Was Xe'ra good or evil?

Lore Story Forum
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Inspired by a revived Odyn thread,

I made one about another contentious character. Do you see her as a basically good guy or a bad guy, given her past actions and choices?

Since she can evoke strong emotional reactions, I ask because characters like Odyn and Sylvanas have done similar or worse actions than anything she ever did and yet seem difficult to classify morally.

After some consideration, I personally see her as Lawful Neutral and morally grey.

Addendum; Please stick only to things Xe’ra has actually done, not what people THINK she MIGHT do but HAS NOT ACTUALLY DONE. Anyone can accuse anyone of anything so “what ifs” don’t matter here.

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She is a cosmic being, and thus amoral. She cannot help but attempt to adhere to the Path of the Light as best as she can perceive of it, and will do whatever it takes to ensure it comes to pass. She is literally incapable of conceiving of there being another possible choice, as any other path is of the void.

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Any character that devotes themselves in their entirety to rigid, unmoving ideals is gonna be evil at some point. The Light doesn’t really give wiggle room for that. That uncompromising nature means that if your goals and the Light’s goals are aligned, Xe’ra’s a good guy. However, the moment that your goals deviate, it’s bad guy time.

It’s a bit like fire in the real world. If it’s heating your home in the cold, it’s fantastic. If it’s burning your home down, you’re gonna feel quite differently about it.

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She/They are primal forces that can’t conceive of not doing as they are compelled to. By their perceptions they are always in the right and it is us who are the problems.

As much as I bash on the light there will be times that even the most devoted of light path worshipers will find me agreeing with them, just not as much as they’d like.

In theory the light could be a force of good, just as the void can be, it just needs to be used in moderation and with the full understanding that too much can lead to problems.

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I’ve pointed it out before, but the thing is, it can be hard to pin down the true motives of any character who’s acting according to a prophecy we haven’t objectively seen or experienced ourselves.

Meaning Xe’ra’s interactions with various characters and the player might have amounted to priming us to all act the way we did in order to ultimately achieve the outcome that we achieved. Did she really lock Alleria up just out of a Light-driven intolerance for her use of the Void, or because it was necessary for subsequent events involving Alleria to occur? Did she really bombard us with pro-Illidan propaganda because she believed it herself, or because it would lead us to eventually restore her and bring him to her? Did she show Illidan visions of himself as the Chosen One because he was meant to become so in her eyes, or because seeing those visions would inform his actions later? Did she try to forcibly convert Illidan because he was really destined to become the Chosen One in her vision, or because her vision showed her that she would try and he would destroy her, setting him and us all on the path to defeating the Legion the very way we defeated it?

Without actually seeing her prophecy ourselves, absent the filter of Xe’ra herself showing us what she thinks we need to see, we can never truly know how much - if any - was her enforcing a hardline ideological worldview according to the Light, and how much was her playing that role in certain instances because her vision had told her she needed to do so knowingly in order to prompt certain responses from the world around her.

Prophecy introduces a complication to any character’s behavior because it becomes difficult - even impossible - to discern when they’re acting on their own inclinations and when their actions are being choreographed by their foreknowledge of how everyone and everything else will respond.

After all, a whole bunch of TBC’s outcome turned out to be predicated upon a naaru playing along and acting a certain way in order to achieve an outcome of events that Velen had foreseen, culminating in its own death to deliver on said outcome. For all we know, M’uru may have had the power to escape his blood elf captors any time he wanted to, or at the very least avoid his capture in the first place; he didn’t because he knew his imprisonment and eventual sacrifice was necessary. So it’s arguably no less possible that Xe’ra could have foreseen her own destruction as the necessary price for the Legion’s defeat and been acting toward that eventual end the entire time.

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I see her as an obnoxious person, whose shaming me of killing Illidan, caused me to laugh in glee when Illidan killed her.

As for her being good or evil? I would say she had good intentions but went knight templar on them, which is bad.

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Obviously this is stupidly reductive, we all understand that, but if we have to be get down the essential nature of her: closer to evil.

It was very convenient that she was aligned against the Legion, because the Legion was very obviously evil and so her quest to destroy them was hard to criticize too heavily. Still, though, we must wonder what would have happened next. Fundamentally, I think that if Xe’ra were still around after the Legion’s defeat she probably would have gone looking for some other impure thing in need of cleansing. She would have set her sights on the Forsaken or Alleria and the Void Elves, or… something.

Illidan, by contrast, basically just went into retirement. However extreme his methods against the Legion, once the fight was over he proved that he wasn’t interested in sitting in Kil’jaeden’s chair.

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Xe’ra can no more be good or evil than a gust of wind can be. She is a being of pure Light, and has no ability to do anything that doesn’t align with the true nature of Light. Gravity or electromagnetism can’t be evil, as it makes no sense to even assign intent to their actions. Void, Light, Fel, these are just forces, with effectively no free will, as they carry out their function as a law of the universe. From a deontological perspective, it is very difficult to assign the concept of morality to them.

From a consequentialist perspective, the question is: would Xe’ra be detrimental to mortal life as it has always existed if she had free reign? The answer is a resounding yes, and she is therefore evil. The Light represents stagnation and resistance to change when unchecked, as seen by the worlds encased in crystal forever by the Light.

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She bad for sure

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I’d say yes - evil. It just so happens that when fighting the Legion, it’s easy to be seen as the lesser of the two evils.

Also, you guys do remember that each cosmic force is governed by a pantheon*, right?

Without further information, we have no idea whether or not Xe’ra and her actions align with that of the Light pantheon’s consensus or a rogue, more extreme member of that said pantheon.

We’ve already seen two pantheons with member(s) that act against the roles given to them by the First Ones. Given that most of the times that we see the Light, it’s portrayed as fairly benevolent (with Scarlets, Yrel and her Lightbound, and Xe’ra being notable exceptions), it is entirely plausible that the actions of Xe’ra don’t represent the intended position of the Light.

She’s not even the first Naaru that we’ve interacted with at length, with A’dal being much more neutral, if not just outright benevolent.

It’s not even like we can take characters like these at face value when they refer to cosmological forces as a singular entity, since even Sylvanas shorthanded the Jailer as being Death**, despite his will not reflecting that of his Pantheon at large.

*Firim’s report, Expedition Report A37J - Part 4, gives us the line “Imagine, then, based upon the truths I have told you, that each of these rival forces could–and I stress could, for the fractals may yet reveal another path–be embodied by a host of transcendent beings as powerful as our own Eternal Ones”. Given that we know there to be an Order pantheon and a Life pantheon (something Firim wouldn’t have known about), it’s to believe that he is likely correct in this assumption.

**Sylvanas Loyalist epilogue, when referring to her bargain with Azshara in order to cause more souls to enter the Maw, she states “In the end, he too will serve Death.” in reference to N’Zoth. Notably, the in-game subtitles treat Death as a proper noun, and given her alliance with the Jailer, it’s likely that she is referring to him when she says Death.

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Yes, I suppose this is true. There is nothing wrong stated here.

But I’m willing to bet that intention is for the so-called 7th force to be mortality, or some kind of Captain Planet mix of all the forces, which leaves us mortals to balance out the single-minded and inadvertently destructive nature of each of the 6 forces on their own. For us to function as sort of cosmic Shaman, each force has to be somewhat bad on its own, and you know that’s where the story will go.

So understanding that, I think we all know it’s a tad dishonest for us to pretend, for the sake of debate club, that Xe’ra won’t end up being representative of the Light. She will be.

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The road to heck is paved in good intentions.

Xe’ra certainly thought she was doing the right thing, for the right reasons.

  • Throw away Alleria because void is bad.
  • Do anything to get Illidaniel back, because he is needed.
  • Force Illidaniel to accept her gift, regardless of his will, because that is also necessary.

And the reason? To defeat the Burning Legion, which is absolutely a force of cosmic evil. With the stakes of everything hanging in the balance.

It’s easy to dismiss her as evil. Taking someone’s free will certainly should be evil, and is definitely not an act of good.

But what if that one act is required to save the entire cosmos? Is one person’s freedom worth the cost of absolutely everything?

Because that’s what Xe’ra believes she is faced with. Illidaniel’s will, versus the cosmos surviving. One night elf screw-up fel addict who often acts recklessly and needs others to clean up after him, or all life everywhere. And all she has to do it purge his fel to replace it with holy light.

Yeah, it’s bad and she did a bad. But like… It’s kinda foolish to think anyone would do differently. It’s all nice and poetic to say that one person’s free will is always worth it, no matter the cost. But that’s just fantasy when the alternative is killing everyone everywhere, thus also killing those free-will-having people.

So was Xe’ra good or evil?

That question is very reductive.

Xe’ra was just, ultimately, given false information from her visions (IE, we didn’t need a lightforged Illidaniel to stop Sargeras and the Legion). Xe’ra was simply wrong.

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Xe’ra was only changing his class from demon hunter to paladin, not taking his free will. Otherwise, good comment.

I said based on what she’s actually done. What you think she MIGHT do but hasn’t actually done is irrelevant.

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I could certainly argue this point (and we both know that someone’s going to inevitably respond doing exactly that), but I’d rather leave it civil and say we both have a different perspective on this, and I think we both have valid reasons for our viewpoints.

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Fair. I already see people making assumptions and using theories about Xe’ra when I said to stick to things she actually did or tried to; anyone can accuse anyone of anything, so “what ifs” and theories don’t matter here.

Because if we take away those fan theories, we see that Xe’ra has done very little (and some of her haters are making mountains out of molehills).

Trying to force two elves to stop using dark magic is far less wrongdoing than any villain (and most “heroic” characters) have done - even Jaina has done worse than Xe’ra given the Purge of Dalaran (and I speak as someone who likes Jaina).

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all that would have changed was xera would have been killed by light instead of fel

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Are you saying that would’ve happened if Xe’ra had successfully Lightforged Illidan?

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yea, the moment xera even tried to force illidan into something was the moment illidan was going to kill her, sucess or not wouldn’t have changed that

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Whether he’d succeed or fail in the attempt aside, I agree. That said, I’m trying to focus this thread on things Xe’ra has actually done, not theories.

I get the feeling this thread is going to get a lot less replies and interaction now there’s a “canon actions only, no theories” requirement.

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This.

Good and Evil only exists in the context of choice.

A lion is not evil for running down and brutally snuffing out the life of a wildebeest calf.

In the same vein, neither are honeybees good for engaging in cross-pollination.

In both of those cases, entities are behaving according to their nature.

The nature of man however, is choice. That is why man can be Good or Evil.

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