It tells us the frame of reference is avoiding hell, which being undead does.
Itâs something everyone tries to avoid Dread. Itâs not unique to undead
Oh my good lord god baby Jesus Christ of latter day saints.
Uther told him to go to hell.
Arthas gave him a smart ash response because, as far as he understood, he would never go there.
The exact moment of his death is pinpointed in Rise of the Lich King, when he dons the Crown of Domination. He was alive-ish after a fashion, not quite undead, but not fully alive either, as a death knight.
Death knights in Warcraft 3 were one of three Scourge units that were not at any point referred to as being undead beyond game mechanics.
There is some indication that Death Knights are fully raised back to life (excepting Forsaken ones). Which makes some sense. Fully raising someone seems harder, and would only be done for the more important members. Taking the time to fully attach the soul and restore the body was likely not something that was worth doing for the cannon fodder level of undead. But, for DKs it might actually be what allows them to be stronger than the undead minions. Fully attaching the soul and restoring the body might just result in them being alive, even if that was not the actual goal. But I donât think anything has been confirmed.
Plus it does fit some other things, like the text on the Lichborne ability. It says âDraw on unholy energy to become undeadâŚâ And Blizzard made a point to allow spells that target undead to only effect DKs while that was active, until they made some changes for balancing issues anyway. So, it seems the intent was DKs were alive, but could become undead for a time. They just canât remain undead because they donât have enough unholy energy to stay that way.
Which also may answer some of the question of if/when Arthas died. He may not have. He may have just gone straight from living to undead as he was infused with unholy energy. Which could have happened anytime. But probably around the time the Lich King made him his champion.
Maybe Arthas becoming an undead was an unintended side affect of Frostmourne. Kingsmourne on the other hand was designed to be an improvement over Frostmourne. Anduin retaining his âaliveâ status was probably intentional on Zovaals end. After all, it helped sell the illusion that Anduin was still âpure enoughâ to get an audience with the Archon.
It could also be a case of willingly becoming cursed vs resisting it.
Arthas knew the risks and accepted them. Anduin on the other hand was forced to become dominated by Kingsmourne and thus was in a position to resist. Which is a major factor of his raid encounter. He is resisting and we need to help him in that regard.
Personally Iâm leaning towards the first possible scenario because it is clear that Zovaal can turn on and off the âdominatedâ look for Anduin. As shown in both the 9.1 trailer and in the conversation Anduin has with Sylvanas prior to the Sanctum of Domination raid.
He died after the human campaign, and in the very frist mission of the UD campaign Tichindrious clearly state that Arthas soul was the very frsit that was claimed by Frostmourn, which make him an undead.
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Interesting.
I would argue that this implies that only a soul connection through necromancy is required to classify someone as undead. The bodyâs functionality seems to be irrelevant.
Guys.
Itâs just novice writers novice writing.
He was indeed a stinky boi that couldâve used a shower (aka a Paladin casting Holy Light)
He wasnât undead until he became the Lich King imo. People will argue and act like he definitively was, but nothing anywhere suggests he died at any point before the end of WC3.
And to me, the passage of him putting on the helm is to specify that it was the point where he finally actually died and became undead, fusing with the Lich King.
He was a Death Knight that was still technically alive. Rare, yes, but nonetheless, true.
With that in mind, Uther plucking Arthasâs soul and basically making sure it does go to hell was a nice call back.
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Yeah. It was one of those details you can at least appreciate. Even if one didnât like how the rest played out
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The only thing that can be definitively stated is that the Arthas who returned to Lordaeron was a very different person than the one who left Capital City to investigate the plague.
Now the pop answer is that the change was a binary flip when he picked up Frostmourne.
I see it as a process that was already in play at the start of Arthasâ Paladin training and meets its apex when Arthas destroys both the Nerâzhul and his lingering Humanity within his own mind in that five year sit on the Frozen Throne. Very much how in modern writings The Hulk didnât begin with the Gamma Bomb but with the broken childhood of Bruce Banner.
What meets itâs final extinction in the overthrow of the Jailer is the last echo of Arthas.
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Shadowlands in general had some very good ideas mixed with an insane amount of âjust why?â decisions.
The fact that the lady in that cinematic didnât even make it past the first zone is one of the prominent dumb decisions blizzard made up and down that expansion.
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I agree entirely with that assessment. Nerâzhul had a plan, and that plan involved softening up Arthas to be his pet by progressively driving him to desperation and then madness. He never would have considered the possibility of culling an entire city when he first set out from the capital, wouldnât have stranded his soldiers in a far-off inhospitable land, wouldnât have betrayed a band of mercenaries to cover up his refusal to obey his fatherâs orders. Whether or not his soul being bound to Frostmourne makes him undead doesnât matter much in his overall fall from grace.
From a purely biological standpoint, Iâm not convinced that picking up Frostmourne caused his body to physically die on the spot, because from what I recall the wording doesnât specify that his soul is no longer in his body, rather than just cursed and bound to Nerâzhulâs will. It doesnât really matter to me for the sake of the story that played out, but I am curious about the technical details for the sake of comparison to other death knights, as well as general lore on Warcraft necromancy and cursed weapons.
Most of the other death knights in WoW that we know any background of are more classically undead, in that they were once alive, were violently slain, and then their corpse was raised into undeath, resulting in the death knight we now know. Simple, direct, easy to follow chain of events. Arthas is missing that âwas an unresponsive corpseâ stage that would make it easy to tell what his status is.