In hindsight TBC was really just a disaster for lore consistency from the start.
Edit: Garithos is entirely a baffling writing decision that really doesn’t make any actual political sense the minute you dig deeper or think harder about him.
He didn’t have any actual ranking
His only political sway was being the son of some destroyed town’s mayor
Everyone, not just the Elves, under his command suffered and wasn’t really a huge fan of him.
Kael’Thas outranks him militarily and politically as the direct descendant of Anasterian, a previous founding member of the Alliance, so could have immediately seized control of his forces and instead marched to Stormwind to talk to an actual representative of the Alliance.
Garithos would have been executed on the way to Stormwind for treason against not only the Lordaeron crown but the Alliance as a whole.
The Dalaran thing is??? Completely nonsensical??? I don’t even know how to talk about it, I guess Dalaran just wanted to side with some random town mayor’s son over a member of their Magi Council.
Shows up for 10 minutes of Warcraft 3 and is immediately never spoken about ever again in any context. The Garithos Enigma.
Garithos makes great sense in the apocalyptic aftermath of the Scourge invasion. There is barely any structure in the lands because almost everyone is dead/dying/undead so of course a warlord of his caliber would find it easy to claw his way into leadership amidst the chaos.
This entire process does simply not exist during the Third War in the northern part of The Eastern Kingdoms. Dalaran goes along with incarcerating a massive chunk of the blood elf population because things are just that dire, fear has completely overruled logic following the destruction of their city and the loss of their leader.
The only thing that doesn’t really gel with me is that more non humans did not desert Garithos’ ranks.
I guess he uh. . .needed them to be ghoul food? Considering that’s what ultimately happens to everyone under his command, he just turns them into Undead food.
Yeah, he’s in command due to circumstance, not competence. He is simply the highest ranking survivor of the Alliance military after Lordaeron has fallen.
Alleria, missing.
Sylvanas, dead.
Vereesa - married to Rhonin, a member of the Council of Six - was the last remaining Windrunner, and thus a major player to be the next ruler of Silvermoon in the event the Sunstrider dynasty vanished from the face of Azeroth for good without a successor being named.
Vereesa twisting Dalaran to her own power-hungry whims happened in MoP. And I don’t think it’s a great stretch to say she did it to Kael either.
Is that entirely headcanon? Yes. But it’s the only thing that makes Vereesa interesting. So therefore it’s canon now.
Least of all because the elves directly affected by Garithos’ actions went on to become the Sunfury, more of whom probably died in Northrend, Outland and Quel’Danas than returned home to Quel’Thalas after TBC.
Garithos was legitimately a Grand Marshal of Lordaeron by the time of Lordaeron’s fall, it wasn’t a title and rank he simply claimed.
His father was a baron whose reputation and legacy within the larger Kingdom of Lordaeron was so stark it mostly facilitated Garithos’ rise to the high command.
This is an issue with Warcraft 3 lore clashing with the modern WoW lore. During Warcraft 3 there was nothing of Lordaeron left, much of the entirety of the Eastern Kingdoms had also been laid to waste. There was no vibrant Hillsbrad Foothills just to the south of Garithos’ forces, only more death and plague. Few liked him, but there weren’t any where else to go.
With Quel’Thalas having left the Alliance Kael’thas wouldn’t outrank Garithos militarily, and even with Quel’Thalas in the Alliance, Kael’thas doesn’t have any military title.
It’s hard to argue he would have been executed for treason when the remaining Alliance powers all supported him.
Garithos has two mentions since Warcraft 3, you have Rommath in Shadow of thr Sun – but he speaks more of the Kirin Tor. And some Wrath Dungeon boss who was a high elf.
Think it’s fair to say he’s a sore point for any dalaran aligned elf. But beyond that? Eh.
Was he legitimately a Grand Marshal? We only have his (incredibly flawed) word for it and he also has the titles of Highlord, Warlord, Baron and Lord on his WoWPedia page so it seems he liked to flip and flop between titles he liked the sound of.
Edit: I should say I know its kind of hard to give an actual answer to this, because we don’t have one.
I wouldn’t say they supported him. It seems unlikely given all the Alliances forces (the vast majority) below the Span didn’t know who he was or what he was doing. Most of the Alliance fled Lordaeron either with Jaina or southward past the span following the Scourge and I can’t see Varian Wrynn being a huge fan of Garithos.
He was legitimately a Grand Marshal, this isn’t simply at title he claimed by himself. We actually have the answer to this from round 3 of ask the creative devs, which greatly expanded on Garithos’ story. It’s where we got his first name from, Othmar. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ask_CDev#Ask_CDev_Answers_-_Round_3
By the time of the Scourging of Lordaeron, he had attained the rank of Grand Marshal and was the highest ranked surviving military officer in the region, promoted not necessarily due to his own abilities, but his father’s reputation and title.
The only copy of Cycle of Hatred I could readily find was in Chinese, so I can’t say anything about his supposed Highlord title, but it is the only source of him having it. In Warcraft 3 Varimathras says this. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dreadlord%27s_Fall_(WC3_Undead)
“Detheroc used his telepathy to enslave a top-ranking human warlord. I believe his name was Garabon or Gilithos or something. Human names all sound the same to me” .
His father was the Baron of Blackwood, upon his death during the Second War Garithos would have inherited this title, making him a Baron.
Grand Marshal Othmar Garithos was the only son of a baron who ruled over lands in what would later be the Eastern Plaguelands that bordered Quel’Thalas. While his father ruled from the town of Blackwood on the shores of the named lake, Garithos joined the army as a knight during the Second War.
Lord, on the other hand, is a more generic title. It’s more of a honorific style that can be bestowed on people of noteworthy rank and status. It is the name of Garithos as a unit in Warcraft 3 and something he is referred as in dialogue. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_Garithos_(Warcraft_III) https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/A_New_Power_in_Lordaeron_(WC3_Undead)
“Lord Garithos, our scouts have found the missing band of dwarves! They appear to be lost in the wilderness nearby” .
Returning to ask CDev, you are quite right in that much of the Alliance remained ignorant of his pro-human beliefs. They simply viewed him as the greatest chance of retaking Lordaeron as he was the most powerful figure in that region of Lordaeron, and potentially the last vestige of its government. Again a case of Warcraft 3 lore clashing with WoW lore as the Silver Hand had been utterly decimated and did not fight on in eastern Lordaeron in Warcraft 3.
Despite the ad-hoc nature of his forces, other states recognized him as potentially the last remnant of Lordaeron’s government and certainly the strongest warlord in the area. As such, officials from neighboring non-human states such as Ironforge and Quel’Thalas sent him aid, ignorant of his intolerant policies.
Another instance of him being referred to as a warlord as well, but it is important to note that the only person to refer to him as a warlord in-universe is Varimathras.
Few of the Alliance fled with Jaina, since they would only arrive in full force after she had gone to Kalimdor. She didn’t even have the support of most Lordaeronians. But you are right that Varian probably wouldn’t like him.
This makes no sense. You lift the blame from a faction taking on single individuals and their own agenda, while not applying the very same reasoning while saying “unlike the Horde lol”.
Blizzard does not have to “find” reason to have bad guys, they can write the reason.
Garithos represented Lordaeron when he did what he did, and human soldiers saw former allies (kael’thas forces) work alongside nagas.
Sunstrider + his soldiers were left to die as temporary repellent against a vaste group of Scourge (after the Quel’dorei barely survived the invasion in Quel’thalas as a race), but the average human citizen did not know about this and given how things were written, I guess we must assume that none reached out to try and repair relations or it was too late.
The fact that actions of two “small” (they never say how many elves the Prince had, nor how large was Garithos’ force) fighting forces reflected on the relations between their realms is also due to the titles they carry and what it represents.
Racial hatred / corruption /mistrust / ignorance/pride were way more interesting and driving flaws for fantasy characters (heroes or antagonists all the same) than the perfect/ ever friendly personas we have to deal with nowadays in wow, imo.
The things they’ve done have been fine mostly, it’s just how those have been written which has inevitably lead into player responses.
Whether it’s old vanilla moments (quiet support for the Scarlets, dwarven imperialism in Alterac/Kalimdor, Theramore’s fake neutrality) or more recent stuff in BfA (mass murder of goblin workers with molten giants, throwing Horde ambassadors into the Void, Purge Squads, murdering goblin socialites at a party. killing a bunch of civvies during the Dazar’alor invasion), the Alliance stuff is generally glossed over by the greater narrative, which leads to players doing the same.
Those moments are just fine as far as villain moments. Just they’re not really treated as such.
That moment when the Lightforged Draenei Paladin congratulates you for a job well done after using VOID NECROMANCY to ressurect the bones of thechildren of fallen wild gods/Loas to run wild across an entire ecosystem and devouring everything in their path.
Most of the elven soldiers that followed Kael’thas were conscripted into Garithos’ own ranks and taken to the frontline, they weren’t even with Kael’thas. So all of these blood elves were blamed for something a fraction of them did.
It isn’t helped by the fact the Horde in these cases will have already done something far worse or are about to do something worse.
They were with Kael’thas, just he himself part of the army and ofc not there as a contigent of elves alone (was not the point).
An human emissary communicates Garithos’ orders, to the Prince,that they are to stay at the tower/observatory (I can’t remember) they repaired and stop a laughably big amount of Scourge before they reach Dalaran with his own men (Garithos orders were to dismiss everyone else) . After the elves survive thanks to the help of nagas Garithos himself arrives and has the whole force litterally imprisoned.
Im not saying the alliance as whole but at least the guardians of said prison weren’t really “polite” at the elves imprisoned there, which strongly hints to racial hatred of a minor/major group.
The order was to execute them, so they escaped.
Now you tell the survivors of that realm that their Leader was to be executed by an officer of their former allies.
The incident itself is legit big enough and not as lame as some people depicts it.