Brooks’ A Good War implied she was already working for something evil rather than for the Horde. I suspect Brooks already knew about the Jailer at the time of writing.
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where was it implied? can you show me?
Lines like this:
- The look in Sylvanas’s eyes gave Saurfang pause. She was more annoyed than he would have expected. If the Horde managed to kill both Tyrande and Malfurion, yes, it would be a great victory that would weaken the Alliance, but the objective was supposed to be conquering the World Tree. That wedge would split the Alliance no matter who ruled the night elves.
Saurfang considered, not for the first time, that Sylvanas wasn’t telling him everything.
That was what war did. That was what it was for: to give civilized beings permission to do the unthinkable. Only then could you achieve the impossible.
Sylvanas had learned that the hard way. Too many others probably never could.
Elune had intervened. Perhaps she had even stayed Saurfang’s killing blow. And she wouldn’t be the only force beyond the Alliance to oppose Sylvanas’s true objective.
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I didn’t read these as proof she was being manipulated. Sylvanas has always been this cold and pragmatic. She holds her cards close to her chest and with Before the storm as a prior release we knew she wanted to defeat the Alliance. Her reasoning (which was logical) was that Azerite would change the very nature of warfare and the Alliance already had the technological upper hand, she says at the beginning of A Good War that she was only trying to even the playing field.
I’m sure it looks that way to you in hindsight now, that she was working for a higher being because we now know she was, but at the time that this was current we had no idea. She was working for herself for her own agenda, whatever that was, it seemed at the time it was for the future of the Horde.
She said things like:
Anger flooded Saurfang’s mind. He knew he wasn’t hiding it well, but he didn’t care. “Are you so eager for another war? After all we’ve seen?” He slapped the stone figures off the table, and they clattered around the war room. His lips pulled back, baring tusks and teeth. It would take a thousand battles—no, a thousand victories—to even conceive of a total Horde triumph over the Alliance. The cost would be devastating. And what would the reward be? To spill some Alliance blood and burn some cities? Oh, how the Horde would celebrate as they picked through the ashes of the homes and loved ones they would lose in the fighting. “You are not Garrosh Hellscream. Why do you want to throw the Horde into the meat grinder again?”
Sylvanas’s eyes did not waver, even in the face of his rage. “If I dedicated myself to peace with the Alliance, would it last a year?”
“Yes,” Saurfang said curtly.
“How about two years? Five? Ten? Fifty?”
Saurfang felt the trap closing in on him, and he did not like it. “We fought side‐by‐side against the Burning Legion. That creates bonds that are not easily broken.”
“Time breaks every bond.” Sylvanas leaned across the table. Her words flew like arrows. “What do you believe? Will peace last five years or fifty?”
He leaned forward, too, his face inches away from hers. Neither blinked. “What I believe doesn’t matter, Warchief. What do you believe?”
“I believe the exiles of Gilneas will never forgive the Horde for driving them away. I believe the living humans of Lordaeron think it is blasphemy that my people still hold their city. I believe the ancient divide between our allies in Silvermoon and their kin in Darnassus is not easily mended.” There was a
smile on Sylvanas’s face. It was not a pleasant one.
“I believe the Darkspear tribe hasn’t forgotten who drove them from their islands,” she continued. “I believe every orc your age remembers being imprisoned for years in filthy camps, wallowing in despair and surviving on human scraps. I believe every human remembers the tales of the terrible Horde that caused so much destruction in its first invasion, and I believe they blame every orc for that, no matter what your people have done to redeem yourselves. And I remember very well that I and my first Forsaken were once loyal Alliance citizens. We died for that banner, and our reward was to be hunted as vermin. I believe that there will be no permanent peace with the Alliance—not unless we win it on the battlefield on our terms. And believing that, answer this, Saurfang: what use is delaying the inevitable?”
By the spirits, she is cold.
Silence hung between them for a while. When Saurfang spoke, his voice had calmed. “Then we should talk of preparing for the next war, not starting it today.”
“We are,” she said. “You are the only living creature I know who has conquered both Stormwind and Orgrimmar, Saurfang. You say a direct attack on Stormwind is impossible with our forces today. Is the same true for the Alliance? Do we have enough natural defenses in Orgrimmar to repel a surprise assault?”
No, Saurfang concluded instantly. He rebelled against that thought, but every counterargument he could think of died quickly. Orgrimmar was more exposed than Stormwind. Its port was outside the city walls and thus was vulnerable. The civil war against Garrosh Hellscream had proved that. It would not be simple to crack open Orgrimmar again—Saurfang had spent years making sure of it—but it was possible, and he knew how it could happen. Draw off our navy, land troops in Durotar and Azshara, isolate the city, begin the siege from two directions, wait for the city to starve . . .“It’s my duty to make sure that doesn’t happen, Warchief.”
“And if it does?”
Saurfang laughed bitterly. “Then the Horde charges into battle and dies honorably that day, because there will be nothing else left for us but a slow death inside these walls.”
Sylvanas did not laugh with him. “It is my duty to stop that from happening.”
///
then she reinforces this at the Battle for Undercity where her and Saurfang clash again, where she says:
https://imgur.com/a/XjrRWuo
We were honestly following who we thought was right. And we were duped by Afrasabi and his team.
Even now at the end of the day she was right. this whole monologue of hers I quoted is right. The Gilneans still hate the Forsaken, the Humans still want Lordareon back, the trolls are on the verge of war with Jaina Proudmoore… this faction war is not over. Peace will not last.
Oh, and since you brought it up as the crutch of your argument, the thing she was keeping from Saurfang was in Before the Storm, she was planning on destroying Stormwind… and raising all the fallen humans to be Forsaken, that was her secret. The Horde doesn’t like the idea of necromancy or Sylvanas building an army and that’s because Saurfang agreed with Garrosh about that.
That’s why her using necromancy at the Battle of Undercity was the moment he defected, he would rather die a PoW than let the Horde use necromancy. (That’s fair, with his personal history with his son tbh, but doesn’t justify her being a villian)
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What we knew at the time as readers isn’t the same as what Brooks might have known at the time as the writer.
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The Saurfang vs Syvanas story was complex. I feel like you are relying heavily on confirmation bias to prove your point.
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if complex mean “Saurfang was to dump to understand that war is …wrong in general”:.then you´re right.
It’s really not that difficult to see the difference between “Hey I think this part would be better with this suggestion” and “Your story sucks so you should die”.
The book is pretty great for Quel’thalian Elf lore. There’s a lot of info about historical events that have happened and how society works. Very useful for roleplayers. It’s why I’m able to excuse a lot of it despite having things such as Golden being unable to resist describing Sylvanas’s parents unicorns in unnecessary detail whenever such a vast description has no importance to the plot.
Writers often write about what they know, and the things that writers often write about can really show their intelligence. Ian Fleming made James Bond partly inspired on himself, having given him a lot of his own habits and traits, and in his books he goes into great detail about how he does things such as how he makes his cocktails and how exactly he likes to eat his breakfast in the morning, which is interesting because it’s believable to the tastes a spy would have and makes it exotic. Arthas and Sylvanas really liking horses just comes off as obnoxious, because no one thinks that to be an interesting part of their characters, it comes off as bizarre and forced because there are a lot of other valid reasons that could be used for motivation than their love for horses. Bond killing a target in a particularly cruel way because the scrambled eggs he had for breakfast were made wrong is believable, Arthas killing his father and wiping out two cities because his horse died isn’t.
The quality of the book really nosedives in the second half. Atleast a couple of those chapters becomes a slog to get through. They went on for too long without anything interesting happening. The entire chapter of Sylvanas talking to her brother’s grave should’ve been cut. Atleast once per chapter she goes on about missing her brother which was painfully repetitive, as we already knew this several chapters before and hadn’t forgotten. It needlessly dragged the book out.
That was such an unprofessional interview too. Golden literally putting things down like “lol I like this :D” in an interview over text. Then she goes on to ignore the works Roux has written and the vast amount of female writers they got for the fairytale book.
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I brought up that Sylvanas was likely lying to Saurfang about saving the Horde as early as the beginnings of 2019, if not earlier, well before the Sylvanas book confirmed it all.
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Honor Horde, If I wanted to play the bad guy, i’d be Alliance
she was lying about wanting to raise the Alliance dead as Forsaken, it was in Before the Storm, her plan was consistent, destroy Stormwind, take the dead for herself.
“Baine, Saurfang, Lorthemar and Gallywix would no doubt consider that Sylvanas had a certain interest in creating human corpses. They did not become leaders of their people by being stupid, after all. But they would also be fighting against the hated humans and would be claiming their shining white city, with it’s neighboring forested lands and bountiful fields, for their own. They would not begrudge her the bodies, not when she handed them such a victory - one both practical and highly symbolic”- BtS page 28
Pre-BFA there was no plan of the jailer, they only had the vauge idea of the Dreadlords inciting a faction war. They probably knew they wanted a faction war that would feed the Jailer but they were propping up Bolvar to be the villian in Legion and not Sylvanas.
Why would she waste all that energy focused on raising new Forsaken, if she was just going to abandon them?
Can you not just accept we were mislead? How much more personal experience and textual evidence do you need?
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Opposite of A Good War, Before the Storm had the distinct feeling that Golden hadn’t been told about the Jailer yet. They were only able to fill in that plot hole with Mueh’zala, but Vol’jin’s story felt even more slapdash than Sylvanas’.
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Would have sided with Garrosh in MoP given the option; and remained loyal to Sylvanas in bfa.
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I mean….the passage does just straight up say she’s keeping information from Saurfang and also mentions having ulterior motives.
And we already know from BtS she’s keeping her plans to destroy Stormwind and mass raise its populace from everyone as well.
Like even disregarding the Jailer entirely, there still absolutely was a sense that she had something else to gain from this war aside from simply dismantling the Alliance in the ‘them or us’ narrative she spun.
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Absolutely, but the difference here is believing if she had more to gain for herself, rather than her doing anything for a higher power.
Her raising more Forsaken may be gleened as evil for you, but it’s not evil from the Forsaken perspective she was only trying to ensure her people don’t go extinct.
Negative bias is a real factor at play here.
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by starting an war and putting her people at risk? The forsaken didn´t die out in a few years because rotting to the grave, but because they were involved in wars and died during this wars.
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My point stands. It seems like there will always be animosity to players who chose to follow Sylvanas.
The Horde is still divided. We will never not get hate over choosing “the wrong” side.
I’m not sure if Blizzard can actually ‘fix’ what they did.
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Depends on the Forsaken player perspective. Deathisfinal was always quick to say that Sylvanas was only using the Forsaken as tools and did not see it as unexpected when Sylvanas abandoned them.
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But i do not attack you as a player and fan but listened the events that occurs and happened
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I think that’s the issue. As much as blizz wants to convince people that siding with saurfang was the right choice, people still sided with a person who was involved in not one, but two genocides.
Which is why saurfang will always be one of the biggest hypocrites the horde ever had
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