What was the goal?
jailer, legion, old god. take your pick.
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To create an army strong enough to defeat the legion. He was convinced azeroth would never come together to fight them and lose
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He was just crazy. Frostmourne corrupted his mind and soul, became nothing short of a villain
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Was originally like what Memberberry said –
Also he wanted to be king, that ruled over all. The best of the best, it was a kind of hubris he carried with him.
… However Shadowlands thought all the lore that people loved and revered sucked – Decided to retcon most of it, and make their own mumbo-jumbo to both make themselves look cooler / better, and also in the process use it to justify their shoddy writing moments throughout BFA and the random ‘as we go along’ stuff throughout SL.
So yeah, ultimately it ended up being a whole mess and like what Cladriah said:
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Arthas’ reasoning can still work in the light that none of them were directly controlled by Zovaal.
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All Zovaal could do was switch on the Auto-Pilot(by removing the Driver from the Front Seat by taking advantage of his desire to save and avenge his Civilians which Ner’zhul forced him to kill) without realizing how that was a bad idea.
The Auto-Pilot for Arthas’s Body was trained to seek rulership and reject all outside influences from the Passenger’s Seat(an unwanted side effect of Ner’zhul telling him to get rid of Arthas’s Soul Fragment) and once that succeeded the Auto-Pilot had no motivation besides to seek a World of Strife(in his own words) protected from the Legion(whom he was trained to oppose).
Ner’zhul’s motive was just to get a new Body before feeding the World Soul’s Azerite to the Maw I.E. Zovaal’s Plan A which would release him from the Maw and get the sigils the acquiring the last of which would result in him getting the flow of Souls to fuel his plan for Zereth Mortis.
Of course thanks to Arthas’s Auto-Pilot rejecting all outside influences he had to resort to Plan B which switched the fuel used for each phase of the plan(Azerite for feeding the Maw was switched for the Soul Flow and the Soul Flow for feeding the Sepulcher was switched for Azerite).
Zovaal was quite displeased that Ner’zhul delayed the plan for the sake of getting himself a Body which backfired and thus punished Ner’zhul severely and yet he mistook the flaw to be letting his minion have free will when he should have simply let Devos do her own job rather than grab a Champion for infiltration like Ner’zhul did.
Devos and Kel’Thuzad were both well on their way to fulfilling Zovaal’s goals without him needing a grand infiltrator yet he sent Sylvanas to grab one anyways. He was as dense as Ner’zhul which was not surprising since he was the source of Ner’zhul’s visions(which included Ashbringer striking Frostmourne) when he was the Lich King.
Ner’zhul would have been better off if Zovaal didn’t show him visions of the Future and would have gotten the plan(send Azerite to the Maw) done immediately(causing Archimonde to suddenly realize upon learning about the opening of the Maw into Azeroth that Sargeras is not the true power behind the Nathrezim and start making deals with Zovaal). Because Zovaal showed him visions he made the exact same mistakes that Zovaal would later make.
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Arthas hears the voice of the Dark Lord. Ner’Zhul whispers to him through the blade he wields. What does he say, we wonder? What does the Dark Lord of the Dead tell him? You could write a whole novel about this. Too bad Christie Golden didn’t do that.
But to ask why is also missing the point. He lost his soul and the last vestiges of his sanity, and had very real voices in his head on top of that.
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“All the numberless kings, resting in their graves. Even kings must kneel before death.”
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By that time Arthas decided to make himself Lich King by killing Ner’zhul and the last bit on innocents in him, his only goal was more power. Zovaal, may have been whispering in his ear, but it was him of his own freewill who decided to do it.
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That’s just perfect. Where’s it from?
This isnt totally true. Sure he wanted power but apparently a small portion of his old self still influenced how he justified it. He thought a world ruled by the undead would have “no more wars, injustice, mortal flaws” and also he thought it would be more capable of protecting itself from the Legion.
Ner’Zhul wanted an army vast and powerful enough to defeat the Legion, and thus claim his revenge upon them. Arthas, OTOH, was just insane. Arthas wanted to ‘save Azeroth from the Legion’ in much the same way Anakin wanted to ‘prevent his loved ones from dying’. He was borderline crazy when he picked up Frostmourne, which promptly sucked up his soul and made him a full-blown sociopath via doing so. After a series of (what he saw as) personal betrayals, he decided that with his new-found might he’d just make everyone in the world his truly loyal undead slaves so that no one could ever say ‘No’ to him ever again.
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It was purely for power. The portion of his old self you talk about was represented by the emaciated child at the table with him and Nur’Zhul. He could have fed the child. Nurtured him back to health. Instead, he “chose” to kill them both to be Lich King and gain more power.
The emaciated child is called the last fragment of Arthas’s Soul in the Novel not the last of his motives and as the Chronicle Vol. 3(the latest Lore which overrides all previous Canon contradicted) itself states Arthas maintained a remnant of his old motivation even without his last 2 Soul Fragments(one of which was cut out with his Heart).
Chronicle Vol. 3(which as I stated trumps all prior Lore including the Novel) also stated that Ner’zhul survived being stabbed and had to be guilt-tripped into submission which explains why Arthas had to cut out his Heart to get rid of Matthias Lehner after he thought he fed the last fragment of his Soul to Frostmourne.
Mourneblades that steal Souls always leaves a fragment of Soul behind so in order to remove said Fragment it must be isolated to a specific Body Part and cut out(as was done with Matthias Lehner once Arthas’s Body on Auto-Pilot discovered it). In order to kill Ner’zhul the Helm of Domination had to be broken by Sylvanas which sent him to the Maw to be punished by Zovaal for getting usurped.
A Body on Auto-Pilot would retain their Habits but not the Feelings backing them. If it had a habit of seeing benefits to what it does then it will continue to do so without any actual attachment to this motivation.
Eventually the motivation will break down over time without the Soul.
Without the Soul the Body of Arthas may have continued to justify his actions at the start but as the Final Raid showed his motives plummeted to seek strife forgetting why he begun his invasion upon his awakening in the first place.
Arthas was on the verge of forgetting desire to save his people in favor of sheer vengeance but remembered right after he uttered his desire for revenge.
After he took up Frostmourne he had begun to forget why he took up the sword before being told that the thing claimed his Soul upon which he had begun to remember his old motivation only to start wondering if it even mattered. This was after his Soul was divided into the Soul Fragment in Frostmourne and the emaciated child Soul Fragment in his Body.
The fact that Arthas wondered if saving his people mattered despite remembering his motivation showed how little control the Soul Fragment had over his Body at the time. The Soul Fragment shrieked in terror over being tricked into losing part of itself while the Body’s Auto-Pilot wondered if the whole thing even mattered.
After he(due to his Body’s Auto-Pilot being in control) removed the rest of his Soul(by having Frostmourne steal one half while ripping the other half out with his Heart) entirely he started his war with the justifications for it only to completely forget about them and be consumed by the very thrill of the war he started to the point he desired war for war’s sake.
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The passaged was from Chornicles that was AFTER Arthas had dealt with Ner’zhul(and presumably his younger self) The entire point of that passage was to show that he wasn’t totally evil. Or more so that the values he had in life still existed but were twisted(remind me of a certain banshee queen but i digress).
And while there might be a revival from people wanting “pure irredeemable villains” I find the fact they wanted Arthas to be more complex to be a better reading of him. That while he did want power he still technically wanted what was best for the world(in his own very twisted way).
Arthas never dealt well with people who disagreed with him. What better kingdom for him than one composed of mindless undead that would never talk back?
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If he wasn’t before, he certainly was after he murdered the last of his own humanity.
That’s the theme of the opening Litch King cinematic. Arthas is twisting the lessons and virtues involved im rulership taught to him by his father.
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But he wasn’t. Even after that we know that he still had some part of his humanity(like keeping Jaina’s locket).
And he considered himself right. That like Villains like Sylvanas, The Incarnates, the Jailer and Sargeras they all considered whatever they were doing as justified. That they were all the heroes of their own story