She is a filthy traitor who signed the peace treaty against the desire of her people for vengeance gainst Kul Tiras. She is unfit to lead and should be violently overthrown in a rebellion that executes the traitor queen for betraying her own kingdom. Then we attack the alliance again and purge them from this world like the filthy vermin they are.
Their people will be enslaved, their leaders killed and their cities burned. Death to the alliance. Always. Lok’tar!
With what army ? You kind of want to kill 99.9 % of Horde, because traitors or lazy
Typical neonazi clown. kill this, kill that, kill everyone. Pathethic
What You gonna attack people on street for wearing blue shirt ?
Talanji cool. Wanting retribution for the siege of Dazar’alor is 100% legitimate but engaging the Alliance back in the days of Shadows Rising would have obviously ended with what’s left of the Zandalari Empire utterly destroyed.
It will probably happen in due time. But before that they need to rebuild and make tons of cool Troll babies
Talanji is not Rastakhan. He shouldn’t have died. Period. That he was killed off like that is alliance bias.
Rastakhan was an amazing character. Imagine having him in the Horde!!
If Rezan was still around the Alliance would have been defeated without laying harm to the king. But that didn’t happen. Because Blizzard has alliance bias.
No. Next topic.
Yes. Not next topic. Talanji needs to die. And be replaced with someone who is actually willing to take the fight to Kul Tiras and bring an end to Jaina for good. We don’t need traitors and weaklings in our ranks.
Get out then. <3
No. It will be Thrall, Talanji and Baine who will be executed for their treachery. All weakness will be purged from the Horde and then we will rise again to destroy the alliance for all time!
Are you implying that her strategy is going to be repopulating the Zandalari a lot, rebuilding their fleet and swarming Kul Tiras or the Alliance with a big naval/land invasion?
That Troll strategy doesn’t work against a coalition of other races…since the Amani and the Troll Wars 
so if the Zandalari want their revenge, they must wait and act alongside the rest of the Horde in a possible future faction war. Even if they repopulate and rebuild the fleet they will never accomplish anything without the support of the rest of Horde races.
He was an old-school Troll so he wouldn’t have joined simply for the presence of the Blood Elves and also Undead who the non-Darkspear old-school Trolls generally despise. It’s even dubious he would have simply been a Horde ally in a partnership.
Sure, he was a cool King, but way too old-school for the current present politics of the world at the moment. Not to mention that the main thing that made Rastakhan so cool is that he lived so long among all Trolls…and even if it was granted by the Loa, we know living for a long time is a feature of the elven races first and foremost…
Rastakhan was the very best. His daughter is a disgrace. Her accepting the peace treaty makes her unbearable to lead the kingdom.
Talanji did not sign any peace treaty, nor did she give up on her vengeance. Read Shadows Rising.
But unlike you, she is smart enough to know that revenge is a dish that is best served cold. It would earn her nothing to strike when her army is weakened, and she won’t throw her people into the meat grinder to achieve her goals.
That’s a sign of wisdom, not weakness.
Fleets can be rebuilt, and the Zandalari are still strong. Her time will come.
He shouldn’t have died, true, but that’s not Talanji’s fault and thus, does not support your crazy argument at all.
Well yes that’s what I meant ! Right now Talanji needs to focus on rebuilding, repopulating, regaining confidence from the population and learning new military skills from the Horde. That’s a prerequisite for any operation, after what she lost to the siege and the Widow’s Bite drama.
I disagree. He was old-school yes, but the game made it very clear he was willing to work with us, even before we saved his life, ended the Blood Trolls threat and fought the traitors. I’m certain after we did all that he would have agreed to ally or even join the Horde.
The Trolls’ visceral hatred for Elves seems to be a thing with the lesser tribes mostly (and even then, it’s not systematically the case)
Rastakhan was a failure, and there isn’t much reason to miss him. His centuries-long reign as king brought the trolls exactly nothing. The fall of the Drakkari, the defeat of the Amani and the regression of the Gurubashi all happened within his tenure, and that’s just the troll stuff we know about. He let himself be used as a puppet by the council he chose for himself. When Zul brought him prophecies of doom and suggested that urgent action was needed, his reaction was essentially “Eh, whatever, do what you want with the troops, just do it without me.”. When his daughter begged him to react to the growing threats within he empire, he couldn’t be bothered, and when his daughter brought him the Horde, essentially making him choose sides in a world war, he shrugged and took it as it came. That lead to his murder by his advisors, which would have been as final as such things tend to be without literal divine intervention. After his god then told him what a loser Rastakhan had become… he proved his military genius by leading his god into a trap that killed it. And when things got worse, Rastakhan, who had realized how bad his judgement had been… made the judgement that binding the throne to a death cult without consulting anyone was a great idea!
So yeah, the guy was a loser without any drive and not exactly much brains or cunning. People might like him as a flawed character, though I’m not sure I can understand why passivity and stupidity would be endearing flaws here, but the trolls pretty much lost nothing when they lost him. His arc as a result of his actions could have been a bit more interesting, though, I’ll grant that.
Now, if Talanji, who is willing to throw out any traditions, and who brought the Zandalari into the faction politics that brought the Alliance to their shore, is much better than him is another question, I guess… But I just don’t like the glorification of Rastakhan.
Rastakhan was a long anticipated character and he had a great personality, he was enthusiastic, laid back yet proud, swift to go to the front lines at the end of his life, and his writing gave him an aura and charisma (that’s a personal appreciation of course). His ultimate dialogue with Greymane is a good illustration of that I think.
Also remember that we know very little of what he did before MoP. The various dialogues in Dazar’alor clearly establish him as one of those long-reigning kings who earned legendary reputations due to what they did in their primes, but who ended up falling in stature as they got older, growing overconfident and complacent, passive, and relying too much on their past deeds. Apparently he used to be quite the guy.
(Let’s be honest, nothing could have saved the Drakkari. Also, turned out the pact with Bwonsamdi wasn’t such a bad move, as Shadows Rising showed.)
As for Talanji, she had no choice but to step into the faction politics. She needed external help to save her people from the Blood Trolls, and the Alliance had captured her and imprisoned her in the Stormwind Stockades - presumably because she sought to contact the Horde for that reason, or maybe for what the Zandalari did in Cata/MoP ? Anyway, point is the Alliance made sure the Zandalari would engage into faction wars.
Well, I’ll agree on the charisma. And like I said, there could have been a great character arc in it to make him a respectable character. In the end there was none, though.
I can only judge what we know. And all we know is that Rastakhan was politically inept, slow to act and easily fooled. And knowing that the Zandalari pretty much revered the institution of kingship as divine providence, and thus revered their rulers, doesn’t really change that. But sure, he could have been a different person in the centuries before we met him. He could have been a great leader. But when we met him, he wasn’t. And what the Zandalari lost wasn’t the guy he might or might not have been 200 years ago, it was the guy he was in BfA.
Also… the trouble with not knowing is that it could just as well have gone the other way. He might actually have been worse before, with a halfway decent PR team. We don’t really have any reason to assume we know anything about how he was before.
Didn’t she have a choice? It’s not the Horde armies that saved Zandalar, it’s the quest content which was mostly about securing the help of the Loa. It was done by champions, not by armies, and I while those champions were from the Horde, I really don’t see any reason why Talanji would have assumed that they would have to come from there. Except maybe Zul’s prophecy’s and trusting in those isn’t really something that would recommend her over her father.
And yeah, after the Alliance captured her she had no choice anymore. But since she had already made the choice before that happened, I don’t really see why that matters.
Yep. That’s the biggest gripe for many fans, that Rasta had been teased for so long, turned out to be an actually charismatic character ( despite his obvious flaws ) just to be killed off in the second patch.
Considering that Zandalar and Kul Tiras are basically the same stories in bfa ( nations at the brink of ruin, inert leaders listening to bad advisors ) it was frustrating that unlike Katherine, Rastakhan did not get the chance to set things right, at a time when he had already proven that he was able to learn from his mistakes.
Now of course, the moment Talanji was introduced it was clear that he would probably not survive the expansion, and that’s why some disliked Talanj’s character from the get-go and, unfairly, blame her for his death.
We should have been allowed to keep them both. Alas…
Not really, no. It was a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation. And in the end, Talanji secured the survival of her kingdom.
That’s true, but you’ll agree with me that the help received from a handful of champions being interpreted as receiving help from the entire faction they represent was what happened for almost all allied races (Horde-side at least, idk about Alliance AR). HM Tauren were recruited by mostly Baine and the player character, Mag’har were recruited by Eitrigg and the player character, Vulpera were recruited by the player character single-handedly… The involvement of individual champions equals the involvement of the entire faction, in BfA. Maybe that’s due to game limitations, maybe to bad writing, maybe to both actually, but that’s it really. Zandalari and Nightborne were probably the only races whose recruitment arcs involved the Horde as a faction and an army, if only a bit.
Before the Allliance captured her, she sought help from the Horde. She didn’t want to become part of it, as far as we know - it could have merely resulted in trade relationships, non-aggression pacts, up to maybe an alliance… But certainly not fully engaging into, as you rightfully called it, a world war that was none of their business. We know that before the Stormwind Extraction, the Horde and the Zandalari didn’t exactly have the best relationship. They really had no pre-established reason for such an allegieance.
Then the Alliance captured her, and the Horde set her free. And then the Alliance raided her capital, destroyed her fleet and killed her father. After that, yes, she didn’t have a choice anymore.
The whole idea behind the siege of Dazar’alor was admittedly to ruin the relationship between the Horde and the Zandalari. It was stupid and of course the operation didn’t have the expected consequences, as acknowledged by Anduin. But it really shows the Alliance’s undeniable responsability in the Zandalari joining the Horde, from the beginning to the end of the arc.
Sure, but since I’m talking about her motivations, I’m not sure how relevant that is. If this could be done with some select champions… well, that kinda undermines the inevitability of going for the Horde here. If she needed an army, going there makes sense. If she needed a task force, it’s hard to believe that the prospect seemed impossible within Zandalar. Especially considering she had no idea about the Old God stuff going on before leaving.
Well… “as far as we know” is sadly limited once again. Blizzard failed to explain their setup. But really, considering Zul was with her I feel the most likely explanation is that she didn’t really know what she was trying to do, either. She just stuck her head into a war zone, an enemy to both factions in tow. No matter what she was trying to achieve… it doesn’t look very well thought out from where I’m standing. I don’t know how much of that I can blame on the character and how much on shoddy writing, but that really doesn’t improve things now, does it?
I mean… your own argument includes the admission that she didn’t even have a reason to assume that the Horde would be anything but hostile to her. So even if she couldn’t have forseen how her act might have been seen by the Alliance, it still doesn’t seem like a move that instills much confidence in her leadership skills.
The Horde used Zandalar as a base of operations and was welcome to the high levels of the ruling pyramid. Their ships and their soldiers fought side by side. For all intends and purposes they were already allied before BoDA. Trying to make Rastakhan’s death out as some deciding factor here is about the same level of big brain Blizzard thinking as calling the whole affair “the Fourth War”. It makes sense because they say it does, not because it fits the facts.
If I shelter you, defend you and equip you and still am a surprised Pikachu when your enemies see me as your ally… well, I might want to have my mental faculties checked. Talanji’s flight from SW, accomplished through highest level agents of the Horde which were seen by the Alliance commanders, ends with an Alliance fleet destroyed by Zandalari. Heck, they let the Goblins mine the Azerite that was explicitly needed as a weapon against the Alliance. That there was any doubt that these nations were enemies before BoDA is just plain cow poop.