Nothing was vague. Everything was crystal.
A fallacy. I didn’t say that Anduin’s status as Lothar was retconned, but rather his status as the last of the Arathi and Thoradins line. The implication here is that no one else remains.
And that was hardlore, not flavor lore.
Nothing was vague. Everything was crystal.
Literally is vague because saying someone is “last of their bloodline” is just a BS statement because get this, people do spread out. Especially Thoradin who had a huge family, according to the warrior legion hall, and didn’t leave Strom’kar to his children, yes, plural, because his bloodline will rule, not the one who wields the sword.
A fallacy. I didn’t say that Anduin’s status as Lothar was retconned, but rather his status as the last of the Arathi and Thoradins line. The implication here is that no one else remains.
And that was hardlore, not flavor lore.
That was never Hardlore, that was assumed lore. That was written in because when Anduin Lothar was made, Thoradin was hardly ever written a true back ground. Warriorlegion hall showed us he had a big family.
Anduin Lothar is part of that big family. He was ASSUMED to be the last, but now we know a branch of the family left and split off. Who knows, maybe the Emperor of the Arathi Kingdom is a Lothar.
Does it really matter that much?
I honestly don’t get why people care about this. I don’t get why you care about it.
You don’t know what lore connection does or does not exist because it has not been elaborated on. I don’t get what’s to be mad about here. Maybe wait and see where it goes instead of getting pissed off over nothing?
And cover for what? She was never advertised as a Lothar. It came in the middle of the storyline. Her being a Lothar just means one thing, the Thoradin bloodline lives on.
She is also considered an embarrassment to her family, the Lothar family, it seems. She ran away. According to the warrior Legion hall, Strom’kar was kept by THoradin because he wanted his bloodline to rule, not the one who wielded his sword, or I would be king.
This means, assumption wise, The Emperor is a Lothar, and Faerin is considered the black sheep of the family, hence why she ran away.
Maybe WC2 Lothar didn’t check 23andme to dig up every last relative from the past 2000 years to see if any branches of those hundreds and hundreds of people were still alive. Maybe his 1996 internet didn’t work well enough to do that.
That’s equally bad if not worse.
In the old lore, Lothar was considered the last of the Arathi bloodline, which was the reason the high elves ended up joining the original Alliance (this being a retcon from War2 where the Alliance rescued a bunch of rangers and Terenas used that to convince the elves to join).
The existence of some branch that went somewhere else is an afront to this since it retroactively makes the high elves look like even bigger a-holes for leaving the Alliance in War3 (since they used Lothar’s death as an excuse to leave). Having someone named Lothar is just utterly contrived since it would presuppose every marriage of that branch of the family since the split had a clause that the couple of use the Lothar name no matter what, on top of being an obvious attempt to play on nostalgia. This was one of the instances where a brand-new character would be warranted instead of attempt to ride on Lothar’s name.
Aye, taking real life into account, with my own story, I found out that I have bloodline going all the way back to spain. They even have the same surname as I do, who’s family was raised in Central America into North America.
In the old lore, Lothar was considered the last of the Arathi bloodline, which was the reason the high elves ended up joining the original Alliance (this being a retcon from War2 where the Alliance rescued a bunch of rangers and Terenas used that to convince the elves to join).
That still happened. That didn’t lose its meaning because a branch family lived across the planet.
The existence of some branch that went underground is an afront to this since it retroactively makes the high elves look like even bigger a-holes for leaving the Alliance in War3 (since they used Lothar’s death as an excuse to leave).
You are getting confused AF right now. The Branch family left with a bunch of other humans and High elves to explore the other side of the planet. They literally got lost and the Arathi Empire on our side thought they all died off. They were lost and stuck behind the storm. They literally just came back 20 years our wow player character time. When Anduin was a child in Vanilla wow, that was when they got stuck underground, a small part of the Arathi empire of theirs.
The High elves of our continent would have not known that another whole other Lothar bloodline was out there. Why would they?
Having someone named Lothar is just utterly contrived since it would presuppose every marriage of that branch of the family since the split had a clause that the couple of use the Lothar name no matter what, on top of being an obvious attempt to play on nostalgia. This was one of the instances where a brand-new character would be warranted instead of attempt to ride on Lothar’s name.
I don’t think you understand the implication of Faerin being a Lothar. If you haven’t played warrior, you would know that his bloodline will rule. If a Lothar branch survived beyond the storm, they would be ruling. Faerin is considered the black sheep of the family, the one they wanted to hide away in a Library. She ran away because she didn’t want that. So the Lothar family THRIVED in the Arathi empire away from the 7 kingdoms. The implication is that Lothar is probably the Emperor.
Not an afront that you claim. Not contrived, an expansion because we knew from Legion that Thoradin had a big family. Anduin Lothar being the “last one” was kinda contrived for a bloodline of the first king of humanity. Someone, somewhere had to survive. And it did. Faerin isn’t even considered to be the best of her family.
Not at all. No one knew they existed. Anduin Lothar was the last direct descendant of the old empire that we knew of. Now we know different.
This is precisely why this title is so special and not just some “BS statement”.
In Tides of Darkness, his word carries special significance because of that.
Your personal devaluation of this lore source makes it no less canon or at odds with current lore.
The usual excuse. No, that’s wrong. When the lore was written and they said “he was the last” then it was meant that way. If you want to tell me that whoever wrote it 20 years ago had the ulterior motive of finding other descendants somewhere out at sea, you’re trolling me.
This was confirmed once more in Chronicle Volume II. You will now claim that Chronicle has an untrustworthy narrator and is based solely on assumed lore, as Danuser stated. To which I reply, “But that is not how it was sold.” Chris Metzen advertised Chronicle as hard lore on Amazon. In other words: Danuser has retconned Chronicle’s status as hard lore. We have a retcon chain.
Lore that is based on a retcon is no less a retcon.
there is no possible way the elves could have known about the new arathi empire, the fleet vanished, never to be seen again and the sea of storms was deemed impassable. those guys were in isolation long enough to turn their entire population into half elves.
The high elves upheld their oath as far as anyone knew until about a week ago. They didn’t know another branch existed, neither did anyone else here
Another false conclusion. The condition for saying “Now we know that it is different” rather than “it was rewritten later” is that it was already intended as false or incomplete information from the start and was then “revealed” at some point later. This is demonstrably false.
When someone says something like that, it feels like that they’re trying to gaslight the other person. Not cool, man.
No no it would not have been, the Byzantines never considered themselves Byzantines, they were Romans long after Rome fell.
he was the last descendant of Thoradin left in the eastern kingdoms, but the arathi empire is ruled by Thoradin’s direct line, the Lothars in the new arathi empire are minor nobles according to Faerin
no it isn’t, Thoradin had a huge family, they spread out all over the place thats how branches like the Lothars exist at all
Perhaps you should address my actual arguments for why I believe renaming would have made more sense.
That’s the retcon, yes.
See other posts for sources.
you think it would make them more like the 7 kingdoms that split off from the Arathi, but that’s not what they are.
they are the direct continuation of that empire, hence the comparison between the western roman empire and the eastern one.
unless Thoradin’s surname is Lothar no it isn’t
“We know different” as in the characters in the story know different. And notice they aren’t making a big fuss about it? Just Anduin remarking that Lothar was one of their greatest heroes. Not getting upset about how it rewrites history, or that his legacy was a lie. Be like Anduin.
Well, the other seven kingdoms have named themselves, so the comparison with Bzyans is not entirely appropriate.
One would expect a kingdom with no ties to Arathor and a sizable population of half-elves to keep things similar to Stromgarde. But that’s merely a side issue. I would have thought it more consistent, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter because, in this case, it’s just a name.
If the Lothar family goes back to Thoradin, then yes. If there are two branches, they will both eventually go up together and back to him.
This is meaningless to me as a viewer/player when deciding whether or not it is a retcon.
I am.
I lament the loss of my original lore, just as Anduin laments the loss of his light powers.
Nah, just kidding. It’s not that important.
People might say: It’s a retcon, deal with it.
And then I’m like: Yo. 
But if you want to contest it, I will surely contest it back.
They didn’t, at first, they introduced her independently as just Faerin. I thought prior to the reveal she was interesting, they handled the reveal well, and after it I was even more intrigued.
What I would ask is why WOULDN"T they make her a Lothar? Anduin Lothar is long-gone, through Faerin we get more lore on his house and the Arathi, which I’m all in favor of.
I really have no idea. Yeah they kind of handwave it by saying she’s some distant branch, but the entire point of Lothar was that he was the last of his line, which is why the elves agreed to send help for him and only him. It would be like if in Lord of the Rings, Aragorn just happened to have a cousin or something who was also in the lineage to rule Gondor.
The explanation Faerin gives doesn’t even make sense. Lothar was descended from Thoradin, the King of Arathor, even if her family lost power how could she possibly be unaware of the significance of the name? It would be like if I had the last name Caesar and was like “oh is that an important title or something?”
Maybe retconning Lothar being the last of his line would be forgivable if making her a Lothar serviced something for the story but… it doesn’t, at all. Literally nothing about her character, or the plot changes if her last name is Smith. The only one present who even knew Lothar was Alleria, and she doesn’t even comment on it. It just feels like a cheap reference for no reason.