Well. Until it wasn’t.
Until Alex Afrosalami got on a stage at BlizzCon and said “Sylvanas did the Wrathgate roflmao”. Until Chronicles Volume 3 made it written lore.
It clearly was initially intended to be a rebel Putress doing his own thing, but then Afrosalami saw a chance to bash a female character and he took it.
This is a retcon of a retcon that I am happy with.
I thought the Afrasiabi claim was strictly cdev and not chronicles
I don’t have the book here, but I’m sure someone can site the specific page that discusses it. It’s in there.
EDIT: Actually, IIRC, Chron V3 just strongly suggested it was Sylvanas, and Afrosalami said “naw, she did it, it’s canon, I wrote her since forever. Sylvanas ordered the Wrathgate.”
So she was always a psychopath.
Neat.
No, not always. The book does a good job of showing how she gets there. It’s a gradual descent and gets increasingly worse as time goes on.
It is a mostly gradual descent into madness, with a few cliffs she falls off, first the murder of her parents, then her brother, then the total collapse of her family, then Arthas and her experiences as an undead.
From very early on there were instabilities in her personality that I think ended up resulting in her coming unraveled, though. She is rash, and short sighted. She makes messes and then runs away to leave others to clean them up. Though she tries to hide it, she has sentimental nature unable to let go of how things were, which leads to deep emotional wounds that she never lets go of.
all this because she never thought to hire a goblin to send a letter to the alliance
TBF, this is Wrath-Era Varian. He didn’t have a Cosmic Flux to give when Jaina insisted this had to be a misunderstanding. He gave no Cosmic Flux when the Alliance hero goes into Orgrimmar and finds out both Thrall and Sylvanas say it was an accident.
I do not think a letter from Sylvanas saying “oops, my bad, Putress did a bad thing. Besties?” would have made a difference in the least.
actually it would have been pre-vanilla era sad depressed varian
I was talking more with her initially “trying” to contact the Alliance
Not always, the book is actually very good showing in how she gets to that point. She also pretends and telling herself that shes unfeeling despite her actions and thoughts clearly showcase that she’s not. The characterization of her is nice and I just wish we could have seen this in game.
The main gripe is the scale of the world is portrayed as. Like going from what’s now the ghostlands to Silvermoon in less than a day etc, but if you can ignore that then it’s a solid book.
Garrosh forces the Forsaken into it and Sylvanas drops the B Bomb to cut off the 7th Legion who Varian sent.
This is markedly less interesting than the Horde version where you go into a pocket dimension some Alliance aligned Dalaran hold outs are hiding in.
Break that, kill and raise them, then hit the Alliance with a sudden new army of undead wizards that forces a retreat. A cease-fire is negotiated with Crowley’s daughter as a hostage bargaining chip.
Then Godfrey ganks Sylvanas with a gunshot to the head and a few valkyr have to off themselves to raise Sylvanas for the 3rd time.
But WoW’s new writers aren’t interested in any Horde or non-human race so, yeah none of this comes up.
I’m guessing that Sylvanas doesn’t tell Anduin about that time she was cut off mid-monologue by a gunshot to the head
Blizz in general doesn’t seem to want us to remember that. Because it would’ve made more sense to put the meeting with the Jailor there.
Because we follow Sylvanas’s PoV in Edge Of Night. But we don’t see what happens to her there. And as SL time is all wonky it easily could’ve worked.
So instead EoN is this retconned mess that only adds up if we decide Sylvanas is an omnipotent character aware of the audience.
Ah, well then that’s a horrible idea.
As you have made abundantly clear, the lands stretched between where Sylvanas claimed her land and where the Alliance live is filled with such danger and so many threats, no goblin could possibly survive. He would be just as eaten by crocolisks and raptors and giant spiders as you surmise the forsaken diplomats might have been.
And then even if this goblin did make it to Alliance lands?
Last time goblins came around, they were working with large green alien invaders for fun and profit, arming the very army that the Alliance was formed to fight. Not exactly the type of trustworthy individual who you’ll trust, even if the note he was sent to bring to you from the undead queen in the north is talking parley.
Goblins were literally allowed in Terenas’ court
A Goblin messenger also would have had access to infrastructure the Forsaken didn’t
Varian is not Terenas, Stormwind is not Lordaeron.
Kinda weird you need me to tell you that.
There are Goblins in SI:7 and Goblins are regularly allowed to come into Stormwind to do business
How many of them are bringing greetings and good tidings from the undead queen to the north?
It’s also not ten years since the goblins allied with orcs to lay waste to Stormwind, nor has a recent revolt among orc prisoners occurred.
You know you’re ignoring all the context. Why?
Keep moving those goalposts
My goalpost remains the same; sending a goblin with a message is dumb.
Keep avoiding the situation, everything around the situation and your own previously established headcanon. But at least do try and remember the difference between Stormwind and Lordaeron, Varian and Terenas.