Because the Scourge ripped the Alliance to shreds and as a result they refused to even consider the idea of free willed Undead, causing them to push(putting it mildly…) the Forsaken away.
right into the Horde’s arms.
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There is also the Scarlet Crusade, who nominally would be part of the Alliance but even before the plague destroyed Lordearon was rather racist. Even to Dwarves/elves.
I assume it was a ton of factors. I am sure some of the humans did reject them when they came back. Which in turn made the Forsaken violently against the living. We will have the Sylvanas book, so who know what we end up learning.
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I mean, beyond the loaded question, lumping all the Alliance humans under one banner isn’t exactly fair. I would argue for the bulk of the human kingdoms that are part of the Alliance, we didn’t see much in the way of Forsaken hate pre-Cataclysm. After Cata of course it was open war and all bets were off and we had… them doing a lot. I assume the question refers to prior to this, however.
Stormwind: There really wasn’t much indication of hatred for Forsaken prior to Cataclysm, beyond general ‘they’re in the Horde and we’re doing a Cold War’. Sure we had Varian, but in Wrath he was just angry in general, something that earned him the ire of players for the a large chunk of his existence.
Lordaeron: Fairly obvious, any Lordaronians by and large who stuck with the Alliance and didn’t deign to join the Argents in their reclamation efforts likely couldn’t get over their old traumas with undead.
Kul Tiras: Didn’t like anyone up until a certain point, long after Forsaken were established Horde members.
Gilneas: See above.
Alterac: N/A.
Arathi: N/A.
Really, most of it boils down to the same logic that saw Night Elves on the Alliance as opposed to being on their own. Faction balance and to be the ‘odd ones out’ of their given side. But hatred (pre-Cata) by humans doesn’t really seem to have been much of a thing. The book is another strange instance of trying to create moral equivalence without actually putting in legwork. The Forsaken we see in Vanilla to the end of Wrath never come off as rejected, not to mention they’re Lordaeronians, it doesn’t even make sense timeline wise. They could have allied with the Argent Dawn, and then the Crusade, their fellow countrymen. Why would they have even gone to the Alliance humans, at the time made up of almost entirely Stormwindians?
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Humans hate what they fear. They fear the dark. They fear the unknown. They fear the undead. They are revolting if not terrifying to look at. They are unnatural. The undead are unanimously bad for humans. It is an automatic and primal reaction. Things that go bump in the night just don’t bode well for humans.
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I think, canonically, the Argent Dawn weren’t a thing yet. They’re made up of Paladins seeking to reclaim the Lordaeron continent post-fall and don’t start their efforts until after the start of WoW, which is after the Forsaken went to the Horde.
The point is nothing stops the Forsaken from joining different organizations, and the book over looks the Argent Dawn/Crusade.
Does the Forsaken get 100% of the blame or is their reason to believe that the blame for their relationship is shared?
The Forsaken aren’t mindless Scourge. They’re people. They have free will. And yes, some of them have been changed for the worse. Those have moved on in their existence with hate and fear. But not all of them. - The King of the Alliance, BtS
I think the Alliance is finally starting to learn from their prejudices and hatred. At the same time I think the Forsaken are learning that the Alliance isn’t filled to brim with hatred. I’ve always been able to see both sides of the coin, and it seems like with recent lore updates that we’ll be getting some more of these scenarios in the future.
The Forsaken sent ambassadors to the neighboring kingdoms. None returned. They tried diplomacy with the Alliance first. Since they were being besieged on all sides, and the Horde was looking for partners in the East, it worked out. They ended up on the Horde after their diplomacy with the Alliance yielded nothing.
Almost like the Nightborne were coolly rejected by Tyrande, and ended up in the Horde.
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I find this to be something of a hard sell. The Alliance hasn’t been shown to be driven by prejudice and hatred since WC3, where most of the old guard who were motivated by that died off (Daelin, Garithos, etc…) and the newer generation was more open to tolerance and mutual respect (Jaina, Varian, etc…).
If anything, any hatred or prejudice the Alliance has developed for the Horde seems more a result of the Horde’s actions during WoW’s lifetime.
In other words, poor writing that completely ignored the Horde’s growth during WC3.
At the end of the day I never fail to appreciate how this IP, in wiser hands not shackled by marketing, would’ve been able to tell some truly fantastic stories.
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Except she doesn’t. Because until the relatively recent retcon that she was being evil all along, almost none of the Fosaken’s actual villainous acts were ever laid at her feet. She was mostly portrayed as being heroic, if mean. And actual acts of villainy undertaken by the Forsaken were always attributed to “rebellious” elements within the Forsaken, overstepping behind her back.
Anduin was just, ya know, paying attention to the ACTUAL lore than had taken place in WoW up until that point. Instead of the retcons the writers were suddenly introducing. Ironically, making Anduin like a lot of the posters in the lore forum.
…because that’s an out-and-out falsehood? The Forsaken sent messengers to the Alliance first and they were immediately killed.
An interesting theory. But it’s only that.
Yeah, “We think Sylvanas is really evil. We should probably, ya know, not do what she would do.” What an out there concept…
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Humans like 100% of all wow races that are interesting are xenophobic by nature.
dont tell blizzard that or all wow races might get turned into fruits. or worse.
Plants.
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Ehh… she had her hand in things, or at the very least a peripheral involvement in most of the Forsaken’s shenanigans. The Blight as a weapon was created at her command, explicitly to kill both undead and living alike. She didn’t command her apothecaries to gas a room of farmers in Tarren Mill, but she commanded they make and test the Blight.
‘Evil,’ is subjective, and I imagine its more difficult to grasp the Forsaken’s concept of what evil is considering their state of existence. If anything one should feel more sympathy for them as they should remember what they considered, ‘evil,’ while alive, but now that they’re undead, they have new perspectives they didn’t have before.
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Killed by whom? Bear? An accidental meteorite? Demon? Did they quarrel and kill each other?
Although … you’re not directly blaming the Alliance.
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We also know that if they sent messengers to the Alliance it was after they had already betrayed the Alliance in TFT because Sylvanas hadn’t organized the Forsaken as a faction until the end of that campaign.
I’m not sure why Blizzard decided to put “and then they sent emissaries to the Alliance” in Chronicles because it doesn’t make any sense. The Forsaken had already made their decision.
Although since we know that the entire purpose of Sylvanas sending out emissaries after TFT was to find useful idiots maybe she was hoping it’d work on the Alliance twice.
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Its safe to assume if they made it to Stormwind the Alliance killed them.
At the end of the Death Knight quest the King of the Alliance says that the DK would have be a stain on the floor had it not been for Tirion’s letter.
Its really not when you think of the origin of the Scarlet Crusade, Garithos and the Silver Hand.
Varian literally says that the DK PC would have been killed if not for Tirion’s letter.
I’ve always been of the mind that both the Forsaken and the Alliance are at fault for their vicious relationship. I know that there isn’t a chance in the Maw that the long time pro Alliance posters will never see any fault in the Alliance but that’s not the point of the thread.
I really just want to have the Forsaken-Alliance conversation given the updates in BtS and Exploring Azeroth. Anduin, Shaw, and Faol are laying it on thick as far as the Alliance faults. Anduin and Faol also talk about the evil Forsaken, but they quickly turn it around and talk about evil humans. The story is definitely going places with a lot of former living and unliving citizens of Lordaeron.
I’ve been waiting for this for a while now.
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I may be wrong but Garithos is one of those I mentioned as the, ‘old guard,’ from the Alliance that ran on prejudice and hatred. The fact remains the Scarlet Crusade wasn’t a part of the Alliance, so I don’t know why you’re bringing them up either.
When WoW started, Varian as King was open to further discussions to enhance the peace between the Horde and Alliance. Then he became a Horde slave, had his soul ripped in two, put back together in a very unstable state, etc… once he actually got his soul sorted out, well, we saw where he went, and it wasn’t being driven by hatred and prejudice.
I agree completely. I think both are at fault for reasons that are logical on both ends. The Alliance feared the Forsaken as Scourge, and the Forsaken emissaries were slaughtered by the Alliance.
Here’s hoping it goes somewhere. I liked the characterization of the one apothecary in Shadow’s Rising. Came off more like a maester out of Game of Thrones and I think that’d be a really fascinating direction for the Royal Apothecary Society to take.
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Imagine if the Allies in WW2 were like, “No, we won’t take advantage of the German lines collapsing and push towards Berlin. That would be no different than Mustache Man. Instead, we will give them time to mourn their losses and regroup.” Pushing your advantage in a war isn’t a “Sylvanas” thing, it’s a “people at war” thing.
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We are still talking fog of war after the zombie apocalypse right?
The part of the Silver Hand turned Scarlet Crusade and had recruiters stationed in Alliance cities. Anduin straight up talks the Alliance’s prejudices and hatred post WC3, have you read BtS?
The running theme lately is “have you read BtS?”
Look at it from the Human’s perspective.
The Alliance remnant in Lordaeron finds some Undead that are supposedly free-willed and begrudgingly join with them to retake the Capital, but right after winning these Undead turn on them and try to slaughter them to the last.
And we know some survived because one of Jaina Proudmoore’s advisors in Theramore was the right hand man of Garithos who saw the whole thing go down and chances are he didn’t keep the incident to himself.
Yes Garithos was a racist moron and yes Sylvanas probably had little choice but to kill them in order to take the Capital. If they had given it back as promised, the odds are high that Garithos would have used it as a staging ground to hunt them down afterwards. With the Scourge already hunting them and the Alliance remnant doing the same, the Forsaken would probably have been boxed into a corner and either annihilated altogether or be forced to flee elsewhere as a scattered remnant.
I honestly think there was no perfect answer here for Sylvanas and while it was treacherous and cold blooded, the alternative was likely the Forsaken’s destruction. However, I think she made a grave mistake by not only trying to slaughter ALL of the Alliances forces instead of just Garithos but also leaving a Dreadlord alive as her second in command.
As mentioned earlier, there were survivors and the tales they had to tell about the Forsaken wouldn’t have been very flattering at all to the Human kingdoms of the South like Stormwind. So is it really that surprising that when Forsaken ambassadors and messengers started showing up and making peaceful overtures, the Humans of the Alliance killed them on sight?
They’d have been crazy not to, they already showed their willingness to betray and murder Alliance forces en masse when it was convenient to get what they wanted. If anything, they probably thought the representatives sent to them were spies or worse carriers of some awful Plague to be spread in their midst or even insidious servants of the Legion. After all, their second in command was a freaking Dreadlord which is just NOT a good look no matter how you try to frame the context.
I think Sylvanas was a bit naive and overly optimistic if she actually believed the Alliance would have seriously considered diplomatic relations with the Forsaken after what she had done to them.
And on an individual basis, I don’t think the Humans who rejected Forsaken who were just trying to reconnect with their families did so out of some misplaced xenophobia but because they just couldn’t trust their intentions at least at that point.
What would sound more likely…that certain Undead were just able to break away from the Lich King because of their strength of will, or that this was just a newer and more insidious aspect of the Scourge that would use the personalities of those they’ve converted to tug on the heart strings of the living and make them vulnerable to exploitation?
Some might have turned them away simply because they were Undead sure, but I’m willing to bet most did so because it would just be far too big a risk if they were wrong.
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I have read BtS and you know it. But you’re treating some of its contents as being definitive rather than complimentary, and I pointed out that I think that the book largely ignoring the magnitude of Forsaken crimes (even from the perspective of someone who has been victimized by them before) is one of its flaws despite the fact that overall I really enjoyed it.
You’re also ignoring the fact that BtS says that humans overall don’t hold much prejudice towards the Forsaken. Anduin actively probed public opinion on the matter and found that most human resentment is directed at the Horde for exploiting the Forsaken rather than the Forsaken themselves.
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How can I not when Turalyon, Anduin, and Genn have all seen the errors in their ways and are Forsaken BFFs now?