Yeah, between a whole bunch of dynastic changes, the split-off into France and the Holy Roman Empire, the complete erosion of the feudal warrior-elite as the societal backbone post-Italian Wars, and, perhaps most importantly after the split with the HRE, the French Revolution, I don’t think modern day France is much related to the old Frankish kingdom other than that the latter is the first, clear organisational definition of ‘France’ as an entity
I don’t think that or celebrating the birth of the nation you live in as a concept is particularly related to colonialism or celebrating colonialism and imperialism (especially when it’s as far back as France’s for example!) though; that’s stretching the definition of those things so thin that the mere concept of nationhood or even a people is colonialism and/or imperialism which is both silly + makes literally every single country and every single people colonialist and imperialist
You’re right, both countries went through multiple dynasties and changes of regime, but why should that matter? If France/Hungary was a constitutional monarchy with descendant of Clovis/Árpád as king, would that mean they’re colonizers when those descendants weren’t the ones colonizing anything? Similarly for Drustvar, why should it matter that Waycrest leads it?
IIRC, first settlers of Kul Tiras landed there around 2700 years ago. Clovis lived 1500 years ago.
If put into RL context, Kul Tiras started being colonized when Rome was founded.
There is a pretty stark difference in how things in Europe shifted and changed vs how both Africa and the Americas were treated during colonialism.
That’s more of an issue with WoW’s writing. Blizzard really likes to put things over massive distances in years for no reason beyond “its the ancient past”.
Blizzard simultaneously be like “and then nothing happened for thousands of years” and also “we have experienced fifteen world-ending threats in the last five years, one after another, without pause”.
It’s also kinda crazy how Azeroth has only made a single technological leap the last 3-4 years, and prior to that we had the same kind of cultures, societies and technology going back to fantasy Pangea.
I’d definitely attribute this to the complete lack of understanding of the concept of the passage of time Blizzard writers have, tbf, but either way it’s more than long enough for the Kul Tirans to just as easily be able to claim they have roots to the land or whatever as the Drust though (I guess the Drust have them, literally, but they compensate for that by being objectively evil and reprehensible)
I fully agree though that ‘Kul Tiras’ is about as much of a colonial nation at the current point in the timeline as, say, my own country of the Netherlands is a ‘Baltic island people’s colonial project’
As an aside, it raises an interesting predicament. I know it is obvious that the game is called ‘World of Warcraft’ but that is very much the case and it is always going to involve conflict in some form. Not always between the Alliance and the Horde, either.
So naturally, that means ‘something’ is always going to be reduced to fodder for the sake of quest objectives.
As much as I appreciate nuance and depth, I don’t think it needs to be present absolutely everywhere all of the time. Furthermore, being a fictional fantasy setting means that it does not and should not always adhere to modern day real world morality absolutely all of the time.
Would it be nice to see more consistency, especially when accounting for major story beats? Absolutely. Though I think it risks eroding away a lot of what makes games like this enjoyable in the first place if every single quest/quest chain is scrutinised down the tiniest detail.
It would mean they’d have some native ancestry, distant though it might be.
Given how colonisers typically act with native populations that might not be a point of pride - though that’s probably a little too heavy a topic for Warcraft these days.
I like to think in a more happy version! So perhaps they’re descendants of the Drust that sided with Ulfar, instead of descendants of what you think might have happened.
lol no. We’re a few republics and revolutions (revolutions with a plural S mind you) past that. And while the name came from them, yes, they never conquered “Francia” as an entity since it’s not going to exist as an entity for a whiiiile after that. We could blame the romain for the invasions too, since at the time of the franks invasion the civilisation in place is “gallo-romain”, not just gaulois anymore.
You’d have a better case with the treatment that had been given to our regions and regional languages but even then it’s not the old franks so much as centralised Paris trying (and succeeding in some cases) to make the other languages disappear.
(We do, and have a for a while, have a problem with how central Paris and its region is but it’s a topic for another time. One of the two languages of Brittanny survived, and there’s efforts for those in the south.)
The Drust also aren’t the original natives of the land, as they heavily implied (and later almost confirmed it in an interview [1]) that the Drust are an off shoot of Vrykul who settled the isles and developed a new culture in isolation. There are no native people of Kul Tiras; just a series of settlers claiming the land as their own.
Also the original Drust co-existed with the Kul Tiran settlers in peace, and it was Gorak Tul who started the war to exterminate them, corrupting their old ways in the process. Many Drust sided with Waycrest against Gorak Tul because of the existential threat he posed by meddling with Thros. After he was deposed, the Drust continued to live in peace with Kul Tirans, and intermingled with one another.
Settling of Kul Tiras was not an imperailistic movement.
[1] Non-Corrupted Drust spirits use Vrykul models.
That being said, modern day Kul Tiras is a colonial power with many overseas territories according to the novels that contributes to them being the wealthiest nation in the world. When Genn started having dreams of turning Gilneas into a colonial power to rival Kul Tiras under the pretense of redrawing maps following the annexation of Alterac, and he began planning to expand into Kul Tiras’s colonies, Daelin threatened to conquer Gilneas and turn the country into a colony. Genn backed down and his dreams of a Gilnean colonial empire died in the crib.
