The thing is, it seems in Shadowlands her goal was related to the Jailor and the afterlife, or something. But she started a war in Azeroth beforehand, killing people and sending them to the Maw.
So hypothetical theory topic. Imagine Sylvanas won in BfA.
Would she still attempt to defeat Bolvar afterward and open a portal to the Shadowlands? Like, was her goal really something to do with that? In this case she would have a large amount of Horde troops and may have raised Stormwind as undead. What would she do with these?
Here’s what I’m guessing:
Most of the Alliance would be turned into undead and most of Azeroth would serve her like a Lich Queen. But not everyone would be undead. Goblin cities like Booty Bay would remain as they always do, but anyone who tries to be a major authority like Alexstrasza or KirinTor would be turned undead or made to serve somehow.
After this though, its hard to say what she would actually attempt to do next.
Sylvanas main goal with the Fourth War was to spread death and ensure that the Jailer got plenty of souls flowing into the Maw. Thus she wouldn’t have most of Azeroth serve her, as every soul she kept on Azeroth was one less that went to the Jailer.
It’s likely that a connection between Azeroth and Shadowlands would occur if Sylvanas won, either via her defeating Bolvar or by Zovaal being powerful enough to open the way himself. And a Sylvanas win, would be Zovaal being who she thought, and him giving everyone the true freewill that she felt they all lacked.
Maximizing deaths during the war was her goal whether she “won” what would come to be called the Fourth War or not, as each death fed Zovaal’s army. Even when N’zoth arose as the dominant threat she was betting on the Alliance and Horde still dying in droves to feed the Maw by throwing their armies at the Old God and his minions and getting slaughtered en masse.
If The Shadow Lands processes every single soul from every world in every reality in existence, even the total extinction of life on Azeroth would represent a totally irreverent increase in the amount of souls entering the maw.
Doesn’t seem like a good plan. She’d need to start a brutal war on a few dozen planets or something.
Theoretically the souls Sylvanas provided by fomenting conflict on Azeroth may have been weakening the Veil into Death there in particular, allowing Zovaal to provide her the boost in power with which she could overwhelm Bolvar and tear open the Veil completely.
The Jailer’s plan was ultimately very Azeroth-centric (what with his use of the World Soul-draining machine that Arthas apparently had the Scourge built under Icecrown Citadel without realizing what it really was), so causing excess deaths on that planet in particular may have played into him needing the breach into the Shadowlands to be physically located in Azeroth in order to ultimately use said machine.
It may be worth noting that had Ner’zhul or Arthas been successfully compelled to follow through with Zovaal’s wishes, then whatever they specifically did to breach the Veil for him would have likely been preceded by the Scourge similarly causing a global surge of mass deaths by way of Scourging people all over the planet.
Sylvanas’ goal was to remake reality itself, with the Jailer.
Had she won the Fourth War, Azeroth would’ve been a ghostland, every soul possible sent to the Maw to empower the Jailer’s forces. Events would have proceeded normally, from defeating Bolvar to break the crown, to stealing sigils to enter the Sepulcher of the First Ones. The Jailer would’ve drained the World Soul of Azeroth, and used that power to remake reality. Or maybe it was one of several World Souls he needed, the details aren’t exactly clear cut on what the specific next step would have been, but re-making reality was the Jailer’s end goal, and Sylvanas wanted a fairer afterlife than what the Shadowlands had to offer.
Even as BfA ended, I thought that maybe there was a sliver of a chance that :
Sylvanas initially planned to conquer Azeroth with the Horde, and then turn its combined might under her banner to free herself from her obligation to the Maw - and save us all, along the way, just as a side effect of her desire for liberation of her contract.
Like, her plan was for the Horde to crush the Alliance, with her as Warchief, unite the Factions, and then storm the Shadowlands under the guise of our benefit, but really to free herself of the pact she made with Valkyr.
That ended up kind of happening but not really? In the end, we did storm the shadow lands, overthrow the power she was obligated to, and then Sylvanas basically traded her pact with the jailer for a pact with Tyrande.
A Sylvanas win in BfA would have looked different than one in SL because I’m very sure the whole Jailer thing and unmake reality etc only became her goal and was written as an explanation after BfA launched. Remember in SL when Dansuser said they hadn’t even written/decided the ending of the very expansion we were in? I’m sure one of the major issues at the office that went unsaid since the lawsuit stuff (rightfully) took precedent was likely the sheer amount of changing direction and altered plans likely making work a living hell of uncertainty for a lot of people.
A win condition for Sylvanas is different even between the start of BfA and six months in. And that’s if you buy that they planned BfA as it was from the start and didn’t cobble together pieces of multiple half-finished expansions to try and make something they could sell.
BfA Sylvanas? Whose thoughts we actually saw since she was a PoV character in Tides of War? Her win condition was explicit, a red Kalimdor and a blue Eastern Kingdoms. It doesn’t make much sense, of course, but it’s there.
You may be onto something. I’ve always thought the Jailer was invented in the second half of Legion—around the time when the “deal with Helya” scene happened. The shift in presentation of Sylvanas at that point is striking, and it continues into BfA. But then, there’s no hint of the Jailer in BfA, when Sylvanas still wants to raise all of Stormwind as undead. So maybe they had decided she was going to turn extra-super-duper-evil already, but they hadn’t decided why.
Although she was misled by the Jailer, Syvanas’ plan was always to destroy the fate forced upon her and the Forsaken. She wanted them to have freewill to choose their own destiny whether it was to remain undead or move on to one of the infinite realms of the Shadowlands. Her goal was just, although her means are questionable.
It wasn’t like she ever tried to find a way to change the fate forced upon her and the Forsaken. She only thought of them as arrows in her quiver. It’s not like she stopped Garrosh from using the Forsaken as cannon fodder at Gilneas because she cared, right?
Sylvans’s whole narrative was she had to convince herself she didn’t care despite all her actions going against that, Although meta wise we know this is cause one writer wanted her dead an another didn’t, so they played tug of war, leading to this being the only way to salvage the character
