work, but the Jailer standing before her.
The jailer tells her, her decisons she made in life brought her here, and then she asks if he was also here because of his choices and he explains that he’s the jailer. That’s the only indication at all that Sylvanas had been judged, that somehow her choices up until Edge of Night had lead her to the Maw but most of the decisions were made while under the domination of the Jailer through Arthas so he’s an unreliable narrator.
It’s likely that the Jailor had the mawsworn pluck Sylvanas as her soul was entering the Shadowlands and they brought her to him. but that’s just speculation. Still no confirmed judgement by the Arbiter.
It seems like the Jailer chose her because he saw someone who had built a reputation on breaking control, (breaking his own control mostly) that’s essentially what he wanted to do, he wanted to break his own chains and break the Shadowlands. Whether Sylvanas was worthy or not of judgement, or was judged is moot, if he bypassed the Arbiter and made her believe that this was yet another prison she needed to break free from.
Contextually it’s important to note that prior to her going to Icecrown she goes back to her family home and questions her choices over everything she’s done since breaking control of Arthas. There’s important dialogue which suggests that the Jailer may have possibly used this and chose her as his next victim to manipulate. she says,
“I thought I was doing the right thing. I’ve thought that every time, every step. And it has been. I died protecting my people. I fought for my freedom. I reached out to friends who I thought would --”
"I did what I needed to do to ensure my survival and others like me. Sometimes, there are no good choices, but we are still made to choose."
When Sylvanas say that Sylvanas has never had a good choice we mean it, she usually has to choose between two choices in a lose/lose scenario, like the Broken Shore.
I feel like if that was the moment she stood before the Arbiter pleading her case and not pleading her case to her brother’s grave. She would have been granted mercy by the Arbiter. By denying her judgement, and playing on her strengths for his own selfish gain, the jailer may have stolen her chance at fair judgement.
