-
Anduin became king by right of succession and it made perfect sense.
The position of King is heredo hereditary, not selective like with Warchief. If the new king is not able to cope with problems on his own, he employs competent advisors. This how hereditary monarchy works. -
The first paladins of the Alliance were either knights or priests, so turning from priest to paladin is very much cannon.
-
I agree that Blizzard at times gave Anduin too much unnecessary attention, probably at the cost of others and without making Anduin a more interesting / appealing character. I think we can thank Steve Danuser for this, who is thankfully no longer in Blizzard, but his legacy lives on.
Which you typically donât have to do when a story and its characters are well written. Doing that makes sense until the next retcon happens, and the one after that, and the one after that one.
Enjoy the story however you like mate, my bitterness isnât directed at you. All Iâm saying is that interpreting things your way often ends up with big disappointments. I had to stop caring about the characters as much as I used to to be able to actually enjoy the game.
Iâm looking at the Worldsoul Saga as a whole new series with new versions of the characters to avoid being too disappointed again. Itâs a wee bit harder to do with Anduin because he used to be one of my favourites, and the writers are using the part of his story that I hated the most too heavily to define him for me to be able to not care at all. Iâll grow numb to it eventually
The funny thing is that being the king of the Alliance has never been mentioned to be hereditary. King of Stormwind, yes, but the leadership of the whole faction was very strange for him to get. Varian didnât create the Alliance.
2 Likes
Iâm talking about the Leader of the Alliance, not the King of Stormwind. If I remember correctly, Varian was unanimously chosen by all the leaders of the alliance races. By voting. So it was everyoneâs choice unlike the Warchief title which can only be given by the previous Warchief.
yes, but it doesnât make much sense to Anduin. He never wanted to hold a sword on his own. Besides, he was already able to defend himself as a rogue. Even without his sword, his light magic was extremely powerful.
He is a trained swordsman though, even if itâs only mentioned in the novels. Besides, his big bubble technique that amazed Sylvanas is a typical spell of discipline priests, who are known to hit to be able to heal (and using shadow magicâŚ) Even if his focus is healing, he can fight
Even if he trained, it didnât mean he had to immediately put on the most uncomfortable armor he could find. He did great without any weapons or sword during the Dreadlord attack in Legion. the power of light was strong enough to imprison and even kill demon. Iâm not saying that he should go to the battlefield without protection, but it is clear that Anduin himself doesnât feel comfortable in armor. Forcing him to become a Paladin is a poor choice in my opinion.
Thatâs what happens when devs write a trailer before finishing the story of an expansion. Donât take his behaviour and teary eyes in the BFA trailer that seriously. Armours in WoW have always looked ridiculous, heâs not worse off than others.
Which he didnât become and isnât set to become either. He is a discipline priest who can wield a sword, he didnât take any paladin vow
Not to make too much of a point of itâŚ
He kinda is though, Mostly because he always looks as if he knew how ridiculous he looked⌠Other characters usually go all in on their chosen style, no matter how ridiculous, Anduin always felt like he was wearing a costume.
Not being an artist or an arc critic of any ability, I canât really say why that is (though I guess his cinematic baby face didnât help), but it stuck me from the first, and impressions matter.
On the paladin point though⌠it is kinda sad for fans of the priest fantasy that the devs seem to have no idea what to do with it, and they either just throw all religions together as basically the same, or they just make the priest a paladin, because those guys are about hitting things, and that much the devs can do. There is a reason why the priest order campaign was in good parts an inferior version of the paladin campaignâŚ
I do think forcing Anduin to pick up sword and armor, when it was never his thing, does fit the PTSD arc they are going for now. I just donât think that going for that ever was a good idea anywaysâŚ
Itâs true that he feels self conscious and seems to be the only character in that situation. That may be why heâs a bit difficult to apprehend, the writers put him in a strange inbetween and donât really seem to know what they want to do with him. Or rather, his personality and aspirations change more often than we realize depending on which writer is the lead when he is concerned, a bit like Sylvanas.
I think the disconnect was done on purpose in the BFA trailer, but most of it was nonsensical. I struggle with believing it is fully canon for many reasons, but anyway. The in-game model of Anduin wearing his armour in BFA gave off a completely different image which quickly supplanted the one from the trailer to me, so I donât see it the way you guys do. I understand your point of view though
It is sad because the distinction isnât hard to make for me, thereâs no contradiction in being a priest who knows how to wield a sword properly. Itâs not as clear for the devs though, because they managed to turn Anduin into a death knight aka the antithesis of the paladin, not the priest 
Dark Anduin would be a shadow priest, but Iâd rather not waste time in woulds and coulds
I think it was, just not the way it is now though
Aha, so you mean specifically the title of High King of Alliance as opposed King of Stormwind.
Iâve just rechecked wowpedia and there is a astonishing lack of information about the title of High King of Alliance.
I couldnât find any information about alliance leaders voting for High King position.
The story about how the leadership of a New Alliance was established seems to be a gap of WoW lore. All that I managed to find is that Night Elves joined the Allian because they lost their immortality and decided they needed allies. The horde was cutting their precios forests and thus they opted to join Alliance.
Thatâs because High Kings werenât a thing before MoPs development, and the âTrials of the High Kingâ that were supposed to establish it were mostly cut, with stuff like the âA little Patienceâ-scenario remaining. Before the establishment of this âblue Warchiefâ, the Alliance was supposed to be what the name implies, an alliance of independent peoples. It was a half-baked idea, badly implemented, but since Varian only held the title from MoP, where a war marshal made sense anyways and he was written to be a good pick, through WoD, where the faction leadership was irrelevant, to his death in the prologue of Legion, it was fine-ish. Nothing to get too worked up about.
With Varian there was at least the idea that he had to prove himself in these trials, even if a lot of that had to be added through headcanon. But the idea that the Alliance would suddenly have inherited rulership, effectively making it one empire instead of an alliance of different peoples, didnât follow from that at all, so Anduin getting the title without comment or fanfare raised a few more eyebrows⌠from people who still cared at that point. The High King was, going by tweets, because thatâs how lore is written in WoW, supposed to be the High Marshall of the united forces of the Alliance. A post Anduin certainly never showed the least bit of qualification for, compared to⌠well, any other racial leader of the Alliance, frankly. He basically wasnât just a suboptimal choice, he was the worst one available.
As far as Iâm concerned, Blizzard just notified us that they didnât have any patience or idea to actually include faction council politicing, and the High King title just bestowed the rank of Alliance protagonist on Anduin, the man who could just decide what would happen, making everything his personal drama in the process. And thus the Alliance now supposedly has one Warlord, while the Horde now has an impotent council. How the turn tablesâŚ
My loathing for the way Blizz dealt with the High King issue is only surpassed by my loathing for the way they implemented Void ElvesâŚ
Yeah I heard of those âTrialsâ, I donât find them adding much meaning, because Varian had been already an effective High King / Grand Commander at least since Wrath, he was in charge of Alliance Forces after Bolvarâs defeat at Wrathgate.
For me the most legitimate reference would be to the Alliance of Lordaeron (i.e. âOld Allianceâ), to which the modern Alliance is a successor.
The political leader of Old Alliance was King Terenas of Lordaeron, mainly because
- he created the Alliance in the first place,
- his Kingdom commited the most amount of resources into the war.
The military leader of Old Alliance was Anduin Lothar, he had a clear title of Supreme Commander. He had most experience fighting against orcs, so it made perfect sense.
The (re)creation of Modern Alliance is blank point. I think it was probably Jaina who recreated the Alliance as being diplomatic and being the only strong bond between Night Elves and the rest of the alliance. But Blizzard never confirmed it.
Throughout WoW humans have clearly committed the most amount of resources for the majority of wars Alliance waged, both before and after Varianâs death. Coupled with diplomatic nature of Anduin that would support Anduinâs claim for political leadership (although his inexperience and youth speak against him).
As for military leadership, my best candidate would be Turalyon, witth Jaina and Tyrande being close seconds. Genn - no, sorry, he made too many terrible mistakes as a king of Gilneas.
I think Anduin, just like Sylvanas, has become victim of Blizzardâs stupid obessions with 1-2 characters at the costs of many others. O
Imagine how much better it would be if Anduin were largely a figurehead (a symbol) of Alliance, heavily delegating political decisions to Velen and Jaina, while leaving military in the hand of Turalyon and Tyrande, for example.
Also I am curious what exactly you donât like about VE implementation? To be clear, I donât like it either! As much as I adore Void Elves visuals and their void affinity, I see the story around them was so simplistic, short and badly written, especially compared to Nightborne.
I agree that the trials arenât the point. But they would at least have been an acknowledgement of the extraordinary position they were creating here. I never really mindes Varian as de facto leader of the Alliance (well mostly, there was that time where he just went in and decided the new form of dwarven government, that really should not have been a thing, but anywaysâŚ), but I am very cross with the idea of it having a de jure leader at all.
Basically... everything.
At the top of my hatâŚ
- Firstly⌠the Alliance might have made some "ends before means compromises, but as a whole they were pretty clearly Light-alligned. That there wasnât much of any reaction to inviting a combined group of people in that wasnât only visibly changed by the void, but insisted on keeping on practicing it, should have been a big deal. It wasnât.
- Then there was the fact that their control over the void wasnât actually made very believable either, and Blizzard really didnât care enough to sell it to us. Some random space nomad found Alleria and taught her the secret to kinda mostly controlling void, over a period of intensive training of hundreds of years⌠ok, fair enough, thatâs a special case, maybe. But then she picks up some stubborn amateurs, and they do it in something like a 6-month crash course. Not only does that totally ruin the threat void corruption posed until that point, it just shouldnât be believable to Anduin and friends. The sanity of the void elves wasnât tested enough to let them in where they could do damage. Not the palace, not the Kingâs side, not as part of any plan that requires reliability.
- Then there is the fact that Umbric and friends personally just werenât trustworthy in any way. They followed void research for no reason but their own stubbornness. They rejected their own people and presumably families for it. They delved into the darkest sorces they could find, with no reason to believe that they would do better than those who were corrupted before them. And they ran into the trap that corrupted them with open eyes, only to be partially safed by deus ex Alleria who just happened to look for them at that exact moment. And after that⌠they were perfectly happy to just turn on their own people, and use all the dark horrors of the void against them without a qualm. They are obsessive, incautious and arrogant, incompetent, illoyal and disobedient. And that was before they got the voices into their head that asre supposed to make everything worse, and displayed their cruelty towards their former friends and new enemies. They are scum. Even if the idea of Alleria training void users for the Alliance had merit, they werenât it.
I probably could think of more, but really, void elves were the point where I just gave up on the story.
1 Like
Silvermoon had and still has plenty of people who are unhappy both about Elves leaving Alliance and joining the Horde. There is nothing wrong with leaving your faction, it allies itself with a genocidal maniac. When doing few void elves related quests that exist, you can see that although they like thier homeland, they never felt being part of Horde and despised it.
Theyâre not more disloyal than an average blood elf, but they definitely lack caution.
Both of these points have never been played out in the game. Missed opportunity for at least some interesting quests lines, if not for an entire patch (like it was with Nightborne).
As for the rest, yeah I get your points, thanks for sharing.
Not if you leave it because of that. But that just wasnât the case here. They didnât leave because of Garrosh, they didnât leave because of Sylvanas, they let themselves be kicked out, because Rommath forbade their magic drug of of choice. They didnât decide to fight their people, because what they did was bad, they only started fighting them, when they got offered a place in the Alliance for it. I donât really care, if they can rationalize afterwards that they were never into the Horde anyways. We know their history, and that shows what drove them better than what they can say. They never stood up for any anti-Horde principle, they stood up for their right to do the magic that makes everyone go mad.
So yeah, Iâll stick to my judgement of disloyalty thatâs notable even for WoW. Even though itâs not really an important point for my arguments here. 
They are twice traitors which makes it much worse I wager.
Good donât let the door hit you on the way out. The majority of the elves kept their actual loyalty for 17 years longer then they were part of the alliance.
Alliance literally jailed deserters before. That is a crime.
Sylvanas was the hero that stayed behind while Alleria was busy haying humans and would have died on a forgotten planet against demons.
More elves and even Dwarves keep joining the Horde. Have you ever considered they might have a point?
They did not leave on their will, they got kicked out of Silvermoon by force.
You kick the player out of your team, he later joins another team and you call him ânotably disloyalâ for this? Do you even know what word âloyaltyâ means ?)
As for what they stood for, did you entetain the idea of mixed motives? Because 99% of decisions in our life are driven by mixed motives.
1 Like
Donât mind him so much. Heâs got this blind loyalty to questionable characters. Doesnât surprise me too much though.
He speaks of loyalty yet praised Nathanos, who him and his âQueenâ betrayed all of the horde.
Because they were criminals by Silvermoon law that chose to persist in their criminality. Thatâs 100% on them. So yeah, being kicked out doesnât excuse them from being disloyal in that case. They should have had a duty of loyalty to their people, and they didnât live up to it. And when asked to, they turned against them. You canât tell me they were just trying to be martyrs that took the legal hit for the sake of their people, if they were fine with killing them afterwards.
So I stick to calling it extremely disloyal. They showed no loyalty, when they should have.
Sure. There can be a lot of motives. But the timeline just doesnât fit a âWe deserted because we hated the Horde from the startâ-narrative, so Iâll call that motive irrelevant.
So⌠I might just as well add hypocrisy to the list of their personality failures, I guess.
I was thinking Varianâs election was an event inside comics but now when I try to find it I donât see it. My bad.
What exactly do you mean by their criminality?