This doesn’t explain his final words. While he may have committed questionable acts before he took up the blade, none of it was truly evil. Every action taken was taken with the intention of saving his people.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions
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For evil to triumph it only takes good men to do nothing.
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He asks if it’s over. And it is.
That’s entirely irrelevant to the facts. Arthas was never a victim. That’s been shown and explained time and time again. If you want to live in your headcanon, that’s fine. But it’s not factual lore.
I’ve had this argument before and I’m not going to have it again. Canon lore is canon lore. Dude was already set in his darkness before he got the sword, there’s been explanation that he did what he did just to make sure he could get control and then he took complete control.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. There is no nuance. There is “But…” There is nothing else except the facts.
Arthas chose his dark path and doubled down on it.
And that’s where I’m done with this, because I truly cannot do this fandom “but wait!” argument again.
Have a good day, all! 
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No.
Every action he took was to prove himself right and justified.
This is called Pride.
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Uther The Light guy failed us all 
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Well we can argue till we’re blue in the face about whether his actions were completely warranted in the culling, which is kind of why that story is as good as it is, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to come to an agreement on that. It’s an endless debate in WoW for a reason.
I didn’t intend to spin off an entire debate on seriously redeeming Arthas. It was more memeing how literal demons are now in the alliance after a two second chat with the Prophet.
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To me it’s like Tyrande letting Shen’dralar into their city.
Yeah they used fel and arcane but they weren’t directly involved with all that happened with Azshara. They remained out of all the fighting that went on.
I assume these eredar were the same way.
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Nothing he did pre-Frostmourne was remotely irredeemable, most of it was right. Stratholme was already lost and he probably delayed the Scourge overrunning Lordaeron. He also wasn’t wrong that death was a kinder fate than undeath. Uther and Jaina had no clue how fast the undead would turn because they weren’t at Andorhol, while Arthas was keenly aware of how quickly victims of the plagued grain would turn.
He thought that the sword was the only method to stop Mal’ganis, who he had been misled into believing was the source of the Scourge, and whose defeat he believed would end their threat. The man was extremely traumatized by what he saw at Andorhol and was willing to do anything to prevent the fate of being turned undead for the rest of his land. He took on a curse that he thought would be directed at him to save his people, not knowing it would turn him into a weapon against the very thing he was trying to protect.
The worst thing he did pre-Frostmourne was probably betraying the mercenaries. Still, he believed that the only way to stop Mal’ganis was to confront him in Northrend with the sword, backed by the military, so he was willing to trade those mercenaries lives for that cause. Dark, but based on the information he had, something right in line with anti-hero choice making.
Pre-Frostmourne, Arthas basically went from hero to anti-hero. At worst anti-villain. That’s what redemption stories are made of. Even outright villains are often ripe for redemption in popular storytelling.
It’s funny, some people refer in this thread to Arthas being the Darth Vader of WoW. Audiences watched Darth Vader aid in blowing up an entire planet, learned he betrayed his order and killed other Jedi, saw him kill Obi-wan, and saw him try to corrupt his son, with the original Star Wars trilogy. Vader wasn’t even given justifications that could be argued for any of this, like Arthas was. Yet they generally loved Vader being redeemed in the end, showing his restored force ghost standing alongside Yoda and Obi-wan.
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People should really read that old Arthas novel.
Arthas was rotten to the core.
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Vader admitted he was wrong to Luke and at the last minute did the right thing.
There was no admitting to anything or Arthas helping us. Even when he was in ghost dad’s arms he didn’t ask for his forgiveness, he just asked if it was over.
Arthas and Vader’s ending are nothing alike.
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Playing devil’s advocate (literally), the Burning Crusade’s mission statement was that destruction was preferable to corruption. If an eternal god-like being that’s powerful enough to defeat the rest of the Pantheon shows up and informs you that the only two possibilities are either “every planet gets burned to ash” or “every planet gets corrupted into a giant violent horrifying mass of depraved tentacle creatures for eternity,” you might side with the “burn everything to ash” guy.
Now these Man’ari know a truth that was hidden from Sargeras - that putting a yellow exclamation mark over your head and telling 20 players to punch gods hard enough can overcome any and every cosmic threat. Really, as long as 20- mortals hit and pound something hard enough, no matter how metaphysical or spiritual or psychological it is, they win. Remember when in MoP we had a raid where we were told, “you cannot face the Sha of Pride until you overcome your own pride?” Then we overcame our own pride and made ourselves humble by punching our pride a bunch?
Admittedly, the MMO writing tropes for how threats work got pretty bad in WoW.
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If your point is that adding playable red space hookers to the Alliance is stupid, you’re right.
But not nearly as stupid as all the Alliance players begging for playable red space hookers, in the first place.
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False.
You realize you are justifying his actions with knowledge that he did not have at the time of making his choice. He chose to turn his back on his teachings, his friends, and his faith because in his own hubris he believed HE was right. THAT is the tragedy of Arthas his own pride and hubris led him down the road to becoming the Lich King. He had already gone bad before he picked up the sword and put on the crown.
Repentant Demons
Also Arzaal says that those that bought into the Legion promise then realized how screwed they were. Most couldn’t abandon ship because Kil’jaeden pretty much executed any and all who had doubts about it.
Arzaal and his group where held there by fear.
Arthas went off the deep end the day he murdered his “beloved” horse when he was 19.
Which makes sense. They had two options:
Convert or be chased for 10,000 years. I can see why someone would take the easy road.
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You’re confusing “was redeemed” with “can be redeemed.” Arthas had his soul stolen by Frostmourne. If he got it back, it was when we were in the process of slaughtering him. Vader was always in control of himself.
The hypothetical being raised is whether you could have a redemption story for Arthas in a fantasy universe where people get brought back to life or their souls get to interact with a world of spiritual threats.
If you can redeem Vader, you could easily redeem Arthas. That’s not saying Arthas was redeemed - that story was never written, and was really squandered with Shadowlands.
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Well… you could argue that that was he only thing he could do with a horse in that setting because usually a broken leg is a death sentence for a horse but on the other hand this is a universe with priests that could have mended up his horse with the wave of a hand.
That’s the problem with magic in a story.
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Only mostly dead.
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