Sylvanas Windrunner has to be the most ridiculously controversial character in Warcraft lore. Tirion, Thrall, and Garrosh are all contentious figures, but none of them hold a candle to Sylvanas.

Seriously, if you ever feel like trolling, just go to the official lore forum and mention Sylvanas. It doesn’t even matter what you say about her; there will be blood.

Half the fanbase worships Sylvanas, and the other half hates her guts, but everyone has a strong opinion. Myself, I’m of two minds. I do find her absolutely despicable, but she’s also one of the most compelling characters in Warcraft lore, and World of Warcraft would be a much duller place without her.

But Sylvanas presents a problem. No queen can rule forever, and no plot can go on indefinitely. A resolution must be found for her arc, but because she is such a contentious figure, it will be very difficult to find a satisfactory solution.

The problem:

It is my firm belief that all villains have a shelf life. And yes, all apologies to Forsaken fans, but I do consider Sylvanas a villain. She’s more complex and sympathetic than, say, Arthas, but she’s still someone whose ultimate plan is world conquest over the bodies of all who oppose her.

Villains need to die sooner or later. Otherwise, they eventually lose their intimidation factor and become ridiculous. When a villain can never defeat the heroes nor be defeated by them, it makes both sides seem weak and uninspiring. See: the Borg in Star Trek.

The only other potential solution is redemption, but I don’t see that as an option in Sylvanas’s case. Every piece of story surrounding her so far has been about her becoming more vicious and more corrupt, and at this point, there’s a huge portion of the fan base who would absolutely lose their minds if they were asked to accept a redeemed Sylvanas.

So Sylvanas needs to die. Sooner or later, she’ll be a raid boss. Or maybe a villain in Warcraft IV, but I’m sure that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

But Sylvanas will leave a gaping hole in the lore. She means so much to so many people — even those who hate her, in a way — that finding a suitable replacement as leader of the Forsaken is an excruciatingly difficult task.

Solutions:

Whoever replaces Sylvanas has a number of needs they need to fulfill. They need to be edgy and ruthless enough to fit the Forsaken’s theme, but they need to not be so blatantly evil as Sylvanas, or else there’s really no point in replacing the Dark Lady.

It’s going to be an incredibly difficult tightrope to walk. If the new leader is entirely honourable, the Forsaken have lost their identity, but if they’re not as least somewhat decent in their goals, we’re back to half the players howling for their blood, and nothing is accomplished.

Sylvanas is also very meaningful to female players — and male players who appreciate strong female characters. Not only is Sylvanas one of only two female faction leaders, but she’s arguably the only major female character from Warcraft III to not be reduced to a complete non-entity in WoW.

Losing Sylvanas would be an incredible blow to those who care about how women are portrayed in Warcraft, and it would need to be compensated somehow.

The choice needs to make sense in the lore, too. It needs to be plausible that the Forsaken would accept their new leader. Considering most Forsaken revere Sylvanas with a fervor that borders on the religious, that won’t be easy. They would likely view any new leader as a usurper unless they had very good reason to respect them.

So with all that being said, let’s examine the potential candidates to replace Sylvanas.

WARNING: If you have not read my finalist story from Blizzard’s writing contest, “The Future of Lordaeron,” the rest of this post will contain spoilers for it.

Koltira Deathweaver:

Koltira is one of the more oft-mentioned candidates for new leader of the Forsaken. He’s got a lot going for him. As a Knight of the Ebon Blade, he’s ruthless, but he also knows there are some lines that must not be crossed. He’s established as a Horde-sympathetic character, and he clearly has no love for Sylvanas.

I don’t think he’s ultimately a very good choice, though. For one thing, what reason would the Forsaken have to follow him? He’s an outsider.

Perhaps more importantly, he has a penis, and I really think the new leader of the Forsaken must be female.

Lilian Voss:

Now here’s a stronger contender. Lilian is a fan favourite, and a strong and respectable female character. She’s a ruthless killer that will show no mercy to her enemies, but she is also principled — almost fanatically so — and it’s hard to imagine her going to the extremes Sylvanas has.

All in all, Lilian is an excellent anti-hero, and she fits the themes of the Forsaken perfectly. But as much as I love Lilian, there are some glaring problems with her as a new potential faction leader.

One is that she is almost certainly meant as an homage to a character from Magic: The Gathering. Blizzard doesn’t shy away their pop culture references, but I’m not sure they’d go so far as to make one a major faction leader.

The other is that Lilian’s entire personality is defined by utter rejection of undeath and the Forsaken culture. It’s hard to imagine the Forsaken choosing to follow her, and it’s even harder to imagine that she would choose to lead them.

Calder Gray:

I don’t think Calder Gray is in any way a viable candidate. I just want to take a moment to imagine how awesome it would be if he did take over the Forsaken.

Everyone on Azeroth would be dead within a week, but it would be an entertaining week.

Nathanos Blightcaller:

Nathanos is a reasonably viable candidate. As one of Sylvanas’s most trusted lieutenants, he commands the respect of the Forsaken people.

The main problem with Nathanos is that he doesn’t really have a lot of history or personality to draw on. I mean, I’m a lore nut, and even I barely know who he is.

Plus, again, male.

Undead Calia Menethil:

If you’ve read “The Future of Lordaeron,” it should come as no surprise to you that I view Calia Menethil as the best candidate for replacing Sylvanas.

If you haven’t heard of Calia, I don’t blame you. She’s appeared in only a handful of scenes in a few of the novels. Basically, all we know about her is that she is Arthas’s older sister and that she was briefly engaged to Deathwing (in human guise).

It’s presumed that she was killed by her brother during the fall of Lordaeron, but we really don’t know. There’s a long-standing theory that an NPC in Theramore, Calia Hastings, is actually Calia Menethil in disguise, but there’s no evidence to back this up. And we don’t know if she survived the mana bomb.

This puts Calia in a unique position. As the elder child of King Terenas and the sister of Prince Arthas, she is a very important figure in lore, but she’s also something of a blank slate. She can become whatever kind of character the plot requires.

She also has the best chance of winning over the support of the Forsaken people. Lately, Sylvanas has done much harping on the idea of the Forsaken being the rightful owners of Lordaeron — and to be fair, it was their home in life. I’m in the camp that says they gave up their rights when they started plaguing things, but the Forsaken themselves seem to believe in it.

If that’s really the case, then Calia would be their rightful ruler. Assuming she’s still walking around in some form, she is the last scion of the Menethil line and thus the queen of Lordaeron.

Assuming that Calia was murdered and raised into undeath, she would likely be a much harder woman than she was in life. So she could fit the ruthless image of the Forsaken. I’m just getting into pure fan fic at this point, but I also imagine she would want to avoid anything like the evil perpetrated by her brother.

This puts her into the sweet spot of anti-hero the Forsaken need.

There are very flaws with Calia as a replacement to Sylvanas, in my view. The main one would be that she is relatively unknown, and so she could appear to come out of left field to some people.

There are some fans who are quite offended by the idea of “another” Alliance character going Horde, but anyone who gets so offended by a plot twist in a game is taking things too seriously, and considering the near total lack of factual basis for any Horde favouritism on Blizzard’s part — historically, the Alliance has been shown much more favouritism — it’s hard to give much weight to such concerns.

Plus, if they put Calia in charge, I can brag and take credit for it.

* * *

What do you think? How should Sylvanas’s story arc come to an end, and who should replace her in the event she becomes a loot pinata?

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When Blizzard announced that Garrosh Hellscream would be the new warchief of the Horde, fan reaction was strong and almost uniformly negative. Massive lists of better potential warchiefs were compiled, mentioning everyone from Saurfang to Sylvanas, from half a stack of peacebloom to basic campfire.

Certainly, I have always counted myself among the Garrosh haters. He has taken the Horde back in time, effectively erasing a decade of development for the faction’s lore, and he has generally been written as an emo, thick-headed, and utterly unlikable character.

But Mists of Pandaria has caused me to see Garrosh in a new light. Could there be some method to Blizzard’s madness?

Yes, and no.

The genius:

I don’t know when Blizzard decided Garrosh would be a new main villain. I’m sure it wasn’t in their minds when they first stuck him next to that campfire in Nagrand, but I’d like to imagine it wasn’t something they just pulled out of their proverbial behinds when Pandaria came along.

It feels to me like they planned ahead a bit here, and that’s where I start to believe there might be some sparkle of brilliance in making Garrosh warchief of the Horde.

Garrosh taking over pissed a lot of people off. Those of us who were fans of Thrall and his Horde have grown incredibly resentful of Garrosh and Blizzard’s decision to appoint him. We feel like our Horde has been stolen from us. We feel disenfranchised.

I’ve even compared it a form of false advertising. I joined a faction of noble savages, not the Nazis. The Horde I agreed to play is not the Horde currently in-game. I very much feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under me as a Horde player.

Not coincidentally, this is exactly how most of the fictional members of the Horde now feel, too.

Garrosh has become a ruthless tyrant. Anyone not an Orc and a loyalist is treated as little more than disposable cannon fodder. Hellscream’s secret police roam Orgrimmar in the night, brutally silencing any who dare speak against the warchief.

The Tauren hate him because he killed Cairne. The Blood Elves hate him because he’s wasting their lives, something their small population cannot withstand. The Trolls hate him because he killed Vol’jin — as far as they know — and threw them all in internment camps. The Forsaken hate him because… they pretty much hate everyone, actually.

Even many Orcs hate him for his allying with the Blackrock Clan and essentially restoring the dark Horde of yore.

But still, Garrosh does have his supporters, and this, too, mirrors the real world. Many young and hot-blooded Orcs, born into slavery under the Alliance and tired of being hated by the rest of the world, welcome Garrosh’s take-no-prisoners attitude towards any who would oppose the ruthless advancement of the Horde.

Similarly, many players feel that Garrosh has gotten the Horde back to its savage roots. They feel that honour and the Horde are two concepts that can’t coexist, and that ruthless conquest is the natural way of life for Orcs.

I would argue that such players grossly misunderstand the lore, but that’s a discussion for another time.

The point is that there is a conflict among Horde fans that closely mirrors the conflict in the game. In both realities, those who cling to the brutality of the past are arrayed against those who welcome an honourable future.

It’s a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy that could almost give The Secret World a run for its money.

Ultimately, I tend to view villains as having only two key responsibilities, and one is to be hated.

Garrosh Hellscream has absolutely aced this test. By making him the leader of a faction without initially hinting he would be a raid boss, Blizzard has given us a personal vendetta against Garrosh. For the first time since Wrath of the Lich King, I’m truly chomping at the bit to face a boss purely because he pisses me off.

I’d happily kill Garrosh even if he dropped no loot. Hell, I’d sell off my purples for a chance to take a crack at him.

From that perspective, putting Garrosh in charge was something of an act of genius.

The folly:

But unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I said that villains have two responsibilities. One is to be hated. The other is to be feared.

Garrosh has failed this test miserably.

Garrosh is something of an anomaly among Warcraft villains in that he has no special powers or abilities. He’s just an Orc, albeit an unusually strong one. That in and of itself might not have prevented him from being compelling as a villain, but Blizzard has almost gone out of their way to ruin his intimidation factor as much as possible.

When we first met Garrosh in-game, he was a pathetic, depressed creature who spent all his time weeping by the fireside because his grandma was dying. And it hasn’t really been uphill from there.

We’ve been told Garrosh is a military genius, but we’ve never been shown this. When you think about it, he’s actually been something of a spectacular failure as a commander-in-chief.

His invasion of the Borean Tundra promptly got its ass kicked by Scourge. It was only the meddling of Saurfang, and the assistance of the player, that enabled it to succeed. Garrosh got the credit because Saurfang kept his actions a secret.

His plan to conquer Gilneas proved to be an utter failure and has dragged the Horde into a bloody quagmire war that is still unresolved.

Garrosh has tried and failed to invade Ashenvale not once, but twice. In-game, the Night Elves drove him back, and the only thing that stopped the Horde from losing their foothold in the forest entirely was a pact with a Demon. In the novel “Wolfheart,” he was driven back, and he personally got his ass beaten in by Varian in single combat.

He lost Stonard to the Alliance, robbing the Horde of one of its oldest and most storied settlements in Azeroth.

His invasion of the Twilight Highlands was an unmitigated disaster, saved only narrowly by the efforts of the player and Zaela.

And then there’s the whole “let’s experiment with the Sha because that’s totally not a bad idea or anything” scheme of his.

I could keep listing off his failures, but you get the idea. Simply put, Garrosh is an idiot, and it’s hard to take seriously a villain who has been so clownishly incompetent for most of his history.

Now, he did lay the smack down on Theramore pretty good, and he has generally come across as much scarier and more capable in Mists of Pandaria, but it’s hard to ignore the past.

And this brings us to the other fatal flaw of Garrosh Hellscream, and that is that his writing has been horrifically inconsistent. One day, he’s preaching the virtues of child-killing to Saurfang. The next, he’s executing his own generals for killing children. Then an expansion later, he’s burning the ships in Theramore to ensure as many civilian casualties as possible.

I actually have an explanation for this, and Christie Golden has said the same thing when talking about her take on Garrosh’s character: he has a very weak personality.

This may seem odd for a character who greets you by screaming, “ONLY THE STRONGEST MAY DWELL WITHIN ORGRIMMAR,” but what this means is that he’s very susceptible to the influence of others.

When he was hanging out with Saurfang, he picked up some of the elder Orc’s high-minded ideals. Now that he’s fallen in with Malkorok and the Blackrock Clan, he’s adopted their vicious attitude toward warfare.

But again, this does not make for a compelling villain. He’s little more than a spineless puppet, following whoever whispers in his ear at the moment.

There’s an almost tragic irony here. One of Grom Hellscream’s favourite insults to throw at his enemies was, “Weak-minded coward!” And weak-minded is exactly what his son grew up to be.

* * *

In the end, Garrosh looks set to prove far more interesting and valuable to the ongoing storyline of Warcraft universe than I ever thought possible, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a character more funny than frightening, or the countless missteps Blizzard have taken in regards to him.

Garrosh could have been brilliant, but he was mostly terrible, and I see it averaging it out to a story that is merely okay.

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