I feel like I might be reading too much into it based off of a brief synopsis, but I’m confused. Jaina… pledged Dalaran and the Kirin Tor to the Alliance, right? And suddenly now because she’s arguing with Varian, she muses about going back to being “neutral”? She obviously wouldn’t be neutral in the truest sense, since they would still reject the Horde, I assume.
I generally don’t like Jaina’s writing around this period of time, writers kind of took her too far and lost a lot of the cool-headed Jaina from before. But it’s weird to me that she wants to make little threats of leaving the Alliance when she kind of purged it of all Sunreaver presence to specifically bring it back into the Alliance fold.
I think Jaina was getting back at Varian for thinking he could make her do what she didn’t want to. Since MoP, Varian tried to command her. His authority over her was questionable. There’s multiple times where Varian got mad at her for various happenings. It was kinda annoying.
Her tone changed drastically after the Battle of Drazal’alor.
It could be that actually fighting in war and having a near-death experience drastically changed her opinion on the war and highlighted the benefit of peace.
The writing in a lot of the novels, especially with Jaina and even Sylvanas, should be taken with a grain of salt, because their impact in the actual game story has always been haphazard at best.
Jaina’s threat didn’t make much sense because Dalaran had already taken the side of the Alliance against Garrosh by the time War Crimes was written, but had only pledged them because Dalaran’s neutrality had already been violated in the course of the war, and the Horde under Garrosh showed no qualms using powerful and destructive magical artifacts to win, which is kind of Dalaran’s whole reason for existing (making sure people don’t do that).
It was a natural thing for Dalaran to go back to being neutral, or at the very least apart from the Alliance as a whole but still favouring them over the Horde. A comparable example would be the goblin cartels, who, while neutral, only have their zeppelins available to the Horde itself, as opposed to both.
Dalaran, given its role in modern day Azeroth (at the time, anyway), benefits far more from being detached from any one faction, as opposed to within the Alliance structure, since they could very well one day need to bring the Alliance to heel for using dangerous magical artifacts irresponsibly. And they did go back to being relatively neutral by WoD, since Horde players can go into the Kirin Tor outpost in Talador, albeit only after Jaina grinds her teeth about it.
She did nearly die, but, I wasn’t referring to sense being slapped into her. I meant moreso in that intentions can change dramatically after exposure to the reality of that intent’s nature.
Something along the lines of “that was god awful, do I really want to continue on with this and subject a lot more people to it?”. She is empathetic and a reality check can sometimes be just what’s needed to really align people with what they really value, more than passion dictating a few choice, fierce words.
That sounds like a progression of character development intended to help the audience connect with and understand a character and their decisions. We don’t do that here.
We flip a switch back and forth and make the fans fill in the blanks.
The writers have been very inconsistent with Jaina’s “wild days”.
War Crimes ends with Jaina seemingly making peace with Thrall which one would think in turn would…calm her butt down a bit with regard to the Horde. But then in Legions she orders that the Horde not be allowed within Kirin Tor territory, Khadgar being Brodgar simply ignored it though.
It really comes down to Blizzard not having a real clue what they wanted to do with Jaina so she just sat on a seesaw of kindness and unyielding rage into BfA finally gave her story closure.
To be honest I kinda though her change came at seeing all these people in Theramore die… she was mad with grief… and in BfA she admitted she change too. This is what I Have speculated and accepted what must have happend to my favorite Old Alliance character… not that I like this “new” Jaina but I guess this is WoW life changing moment for her character…
The other choices I thought are less likely and more of me Joking to myself:
Either that or Thrall and Jaina are going into the WoW version menopause and Andropause symptoms… lmao!
OR Jaina at some point got switch or turn into a Dreadlord agent. Which would really upset a lot of WoW fans but…
Meh, at this point we know, when it comes to lore and writing Blizz will go forward with whatever they need for the Game story to keep going… lol
I know the devs were originally planning to have Dalaran go full Alliance after the Purge–there’s an interview where they said it would be taking part in future faction war battles (SoO?) on the Alliance side. But that never happened, for whatever reason. (I’m actually curious to know why they didn’t follow through on it.) Maybe the novel was trying to plaster over that inconsistency.
Honestly I’m glad I missed the story beat where Dalaran joined the Alliance and we had Punished Proudmoore for awhile there.
Seeing as Dalaran will always be accessible for Horde players suggesting their taking a side is never going to be reflected in game. And I’m not terribly interested in story beats that you’ll never know about if you only interact with the game.
And also the moral of Jania’s story being “Doubting your racist dad will come at a terrible price” is just, gross, really.
But Theramore was always a little weird. I never understood why it wasn’t neutral. “We’re going to strive to coexist with the Horde, which is why we’re going to align with the human led rival superpower and let them use our port to walk into their territory”.
Pretty much what Gantrithor said haha, you think our capitals intimidating Spikes could actually match the Exodar and Dalaran superior magical firepower?
Horde is still in the stone age in comparison to the Alliance in that regard (IMO)
Hmmm now that I think about it, we do have the Blood and Nighborne elves advance magics and research on portals and time magic etc… however, for some reason they been really silent about them… Like it or now they seem to be our strogest allies right now…with a potential to match Alliance Magical and Technologies might. (IMO)
Hmmm this could work, I’m taking notes on this!
God I love the Story forums so yummy with new perspective and view on the lore you don’t find… anywhere else.
EDIT: OH and we got the Zandalari too!! I forgot about their unique Loa culture advancements. Need to write does down too.
That’s never stopped them before. I think there must have been another reason for it. If I had to guess, I think someone said, “Are you CRAZY? We have a movable neutral capital city already designed that we can pull out for any future expansion when we’re strapped for time and can’t make a whole new hub–we can’t just throw that away for a STORY!”
Jaina is a walking mood swing. Her position has swung wildly in different directions for as little a reason as the wind blew and she decided to change her tune this Tuesday.
She’s the most consistently inconsistent character in WoW.
