If anything the Alliance was irritatingly passive when it came to this. They SHOULD have explicitly stated that reclaiming Lordaeron was their long term geopolitical goal, like reclaiming Stormwind was in the Second War, but they didn’t.
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The Argent Crusade has undead members and is the only group to have had success reclaiming any major part of Lordaeron outside of Tirisfal and Silverpine. One of their oldest and most respected members is an undead, with the title the Revered.
Scarlets are the only group that’s shown any inclination of actual… crusading in that fashion, and they’ve utterly failed every time to actually hold the land they take, none of said land taken having actually been in lands held by Forsaken (barring the monastery). You push them out in the leveling zone of Tirisfal and then they never appear beyond that in Cataclysm until you get to Eastern Plaguelands, where the Brotherhood of the Light promptly gives them a final beatdown.
Lordaeron does have some holy land parallels, it was the primary center of Light worship and the architecture is fairly Byzantine (domes and such) but the only people trying to reclaim the place, unlike the real world crusaders, are the ones who actually lived there or groups led by those who lived there.
All the groups trying to take Lordaeron/settle it have an equal claim, it’s just some (the Scarlets) are more insane than others and incompetent besides.
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It was an allusion to the real life crusades. The suggestion I am making is that the former people of Lordaeron who took up arms to hear that great speech before the battle, weren’t responding like “Oh… huh. He’s right. We totally should take back Lordaeron. I cant believe I never thought of that before! How convenient that we were so close by we could just hop over here the moment the opportunity presented itself.”
Here is Anduin’s first line…
King Anduin Wrynn: Champions of the Alliance, the time has come for us to claim what is rightfully ours!
Anduin, or the royal speech writer believed this or believed that this would resonate with Alliance troops. Either the sentiment was prevalent enough to be politically beneficial to Anduin, or was so entrenched in human cultural identity that even the most pacifist human we’ve ever encountered believed it enough to start with it in his rallying cry.
Not the Argent Crusade… a member of the Argent Crusade. Despite that group being level headed enough to realize that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and assist the Forsaken at the Bulwark, Stephon Marris haunted the Marris stead, waiting to kill his cousin and killed other forsaken to pass the time.
When does he say this? It doesn’t show up in his quotes for the scenario that I can see… granted Wowpedia has a lot to sort through.
Man, I cant remember exactly, Ill look it up and edit. I think its before you get on the boat for the scenario, maybe? Or when you first get there. Sorry.
It’s part of the dialogue box when you accept the Battle for Lordaeron quest
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He patrolled near the Marris Stead because Nathanos was killing humans in the area. He learned about him from Darrowshire refugees.
Ah thank you, okay. More writer brainworms… Stormwind’s a foreign kingdom with no hold over Lordaeron, or claim therein. Unless Andy’s got some Menethil blood going waay back.
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There are an abundance of Lordaeron refugees in Stormwind. Including Turalyon, in fact, who is a Lordaeron noble.
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Also the dude got turbo-killed so using him as the one example’s a teensy bit silly. He heard refugees were getting killed by Forsaken, he went back to his family holdings, ergo well within his right to defend it, but alone and clearly not sanctioned as a result.
And then he died so Sylvanas could have a prettier face to monologue to.
Edit: Reading the page, he actually thought the Forsaken had killed Nathanos and went there for revenge.
Yeah, I think thats a fun thought and possibly a thing they were kicking around. But I think (and this is part of why as I said, the forsaken were a nation surrounded by human enemies that wanted to see them wiped out) The Grand Alliance, or the Alliance of Lordaeron, made everyone sort of Lordeaeronian. Some refugees of Lordaeron-proper fled to neighboring human kingdoms. Fantasy racism kind of makes it a hashtagwearelordaeron situation. Humans believe that Lordaeron is rightfully theirs, not the Forsaken, whose claim to Lordaeron is illigitimate because they are no longer human… sub-human.
The desire to remove the Forsaken from Lordaeron, isn’t rooted in the Forsaken membership in the Horde. Its why the Forsaken joined the Horde.
Scourge. He thought Nathanos was killed by the scourge. Then he heard that his uncle was killing “Heroes of the Alliance” (player characters sent to kill Nathanos) “who sought to restore peace.”
You have it completely backwards. The Forsaken suddenly being “from Lordaeron” as a driving force for them was largely pushed by roleplayers from Vanilla through WotLK and didn’t gain any canonical basis until Cataclysm
The Alliance’s Lordaeronian heritage has always been made explicit and clear from the start.
Conflict between the Alliance and the Forsaken made sense in Vanilla because the Alliance considered itself the political and cultural successor to the Kingdom of Lordaeron and hence sought to restore it to its pre-Third War state, while the Forsaken wanted to build something completely new and different, a Nation of Undeath, on the ruins of Lordaeron.
Conflict made sense because both the Forsaken and the Alliance wanted something different and mutually exclusive.
But then Cata happened, people started pushing the “Forsaken are the people of Lordaeron” thing, and that naturally raised the question of “so why are they fighting the Alliance then” because the main source of ideological conflict between them and the Alliance was removed.
Now the best people can come up with is some kind of superficial “well the Alliance is racist and the Forsaken are nutters” thing to explain why two groups who nominally want the same thing and consider themselves the same people are killing each other.
Perhaps I am not being clear. I’m not trying to say who has the rightful claim. If I thought that was clear it wouldn’t be morally grey.
In this particular quote, what I am trying to say is, the Alliance desire for the Forsaken not to be in Lordaeron, precedes the Forsaken joining the Horde. It’s why they joined the Horde. The Alliance original grievance against the undead, is that they are undead. And that can be justified. They are monsters that eat the flesh of the living. They were members of the scourge. The humans that they were did die. The monsters that they are did make up a portion of the army of the dead that terrorized the humans, before breaking free of the control of the helm of domination.
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Another reason I hate Golden’s writing. People can say thats what cdev wanted, but it has all the same flavor of her other writing.
That said, the Forsaken can believe they have a rightful claim to Lordaeron, the land, without considering themselves members of the living Lordaeron, and Golden’s defectors can be a fluke, or conpletely ignored by the future narrative. The forsaken claim to Lordaeron can be mutually exclusive. In fact, to suddenly make the forsaken compromising and empathetic would ruin the race if not the franchise. It is ok for the Forsaken, even irrationally, to consider themselves the only rightful heirs of Lordaeron. It is believable that the forsaken would believe their fight is one of survival. That the Alliance would, at the most merciful, exile them from Lordaeron. As Anduin said, they believe it is rightfully theirs.
That sounds awesome af
Again though…maybe stop reading into this stuff like that?
What? Its art. Art is nothing if not an interpretation of the human experience. That is to say that if you cant find parallels to real life, or if it can’t offer commentary on our condition, why consume it?
No… I don’t think I’ll stop reading into the entertainment I consume.
Edit: I mean, c’mon… There are two Crusader inspired chivalric orders operating in and around Lordaeron that we’ve already mentioned called “The _________ Crusade” … well technically the Argent Dawn doesnt become the Argent Crusade until they start their Crusade in Northrend but the point remains… crusade references arent a product of my deluded imagination. And Tirisfal was long speculated to be named after Tyr’s Fall, long before the legion weapon quests anyway. There’s holy land/promised land stuff littered through the lore of this game.
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Because its fiction?
Like don’t get me wrong I can obviously see parallels but there’s a line between that and just following head cannon so far it bends lore.