I’ll totally cede, the Horde absolutely should have abandoned her, and she shouldn’t have been the main antagonist of an xpac, but does anyone here seriously not see her becoming evil as an appropriate or foreshadowed trajectory for her character? By her deciding to continue the undead (forsaken) race in cataclysm, as opposed to like, y’know, not cursing people with undeath, her whole path to being evil was set from there on.
I don’t know how she could have ended up not being completely evil without it being totally contrived and out of character.
They were leaving their options open for as long as possible. They showed her cruel side and they also hinted that maybe she wasn’t as cold and unfeeling as she pretended to be.
I just watched an interesting video about how people relate to fictional characters. One point it made was that the audience will accept almost any change in a character as long as it happens gradually (they used Walter White from Breaking Bad as their example). So they could have moved Sylvanas in almost any direction they wanted, as long as they did it little by little.
I think I could have been neat if she did a full 180. Once she killed herself and saw what was really going on in the shadowlands she realizes all the death on Azeroth is only serving another entity that does not have our interests at heart.
So she becomes the new Jaina, trying to broker peace with people who have no reason to trust her, opposing Garrosh, offering revival into undeath to the other races, and trying to convince them of the ever-growing threat of the Jailer.
Now, this is probably far too much of the change from her original character but I think it would have been neat as opposed to the same old undead are all heartless creatures that want to kill everything or see it rot.
So they could have changed her to be not evil, but why would they have her character do a U-turn, and then also what does that mean for the forsaken? I’m sorry dude, but WoW has stated pretty clearly being undead, of any kind, sucks, it’s a miserable lonely painful experience that’s significantly worse than just being dead, Sylvanas cannot simultaneously keep her race alive, while not being evil, either she’s good and accepts and comes to terms with the fact that when all the undead raised during the third war die off, that’ll be the end of her race, or she’s evil and continues resurrecting unwilling participants.
On top of all this, honestly there was a better case in cata for Garrosh to not be evil than Sylvanas, in retrospect.
I would have thought it would have been fairly easy to put her on a different course at the end of LK. She had accomplished the driving purpose of her life, i.e. getting revenge on Arthas. It would not have been unbelievable that she would reexamine her unlife and her choices and strike out in a different direction.
I think once they committed to the way they wrote her character in Cataclysm, it became harder and harder to change her arc. BfA was the final nail in that coffin. Even now if they try and pull a Kerrigan/Illidan redemption, it will ring hollow.
They can still be cackling mad scientists who hate themselves. And apothecaries developing cures for diseases. And happy-go-lucky adventurers who hang around with Demon Hunters. They can have variety.
For some. Others, like, say, Tehd Shoemaker, adjust pretty well. Some even enjoy it.
No, those aren’t the only choices. In the first place, the Forsaken don’t have to actively kill people in order to raise them. All they have to do is wait for people to die.
“But they’re still unwilling,” I hear you say. Well, not necessarily. The Forsaken starting experience has them giving the newly-raised three choices: Go back to death, join the Forsaken, or go their own way as long as they don’t harm the other Forsaken. That got muddied up by later developments, but Blizzard could go back to it; it was their original vision, after all.
“But they didn’t ask to get raised in the first place,” I hear you say. I have two three answers to that: first, the Forsaken experience does not include the summoning of the soul from the afterlife; we don’t know whether they agreed or whether it was painful. And second, even if it is confirmed that they’re not asked, I personally consider that to be an acceptable level of “morally grey” for the Forsaken.
ETA: Or third, the Forsaken could move toward raising people who give consent before death, like with Zelling.
I think it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t plan on making Garrosh evil when he was first introduced. I do get the feeling that there has been some behind-the-scenes tug-of-war about which way Sylvanas was going to go.
I mean, I can boil down another possible path for Sylvanas pretty simply: “cruel, but protective.”
Given how Sylvanas was protrayed in Legion, it was entirely possible she could’ve gone down a route where she stays cruel and outwardly cold, but is fiercely protective of the Forsaken and by extension the Horde. Imagine a version of Sylvanas who does morally questionable things entirely in the name of protecting and strengthening the Horde, rather than just for the sale of cruelty, evil, or power. A version of Sylvanas who loves the Horde in her own twisted way and grows to be respected and maybe even loved by her people in return.
That could’ve been fascinating direction to take her. She’d have stayed true to herself–especially the way the Forsaken saw her, as their guardian and protector and guide–while becoming a leader who it made sense for the Horde as a whole to follow.
Sylvanas could have absolutely become an interesting, flawed, and compelling leader for the Horde without having to do a complete 180 and become a 100% good, morally righteous character.
With Arthas killed in Wrath, I thought the logical path for her to take would’ve been to become a sort of “savior” of the Undead, whittling down the Scourge forces across Azeroth and offering solace and shelter to all undead creatures who had been freed of the Lich King’s grasp during the transition of power from Arthas to Bolvar.
This would’ve opened up all kinds of new story possibillities for the Forsaken, and also would’ve offered a way for their numbers to grow without having to kill off living people instead. They would also be contributing to the Horde by providing them more troops, and open up more territory for them to claim in areas with heavy Scourge/undead presence.
Of course, they’d still be offering to raise those living troops who had fallen in battle for a more direct way of boosting their troops. (But they’d have to do that in secret, away from the prying eyes of the Horde)
I won’t go into too much detail here as it would greatly change the landscape of Cataclysm (for the better, but that wouldn’t be difficult to do anyway)
If anything, her becoming Warchief at the beginning of Legion marked an UPWARDS turn for her character. She’d just saved (almost) everyone at Broken Shore, and the hope was that the responsibility of leadership is something she would grow into. And be our responsible and pragmatic(if not exactly personable) leader.
Her storylines during Legion at the time seemed like she might have been working on something to help/expand the Forsaken. A way to create more or restore the current ones without needing the Valkyr.
And I’m not entirely convinced that that wasn’t actually the case. And her turn in BFA wasn’t really planned that far in advance.
Yes. Also it was post-Cata, so it was pretty much too late for her at this point to go through a “believable” re-characterization without it being lame and hamfisted.
Blizzard either doesn’t know how to or doesn’t want to write characters that are cruel or monstrous without being outright evil. In the same vein, Garrosh could have easily been a bloodthirsty conqueror of a Warchief without being maniacally evil. Think more Genghis Khan and less Orc Hitler.
Not on the path of irredeemable evil, but certainly not someone I should immediately be able to entrust my life with either. Blowing a horn at no self-expense saved the Horde, true, but it sure as hell doesn’t qualify her to be Warchief by any means.
My money was totally on her becoming the next Lich Queen for a couple of reasons.
She’s always been a marketable character. So is the position of Lich King. Lich Queen Sylvanas maquettes, shirts, in-game toys, hearthstone cards.
It’s in keeping with her overall thematic arc: She died fighting the Lich King, was made into a banshee by the Lich King, Rebelled against the Lich King, dedicated her unlife to defeating the Lich King, and now she has supplanted the Lich King.
The Scourge is bad, but would be worse if allowed to run amok. Death Knights -as we see in Legion- are still up to pretty dastardly deeds, but still fight for Azeroth. Being the evil team member that you’re not quite sure you can trust has been Sylvanas’ schtick in the Horde for a while. Making her Lich Queen essentially lets her be this for the Horde and Alliance. And any time you don’t need her, just stick her on the throne in hibernation mode until the plot demands otherwise: just like they did Arthas and Bolvar.
But then they haad her destroy the helm (but still have some of the Lich King powers?) and run off to the Shadowlands. Now my money’s on her getting conned into becoming the next Jailer.
To me her character was always about finding a home for the Forsaken because she fells a kinship towards them.
Though her people can’t reproduce normally they use the Valkyr to raise more Forsaken for their people. She doesn’t have to kill people to raise them again, there’s enough death to just find random people to raise. Raising random people against their will is at least less evil then all that she’s done.
In an alternate universe it’d be cool to see her as the Queen of the Forsaken where all who don’t want to die can go to and those who seek redemption for things they’ve done in life can fix before moving on.
