I 100% agree with you.
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Ideally, it happens as late as possible except for one factor: The problem with anything “Self yeet” or later is that Blizz took deliberate care to retroactively ensure that any debate about Sylvanas’ actions was squashed with a sure answer of her earliest mustache twirling. e.g.: They told us Wrathgate wasn’t a misunderstanding, it was her plan all along.
So, if she was complete, and did these things, then getting back to complete means very little. If she was incomplete at powerslide, and that is why she was “bad” then we never had a Sylvanas worth following in the first place.
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That is such an overly simplistic and black and white morality view on things. Just because somebody does terrible things doesn’t mean there aren’t also admirable parts of them. That there were still bits of the Ranger General in Slyvanas’ character these years that gave her the qualities that allowed the Forsaken and Sin’dorei to learn to work together and the Forsaken found worth following isn’t changed.
Lorthemar more less recognizes this, during BE Heritage, where over the years Slyvanas has become less recognizable to him as the Ranger General in her personality and actions.
You also need to remember that its a lot easier to put up with negative traits in somebody when the alternative is bad as well (ie Baine Peacehoof and Honorless Sadfang).
Sure but no one is making that case.
We don’t know exactly what the reunification means. If the missing fragment is going to be explained as if it is impactful that it was missing, it implies that that her behavior and decision-making might’ve been significantly changed.
Otherwise, if the reunification is not a significant change to her character, what’s the point?
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Ding!
The whole surreal experience of the Maw (and my hat off to Blizzard for this) has really challenged the idea of life and death what a soul is and what can be done to it in ways that leave me feeling disturbed. We’re frequently shown souls dying, dispersed, converted into energy, hammered into weapons and armor, pounded into dust or converted into wraiths. The Jailer’s soul portal is just another one of those things we have to try to wonder about. We’ve yet to get a proper explanation of what that portal he reaches into actually is – except that we’ve seen he pulls souls out of it whenever he wants. To have pulled hers out of that portal implies that Frostmourne and other Mourneblades are linked to that space and can deposit souls they claim there. If that was the why / how of Sylvanas’ banshee curse this whole time then it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine a “Jailer made her do it” chain of logic, or that he can just decide to make her mortal again since that was the theme of his dialogue at the time.
Entirely possible I am leaping to conclusions since there is more to be revealed – but I feel like plot wise this is suffering and we are heading towards an illogical outcome like Sylvanas being redeemed. Interesting as that might be, it would be a gross disservice to Sylvanas. Her arc since the post-WotLK period has been a struggle. She is in the odd position of having gotten vengeance against Arthas but still being eternally cursed, and has nothing else to blame it on. It’s cool to think she never gave up hope for trying to make things better for herself in some way, even if that led her to make what the living would think of as bad decisions – even entirely possible to believe she could drive herself mad doing so.
The logical endpoint of that madness is to essentially become Arthas herself, which would have been a tragic but fitting conclusion of her character arc. Burning Teldrassil is something that Arthas would have done. Every single one of us fully expected her to don the Helm of Domination. The only reason not to at that point is that it would bind her to the same master that bound Arthas. And this is where what’s happening with Sylvanas’ story gets weird on me
We go from one of the most powerful, independent and thoughtful female character in Warcraft who answers to no one and still harboring a deep soul crushing grudge about the whole Lich King thing to blindly and willingly serving Zovaal, who created Frostmourne and indirectly caused her predicament.
Fair to give Zovaal credit here, he can and does persuade Kyrian Ascended to fall from grace and Sylvanas was not exactly a Kyrian to begin with. But still – this is a big enough disconnect that I must wonder WTF she was thinking or wonder WTF the writers were thinking? How could she not have known? Uther knew just by walking past a trace of that magic, and he got off easy compared to Sylvanas. I just don’t understand what her motive coming into this story was, and what she hoped to gain out of all of this or ever saw in Zovaal to begin with. She is smarter than this. It is disappointing to see her reduced to lackey / minion who is predictably betrayed when she had been admirably groomed and prepared over like the last 4 expansions to become this expansions main antagonist.
Dunno if it was already addressed. I skimmed the thread, but am also incredibly lazy.
But Sylvanas’ Soul Fracturing happened when Arthas killed her. I can try and find links to it, but there was datamined content from later in this patch where Bolvar explains that Frostmourne was capable of fracturing a soul under certain conditions.
And people killed this way had that chunk of soul sent to the Maw, where the Jailer kept them. We even go into his vault where he keeps the interesting ones (Including Terenas, Antonidas, and Uther among others).
That said, I think it can be argued that the Jailer might not have started influencing her through the shard until Edge of Night. Up until then, her shard was just one of many sitting in his vault.
It was possibly only atop Icecrown that he discovered her potential.
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Its true that he changed RG Sylvanas into a shadow of herself by twisting and manipulating her soul. Even tho that alone sucks because it fundamentally changed who she was in life, I’m still speculating that Arthas added another layer of soul twisting and manipulation onto what was fundamentally caused by Zovaal. I’m really stuck on the references that depict Arthas going above and beyond to corrupt and trash Sylvanas’ soul.
I think Christie’s upcoming novel will seal the deal for a lot of speculation; additionally I think she will flesh out Sylvanas-Zovaal interactions. I’m kinda torn about how I want his character to unfold. Is he the smoothest talker in the world, meaning he’s convincing or is he the best puppeteer in the world? On one hand he has some really good points and has actually convinced the Banshee Queen; on the other he’s just pulling her strings because he knows her better than she knows herself.
He created her.
My guess is that he played up the victim card and convinced Sylvanas they were kindred spirits.
The current lore implication is that Zovaal used to be “the Arbiter”. And that he sought the Sepulcher to access “forbidden knowledge”. This lead the other Eternals to rise against him.
In fact, Domination Magic was used (or even created) by the Primus to imprison Zovaal within the Maw. (It was only afterwards that Zovaal began to reverse-engineer Domination Magic for his own use.)
The same sort of magic used to twist her soul at the hands of Arthas was originally used against the Jailer.
We still don’t know the details of whatever Zovaal did to earn his siblings ire. But it would have been easy for Sylvanas to empathize with him. Both suffered injustices at the hands of others. Both were made slaves using the same kind of magic. Both saw Life and Death as a flawed system.
It’s why, from at least Sylvanas’ perspective, the relationship was treated much like a partnership rather than servitude.
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I think it has more to do with manipulation than genuine convincing. He created all of the souls twisted by Frostmourne, so he knows exactly how to manipulate them. I think Zovaal went fishing until he caught the big one, Sylvanas. He’s probably kicking himself for not choosing to hone in on her to begin with, she’s pretty much the GOAT.
Oh definitely. I didn’t mean to imply the empathy was genuine on his end. Just that, that’s how he sold himself to Sylvanas to buy her trust.
It was never a partnership to Zovaal. Sylvanas was just a means to an end for him. In a bit of ironic flair, they’re relationship mirrors her own relationship with the Forsaken.
But at least Sylvanas still had moments of genuine connection with the Forsaken. And if they do bring her back to Azeroth, they could play off that to change her relationship with them.
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It could probably work if she becomes what many of her fans thought she was to begin with ie exactly the same without the mustache twirl and more decency
I personally enjoyed her non mother goose approach to her people; it was refreshing and unique. All the other faction leaders were carbon copies, save Sylvanas, until they brought Gallywix along.
I think the “partnership” was also manipulation. It wasn’t until SERVE…serve…serve que the Sylvanas song, “Free Will”; that she realized she was getting played.
So Sylvanas gets to join the scores of other characters who pledged to some grand power like Azshara and Kael’thas, etc.
Except they get to say they were being in character and true to who they were. With Sylvanas we have to accept she’s just that uncharacteristically ignorant?
That’s no fun.
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One problem though. The EN raid happens after that as Suramar happens after the 4 other zones and you had to go into the Emerald Nightmare to save the Arcan’dor. That quest has been changed now for gameplay reasons (try getting into the raid on a leveling character 
). That is important since Ursoc dies there and he made it to Ardenweald just fine.
Being reminded of this still upsets me.
Anyway, the split soul during frostmourne power slide still makes the most sense with this retroactive change. From everything we have gleamed, a split soul is nothing more than splitting a soul along personality traits. She lost her empathy and more good natured personality traits and became psychopathic in the literal sense of cold, calculating and manipulative without any pushback from the other traits.
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