Something to keep in mind here is that the story is told exclusively from Sylvanas PoV.
Of course she has nothing to say in Arthas’ favor. She didn’t know him pre Lich King and has no idea about his motivations, nor would she care if she knew. This is the monster who did horrible things to her and her people and that’s all that matters to her.
It seems Golden doubled down on Arthas’ atrocities as Lich King in this book, probably to try and make amends and Sylvanas as his victim more sympathetic and understandable and I think that’s fine.
In the Arthas novel she did her best to vilify Sylvanas ( the “testing blight on civilians” scene was pretty gruesome and not exactly necessary either ) as this was the course the writing team wanted to take the character at the time.
But yeah. In the end, Sylvanas still went from bad to worse by accepting to serve the Jailer and in the Anduin cinematic she admits that by doing so she “became Arthas” and calls her own acts evil and selfish. So nothing really changes, except that we now know about her motivations and well- lava eel vore.
Well, we punish serial killers with life sentences in prison. in RL a single life sentence is about 20-30 years before the possibility of parole, depending on the nation. if she spent (subjectively) even, say, three millennia at her labor, she would of served some 100,000 life sentences laboring in hell before she is let out.
Sylvanas doesn’t exist. Not even in the ‘We don’t know for certain, but we can have faith in their existence’ way that God does. How someone feels about her, positively or negatively, does not define them as a moral being at all. Smallioz attacking a character he dislikes that you like =/= him being a bad person.
I’m lowkey annoyed that Blizzard has a problem naming things. Sylvanas’s dad is named “Verath” right? In 9.2.5 there’s a mob in Quel’thalas scenario named “Varath.” […] blizzard needs to start using name generators.
