Well this is bad enough on its own I feel. Like, that’s enough to know “this is a villanous turn for a character who is abusing power.”
And I also think that he absorbed nerzul while being lich king so he became the dominant personality even while cursed?
I just don’t see enough evidence to suggest arthas was a good person aside from “holding the undead armies back” which metzen went on record as inventing for the sole purpose of giving bolvar a reason to be the next lich king.
Read the book.
This is written after wc3 and by Christie Golden. Which, fine. At least it’s telling me a source of where all the arthas apologia is coming from.
Can you give me a TLDR of what he does that makes him out to be a good person in this?
Not every character should get a pleasant ending. Life just doesn’t work that way. Some people just drop dead despite being the pinnacle of health. Some people die in senseless and meaningless ways. Some people are heroes but are forgotten since the people left to tell their tale die before they are able to.
Life is chaotic. Just because Arthas was just a prominent and impactful individual in life and undeath, for both good and bad reasons, doesn’t mean he “deserves” a drawn out and impactful end and afterlife.
Yes he was done wrong…that’s kind of the point when you think about it. Uther especially should bear an eternal scar for his role in it and Jaina especially should have tore him to Stygia when she found out.
The real disgusting lore implications is Sylvanas and her redemption. “Tee hee don’t blame me guys…it was my naughty alter ego who did it all…tee hee”
It’s not a redemption b/c she does not ask for forgiveness and submits to the judgement of Tyrande. It’s just catharsis for her character arc.
Totally agree. Arthas is a more interesting character as-is. He and Kael are more fun without redemption.
Wow, really, you mean Arthas already lost his soul to Frostmourne before he took it? Truly this is a mighty blade (I guess that’s the expected level of reading comprehension from someone who thinks the Arthas novel exonerated him)
It’s shifting the narrative from her being a villian through tragic means into yet another corny and cheesy story trope. She should have died as a villian fully believing she was on the right side of this and not getting to dump all the bad stuff on her fractured soul nonsense. Even if her character isn’t explicitly asking for forgiveness, it’s the writers giving it to her and explaining it away.
And holy heck how is it even remotely fair to blame Arthas who was equally compelled and dominated himself and arguably had it far worse being the actual LK and STILL became more heroic in keeping the worst of the scourge and/or the LK’s power at bay through the innate goodness of his own soul and give her a pass?
Maybe if Arthas traded his Y chromosome for an extra X chromosome and named was Athena instead things would have turned out differently.
And yet Kael is getting a redemption or at least a chance at one.
I just don’t agree because I feel like this is lazy storytelling and it’s what they do way too much, you know?
They did it to Arthas, Kael, Illidan, Garrosh and poor Guldan had it happen twice. I’m glad that villains have to, you know, actually reflect and pay for their actions in smarter ways than just getting their heads cut off.
I still feel like sylvanas being a villain in the first place was wasted potential, but it is what it is.
He has a chance, but he’s fighting it. I find that more interesting and more in line with his character.
But the end result is he will likely suceed and pass on/become a venthyr.
A fall from grace based on a person’s own choices and agency wouldn’t depend this much on:
His own choices and agency took him from hero to anti-hero / anti-villain at most. The fact that he was willing to do dark things because he thought the alternative was the destruction of his people is a very far cry from slaughtering and betraying everyone he was trying to protect.
Probably the most obviously deserved redemption arc in WarCraft. Lame their “afterlife” expansion ended this way.
Let’s not get out of hand here
Arthas was cool in WC3 but an absolute clown in WoW
Garrosh has been the strongest villain as far as writing goes
But multiple people tell him the sword is cursed and he doesn’t listen. He chooses to accept the curse. And the curse seems to dial up his existing personality to 10 rather than replace it with a new one.
I don’t think so at all. He murders even people who he doesn’t need to murder in order to trick and manipulate his men.
And I don’t think think Arthas classifies as an anti-hero. I think he classifies as a villain protagonist. Arthas does not do immoral things in the name of a conceived morality. His moral compass changes from “the ends justify the means” (which is anti-hero territory) to “I am damned, but you will never take me down. If you think you can, try it” (which makes him a very straightforward villain.)
Muradin literally reads out the inscription stating it’s cursed and tells him not to pull it at that very moment. He wasn’t tricked, he was just a fallen paladin fueled by roid rage.
Hence my point about being tricked as to the nature of the curse. Because the normal, default assumption is, “this is a curse that will make ME pay a price.” Being willing to take on a curse that you think is going to punish YOU, because you think it will save your homeland, is not exactly the sign of a moral failing. It’s using a moral characteristic of the character (a willingness to suffer for others) in order to trick them into something that will twist them into little more than a vessel for the will of something else.
It dialed down other parts of him to 0. His comments that he lost his capacity to care for things he used to love is not indicative of him being somehow more himself. About the only thing he retained with his Death Knight personality was a propensity for sarcasm.
Yeah, that’s probably his single worst deed. But we’re not in the dark about why he’s doing it or thinks it’s necessary. He believes Mal’ganis is the head of the Scourge, that Mal’ganis was responsible for infecting an entire city, and that without an army to lead to confront Mal’ganis in Northrend, Mal’ganis won’t be stopped. (And the army would otherwise depart).
When a story is seen through gameplay that shrinks everything down and puts it into units, it’s easy to lose sight of just how large a plot point it is for an entire city to be wiped out. He’s after the being that is capable of doing that (based on his flawed understanding). It doesn’t make killing the mercenaries a good decision, but then again, that’s why I would label him as an anti-hero or anti-villain by that point.
After Frostmourne, sure. That’s my point. Arthas’s natural self only made the journey to anti-hero / anti-villain. That’s highly qualified for a redemption story.
There was no natural progression to becoming a straight villain. That was an unnatural jump, accomplished by putting a magic sword in the game, tricking him about the nature of its curse, and telling the audience it took away virtually everything that made him human.
Strongly disgree. His inherent flaw was hubris, and thinking that his way was the best for everybody. He had this flaw even when he started as a good guy. He wanted to be the whole world’s dad.
Except he didn’t know best, and doubled down again and again and again whenever he should have listened to the people trying to help him.
He’s a great character and has a great story, but I don’t think anything ever did him any disservice. People who lived in his era suffered greatly because of him. That will never change.
The problem is too many people seem to like him as a heroic figure because, strangely enough, too much of internet geek culture involves worshipping “hard men making hard decisions while hard” style nonsense
It’s a shame because I really like the character as a dramatic tragedy of one man’s hubris rather than a man who was a victim of circumstance. I think there’s a lot of good warnings and lessons in the mistakes arthas makes. Mostly in terms of egomania.