Im definitely not a sylv or a nathanos fan. But I definitely wouldn’t wish this book on anyone.
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Nathanos was always described as an ugly man, this isn’t new information.
In stormhiem he gets a huge gash across his face and the Forsaken response is “somehow that only made him uglier”
I’ve been way too critical, there’s also good things. Nathanos mirrors her father in many ways and that’s also why she loves him even though it’s not explicitly stated but her dad was a diplomat who often pacified her mother who had a temper, Nathanos also fills that role in her life.
She loves him, but she never got to tell him she loves him when they were alive.
She kisses him a lot so that’s a plus. They don’t have a slow burn they are pretty much together since they met.
He’s snarky and their banter is okay, it’s Golden writing banter so it’s just okay.
If anything shipper will come out of this book it’s this dialogue between them:
“I don’t need you”
“Like hell you don’t”
They are in love, it’s cute. She quickly turns him into her house husband.
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So Sylvanas is a daddy’s girl lol
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Yeah, a Daddy’s girl in the same vien as Lizzie Bennet, her dad is the only one who understands and respects her in her family, doesn’t treat her as a burden with no purpose.
(and she likes it rough sometimes, there’s one scene where Golden does her best impression of a Harlequin romance writer. )
He has a really small bed at his farmhouse and she has shared it with him.
I just didn’t wanna get gross for the people who don’t like this ship but there’s multiple suggestions. Everything is off screen of course but they seem to be pretty intimate.
So that puts one question to bed (no pun intended)
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You know what a missed opportunity(of which there are plenty) in Shadowlands this is? Its that if we knew this was the reason Slyvanas decided to go to war with the Shadowlands we might have been able to FIX it. Heck, if Pelagos realized that maybe the Arbiter’s judgement was not perfect he could have actually realized “hey, you know what, I can actually do better then the old Arbiter and try to make the Shadowlands a better place”. It would have been a good way to give Pelagos some growth!
Sylvanas’ motivation did not need to remain hidden until the end of the expansion! It should have been made know earlier! We might actually have sympathized with her more.
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Sylvanas’ motivations have always been clear. The afterlife is not fair. That’s been canon since day 1 of Shadowlands Zerde. You just needed to get to this point to accept it.
You were not receptive to Sylvanas two years ago, and I don’t blame you, few were after BFA.
Point blank this book should have come out years ago and not waited until the final hour to have Alliance fans finally sympathize with her.
Put into perspective now. Do you see how deceptive the Alliance propoganda machine is? Will you now respect the opinions of Horde posters with different accounts of any given situation?
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My point is we didn’t know WHY it was unfair/what exactly motivated her to do what she did. More to the point, this is probably the only expansion where it feels like we didn’t actually make things truly better. That all we got was status quo back to the Shadowlands. If we had this knowledge it could have meant we could have actually have improved the whole issue of “loved ones not going to the same afterlife” issue.
What propaganda? I am talking on a purely meta stand here that if we had know why Sylvanas did what she did there would have been SOME sympathy for her but would ultimately still be that most people would realized she went about her attempt at change in the worse way possible.
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We had this knowledge in early interviews were they said Draka was not reunited with Durotan. And they explained that service to the Shadowlands for Eons was expected, the risk of obliteration in service to the Shadowlands was also expected.
This would seem less of an annoying dialogue if you and others were not defending the stauts quo of the Shadowlands up until now just to not admit Sylvanas was right about the Shadowlands being broken.
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Except Danuser basically said that once Draka was done with her “tour” she would have ended up reunited with Durotan. Which meant the entire thing felt more like people would still end up with their loved ones, not immediately but someday. Danuser gave a relatively optimistic take on the whole thing as oppose to some horrible fate.
but the Shadowlands is a realm of infinite afterlives and one of the things that we’re showing is that, just because someone had a certain pairing in life, doesn’t mean they’re going to go to the same place - at least not right away - in the Shadowlands.
But there are opportunities… Shadowlands represents an eternity, and so maybe her and Durotan are in separate places right now, but maybe their fates would, down the road, lead them to find an afterlife that they can share together. But right now the place that she needs to be Maldraxxus because they’re in a lot of trouble, and her warrior spirit is going to be one of the things that that helps see them through this dark time.
Sylvanas was not “right” anymore then Sargeras was right. Both may have had valid reasons for doing what they did but they both took the worse options available to achieve their goals.
Similarly when I read chronicles for the first time, it gave me the same feeling I have to this particularly revelation. With a “sure I get why you are doing what you are doing but going on your personal crusade is still not the way to get what you want”.
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Well, by reading this thread, a few things stick out :
It looks like Golden is making Arthas more openly villainous and sadistic, and she is leaning in to the whole SA allegory many folks saw in their interaction. And I am glad that they are doing this. It clearly was too vague initially, since Arthas still has so many defenders and there were so many of his defenders accusing those who saw an SA allegory as merely seeing things that were not actually there. At least now, his creepy sadism is more apparent.
I am glad she is cleared for the Wrathgate and the invasion of Gilneas, at least as far as giving the orders. As far as Gilneas, Garrosh should have borne the weight of that choice. It seemed like they initially laid the blame at his feet, but then later they tried to make Sylvanas the instigator to make Garrosh seem less cruel. Knowing what we know now, the shifting blame over Gilneas seems to be an example of the tug o war between the Devs.
But this explanation seems truer to the original. Garrosh commanded her to do it, and she had to, because her people were weak, they were already in a bad place with the Horde after the Wrathgate, and she felt she should lead the Forsaken invasion instead of handing her armies to Garrosh.
Arthas being a creepy sadist, Sylvanas being cleared of the Wrathgate, and Garrosh bullying her in to invading Gilneas are things I felt should be emphasized and explained- and it looks like they are.
I am not a fan of Golden’s saccharine style. So if I get this book, it will be for the lore dump, not for her writing.
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I thought Nathanos was supposed to be one of the greatest human champions and went to Silvermoon for a diplomatic mission.
So he is literally a nobody but somehow magically skilled at everything. Oh boy.
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Except how it actually plays out:
Genn: “I’ve waited a long time for this, Banshee Quee-”
Anduin: “Enough!!! Geez Genn, we don’t use the B-word. It’s very rude!! Sylvanas, I am ***so deeply, truly sorry for Genn’s actions. Why don’t you just take Westfall over there to make up for it?”
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But there was still the idea brought up by Sylvanas Loyalists that up until Teldrassil Sylvanas was undeserving of the Maw and yet she was sent there, Zul’jin was sent to Revendreth and she asks the jailer why she was deemed more evil than Zul’jin who had slaughtered her people. When she had died for her people in noble sacrifice.
I finally understand Baal’s fire eel reference.
The Arbiter could just decide that your loved one’s ideal heaven is different, and they could live eternity in their own paradise without you. That’s how flawed this system is.
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It feels good that many of my speculations are right.
This really don’t excuse her but it’s nice to see her in non mustache twirl stance. You are spot on tho, per usual.
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But until this book no one told us this is how said system worked and as I mentioned Danuser gave a more rosier picture of people who may be sent to different afterlives just someday ending up together anyway.
Her first death had her going to paradise. It was only her second death that caused her to go to the Maw. Suffice to say, the Banshee Queen has done alot of questionable things, not the least of which was allowing RAS to experiment on people, regardless if they were guilty or not. And maybe more to the point, the assumption was it was her contact with Frostmorne that might have changed her fate. That if she was not corrupted by Arthas, she would have gone to Ardenweald(or whatever paradise she was suppose to go to)
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We all knew it was Garrosh who forced the forsaken to invade Gilneas, that was not her crime as far as many people were concerned(myself included) it was her INDISCRIMINATE use of the plague that was squarely on her feet. And unless this book retcons that, she decided to use the plague even when Garrosh explicitly told her not to!
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Did garrosh also order her to plague all the civilians of southshore as well to turn them into goo?
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With you pointing this out, I can definitely say I see some value in this book. These are things I mostly don’t mind being in books (though I think the Gilneas part is just very mixed in-game). Apparently also, whether true or not, according to reddit Zovaal claimed he wanted Ner’zhul to take over Arthas, but Arthas won and took power from Zovaal to conquer and grab power, fighting against Zovaal’s will.
It’s just a flat out loss. It’s fine to have a book for lore-junkies to read the details of all sorts of things. Unfortunately, they created a expansion that basically requires you to read this book (and other external sources) to understand it. Not even just at a “high-level” for understanding.
Assuming Sylvanas’ statement to Anduin, “We can’t even choose who we…” is supposed to be the point where we know there’s some underlying motivation for her decision to join Team Jailer then ideally we get that information at some point before the end of the expansion (we don’t, it shows up in a book). Maybe we can understand.
Danuser says Draka and Durotan might end up together at some point in eternity isn’t quite the same as the fact that we interact and quest with Draka sans Durotan. And yet, maybe I missed it, but there sure wasn’t a ton of, “We have to go find Durotan! Father! Husband! Hero!”
Nobody cared? Wasn’t this a plot point worth diving into if it was the motivation the Jailer was using against her? We just kind of moved ignored it. It’s a great opportunity for us to delve into a similar type of situation to try to understand something unpalatable about the afterlife - and maybe even find out that the one lava eel was actually a jerk and abusive spouse and the system isn’t unfair (not going to lie, everything about the Shadowlands has seemed like a horribly designed system, even if the Arbiter was working, but when it was set to “Auto-Maw” mode it was a disaster).
When she committed suicide (after ICC), in comparison to everyone’s crimes we’ve seen in the Shadowlands, it’s a pretty tough sell to say she deserved the Maw. But this just adds to the point above - the whole fact she even was yanked into the Maw isn’t mentioned in game, we don’t (or didn’t) know anything other than an passage in Edge of Night and in-game there’s nothing.
I mean cards on the table here. In Before the Storm, Sylvanas thought to herself, about her plan to turn everyone into Forsaken. That would have kept their souls out of the Maw, but she was serving the Jailer still, and therefore, she remembered the lava eels and burned Teldrassil. They’re just throwing things out as they go along.
That’s fine in a lot more cases than we’d like to admit, but once they’ve got a path, show enough of it in-game so it actually makes sense while we’re experiencing it. Having a retrospective in a different medium is jarring and doesn’t work.
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She did that to save her people who were being used as meat shields. Look, we are not gonna rehash this again because you want to remain ignorant.
Her people were already suffering from Varimathras and Putriss’ betrayal to had to win Gilneas without losing any more Forsaken casualties. She chose the quickest way to victory to save her people.
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Yes, easy to talk when WC3 was so massively modified here. The criticism was not that it was not present in the novel Arthas, but that Golden has created this whole SA dynamic and it was not originally meant so.
But that with Gilneas I find good, it shows that Sylvanas was not the reason for the attack, there was a back and forth. But sylvanas lied about wrathgate, she ordered the entire event, but didn´t know that putress betrayed her.
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