Why do night elves shun their troll heritage?

Thank you for informing me in the details.

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Besides the Trolls that are currently playable, they have always attacked everyone they’ve come across without diplomacy. Night Elves have attacked first sometimes but there’s plenty of examples where they let people explain themselves afterwards.

I have to take up the trolls’ cause here as well, as almost every Azeroth race does. The trolls just had the misfortune that the narrator didn’t write from their perspective.

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I don’t think any particular post so far actually answered the question. Why nelves are in such a denial to accept their troll ancestry? They believe they are Elune’s creation and that it’s heresy to claim that they came from the troll to the point they were willing to kill for saying that.

https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=7365/staghelms-requiem

So I suppose knowing their attitude Cenarius kept his mouth shut because it wouldn’t be Grom first who would slay him.

Why they shunned them? Hard to say it’s not like trolls don’t have an impressive culture, spiritual religion, and impressive combat ferocity as well as a good grasp on magic.

I guess maybe Elves thought that trolls were too ugly to be their ancestors?
Or they were that far up their own behind believing that they’re godsent that any implication that they don’t have divine ancestry is a greatest offence to them?

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Compared to their own culture which they had at that time, it was just a bad joke. We even know why they view the trolls as lesser bloodthirsty barbarians. Chronicles tell us that this idea originated many thousands of years ago and there was no reason to change it until today.

It is not something that is a new development, but an ancient remnant of an Imperial World Power era. Similar things can be observed until today for example in old European states.

Let me give you a simple example: “Who’s afraid of the bogeyman?” Nobody! “But what if he comes?” Let’s run away"

Such a simple child’s example still reveals old thoughts from another time, a time when the nations of Europe dominated the world, it survived and children still sing it today without realizing what it actually means. Even many adults still learn it to them today.

A variety of reasons, both in-universe, and meta. After the whole “summoning the Burning Legion” thing, the Night Elves decided that the Azsharan way of doing things perhaps wasn’t the best. Some is the Worf affect. If a threat needs to seem credible, the immortal, 7ft tall, avatars of nature and divinity make a good target. Or students, if a younger race needs to seem wiser or more knowledgable beyond their years.

No problem. It’s from Chronicles, but it’s summarized here, if you want further reading.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Kaldorei_Empire

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you could still be… smart! Even without continuing the same thinking, but being smart has nothing to do with the values.

The general rise of the Kaldorei Empire, and night elf society prior to that, or even during, before Azshara took the throne, is pretty steeped in… well, lack of lore, but it could come down to neither trolls nor night elves actually knowing they were related, and by the time the inference was made, there were so many differences and so much enmity that the idea was heinous.

Keep in mind that the night elves first rose in a pretty isolated spot, and likely went through several generations before they started expanding, and by then were fully kaldorei. By the time Cenarius first encountered them, they more than likely only had a cursory resemblance to trolls, and remember that both Keepers and Dryads resemble night elves, lending credence to coming from a different lineage entirely.

To put it in perspective, people today, in spite of having photography for over a century, and paintings before that, and written records, don’t always know what their ancestors looked like, or where their family history comes from. By the time the kaldorei had much longer lives, they’d probably gone through how many generations?

So for a long while it not only would have seemed to be a ridiculous concept, but also insulting to both trolls and night elves.

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Bad joke? Bad joke is your entire comment. Troll empires were described to be impressive, they still had to have engineering knowledge to construct the stuff they did as well as land management with aqueducts, various channels and rotating structures.

If you’re using RL comparisions then you should know that plenty of modern engineers praise a lot Ancient constructions for their precision and high quality of craft.

The point stands, trolls were not comparable to apes or cavemen, they were already a nation with established achievements and heritage.

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And the night elf empire was the most impressive empire ever created by mortals on Azeroth. Miracles that are unsurpassed to this day. the peak of civilisation, the night elf empire. even called the birthplace of civilisation.

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I thought it was Draenei?

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on azeroth…draenei were unknown in this time :wink:

Listen, you may not like it, but there were reasons why the night elves looked down on other races. Not good reasons, but civilization-wise, the Night Elf Empire represents the peak of civilization that is unsurpassed to this day.

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But they were still not impressive enough to become leutienats for the Sargeras like eredar did. So I guess they’re a bad joke compared to them.

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Then read WOTA again; Sargeras even drops, if he had known the night elves, he would have taken them.

The night elves had all the advantages that exist, a divine entity that took care of them, access to almost infinite reserves of mana and magic, physically rich in terms of natural talents, strong senses and a high level of intelligence. It must also be said that they were beneficiaries of their circumstances because with the night elves, everything came together to create such a high civilization.

All this pushed them extremely, of course.

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Yes but, prior to becoming High, Blood, and Nightborne Elves they were all Night Elves and the Night Elves attributed their existence to Elune. So any reference to their Troll ancestry was pushed by the way side and possibly forgotten a long time ago.

The founding members of Quel’Thalas may have shunned her but they knew who Elune was because they were Night Elves as were those in Suramar. They knew of and still respected Elune, the temple was in that city and unlike the Sindorei, most of those in Suramar that survived the War are still living.

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I don’t think it’s really as common knowledge as many people assume. We as players tend to assume that whatever gets presented by some in game is “common knowledge”, but most are just factoids.

There’s probably a little meta resistance to the idea as well. Trolls have a lot of indigenous West African/Caribbean/Pacific/Pre-Columbian Central American coding. There’s already a very long history of undermining the validity of those cultures. Elves have more European and East Asian coding, the civilizations and cultures of which many people could go on about for hours. The fantasy of being an elf is usually rooted in references to those latter more glamorous cultures than the latter.

Heck, we can see a lot of the same language often used in real life being used here in this thread.

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Isn’t it because Elune?

Elune transformed them didn’t she through the Well of Eternity? So to embrace their troll heritage is embracing a time before Elune?

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That’s actually the take I go on in my RP.

Basically, being too far up their own butt to accept they could be anything other than Elune’s grand creation.

Not to bring in too many real-world politics, but I play it off like a creationism v. evolution argument. Yes, the scientists and anthropologists of the world suggest that humans evolved from apes, but there’s also a religious text which suggests divine design. Night elves would be more of the creationists. After all, how can a rock found by some silly dwarf hold a candle to the divine word of Elune?

Plus, one could argue that the kaldorei see the trolls as too primative. Sure, Zandalar is a great and mighty empire, but all the rest have crumbled, or subsist of stone walls and thatch huts (which is Zul’Farrak, Zul’Gurub, and Zul’Aman). They’ve got giant tusks like an animal, and warts all over. Voodoo is a dark, primative magic. They are just a little too fond of sacrifices too, and Loa worship pales in comparison to the veneration of Elune.

Granted, it’s the pot calling the kettle black. Elune’s priestesses are also known for being warriors too. Certain Elune-worshiping rituals including burning the flesh of their fallen enemies. The kaldorei live in wooden houses and venerate Wild Gods, which are the same thing as Loa. And their empire is all but fallen. Mix that in with a little pre-WotA imperialism, “our noble empire v. the savage natives”, and 10,000 years of near-divine duty while the troll empires fought themselves to death, and… Stereotypes will stick.

It’s just a stubborn sense of, “we’re far better than those barbarians, so it’s ludicrous to suggest we could ever be related to them”. Just like real life, “how could humans be related to monkeys? we’re so much better.”

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Elven supremacy & pride,

Re-create history and erase some history that would hinder their cultural “might”

Re-applied the belief they came directly from Elune to maintain the status quo,

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It is a bit strange to me.

The discovery that Elves are decedents of Trolls came from Brann Bronzebeard and the League of Explorers. Which is an Alliance aligned group. Yet, it would seem the High Elves and Blood Elves more embrace it than the Night Elves.

My assumption is that the vast majority of Night Elves assume it to be propaganda meant to discredit Kaldorei divinity as Elune’s Chosen people.

I mean, put yourself in the figurative shoes of someone who has been told they were the special divine being chosen by a Goddess, and some ugly, hairy, short-stack comes in and says you are actually decedents of these warty, tusked beasts.

I wouldn’t believe him.

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