Remember the Broken Shore? Where the Horde retreated, and people like Genn thought they had been left by the Horde, and specifically Sylvanas, to die? Well, considering SL lore, seems like he was probably right. He couldn’t know that he was, but he was. Sylvanas’ allies sabotaged the Horde to kill Vol’jin, and Sylvanas blowing the retreat was probably much more about creating tensions to eventually start the fourth war, than it was about saving the Horde.
Did Blizzard pull another Proudmoore here? Where hindsight kinda justifies the paranoid warmonger’s position? They seem to keep doing that.
Could be spun, as a self fulfilling prophetsy given his exploits in Stormheim and the whole Arathi incident. Even if he was right that Sylvanas was malevolent and emotionally unstable there is no universe, where antagonising her will not make the problem way worse than it otherwise would have been.
But given the current implied direction i don’t believe that they will have Sylvanas directly involved in Vol’jin’s death or commit to any more condemnations, which are not locked to specific perspective like Tyrande.
That’s what we thought before, but if Sylvanas was aware of the actions of her allies here, that’s just not it. The prophecy would have been fulfilled without any prophet, so it’s not self-fulfilling.
I thought they had already implied that she was, considering they alluded to the fact that she was an ally to the Jailer for quite some time and used her tenure as Warchief to further his goals. I guess it wasn’t explicit, but… what’s the alternative? That she knew that there were plans to make her Warchief, but didn’t know that it would involve Vol’jin’s murder? That she was trying to create a war to funnel souls to the Maw, but actually tried to act for the good of the Horde on the Broken Shore for some reason? She had an active part in what transpired. There isn’t much room for plausible deniability, given what we know.
Thing is. The only source we got on Sylvanas and Jailer going way back was an Afrasiabi interview, where he also implied she was behind the Wrathgate, which was effectively a coup against her and way before she was even supposed to know that a Jailer existed. If we take that interview as wholesome canon then it causes so many plot holes i don’t even want to think about it.
Now then. I know that her inner monologues from BfA’s pre-xpac materials are an absolute meme nowdays, but it’s what we got from her perspective. There is no suggestion that she ever learned of Shaw’s replacement or that her decision had any real difference other than the Aliance’s feefees, which she even flat out tells anduin, as something she herself believes to be true. She wasn’t exactly happy about becoming the Warchief either, according to her own thoughts.
Giving Blizz a lot of benefit of the doubt in Stormheim she was still on the “Bulwark against the infinite” quest, from Cataclysm, with the caveat of running out of options and more importantly Val’kyr. (we still don’t know the Helya terms lol) After that best we can do is speculate about the sequence of events and implications. Sometime between BtS and BfA she presumably found out about the Arbiter being wrecked and got a new offer from the Jailer, but directly this time, which would solve the miserable unfair afterlife for everyone problem, on the afterlife end of things.
It’s not like we don’t get them if we ignore it. Vol’jin’s death and Sylvanas’ ascension to leadership were orchestrated by #TeamJailer to make Sylvanas Warchief. That only makes sense when they were quite certain they would be able to use her as an ally. But okay, I have a hard time thinking of anything, but do you have any idea for a timeline where she joins the Jailer after the Broken Shore, presumably through Helya, I guess? That’s somehow the time when the Horde became nothing to her, before that she was seriously trying to help? Her cooperation with Varian in the Legion cinematic was genuine? That’s one hell of a character twist in a very short time, if that’s true, and quite a predictive masterstroke by #TeamJailer.
I’m not sure if that’s giving Blizzard more of the benefit of the doubt than accepting their muddled messaging on Genn would be.
Sylvanas’s problem BfA onward is that she is basically a sentient plot device. That’s the unfortunate reality we’re stuck with and no amount of mental gym is going to change that.
The picture we’re given in the Vereesa thing, from the tales of Azeroth is that Sylvanas has been manipulated basically from the moment she got turned into a Banshee, with Jailer getting her Kyrian Uther equivalent part through Mueh’zala’s treachery, from Ardenweald. Then upon freeing herself from direct control she soon after subjugates Varimathras, who stays with her, as a triple agent and right hand. When Varimathras’s coup fails, Arthas dies and Sylvanas commits suicide Jailer goes for plan B, where he convinces Sylvanas that the afterlife is nothing other than blackness and torment, with the Val’kyr coming in to save her conveniently. That sets her on the Eternal Bulwark quest. Now i don’t think that conceptually making the case that her inner circle always had a Jailer agent is a bad idea. (namely Varimathras and the Val’kyr) Because there always was the looming suggestion of an ulterior motive, in the framework.
The only place i really see as plausible given the information we got is sometime between the Before the Storm book and the War of Thorns, in terms of her starting to take an in the know active role, because she is thoroughly convinced that, at this point that the current Shadowlands are beyond saving and proceeds through the events of BfA, under that premise she internalises that Azeroth side events don’t really matter given how screwed the Shadowlands are so any price would be acceptable.
Sounds a bit implausible to me, but to be fair… so does every possible explanation Blizz left us with. I guess we’ll see in march. But I would still maintain that if Sylvanas did know during the Borken Shore, and I still believe that makes most sense, the messaging about Genn’s overreaction would be muddled by it.
Ideally you could look at both sides of it and see where they’re coming from. Greymane was emotionally justified, in going after Sylvanas, because of Liam. But there was a slight Legion sized elephant in the room, where he sabotaged the whole operation get Aegis and nearly got everyone killed, before the zone got a chance to properly start. Meaning that there should have been reprocussions, even if we count only the reckless endangerment of Aliance personel.
So… if we look at Legion with the knowledge that Sylvanas was probably on team Jailer for quite some time, maybe even since Cata, then why did she even needed to make a deal with Helya? Both of them literally worked for the very same boss.
Probably it wasn’t even a real deal, other than giving Sylvanas the lantern in order to enslave Eyir, getting her own personal revenge against Odyn in the process, Helya probably just informed Sylvanas that, since the Arbiter was dormant and the machine of Death was broken, or was going to be broken soon during Legion, it was finally time for Sylvanas to become an active agent of the Jailer, so she probably explained her (almost) all the details and objectives of the Jailer’s plan, what was the true reason she was made Warchief by his other minion Mueh’zala (Sylvanas looked surprised for a long time just after Vol’jin named her Warchief, and she even cursed him a few times because he put her in this position “in the spotlight” where she didn’t like), also Helya informed her what the Jailer exactly needed Sylvanas to do from now on…so before the meeting and deal with Helya, Sylvanas was probably only loosely affiliated with the Jailer, or maybe just a spy/sleeper agent (so, just a potential asset) for him on Azeroth, but nothing more than that, she probably was not privy to almost anything about Zovaal before that point, which would incidentally explain why she has her own agenda but she still cares for the Horde’s lives as she sounds the retreat and tries to save them heroically on the Broken Shore, she also seems genuinely sad that Varian died, etc etc…
Then after Helya “recruits” her and Sylvanas switches from passive to active agent reminding herself of her “deal” (not the deal with Helya herself, but her own deal with the Jailer and the Nine Val’kyrs after the death of Lich King Arthas), and when even her last plan to achieve immortality for herself and at the same time a future for the Forsaken as a race crumbles when Genn breaks the lantern and frees Eyir (damn Genn, it’s all your fault ) , then only at that point Sylvanas loses all hopes and becomes a nihilistic type of villain (“nothing lasts”), she doesn’t care about the Forsaken/Horde/ any living beings anymore sending as many souls as she can into the Maw during a faction war (yes, for this reason she would have burned Teldrassil regardless if Saurfang had killed Malfurion or not, despite she later claimed that it was Saurfang who “forced her hand” to make the Night Elves and the Alliance bleed in some way after he chose to spare him) and then Sylvanas starts to see the world as simply a prison that people need to be freed of, and the afterlife as unfair and without free will that needs to be remade, so only after that point she’s fully in cahoots with the Jailer blindly believing his plans and following his agenda, and only then she starts to get more and more power from him as well …
) , then only at that point Sylvanas loses all hopes and becomes a nihilistic type of villain (“nothing lasts”), she doesn’t care about the Forsaken/Horde/ any living beings anymore sending as many souls as she can into the Maw during a faction war (yes, for this reason she would have burned Teldrassil regardless if Saurfang had killed Malfurion or not, despite she later claimed that it was Saurfang who “forced her hand” to make the Night Elves and the Alliance bleed in some way after he chose to spare him) and then Sylvanas starts to see the world as simply a prison that people need to be freed of, and the afterlife as unfair and without free will that needs to be remade, so only after that point she’s fully in cahoots with the Jailer blindly believing his plans and following his agenda, and only then she starts to get more and more power from him as well …