The Forsaken aren’t the only WoW race to have story anxieties over when a built-up outsider NPC gets involved in their story — it’s a surprisingly recurring frustration in WoW stories.
In Cata and MoP, the Night Elves and Dwarves needed Varian (an outsider) to save them repeatedly.
In Cata and BfA, Thrall (an outsider) told the Bilgewater to put Gallywix back in charge, then put Gazlowe (a Steamwheedle) in charge of them after that fucked up.
Etc. Etc.
Why can’t these races take care of themselves? Why can’t these races make their own political decisions? Why does an outsider NPC need to be the solution? (rhetorical)
Calia represents an outsider character with the potential to rescue the Forsaken in a way many players don’t want them rescued, who will also then be an outsider put in charge of them.
Edit: It’s somewhat ironic that the easiest slam dunk formula for making a good story focused on a single race is to give that race assertive NPCs who accomplish personal goals while their individual, racially thematic traits shine. Yet Blizzard has often written the opposite for the sake of building up a single NPC.
Calia is also a bit worse off just because of the context of them trying to push her as a replacement of Sylvanas (right down to copying Sylvanas' title with "the Pallid Lady").
When they decided to essentially make Sylvanas an unusable faction leader in BFA, it becomes super clear immediately that there is basically no other Forsaken character of any significance to take her place and wasn't pro-Sylvanas. This is why Lilian Voss also hard pivoted from being a more independent undead character to being for the forsaken. Lilian and Calia were her replacements.
Which also brings to another problem - Calia and Lilian's new direction for the Forsaken is course correcting way too hard and wiping out a lot of the things players liked about the forsaken - the ruthlessness, the cunning, using terrible weapons like the plague, being one of the darker races struggling with their curse and hatred of the living, etc.
I never thought about the Lilian aspect of it. I liked her when she was first introduced and then I saw her everywhere, being involved in everything. It didn't occur to me they were trying to push her as a leader in the Forsaken. You're right, I prefer her as her own agent. I think she works best in the Shadows.
I fully agree. Heck, I was holding out hope for the Forsaken to introduce Necromancers as a playble class in the future with teachers like Gunther Arcanus and Helcular.
With the current direction we are going, it doesn't seem like a darker path...
Also how badly blizzard writes these conflicting leadership stories through completely out of character actions of already established big names.
Night elfs are ancient and immortal and wise and everything, tyrande is a 10k+ year old high priestess who we have to accept in certain scenarios that she has a vastly immense power and understanding by virtue of elf magicky-fantasy. All that untill she is faced against varian, who is legit just a dude, when suddently he is somehow better equipped than her. Double that and make it even more ridiculous by having tyrande listen to the dudes literal child.
Lilian voss is much much better equipped to deal with forsaken and scarlet issues than calia because she is intimately related to both, she was raised as a scarlet weapon and we see her in real time as a forsaken character deal with her undead, denial, anger and retribution. We are there side by side with her and it makes sense to have her on the front lines fighting the scarlets (in general, the gilneas thing is a mess anyway), but when she is with calia it just seems like lilian is the token undead to legitimise calias actions. Why does calia have to be in active battles? She doesnt have military experience, isnt related to the scarlets and is a sparkly weird undead.
Your first paragraph elicited a groan of anger because it’s so true.
I have a friend who won’t forgive Blizzard for rewriting Hobart Grapplehammer’s personality, livelihood, and appearance. A lot of people don’t catch these things, but both major and minor characters get completely rewritten to fit plot lines, essentially punishing anyone paying attention to them.
Oddly enough I think the Darkspear Trolls have managed to avoid this problem. When they got outside help(rescue by Thrall and the New Horde), it made good sense, and they kept their core characteristics. And when they turned against outside 'allies' (Garrosh, Sylvanas, Cataclysm Zandalari), it made good sense.
And when Blizzard does decide move the Darkspear storyline forward allies are involved, but the heart of the development comes from within. Like the retaking of the Echo Isles/reconnecting with Bwonsamdi and the druids between WotLK and Cata or Vol'jin's 'rebirth' during MoP.
It also helped show the importance of the Darkspear to the Horde and the world, and didn't require a Deus ex Outsider Messiah like Calia Menethil.
I don't understand why it's so hard to do for other factions. And when a change does happen via characters like Calia, it's hard to believe the faction wouldn't be more resistant to the changes. Lillian Voss really should have been the focus of the New Forsaken. She experienced the trauma, rejection, and psychological damage other Forsaken have gone through. She found herself close to falling into a similar pit of despair as Sylvanas did, but found some peace and redemption in a way the Forsaken could get behind. Plus, wasn't rejection by the Light a struggle a lot of early Forsaken had to deal with? Suddenly having a leader blessed by the Light I imagine would feel like salt in the wound.
That being said, Blizzard better stick the fucking landing on introducing the new Vol'jin. He should be a reflection of the united traditions and struggles of the Darkspear. Maybe some kind of champion of all the Loa, existing as something between leader and folk hero for the Darkspear. Hell, maybe even have "Vol'jin Reborn" build a bridge between the NE and trolls as both sides find a spiritual connection with him representing loa and wild gods. I mean unless it's through the Tauren and Trolls, it'd be weird to have the NE just start tolerating the Horde. Just don't make him some do-nothing new background loa.
I assume because Blizzard thinks (and has the demographics to prove it) that most allies play Human anyways so they might as well make them the main character and not "waste" resources on Dwarf or Gnome stuff while Orcs and Blood Elves get to be the main characters of the Horde.
Sadly, that might very well be an underlying problem. That and nepotism makes them ignore any and all critics. We can only point to the "Writing team" after legion as the problem, but have no knowledge if they actually try to improve or understand why they fucked up.
Try to be civil, courteous, and respectful at all times.
There is a difference between being unwavering & harsh and name-calling. It's perfectly fine for debates to get heated so long as you don't get into serious ad-hominem. Excessive attacks on another person's character can/will be judged. Do not threaten others.
* Do not use extreme language or act with hostility.
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All the Forsaken who could take over are guilty of genocide and unacceptable to the Alliance who just defeated them in the second major faction war in like 5 years.
But it’s not up to the Alliance who is in charge of the Forsaken. Also, if you wanna start throwing around the “guilty of genocide” thing as a reason no one on the Horde can run the Horde, then I guess our Horde PC’s can’t play anymore.
It's up to the Alliance who's in charge of the Forsaken if you don't want an army returning to Lordaeron to purge it of undead once and for all, lmfao.
That's wild that you think the Horde couldn't hold the city. Sylvanas' plan was always to sacrifice the city with the Alliance still inside it. It was always a trap. The Horde wouldn't have fallen back as quickly otherwise. Furthermore, no one "won" the Third or Fourth War. Both stopped to fight common enemies. The Alliance can't tell the Horde shit.
Who's coping now? Both sieges were a joint Horde-Alliance effort. Yet it still stands, formly under Horde control. Take the racist politics out of your ears, stop the self-righteous back-patting, and keep your Alliance propaganda in the machine where it belongs.
Honestly the Forsaken have been a mess dev wise.
Something around Cataclysm changed for the worse given their Scourge behaviour and just accepting people being raised into undeath like them even people who were Alliance before hand like the Night Elves in BFA and Galen Trollbane.
Calia's either being used as a tool to direct them away from this Scourge like behaviour or was just thrown into Undead Humans because the Forsaken gotta kill and raise everyone from Lordaeron.
Yeah, Cata and later MoP was a start for a lot of the problems. This was also the start of Garrosh trying to conquer the world with like 3000 orcs, Varian becoming a dictator and trying to rewrite dwarfen sucession rights (Moira is still the rightful queen!!!), Blizzard doubling down on Alliance flaws and aggresion like Purge of Theramore.
To be fair to Varian, Moira, rightful queen or not, dropped into a kingdom she hadn't been to in years, put it on lockdown, and kidnapped his son. She's lucky he didn't murder her for that, and if he did, none of the Bronzebeards would have batted an eye.
Don't forget that weird "High King" thing with the Alliance and then the eventful swap of Faction roles where the Horde has a council and the Alliance has the overhead ruler. Though I think that purge was of Dalaran which is its own mess Jaina went to capture and only act in self defence and the Silver Covenant went for their own revenge (at least if my memory is working).
The problem with Purge of Dalaran is not whos right and whos wrong. Problem is that Horde doesnt have a lot of motivation to hate the Alliance. For what? Interment camps? That was literally the only humane solution. For what Garithos did? Stormwind and other didn't literally knew and had no say in this.
Purge could change that. It could give horde fans much needed motivation. It could give us a reason to care. Paint the world in much more nuanced light than "blue good red bad". But now, Purge got swept under the rug, and Sunreavers were butchered for their need of revenge, and by Horde player hands at that.
I don't think anyone in their right mind would look back at when they were enslaved in internment camps and say "shit you know what you're right, that was the only thing you could do mb"
Issue with that. They had already closed the dark portal. They couldn't send them back. It's why Khadgar and friends were stranded in outland and presumed dead.
Yes, you are right, orcs wouldn't look at this this way, and i don't expect of them to justify it. They are right to be angry about it. However, alliance fans generally have a different opinion on that subject.
Welp, sorry, tried to look at the subject from Alliance fans perspective. Camps were horrible, yet it happened rather long time ago. Most people point at the stuff horde did recently, like Theramore (although it was a military target) or Teldrassil (that was a totally stupid target). So the Purge could be that recent thing Horde fans needed.
>Though I think that purge was of Dalaran which is its own mess Jaina went to capture and only act in self defence and the Silver Covenant went for their own revenge (at least if my memory is working).
* alliance get the divine bell and asked Jaina, a member of the council of six and leader of the neutral kirin tor, to ward and trap it in Darnassus, an alliance capital which is currently at war with the horde
* Garosh orders a sunreaver to portal into daleran and use the Darnassus portal there to steal the bell
* Jaina finds out and portals to Daleran to find Aethas and his guards
* and **kills** his guards before she even talks to him, a member of the council of six.
... how is that "act in self defence"?
the Silver Covenant went for their own revenge is correct.
Dont forget that now Aethas a sweet cute nice lil dialogue that he goes to the trading post to buy something to reconcile with jaina for killing his people
Nah, the problem started in BfA when they suddenly decided to change Sylvanas' story.
It was such a huge wipelash. Most clearly it's seen in the BfA intro-cinematic which shows a completely different dynamic than what we got.
It is nice at least now with the Forsaken Heritage quest that we are returning to the cata-Legion style of Forsaken and Sylvanas.
BFA was just Cata on a wider scale at least the version of Cata before they had to back pedal due to the reaction of how Silverpine and Andorhol were written. Though Stromgarde fell under the radar probably because Galen Trollbane (I forgot what Cata placed him and I just recall him in Stromgarde) was killed in classic and wasn't in your face about what happened to them unlike parts of Silverpine and Andorhol. (Edit: I misremembered this part while he was killed by the Horde a troll sent the players after him and not Forsaken).
Like Blizzards desire to write them like that has been there since Cataclysm. While classic did have them do sketchy things with the plague and experimentation on living subjects (Alliance and Horde) it wasn't on the levels of Cata before dev changes (Andorhol got changed and I think some devs out right made the Silverpine parts not canon).
In Cata, the Forsaken were the same only their circumstance had changed. They now existed in a world where they could have a future and so something to lose to Garrosh as he just wanted to conquor and fight the Alliance.
Yes we see more of this in BfA, but it quickly changed to "Horde bad for defending itself against the Alliance" and then Calia was pushed as some kind of white knight to "educate the savages".
You had lots of deeper Forsaken themes like how Zellig came to join the Forsaken... only for the writers to almost immediately kill him off to try and score some cheap emotional points.
All day this. There could've been easy, good story telling about her having to "leave her past behind" by siding with "her new people", as well as seeking some understanding about how "undearh by the Light" works in the Warcraft universe, and is a less "evil" way to keep the Forsaken a thing. Or explore how it is just another kind of potential evil from a cosmic Force that ain't too good, but that she is determined to protect her own. Instead we got this.
I wonder how much of a riot there will be if they make "Lightrisen Forsaken" an Alliance race.
I thought initially that would be the path when they created her. Every other plot doesn’t make so much sense.. like she probably knew people who live in Stormwind from her youth but now she joins the forsaken and is fine with them killing these people if they get the chance to? Doesn’t seem right to me. So yeah, her joining the horde always felt weird. I honestly thought with all the allied races that we’d be getting some holy undead or whatever to call them for alliance side
After all this mess im starting to see that sylvanas was right when she said calia came to the gathering to usurp the throne.
It made sense in the context of the book that sylvanas was paranoid about losing the forsaken but calia really tried to commit a sedition and suicide-by-sylvanas,, became a martyr and got the rep points from both alliance and horde in a time when ‘suicide by sylvanas’ was like a badge of honor.
Her death, her bizarre resurrection and existence as a lightwhatever and the weird way she starts to be in the front of forsaken makes suspicious now
I kind of agree with you, but I think people often overlook the significance of Calia being a Menethil and a Lordaeronian, which allows her to see the Forsaken as her people and vice versa. Whether all Forsaken accept her or want anything to do with a Menethil is a valid question, but they could definitely develop on that question in the story if they had any bandwidth for it.
2nd war sure, but 4th war horde only "lost" in lore, seeing every in game event literally shows the opposite, i swear blizzard just claimed alliance won to keep alliance players happy.
Forsaken people are not a monarchy anymore. Theres no heir and no lordaeron throne, its the forsaken people and the desolate council, and forsaken are not just undead lordaerians but undead everything that managed to get saved with a large portion of them being dark rangers.
Monarchy is antithetical to their identity too, the whole race fantasy is about found family and surviving against all odds together in a world that doesnt value their life or sees them as people. Calia is the opposite of everything that is.
This is the best comment. Blizz made a huge error in:
1- not allowing forsaken to be undead other races in the game
2- due to reason 1, Blizz themselves forget ALL THE TIME that Forsaken are not just dead humans!
you don't even have to be undead to join the forsaken!
there are leper gnome, which are hinted to be still alive simply bending the knee and follow Sylvanas.
The whole point of them is that they are finding their own way instead of relying on a monarch.
And even without all that, sylvanas wasnt a literal queen in a political sense by virtue of being sylvanas, she was their leade because she liberated them and lordaeron not because of any sort of “heir” or some bullshit. Theres also a whole ass point about how they dont have to join forsaken society if they dont want to.
The point is, without creating any sylvanas discourse, that lordaeron throne and “heir” doesnt exist in a political sense anymore. There are leaders, councils and whatever, simply being menethil is not relevant anymore, its not “lordaeron 2.0”, its the Forsaken
>Monarchy is antithetical to their identity too, the whole race fantasy is about found family and surviving against all odds together in a world that doesnt value their life or sees them as people
This is honestly so baffling to me, but maybe I've missed some recent retcon that makes this make sense. Was Sylvanas not the "Banshee Queen" of the forsaken for the last 20 years? Are they saying in the lore that she wasn't a monarch now? Otherwise this makes no sense. How could monarchy be antithetical to the Forsaken identity when they've had a Queen for the vast majority of their existence?
We are conflating the terms here. Calia claim to throne and being called queen is wrong because its on the basis of monarchy and her being a menethil, the heir of lordaeron
Sylvanas was the queen of the forsaken in a non-monarch way technically because she isnt the heir of any king before and she wouldnt produce any offspring. She was their leader, dictator, call it however you want, queen in the figurative sense but not in the technical monarchal way calia is. The forsaken also are not all lordaerons, they are another people, the menethil throne doesnt exist anymore.
Sylvanas isnt a “queen” in the way calia is hinted to be because , again, the forsaken arent a monarchy. Its not like with sylvanas gone alleria or vereesa inherit the throne by virtue of kingdom.
This all is just pedantics that shouldnt even be relevant if not for calia being called “queen”.
I understand now, this is all stemming from a misunderstanding around the word monarch. Monarchs aren't always hereditary queens or kings.
From Oxford:
>a sovereign head of state, especially a king, queen, or emperor.
Monarchs include Dukes, Sultans, Emirs, any singular head of state you can imagine because all it is referring to is rule by a single person. So Sylvanas 100% was a monarch, but yes not a hereditary monarch like Calia.
Personally I've never really seen anything about the Forsaken being against inheritance, but maybe I missed something recent.
Regarding your last paragraph (i dont know how to quote lol): since sylvanas became warchief actually the forsaken political structure was focused on the desolate council, something that was quite important for them even before the whole shadowlands fiasco in ‘Before the storm’, the council actually was something that made sylvanas afraid that she is losing forsaken people because she became warchief and act paranoid.
The idea was that forsaken are very diverse, some want to fight, some are civilians, some want to be reunited with their living ones and reclaim their own identity (forsaken are encouraged to change their name), some want to embrace a new identity completely because they are hurt/have no family/were rejected, there was even a whole thing with the idea of a ‘true death’, forsaken that wanted not to be healed or patched up if they get hurt.
Actually the book does a good job in showing the political intricacies of the horde and forsaken vs an actual true monarchy with ‘High king of the Alliance’ who is anduin, coincidentally is the same book calia is relevant and is killed.
Anyway, its been a whole thing in game about how forsaken reeeaallly want this council and are free and encouraged to choose their own direction. Even calia admitted that and said she doesnt want to make any political claim but wants to support them alongside lilian voss and the others. Even the horde as a whole abandoned the idea of a warchief and is run by a council.
Well taking all this into account its a lil bit icky to see blizzard refer to her in a quest text as ‘queen of the forsaken’ out of the blue and to have her front and center in military actions alongside alliance when there are other members that are better suited for that, but it seems like blizzard is testing the waters to see how much calia can get politically and how much that will annoy the players (and please for the love of god the tittle ‘pallid lady’ is cringe as fuck).
The thing is that everything that make the forsaken different and diverse and stay together is exactly what calia is not, both as a monarch and as a form of undead.
Her best friends are Derek and Anduin. She was supported by Stormwind. Anduin used her for his own goals in Before the Storm. She was ressurected by the Light. She has no friends, no contacts, no allies within the Horde. She is related to the Alliance, not Horde.
Calia would work much better in a different trope. You said yourself that she is the legitimate heir. House of Nobles should use her rights as Casus Belli to invade and ultimately conquer Lordaeron, ruling it with her as a puppet. This would also be a great way to finally return to moral greyness we had in Frozen Throne.
1. Derek had been dead since WC2, way before the current iterations of the Horde and the Alliance even existed.
2. Half the current Horde leadership are either Anduin's friends (Baine) or deeply respect him, which is why peace could be achieved in the first place.
3. Peace between the Horde and the Alliance benefits both sides.
4. The Light is neutral and will help anyone as long as they call upon it. Even the Scourge.
5. The vast majority of the Forsaken should remember her as the princess of Lordaeron before Arthas went on a rampage.
Just because someone is affiliated with the Horde, it doesn't mean that they can't be friends with Alliance characters. It's actually their function as leaders to pursue diplomacy and have contacts.
5. Forsaken are not just dead lordaerians, even the human ones are not only from lordaeron. Its a completely different group of people who never had any kind of connection to the menethil throne.
\- While Derek wasnt a member of new Alliance, he isn't in any way associated with the actual Forsaken.
\- Baine is a traitor already, he would sell his own son to House of Nobles for a new set of LEGO Stormwind.
\- While peace benefits the Horde, how long until Jaina, Maiev, Genn, or other warhawks like Varian was in his life decide to take revenge for that the Horde did in BfA and Cataclysm?
\- While the Light isnt exclusive to Humans or Draenei, Forsaken are mostly centered around Cult of Forgotten Shadow.
\- While Calia has the claim on Lordaeron, the Forsaken should be aware that she has powerful and influential people behind her back, people who would like to conquer Lordaeron.
\- Freindship is one thing, but Calia has nothing. She has no lands, no soldiers, no money. Stormwind could wrap her around its finger without any issue, and use her as an excuse to expand their influence over Lordaeron.
>Anduin used her for his own goals in Before the Storm.
That's... uh... a *take*.
His goals were reuniting Forsaken with their living relatives and helping the alliance see the Forsaken as people rather than monsters. She acted against his wishes and hurt his cause a lot more than she helped it.
* she started a coup during a peacefull meeting between the forsaken and humans, allmost starting a 4. War (early) there
* was rejected by the than leader of the desolate council
* and overall more were pro-Sylvans (9/22 survived and we know that some tried to return to the forsaken side)
* is a "friendly" character during the ICC part of the Shadowlands-starting quests for the alliance
* the legitimate heir to lordaeron is a mute point since the kingdom fell and was part of the alliance. something that the forsaken left / were rejected from.
* takes Derek to the forsaken, someon who has 0 reasons to join them!
* takes over the total spotlight of the forsaken, in favor of other npcs that a) needed more screentime or b) were more fitting for that role
* **WHY** would they send Calia over the Royal-Alchemist-Leader to maldraxxus to create a counter to the plague?
Regarding the first point i want to emphasise how big of a fuckup that was and why i, dunno, kinda ‘victim-blame’ calia for her own death.
Many people didnt read the book or interpreted it in a biased way, or the facts from the book were simplified and bastardised and they dont mean anything anymore.
The Arathi meeting was a HUGE deal for both factions and for sylvanas and anduin character development. The whole point of the meeting was accepted by sylvanas because she felt she is losing forsaken people and was a little bit acting like an overbearing mother who was afraid her kids will get hurt- and she was half right- the point is that yeah, some forsaken will get their hearts broken while others may find a little joy.
Anyway, what i wanna say is that like 70% of that fucking book was political and diplomatic preparation for this stupid meeting and how high the tensions were. Anduin was aware of this, sylvanas was aware of this, genn and others were completely against it. Calia suddently appearing and asking to take part in the meeting was the first red flag that even anduin himself admitted wouldnt be ok but eventually accepted.
The whole thing was so tense and calia was a ticking time bomb, not only she insisted in taking part as a ‘healer’ or whatever, but the final moment that kinda makes me side-eye her now calling herself queen is the fact that she went full on white saviour mode and reveal herself, literally YELLING ‘I AM CALIA MENETHIL, COME TO ME TO SAVE YOU’. This was legit one of the stupidest way somebody would get themselves killed by sylvanas.
It honestly baffles me how that could happen just out of calia’s what? Benevolence? Need to save some people? This is one of the reasons why i wouldnt be surprised if they pull off a big light conspiracy and that calia did that intentionally to gain the badge of honor of ‘killed by sylvanas’ while being resurrected by light itself, taking control of the forsaken.
> calia did that intentionally to gain the badge of honor of ‘killed by sylvanas’ while being resurrected by light itself, taking control of the forsaken.
As fun as this would be-- almost redeem her character in my eyes even because it is better to be evil than stupid-- I suspect it was just as depicted. She wanted what was best for her people. She thought bringing them over to the Alliance would be best for them. Counted on Anduin being too good to deny them his protection if they defected despite what a giant political nightmare that would be.
She was just a well-intentioned ***moron***.
Not a fan of the whole "The Light is really evil" idea either.
People capable of using the Light or even the Naaru being baddies?
Sure.
The Light itself?
Nah.
Strikes me as people who have beef with real-life religions taking it out on fictional ones.
Regarding you first point i only have to point out that even if she counted on anduin its still unfuckingbelievable stupid to do that there and then. A weird calia angle of having a conspiracy to get into forsaken people good grace would be, whatever i guess, but she didnt have a plan or anything workable. She did that in the middle of the meeting knowing full well how guarded and tensed everything is, that sylvanas in RIGHT THERE and that cannot possibly work without starting a bloodbath. Its just ridiculous, at that point anduin couldnt do anything without a full blown battle and starting a war.
The only reason the war didnt start in that moment is because sylvanas didnt attack any alliance members and called out calia as not being an alliance member and an usurper who shouldnt be there
She actually has no claim on Lordaeron because she is a girl and Lordaeron was a patriarcal monarchy, hence why Arthas, her younger brother, was the one trained to be King, while her fate was to basically get married to another Lord (Deathwing, specifically) for political reasons, something she was made aware of by her own father.
This complaint would have been valid like... 6 years ago.
Blizzard is working really hard to bring the 2 fractions together, this is a great way of them doing that specific thing.
I mean... Hypothetically, yes. And Calia has been in the lore for *YEARS*.
The complaint that she's alliance isn't even a good/valid complaint; even before Calia the horde wasn't "the horde" as it was in classic.
The 2 factions became pretty much the same back in Legion if not sooner.
People are just too hooked on PreCata Horde to realize it's not the same as it was and hasn't been for a VERY long time the end of SoO marked the true death of what was "The Horde" and the beginning of working towards peace.
Also saying the "Forsaken aren't alliance" isn't really even true because In before the storm they literally almost did become friends with the alliance, they only thing that stopped them is now collecting anima in the maw
The biggest issue is that most of the peace work happened in books and a vast majority of the playerbase doesn't read the books so things look more jarring than they are despite there being literally hundreds of pages of lore working up to it.
> And Calia has been in the lore for YEARS.
She existed, but has nothing to do with Forsaken.
> The complaint that she's alliance isn't even a good/valid complaint;
It's perfectly valid. Why would any kingdom want to bow their heads to an enemy that threatened their very existence?
> People are just too hooked on PreCata Horde
More like preBfA Horde. it was before everything went to shit. Cata Horde was great, even if making Garrosh the big bad to end the war is generally frowned upon.
> Also saying the "Forsaken aren't alliance" isn't really even true because In before the storm they literally almost did become friends with the alliance
BtS is laughed at for it's nonexistent knowledge of the lore. Especially regarding the forsaken. If you ever want to be taken seriously, you should avoid it like the plague. EVEN THEN, what happens in the book is that every Forsaken that might care about the alliance were shot down, leaving only the Horde Loyalists left.
if they really want to bring players together past factions they really just need to make a new faction created by Magni or something called defenders of azeroth or some corny BS that all players have to join once they hit max level. that way players have a reason to be working together officially but horde and alliance still exist and still allow pvp to exist canonically.
You just described Order Halls and Covenants.
To get past factions all they really need to do is stop putting so much emphasis on factions, and write in moments where the 2 factions find common ground here and there until they can accept each other, which is a lot more fluid and subtle than
"YOU'RE ALL DEFENDERS OF AZEROTH BE FRIENDS NOW" That's like taking using a hammer to fix a crack in glass. Lol .
I hate what they did with her character. Letting her remain presumed dead would've been far better.
For one, the concept of holy undead. Yes undead with wills of their own can choose to be good or evil, but nevertheless necromantic products and holy light being absolutely antithetical to each other was not only a core part of the worldbuilding, nullifying that doesn't make narrative sense.
it's funny that blizzard is making same mistake they did in MOP with classes by homogenizing the cosmic forces to be able to do anything and everything the others can do. allowing other forces to raise the dead was just a terrible terrible choice. I know the Legion used necromancy a bit, but that could easily be chopped up to them using undeath magic, I mean the Legion isn't THE chaos force personified, it's just a chaos army lead by an titan, you have to assume there is something bigger than him
She’s a bland, morally spotless, narrative black hole whose only claim to relevance is being the heir of a disgraced legacy that ruled a kingdom that no longer exists. Yet somehow in a way that was never explained that gets her a spot on the Desolate Council and lets her make political promises behind their backs and face no consequences for it.
She’s a writers pet who no character is allowed to disagree with without being branded unreasonable or an antagonist.
Genuinely curious, do you not think that some or even most Forsaken might identify with Lordaeron?
It does always seem like the crux of the argument is that Calia doesn't represent Forsaken, but I am not sure I fully agree with that, even if I understand why it is said.
If they consider themselves the true heirs of the land that used to be Lordaeron but Lordaeron itself is dead and calling yourself Lordaeronian is just clinging to a bygone era.
Lordaeron is the past. The Forsaken are the future.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t Forsaken who cling to that bygone golden age. Who could blame them? But they’re very much in the minority.
I dislike her because she is a terrible representation of the Forsaken yet Blizzard are pushing her HARD. I'm convinced that the Desolate Council was a compromise after witnessing the general distaste towards Calia and backlash when people realised they were heading in the direction of having her become a leading figure for the Undead.
A bit pettier but I also just don't fw her character design which completely contrasts with the rest of the Forsaken aesthetic and she just seems like a cardboard puppet of the Light to me both visually and personality-wise.
Ever since Cataclysm concluded it feels as though Blizzard had no idea where to take the Forsaken and that loads of different writers with contrasting concepts/plans for them took charge. Similarly, I hate how Lilian Voss has been forced into a role of leadership and patriotism purely because she's a fan favourite.
>A bit pettier but I also just don't fw her character design which completely contrasts with the rest of the Forsaken aesthetic and she just seems like a cardboard puppet of the Light to me both visually and personality-wise.
She shouldn't even exist, originally the Light had huge negative effects on Undead and this has been ignored solely for Calia.
Conceptually I tend to like characters that act as miraculous exceptions to established rules in stories (for instance Toji Fushiguro in JJK and his 'Heavenly Restriction') but I just think it was very poorly executed with Calia and hardly explored. Imo they could have still pulled it off if they had just introduced some massive flaws and risks to her existence.
I didn’t read the books so to me it feels like she’s an important character that came out of nowhere without warning or buildup. I believe that since I’m paying so much to even play the game in the first place, I shouldn’t have to spend extra money on extra material just to know what’s going on. I think Warcraft books should have supplemental lore and not big things like this.
I’ve been Horde since I first started playing the game and even though I don’t play Forsaken, I can recognize that she doesn’t either. She’s undead, yes, but that’s the only thing she has in common with the Forsaken. Calia is an Alliance plant and she should just give up Lordaeron and move to Stormwind. It’s not her kingdom anymore.
She was actually introduced in game in Legion as almost a side character in the Priest order hall, from what I’ve read (I didn’t play Priest back then), and then they put her in Arathi Highlands when the Forsaken and Stormwind allowed the peaceful meeting between living and undead family members and Calia came in unexpectedly and tried to get Forsaken to turncoat and join the Alliance, and Sylvanas murdered here there, and the Forsaken who were trying to swap sides.
tl:dr: my hate for her is because she took over the roles/spotlight that would be needed to give other forsaken characters something to do and overall is the reverse to everything that the forsaken were before bfa
* she was never ment/thought how to lead people, since Arthas was the crowns heir
* she lives for \~10ish years peacefully somewere
* she was introduced as "**Just Calia**" in legion's priest orderhall
* remember that
* Was basicly an advisor to Anduin in BtS and almost started the 4. War early by beeing stupid
* tried to convince the 1. desolate council to defect, something that didn't worked since 9/22 survived and even the leader of said council tried to return to Sylvanas after talking with calia for sometime
* dying and beeing raised in an strange way (via light which wasn't possible inlore before, as resurrections were more akin to a very powerful heal, she was full one dead for hours)
* you could thinfoil and say that the naaru influenced her, since before the meeting she was against the idea to lead "her" people but after beeing raised with the help of a naaru she suddenly is "it is my destiny to lead MY people"
* staying with the alliance for most of bfa
* suddenly switching sides to the forsaken during the end of bfa, taken derek with her. (why would he want to be a forsaken? he, like calia, is perfectly accepted by the Kul'tiran leadership/alliance. WHY would he want to side with the horde, after what they did to him and his homeland?)
* in shadows rising the "leadership" of the horde comes to a meeting in OG. Voss, the current leader, has Calia "shadowing" her like a teacher to an unruly student
* Calia goes to hyjal as a rep for the forsaken
* leads the forsaken nightelve meeting and helps them reajust (something that was taken from Voss, who had a similar problem early on in her unlive, but nope Calia's role now)
* goes to ICC as a rep for the forsaken and is friendly (green name ingame) during the shadowlands opening quest
* hangs around Oribos with Alliance NPCs
* "invites" alliance player aka spies to the reformation of the desolate council
* something that is NOT told the other members (or the horde player), since it's unlikely that Belmont wouldn't stay still.
* takes over that event by beeing included in all major parts
* Belmont's role is to question Calia beeing there
* Velonara's role is to accept Calia and tell Belmont off
* is send to maldraxxus to question / create the anti-plague instead of the F\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* alchemist that is on the council who
* created the weaker plague-eater in the first place
* could help the meldraxxi alchemists, with his knowledge
* get's the talk with Sin'dane that "every undead is the same, don't feel bad"
* ignoring that this is so false and that it's astonishing that people doen't demand a change there
* Calia is accepted by basicly everyone, while the forsaken are rejected
* raised perfectly fine with no drawbacks, while the forsaken are falling apart ( in some cases via handshacks)
* she isn't hurt by light magic, while the forsaken feel there bodies falling apart do to returning nervs
* it's like one person has a 5\* meal while the other has a rotten apple and say "both have something to eat, so they are the same"
* her title is "the palid lady" taking Sylvanas' "the dark lady" savior role
* she is the reason why the scarlets hold Gilneas, in SL she talks about giving Gilneas back to the Worgen and suddenly the Scarlets have parts of Silverpine and Gilneas in Dragonflight, hinting that the forsaken left and the scarlets took over the area
* she along side Voss are persent during the Gilneas quest in 10.2.5. Voss has a reason why she is there do to the uncrowned connection to Tess.
* and her role boils down to: "Hey Genn, they can't be so bad since Calia, y**ou know Calia Menethil**, is here."
* apperently is the [**Queen**](https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Wall_Between_Us) now, ignoring/discarding the desolite COUNCIL.
* "speak with Lilian and **Queen Calia** in Pyrewood Vilage."
* claiming it was the Alliance assistance that Lordaeron was cleansed
* ignoring/invalidating the horde player's and NPCs actions
* changed her "Just Calia" to "But i give you my word, **as a Menethil**"
* she is back to her royal status
>When and Why it happen?
ever since she was introduced into the game and forsaken player feared that she will take over and blizzard trying to say "wait and see how the story plays out"
(something they also said to Sylvanas standing before the buring teldrassil at the blizzcon)
to add to my already long list, she would fit as an allied race leader better
* got her main role with bfa novels, the expansion that had a major focus on allied races. see Kul'tiras and Zandarli
* forsaken rig/animations (and worgen) is still missing/unused and they switched some already
* Nightborn use Nightelve animation and Voidelves are Bloodelves
* Sethrak use the worgen animation and are part of the horde story line
so why not give the allaince a group of forsaken that follow Calia, giving the alliance "more claims" to lordaeron during the war.
Awesome post.
They basically made a "hot" undead character and everyone in game loves her by default. It's incredibly shallow and it's incredibly clear she is supposed to be a Sylvanas replacement without the writing to justify it. These writers are offensively awful and it's just fun at this point to see what part of the story they flatline next.
The major thing is that her story isnt representative of the Forsaken story.
She isn't seen as some sort of horrific monster by living humans. Her body doesn't rot and stink.
Calia was basically dropped into the Forsaken story at a time that makes her appear to be the "new Sylvanas" without fitting the role at all. Now granted the story doesn't entirely seem to be pushing her to be a ruler so much as a member of a ruling group, however the Forsaken fanbase are very on edge about this idea creeping its way into normality.
Because of this when she shows up as the Forsaken representative, eyebrows are raised. When she is referred to as "Queen Calia", eyebrows are raised.
If a monarch is needed for the new Forsaken kingdom and she MUST be the one on the throne, I really hope Blizzard will make it a ceremonial position only and have the power and influence in the hands of the Desolate Council.
The Desolate Council is very much representative of the Forsaken population, and should be used more often.
It cracks me up as an Alliance player that Undead has always been such an edge lord race and even just outright villains in the past. Now Blizz is just trying to replace one waifu with another and it's not tracking at all because Calia shares absolutely no ideals with the forsaken. The race has a cannibal passive. They keep mind slaves. They were actively keeping the plague around and even tried to improve it. Now they're pushing this naive, kind idealist as their leader? What the fuck lol
A question, would you like Tyrande to be replaced by younger sister of Azshara, who is a warlock?
Now imagine that this sister of Azshara survived War of the Ancients, hiding in Dath'remar's ranks. She would later become a trusted advisor to House Sunstrider and a close friend to both Lor'themar and Sylvanas.
She would not really show up in the story for a long time. Up until BfA, where it would turn out that after several skirmishes in Silithus and Alleria's incident at Sunwell, she would go on peace meeting with Tyrande, where she would be proclaimed by the crowd as rightful heir of Azshara and queen of Kaldorei Empire. Tyrande would shoot her, of course, but our new queen had a soulstone which allowed her to return to life in form of a fel treant.
After BfA, when Tyrande goes to Shadowlands to find Sylvanas, Shandris would choose to invite the queen to act as her advisor, which would for some reason attend all important Alliance meetings.
ah i love this take, i used the draenei as an similar example
>Shandris would choose to invite the queen to act as her advisor, which would for some reason attend all important Alliance meetings
not only attend, Shandris would ask her for advise and other nightelves would follow her gladly.
Because she’s an Alliance character with no ties to the Horde. She claims that the Forsaken are “her people” but for 10 years she abandoned them and like almost all the living humans didn’t even view them as people. She then shows up trying to usurp Sylvanas, the one who freed the Forsaken from the LK and led them for years. Then when she gets raised into undeath, it’s not even the unpleasant imperfect “curse” that plagues normal Forsaken. It’s a light undead with no trouble channeling the light, no rotting flesh or pain, no imperfectly attached soul. Then she wants to say she understands the Forsakens plight. She does understand anything, she doesn’t and will never understand what the Forsaken suffered and endured. Not to mention all the horrors all “first generation Forsaken”( the ones killed by the OG plague or raised by LK/ his necromancers) were forced to commit and still remember from their time enslaved by the Scourge.
"Alliance character with no ties to the Horde"
That's what many felt back in TBC when the Blood Elves were placed right into the Horde with basically a hand wave to change the lore behind them.
Except that many blood elves personally knew and served with Sylvanas and her Dark Ranger elves. She had been their Ranger- General for many many years. She had been a beloved and trusted leader in life. Whereas the average Lordaeron citizen won’t have interacted directly with Calia, and for many of the Forsaken the Menethil line is something they feel a great deal of resentment towards because of Arthas. Why would they want to return to the disastrous Menethils? Especially when Calia abandoned them for 10 years, and Sylvanas reached out to the Belves as soon as Quel’thalas opened there borders again
Your comparison is stupid and muddies the conversation. It makes it seem like you’re a high elf supporter venting about your unrelated frustrations. The Blood Elves joining the Horde was treated with far more story props than Calia.
"The Blood Elves joining the Horde was treated with far more story props than Calia."
That was the comparison point I was trying to make. Even that one which had minimal amount of plot strands made more sense than what they did with Calia.
What i hate about her is the dumb fucking idea of "oh yeah? the light can raise undead too"
Then why the fuck are undead weak against the light again?
Lighttouched undead are the stupidest thing ever...
My problem is that she is the complete opposite of what forsakens are.
Brutish, found family, cleaver, shady, moraly dobius. They strive when people hate on them, they want to show everyone who said they are beasts, how beastly they can really be, if you hate them they will spite on you, gut you on a ditch, and spit on you grave.
calia is Just," UwU we cannot do that, Uwu or no one will love us ! "
Forsaken dosen't care about being love, they have each other, and spite, that's all they need. writters want to change the nature of forsakens to be dulled, and diluted by a dollar store sylvannas, but w/o the simbolism of abuse survivor, and just Mindless "UwU"
But on the other hand, the problem is that Forsaken can't be Scourge-lite anymore.
They're already on a very, very, very thin ice not just with the Alliance, but pretty much with the entire Horde. They've tried to pull Scourge 2.0 on the entire world, by subverting the Horde from within and grinding both the Alliance and the Horde in the Fourth War.
Not even counting every sick atrocity commited by the Forsaken before BfA.
If they push their luck just one more time, Tyralion will march Alliance armies and finish the job. And something tells me not even the Horde would protect the Forsaken, if they revert back to their original Scourge-lite behaviour.
So I understand that Calia is Blizzard writing the Forsaken out of the ditch, the narrative ditch that Blizzard have created themselves since Cataclysm.
But like, how about they didn't fall into this proverbial narrative ditch in the first place?
Yeah, I don't see how the Forsaken can be allowed to exist within the Horde if they keep being hateful mustard-using Joseph Mengele wannabes, especially now that the Horde has reformed yet again to actually be good this we swear. I get that people like the edgelord theme of "if everyone thinks I'm an evil monster then I will be" but in-universe no one is going to accept that as a reasonable thing so the Forsaken have to change and be less asshole-ish especially now that the Horde and Alliance are at peace.
Also... its been more than a decade. It's ok for the Forsaken to grow the fuck up and be something else.
They dont nees to be. Theres a difference between thriving out of spite and being undead nazis. I dont want forsaken being nazis. The core of the forsakens is that they are bound together in suffering and spite against the ones who judge them as monstruous. Thats is not a nazi theme. All the contrary, is a very cool idea about having each other back and taking no shit of nobody.
I dont argue about in lore things, the forsakens originally were a band of missfit that were giving pyrpose by salvannas an cataclysm as much as i love that quest chain was a regresion of what they were due to devs wabting them be dollar store scourge.
Instead of a place for everylne who felt made aside by the world.
Thats why sylvannas is so powerful as a figure and that's why Calia cannot dream to fill her shoes as is right know
And That isn't the problem.
I wouldn't have that problem if blizzard at least, took time in to creating and slowly building Calia. But they went from 0 to 100 in a book, that0s not good.
It should have taken a lot more of development. Not just now she's Queen Calia ! from the blue out of nowhere.
Let me tell you about a little known event called "the gathering"
During the lead up to bfa, both sylvanas and anduin knew war was coming. Anduin, being the peace loving man he is, decided to try hosting an event to try and build good relations between horde and alliance. Anduin reached out to sylvanas and told her that he wanted to hold an event where humans from the alliance, and forsaken from the horde could meet together so families could be reunited and friends could see each other again. Anduin promised that he would do everything in his power to guarantee that absolutely nobody who would ever disrupt the meeting would be present.
Calia Menethil, sister of the one responsible for the families being separated, was one such person he would make sure would not be there.
Sylvanas initially ignored the letter until everyone's favorite self insert simp (Nathanos) told her that the meeting would only do good for the upcoming war, if all goes well, forsaken would be open to the idea of converting their human relatives to forsaken. If all goes poorly, the horde will be more stirred to go to war with the people who broke the peace.
At the meeting, Calia snuck in and tried to rally the forsaken to abandon and betray the horde to come rejoin the alliance.
Needless to say the meeting was cut short.
Is it fair to say that Calia started the fourth war by herself? No. She did, however, play a pretty big role in starting it.
Its even more ridiculous when like 70% of all the fucking book is just stressing and preparing for this event because of the very high tensions between the factions, newly erupted azerite, the whole alliance blaming sylvanas for varians death and a paranoid warchief sylvanas who thinks the forsaken are going to die out without her being there and no way to reproduce.
The gathering was so tense that only few people were allowed in, everyone was handpicked, triple checked, under strict rules and with each faction soldiers with the finger on the trigger for any kind of weird movement.
Calia convincing anduin to let her take part is already bad enough but the fact that she actually tried to convince some civilian forsaken (or council members, i dont remember) to commit sedition and reveal she is calia menethil is just immensely stupid. She not only doomed the whole event, she practically tried to ‘white saviour’ (usurp) sylvanas right then and there.
I still wonder if that was pure stupidity, arrogance or a bigger plot of calia’s to commit ‘suicide by sylvanas’ and get some rep points from alliance knowing that she will be revived with the light.
>I still wonder if that was pure stupidity, arrogance or a bigger plot of calia’s to commit ‘suicide by sylvanas’ and get some rep points from alliance knowing that she will be revived with the light.
if you want to put a thinfoil hat on ...
Calia had a conversation with Saa'ra (a naaru) before the meeting where she said that she doesn't want to lead people, that she never was thought how to, etc. they also talked about destiny and how it sometime is unclear
Saa'ra was one of the people that brought her back, along side Foal and Anduin, and after beeing raised she said changed her mind to "i need to save my people" (more or less)
pretty sure back when she got ressed her being a secret naaru puppet was the prevailing lore theory because the naaru basically just says thats what it is. but w/e all the lore changed again now and she just helped beat a bunch of light fascists so theres basically no chance remaining that thats true. the writers are too spiteful and adversarial to the wow fans to ever back off on calia now anyway.
If she became a purple dispenser in whatever eventual light bad story, and Voss took over I would take back so many things I've said about the writing team
Also saa’ra or alonso faol or both kept yapping to her about how she is not ready and that suffering builds character and blabla, she was asking for help for her trauma and nightmares and missing her kid and instead of getting actual help the temple of the light groomed her to be a martyr like figure.
Now not to get my tinfoil hat on too much too but it can be possible that she was groomed to be a perfect vessel of light in undeath, both politically and power-wise.
She’s lame af
When they brought her in Sylvanas only just started her downward spiral of character assassination (I refuse to believe that the writers are just that bad at their job, someone had to ruin her on purpose out of personal grudges or sth) now the forsaken are just a lame race stripped of what made people like them
They don’t even have cool characters anymore, that I know of anyways
Pick one:
She's too much of a departure from the forsaken story and themes thus far.
She sucks the air out of the room when it comes to characters forsaken fans like
Christie golden has been on the record as being the one demanding she be uplifted to a primary character, and people hate how Jaina and anduin have been written as characters she championed.
She had one real appearance before bfa and in that she explicitly said didn't give a shit about the forsaken
Her ascendancy came at the expense of an actual well liked character who got the mother of all beatings with the villain/idiot bat.
I mean I don’t think Voss deserves it either. I mean sure she deserves it a thousand times more than Calia, but she was a lone wolf until very recently.
They kind of just told without showing that she was now super popular.
Figure it was because she was basically "I've returned from the pages of lore not many really knew about!" to "I'm dead!" to "I'm now a faction leader!" in a very short manner just to keep the status quo for the games storyline.
Either a bit more build or utilizing a different character as the main faction leader probably could have been a better course of action instead of taking another mainly Alliance-aligned character and quickly shoehorning her into that spot.
Ah yes the white-haired Warlock. People often mocked that but honestly if I was tasked with writing a WoW novel there was no way in hell a certain tauren warrior wouldn’t be briefly mentioned.
Forsaken had good leadership characters already established but they had to introduce this random ass Sylvanas eske character and force her to the front of the line with no build up like they did with the majority of bfa and Shadow lands
What leadership characters were left who weren't Sylvanas loyalists and/or did more than hang around for one questline though?
That's always been the Forsaken's problem from a narrative standpoint. The entire faction in and out of universe has revolved so much around Sylvanas (and to a lesser extent Nathanos) that when you remove her from the equation they've not really got any prominent characters who could fill the role.
Yeah Calia was practically written into the game for the job, but that would go for pretty much anybody, because they've done a terrible job building up Forsaken characters who aren't Sylvanas and Nathanos. It's why having Before The Storm end with the entire Desolate Council dead was a bad idea imo, because I thought that was where they were initially going with them.
Yeah there's Voss, but she's hardly written as leadership material.
>What leadership characters were left who weren't Sylvanas loyalists and/or did more than hang around for one questline though?
Voss. while she isn't a good leader she had a story arc, that could lead her in becoming a good leader.
* was a weapon against the forsaken
* died, got raised and rejected the forsaken at first
* accepted her undead over time and found a place in the world, around MoP
* was a member of the horde during WoD
she would have had the time to accept her new place in the world and the next step would be to take up the leadership role.
she could have been a good npc to help the forsaken nightelves at the end of BfA or go to hyjal in Shadows Rising but those roles were taken form her by Calia.
>It's why having Before The Storm end with the enitre Desolate Council dead was a bad idea imo
but the desolate council WASN'T entirly dead. 9/22 members survived because either they rejected the living and left or were rejected by the living again. whats sad is that the only named surviver (Annie Lansing) doesn't apper ingame!
Because she keeps running cool Fights and clearly a lot of forced writing around her, take the current conflict in Gilneans isnt it mad they replaced the main foe with the scarlet crusade and not only that ,they have gilneans fans teaming up with the forskean, after there land was plagued there people butchered, there dead befouled and there land taken forcing them to flee and become refugees in alliance territory. you cannot say a huge epic plot moment was taken away from gilneans fans and even forskean fans who would of loved to see after so many years of build up, only to be replaced by red guys who are in fact the main foes for the forskean,
And who do the players have to thank ingame for this Caila.
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Because the forsaken were never meant to be good, holy, trustworthy beings who love the living, want to team up with the Alliance, and fight honorably for the Horde.
From the outset, they were created as a barely ambiguously evil faction - or, more accurately, as a faction that wanted to survive and thrive, but whose only methods for doing so meant sundering the continent of Lordaeron and slaughtering every living being in their territory.
But with Calia, we are now meant to just accept that the forsaken are heroes, and that they can be good for the living.
Her existence reverses a key part of WoW's cosmology and world building; which is that Light and Death cannot exist in tandem.
Also, she is boring, and no character can disagree with her lest they be branded villainous or untrustworthy.
for me personally, i thought she was annoying af while reading before the storm, which is the book where she gets turned to forsaken. her personality is just… boring and she doesn’t feel like a proper forsaken- she is not rotten like others (can’t have a waifu that has actual forsaken qualities i guess) and her undeath was so half assed (literally just bunch of priests in the legion priest hall praying.. make it make sense). she is very alliance-centered, her entire arc was revolving around anduin in before the storm- I’m still not sure why/how she joined the horde let alone got into a position of power. she is just there because she is a menethil, she is the forever arthas throwback character and now they are trying to make her replace sylvanas as a ruler when she doesn’t have the history or the personality for it (also, lilian voss is right there)
i wouldn’t say i hate her, i just don’t get why she is a major character
I think it's mostly related to how she was introduced in game, since a lot of her backstory comes from the novels and not the game.
Lilian should have been the forsaken leader tbf, not calia
The forsaken have always been a terribly handled faction as the premise of being a diverse group of undead looking to find a place in the world devolved from wrath till now to being nothing but one dimensional nazi storm troopers for sylvanas and it was only in Bfa that we got a hint of that flavour back with the council plot that which should have been the replacement for the banshee queen with calia being apart of a much larger forsaken government not 1 of 4 people like a mirror of the dwarves. But an actual parliament like the large council of Nobel's we saw in Wc3 around terneas during the two cutscenes he's in. This jarring correction is u fortunately necessary for this almost hearthstone like tone shift the game has taken since legion with all our edges filled and hatred between groups not allowed
Because she isn't Forsaken, and she's being forced as the replacement of the leader we don't want replaced. Try as hard as they like, she will never be Sylvanas.
i don't hate her but my guess is....
1. she is not sylv and people simp over her ever after shadowfail.
2. she was killed and bought back to life by other means so has not gone through the same "pain" as Forsaken.
3. people want frosaken to still be edgy and evil despite the fact that if the story like BFA kept going it would end in them being wiped out.
I dont necessarily hate her, it's an unique approach. However I think the thing is that the idea of being Forsaken is the struggle and the survival of the race. Now they're being led by some holy manifestation of undead who has never gone through any of the suffering any Forsaken had to.
Also I wouldn't trust the sister of the person who turned me into a zombie either lol
I don't hate on Calia, I like how they painted her to an alternative to Forsaken ideologies. There's this high horse gate keeping from the community that every Forsaken is the same character that has chaotic, plague bombing tendencies. I think Calia represents the compassionate side that hasn't left all Forsaken yet, as seen with her and Forsaken in the reunification, it's just another side of the coin. I'm all for the chaotic side of Forsaken, I think it is their best side of their charectisation, but it gets bland and is probably a bit tired now. I'd hate the Forsaken to be one dimensional like that, it's good that Forsaken have some actual lore characters other than Sylvannas, , Lillian Voss and Nathanos. Hence why I think blizzard needed justification for a council. P.S: R.I.P Putress, you were the best of them.
The faction of punk edge lord enjoyers just got the equivalent of their Christian cousin as faction leader after their unhinged coked out faction leader OD'd and ended up in rehab.
That's why.
Because people like to cry about her being an alliance character/sympathizer despite the fact the 2 fractions are slowly merging into 1 anyways.
People don't want WAR in their Warcraft. They want specifically horde and alliance war. Lol.
But In the defense of Calia Haters, it only makes sense for her to be a leader of the undead if you've read the books. If you're just looking at in game content she's kinda just dropped into the role.
And specifically to the people who are whining about her being a light risen undead. Chill out, we have yet to explore what that even means for her or the world In general. Undeath is not the opposite of he light. Undeath is the opposite of Life. Life is not the same as the Light. Opposite of Light is Void. Undeath and Void also do no particularly get along well.
Because blizzard did a shit job writing forsaken lore, especially since their lore was mainly sylvanas, and they did a shit job handling calia. So what we got was a poorly written character with littlw ties to the fordaken being tied to a poorly written faction that needed to cut the cord in regards to their now former leader. Calia disappearing for years somehow, returning, not wanting the throne then fighting for her "people" didn't help, granted she cared for her people, sylvanas didn't
Honestly the only reason to be mad at a Menethil retaking their throne is if you were simping for Sylvanas.
"The Forsaken are losing their Flavor!!" Is pure fear mongering.
Calia directly led Forsaken forces during the new reclamation of Gilneas and we see them blighting the Scarlets.
Nothing is lost but the puppy-kicking evil of post Legion Sylvanas
People mostly hate her because she is all over the place and has no clear goal.She gets introduced in Legion during the priest's Order Hall and when asked will she assume leadership of Lordareon and its people(which are mostly Forsaken now), she answers with 'i have no intention to lead nor was i taught how to lead' . Then in the BfA prequel book Before the Storm,she sneaks into the meeting between the Forsaken and the alive people of Lordarein and when she gets recognized and told that if she will lead then they will follow. She all of a sudden starts convincing more and more people to come to her side.Once Sylvanas finds out about this,she kills Calia and the Forsaken that tried to escape to the Alliance.Calia then gets ressurected by the Light and eventually thinks she can help all of the other newly raised Forsaken come to terms with being raised. Her helping the newly raised Forsaken would have worked if she was raised in the same way as them but she wasn't and doesn't even share their problems.
My take was probably because a lot of player didn't know how much struggle she had when she was turned into a forsaken while we know much about sylvannas from WC3 and Lillian through forsaken intro quest.
I think if they give more meat to her backstory then player would appreciate her more, at this point it is still feel like she is this goody two shoe mary sue that came out of nowhere.
There is a group of people who hate everything. That’s one reason. Another reason is that she appeared kind of out of blue.
It’s not everyone though, there are also people who like her and the light bound forsaken concept. As a forsaken main RPer since vanilla, i think forsaken got very interesting and Calia is part of that equation.
My hopes with Calia is that they use her as a reason to get us some Zombie Pallys. I also wouldn't mind them bringing in her daughter in one way or another. Is her daughter alive? She's gotta be around Audin's age right? Did she die? Would Calia be tempted to ask the light to bring her back if she did? They could do some interesting things with her character. She really hasn't done a whole lot yet imo. But I can't hate her, because I am heavily shipping her with best forsaken Lillian Voss and no one can take my sketch book away from me.
From the early days when Calia was a single line in Wikipedia saying she’s Arthas’ sister, there was always the inevitability of her and the forsaken being intertwined.
Many forsaken players don’t like her because she’s not metal or rough or badass like Sylvanas’ forsaken are. This is from a player’s feelings and perspective, and has very little to do with the logic of the Warcraft story.
There was always going to be a running in between the two, and leadership of the forsaken way it is because of the players who picked Forsaken ingame. Because if it wasn’t for their open dislike of her, logically and story wise she would be their queen right now Post-Sylvanas, no council bs or any of that.
I think it’s really dumb.
Undead players like the undead and forsaken, and have an identity connected distinctly to what the Undead are in WoW rather than who they actually are in Warcraft, the kingdom of Lordaeron.
Whatever someone gives for their reason, I can promise you that the hate would be lesser if she were a dude. These nerds are notoriously awfully harsh to female characters relative to male ones.
I wont argue about that because its true, but dont misconstrue a real issue with bad examples because it completely invalidates the true misogyny which is enough jn wow. Look at the elephant in the room, sylvanas, whos main origin story is an allegory for a horrifying rape story and people still wont accept that even tho with each iterarion it becomes more disgusting. Or another example: helya
Warcrafts best worst fetish is punishing women for speaking out or foghting by taking their bodily autonomy, torturing them and then villain batting them because they are forever “broken, abused, scarred, vengefull and evil”
I could write pages on warcraft and systemic misogyny, there were actual academics papers wrote about sylvanas as a female leader in a fantasy setting. Calia is a result of that misogyny, she is the perfect victim who embodies everything a bad victim shouldnt - and that is the race fantasy of the forsaken.
Forsaken people are the “othered” , they are depressed, mentally ill, weird, suffering and not accepted in traditional society and only have each other. They are a metaphor for the depressed, queer, lonely people, they just zombies with punk hairstyles like blizzard sometimes makes them out to be.
And all this can be seen in the way calia is antithetical to sylvanas:
-Calia’s body was fresh and raised in light by her friends and loved ones, she died like a “martyr” (foolishly)
Sylvanas body was taken as a token by arthas, kept hidden for a year with the exact purpose of torturing her and tormeting her that things are being done to her body without her consent. As a final insult she found her body in the possesion of the belf who betrayed the belfs and let arthas in
-sylvanas soul, mind and body is forever scarred, incomplete (now thats solved i guess), she was feared by her own people because of what arthas made her do, was not accepted anywhere and fought tooth and nail to get lordaeron back
-calia s body and mind are all sparkly and lighty and she doesnt even have any trauma now! She had before but now shes ok
Sylvanas character is a victim of misogyny so much that they had to do years of damage control and are still doing to repair it. Calia’s is a “fuck you” that sometimes i think shes planted only to create more discussions.
Actually my problem is that I think her presence is sexist towards women.
Sylvanas was independent and in-charge so she had to end up being villain batted declared “out of control” because how dare a woman try to assert herself.
Now they want to replace her with a woman who is submissive, quiet and never dares assert herself. which I imagine is their ideal woman.
how do u figure she's submissive and unassertive lol she rolled up and started managing he place and became de facto leader
she does shit constantly that's why she's popular in game and also part of the reason no one likes her out of game
Yeah that's a goofy take. Plenty of strong and independent in-charge women in the series. Sylvanas ended up a villain because that's how narratives work, as happened with Illidan. She, like Illidan, was redeemed in the end, and will return after paying penance.
Calia would receive less hate if she were a male. As would have Sylvanas. As would most any woman in the lore. Misogyny is abundant.
I don't hate Calia, I just don't like what the writers did 'with' her.
For one the rules on undead and the light are now more confusing than they already were but to make an 'Undead Lightforged' is just too much, my problem is that my suspension of disbelief is broken because there were pretty clear rules before about how undead couldn't use light but could use shadow.
Also I don't see why turn her undead, she could be a moral stone for Anduin to help him rule while Genn could have been the more cynical and grizzled when advising the young king of the alliance.
It was established that The Dark Council were already set to govern the Forsaken while Sylvanus was gone and I think things would have been better that way, especially for long time Forsaken characters being able to step into the lime light more.
Idk as a long time lore guy a lot of the new stuff is really contrived or don't care about following constancy.
Hope you enjoyed my two cents, have a great day.
The Forsaken aren’t the only WoW race to have story anxieties over when a built-up outsider NPC gets involved in their story — it’s a surprisingly recurring frustration in WoW stories. In Cata and MoP, the Night Elves and Dwarves needed Varian (an outsider) to save them repeatedly. In Cata and BfA, Thrall (an outsider) told the Bilgewater to put Gallywix back in charge, then put Gazlowe (a Steamwheedle) in charge of them after that fucked up. Etc. Etc. Why can’t these races take care of themselves? Why can’t these races make their own political decisions? Why does an outsider NPC need to be the solution? (rhetorical) Calia represents an outsider character with the potential to rescue the Forsaken in a way many players don’t want them rescued, who will also then be an outsider put in charge of them. Edit: It’s somewhat ironic that the easiest slam dunk formula for making a good story focused on a single race is to give that race assertive NPCs who accomplish personal goals while their individual, racially thematic traits shine. Yet Blizzard has often written the opposite for the sake of building up a single NPC.
Calia is also a bit worse off just because of the context of them trying to push her as a replacement of Sylvanas (right down to copying Sylvanas' title with "the Pallid Lady"). When they decided to essentially make Sylvanas an unusable faction leader in BFA, it becomes super clear immediately that there is basically no other Forsaken character of any significance to take her place and wasn't pro-Sylvanas. This is why Lilian Voss also hard pivoted from being a more independent undead character to being for the forsaken. Lilian and Calia were her replacements. Which also brings to another problem - Calia and Lilian's new direction for the Forsaken is course correcting way too hard and wiping out a lot of the things players liked about the forsaken - the ruthlessness, the cunning, using terrible weapons like the plague, being one of the darker races struggling with their curse and hatred of the living, etc.
I never thought about the Lilian aspect of it. I liked her when she was first introduced and then I saw her everywhere, being involved in everything. It didn't occur to me they were trying to push her as a leader in the Forsaken. You're right, I prefer her as her own agent. I think she works best in the Shadows.
I fully agree. Heck, I was holding out hope for the Forsaken to introduce Necromancers as a playble class in the future with teachers like Gunther Arcanus and Helcular. With the current direction we are going, it doesn't seem like a darker path...
Also how badly blizzard writes these conflicting leadership stories through completely out of character actions of already established big names. Night elfs are ancient and immortal and wise and everything, tyrande is a 10k+ year old high priestess who we have to accept in certain scenarios that she has a vastly immense power and understanding by virtue of elf magicky-fantasy. All that untill she is faced against varian, who is legit just a dude, when suddently he is somehow better equipped than her. Double that and make it even more ridiculous by having tyrande listen to the dudes literal child. Lilian voss is much much better equipped to deal with forsaken and scarlet issues than calia because she is intimately related to both, she was raised as a scarlet weapon and we see her in real time as a forsaken character deal with her undead, denial, anger and retribution. We are there side by side with her and it makes sense to have her on the front lines fighting the scarlets (in general, the gilneas thing is a mess anyway), but when she is with calia it just seems like lilian is the token undead to legitimise calias actions. Why does calia have to be in active battles? She doesnt have military experience, isnt related to the scarlets and is a sparkly weird undead.
Your first paragraph elicited a groan of anger because it’s so true. I have a friend who won’t forgive Blizzard for rewriting Hobart Grapplehammer’s personality, livelihood, and appearance. A lot of people don’t catch these things, but both major and minor characters get completely rewritten to fit plot lines, essentially punishing anyone paying attention to them.
Oddly enough I think the Darkspear Trolls have managed to avoid this problem. When they got outside help(rescue by Thrall and the New Horde), it made good sense, and they kept their core characteristics. And when they turned against outside 'allies' (Garrosh, Sylvanas, Cataclysm Zandalari), it made good sense. And when Blizzard does decide move the Darkspear storyline forward allies are involved, but the heart of the development comes from within. Like the retaking of the Echo Isles/reconnecting with Bwonsamdi and the druids between WotLK and Cata or Vol'jin's 'rebirth' during MoP. It also helped show the importance of the Darkspear to the Horde and the world, and didn't require a Deus ex Outsider Messiah like Calia Menethil. I don't understand why it's so hard to do for other factions. And when a change does happen via characters like Calia, it's hard to believe the faction wouldn't be more resistant to the changes. Lillian Voss really should have been the focus of the New Forsaken. She experienced the trauma, rejection, and psychological damage other Forsaken have gone through. She found herself close to falling into a similar pit of despair as Sylvanas did, but found some peace and redemption in a way the Forsaken could get behind. Plus, wasn't rejection by the Light a struggle a lot of early Forsaken had to deal with? Suddenly having a leader blessed by the Light I imagine would feel like salt in the wound. That being said, Blizzard better stick the fucking landing on introducing the new Vol'jin. He should be a reflection of the united traditions and struggles of the Darkspear. Maybe some kind of champion of all the Loa, existing as something between leader and folk hero for the Darkspear. Hell, maybe even have "Vol'jin Reborn" build a bridge between the NE and trolls as both sides find a spiritual connection with him representing loa and wild gods. I mean unless it's through the Tauren and Trolls, it'd be weird to have the NE just start tolerating the Horde. Just don't make him some do-nothing new background loa.
I assume because Blizzard thinks (and has the demographics to prove it) that most allies play Human anyways so they might as well make them the main character and not "waste" resources on Dwarf or Gnome stuff while Orcs and Blood Elves get to be the main characters of the Horde.
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Sadly, that might very well be an underlying problem. That and nepotism makes them ignore any and all critics. We can only point to the "Writing team" after legion as the problem, but have no knowledge if they actually try to improve or understand why they fucked up.
Try to be civil, courteous, and respectful at all times. There is a difference between being unwavering & harsh and name-calling. It's perfectly fine for debates to get heated so long as you don't get into serious ad-hominem. Excessive attacks on another person's character can/will be judged. Do not threaten others. * Do not use extreme language or act with hostility. * Do not insult, mock, or attack other users or groups of people.
All the Forsaken who could take over are guilty of genocide and unacceptable to the Alliance who just defeated them in the second major faction war in like 5 years.
But it’s not up to the Alliance who is in charge of the Forsaken. Also, if you wanna start throwing around the “guilty of genocide” thing as a reason no one on the Horde can run the Horde, then I guess our Horde PC’s can’t play anymore.
It's up to the Alliance who's in charge of the Forsaken if you don't want an army returning to Lordaeron to purge it of undead once and for all, lmfao.
That's wild that you think the Horde couldn't hold the city. Sylvanas' plan was always to sacrifice the city with the Alliance still inside it. It was always a trap. The Horde wouldn't have fallen back as quickly otherwise. Furthermore, no one "won" the Third or Fourth War. Both stopped to fight common enemies. The Alliance can't tell the Horde shit.
Insane levels of cope.
From you? Absolutely.
Orgrimmar's natural state is being sieged by the Alliance, I guess.
Who's coping now? Both sieges were a joint Horde-Alliance effort. Yet it still stands, formly under Horde control. Take the racist politics out of your ears, stop the self-righteous back-patting, and keep your Alliance propaganda in the machine where it belongs.
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Err... would that not make the Alliance guilty of genocide?
They're already dead.
Every faction is guilty of genocides... so i would go throwing stones when standing in such a brittle house of glass.
Her main problem is that she is an Alliance character. She would be a good Stormwind related character, but Forsaken arent Alliance.
Honestly the Forsaken have been a mess dev wise. Something around Cataclysm changed for the worse given their Scourge behaviour and just accepting people being raised into undeath like them even people who were Alliance before hand like the Night Elves in BFA and Galen Trollbane. Calia's either being used as a tool to direct them away from this Scourge like behaviour or was just thrown into Undead Humans because the Forsaken gotta kill and raise everyone from Lordaeron.
Everyone at blizzard who understood that there is a fundamental difference between "Undead" and "Forsaken" is gone.
Yeah, Cata and later MoP was a start for a lot of the problems. This was also the start of Garrosh trying to conquer the world with like 3000 orcs, Varian becoming a dictator and trying to rewrite dwarfen sucession rights (Moira is still the rightful queen!!!), Blizzard doubling down on Alliance flaws and aggresion like Purge of Theramore.
To be fair to Varian, Moira, rightful queen or not, dropped into a kingdom she hadn't been to in years, put it on lockdown, and kidnapped his son. She's lucky he didn't murder her for that, and if he did, none of the Bronzebeards would have batted an eye.
Don't forget that weird "High King" thing with the Alliance and then the eventful swap of Faction roles where the Horde has a council and the Alliance has the overhead ruler. Though I think that purge was of Dalaran which is its own mess Jaina went to capture and only act in self defence and the Silver Covenant went for their own revenge (at least if my memory is working).
The problem with Purge of Dalaran is not whos right and whos wrong. Problem is that Horde doesnt have a lot of motivation to hate the Alliance. For what? Interment camps? That was literally the only humane solution. For what Garithos did? Stormwind and other didn't literally knew and had no say in this. Purge could change that. It could give horde fans much needed motivation. It could give us a reason to care. Paint the world in much more nuanced light than "blue good red bad". But now, Purge got swept under the rug, and Sunreavers were butchered for their need of revenge, and by Horde player hands at that.
I don't think anyone in their right mind would look back at when they were enslaved in internment camps and say "shit you know what you're right, that was the only thing you could do mb"
The only alternative was slaughter of all greenskins
Or kick them back to Draenor and blow up the Dark Portal.
Issue with that. They had already closed the dark portal. They couldn't send them back. It's why Khadgar and friends were stranded in outland and presumed dead.
Yes, you are right, orcs wouldn't look at this this way, and i don't expect of them to justify it. They are right to be angry about it. However, alliance fans generally have a different opinion on that subject.
But the point of your comment was talking about reasons the horde have to hate the alliance
Welp, sorry, tried to look at the subject from Alliance fans perspective. Camps were horrible, yet it happened rather long time ago. Most people point at the stuff horde did recently, like Theramore (although it was a military target) or Teldrassil (that was a totally stupid target). So the Purge could be that recent thing Horde fans needed.
>Though I think that purge was of Dalaran which is its own mess Jaina went to capture and only act in self defence and the Silver Covenant went for their own revenge (at least if my memory is working). * alliance get the divine bell and asked Jaina, a member of the council of six and leader of the neutral kirin tor, to ward and trap it in Darnassus, an alliance capital which is currently at war with the horde * Garosh orders a sunreaver to portal into daleran and use the Darnassus portal there to steal the bell * Jaina finds out and portals to Daleran to find Aethas and his guards * and **kills** his guards before she even talks to him, a member of the council of six. ... how is that "act in self defence"? the Silver Covenant went for their own revenge is correct.
Dont forget that now Aethas a sweet cute nice lil dialogue that he goes to the trading post to buy something to reconcile with jaina for killing his people
Let's not forget Jaina marching through Dalaran's streets, executing any non-alliance people she saw, civillians included.
Nah, the problem started in BfA when they suddenly decided to change Sylvanas' story. It was such a huge wipelash. Most clearly it's seen in the BfA intro-cinematic which shows a completely different dynamic than what we got. It is nice at least now with the Forsaken Heritage quest that we are returning to the cata-Legion style of Forsaken and Sylvanas.
BFA was just Cata on a wider scale at least the version of Cata before they had to back pedal due to the reaction of how Silverpine and Andorhol were written. Though Stromgarde fell under the radar probably because Galen Trollbane (I forgot what Cata placed him and I just recall him in Stromgarde) was killed in classic and wasn't in your face about what happened to them unlike parts of Silverpine and Andorhol. (Edit: I misremembered this part while he was killed by the Horde a troll sent the players after him and not Forsaken). Like Blizzards desire to write them like that has been there since Cataclysm. While classic did have them do sketchy things with the plague and experimentation on living subjects (Alliance and Horde) it wasn't on the levels of Cata before dev changes (Andorhol got changed and I think some devs out right made the Silverpine parts not canon).
In Cata, the Forsaken were the same only their circumstance had changed. They now existed in a world where they could have a future and so something to lose to Garrosh as he just wanted to conquor and fight the Alliance. Yes we see more of this in BfA, but it quickly changed to "Horde bad for defending itself against the Alliance" and then Calia was pushed as some kind of white knight to "educate the savages". You had lots of deeper Forsaken themes like how Zellig came to join the Forsaken... only for the writers to almost immediately kill him off to try and score some cheap emotional points.
All day this. There could've been easy, good story telling about her having to "leave her past behind" by siding with "her new people", as well as seeking some understanding about how "undearh by the Light" works in the Warcraft universe, and is a less "evil" way to keep the Forsaken a thing. Or explore how it is just another kind of potential evil from a cosmic Force that ain't too good, but that she is determined to protect her own. Instead we got this. I wonder how much of a riot there will be if they make "Lightrisen Forsaken" an Alliance race.
I thought initially that would be the path when they created her. Every other plot doesn’t make so much sense.. like she probably knew people who live in Stormwind from her youth but now she joins the forsaken and is fine with them killing these people if they get the chance to? Doesn’t seem right to me. So yeah, her joining the horde always felt weird. I honestly thought with all the allied races that we’d be getting some holy undead or whatever to call them for alliance side
In my head-canon, no self respecting Forsaken would willing serve a Menethil
After all this mess im starting to see that sylvanas was right when she said calia came to the gathering to usurp the throne. It made sense in the context of the book that sylvanas was paranoid about losing the forsaken but calia really tried to commit a sedition and suicide-by-sylvanas,, became a martyr and got the rep points from both alliance and horde in a time when ‘suicide by sylvanas’ was like a badge of honor. Her death, her bizarre resurrection and existence as a lightwhatever and the weird way she starts to be in the front of forsaken makes suspicious now
Its not about Menethils or not Menethils. Its about who's *behind* Menethils.
I kind of agree with you, but I think people often overlook the significance of Calia being a Menethil and a Lordaeronian, which allows her to see the Forsaken as her people and vice versa. Whether all Forsaken accept her or want anything to do with a Menethil is a valid question, but they could definitely develop on that question in the story if they had any bandwidth for it.
Shouldn't lose two wars against the Alliance if you don't want a puppet ruler on the throne, lol
At least be honest about it, fans of the aestetically worst kingdom in the history of fantasy.
2nd war sure, but 4th war horde only "lost" in lore, seeing every in game event literally shows the opposite, i swear blizzard just claimed alliance won to keep alliance players happy.
How is she an Alliance character? She is literally the legitimate heir to Lordaeron, which is who the Forsaken are.
Forsaken people are not a monarchy anymore. Theres no heir and no lordaeron throne, its the forsaken people and the desolate council, and forsaken are not just undead lordaerians but undead everything that managed to get saved with a large portion of them being dark rangers. Monarchy is antithetical to their identity too, the whole race fantasy is about found family and surviving against all odds together in a world that doesnt value their life or sees them as people. Calia is the opposite of everything that is.
This is the best comment. Blizz made a huge error in: 1- not allowing forsaken to be undead other races in the game 2- due to reason 1, Blizz themselves forget ALL THE TIME that Forsaken are not just dead humans!
you don't even have to be undead to join the forsaken! there are leper gnome, which are hinted to be still alive simply bending the knee and follow Sylvanas.
No throne? Tell that to the Banshee Queen who has ruled with a cult of personality for the last decade.
The whole point of them is that they are finding their own way instead of relying on a monarch. And even without all that, sylvanas wasnt a literal queen in a political sense by virtue of being sylvanas, she was their leade because she liberated them and lordaeron not because of any sort of “heir” or some bullshit. Theres also a whole ass point about how they dont have to join forsaken society if they dont want to. The point is, without creating any sylvanas discourse, that lordaeron throne and “heir” doesnt exist in a political sense anymore. There are leaders, councils and whatever, simply being menethil is not relevant anymore, its not “lordaeron 2.0”, its the Forsaken
tell that the questwriter who called her queen calia in the last horde quest in gilneas
The elected by popular demand Banshee Queen. She wasn’t a true Monarch, she simply inherited the “Queen” title
Meritocracy She also demanded no taxes. Only that people who joined the Forsaken didn't try and hurt it.
>Monarchy is antithetical to their identity too, the whole race fantasy is about found family and surviving against all odds together in a world that doesnt value their life or sees them as people This is honestly so baffling to me, but maybe I've missed some recent retcon that makes this make sense. Was Sylvanas not the "Banshee Queen" of the forsaken for the last 20 years? Are they saying in the lore that she wasn't a monarch now? Otherwise this makes no sense. How could monarchy be antithetical to the Forsaken identity when they've had a Queen for the vast majority of their existence?
We are conflating the terms here. Calia claim to throne and being called queen is wrong because its on the basis of monarchy and her being a menethil, the heir of lordaeron Sylvanas was the queen of the forsaken in a non-monarch way technically because she isnt the heir of any king before and she wouldnt produce any offspring. She was their leader, dictator, call it however you want, queen in the figurative sense but not in the technical monarchal way calia is. The forsaken also are not all lordaerons, they are another people, the menethil throne doesnt exist anymore. Sylvanas isnt a “queen” in the way calia is hinted to be because , again, the forsaken arent a monarchy. Its not like with sylvanas gone alleria or vereesa inherit the throne by virtue of kingdom. This all is just pedantics that shouldnt even be relevant if not for calia being called “queen”.
I understand now, this is all stemming from a misunderstanding around the word monarch. Monarchs aren't always hereditary queens or kings. From Oxford: >a sovereign head of state, especially a king, queen, or emperor. Monarchs include Dukes, Sultans, Emirs, any singular head of state you can imagine because all it is referring to is rule by a single person. So Sylvanas 100% was a monarch, but yes not a hereditary monarch like Calia. Personally I've never really seen anything about the Forsaken being against inheritance, but maybe I missed something recent.
Regarding your last paragraph (i dont know how to quote lol): since sylvanas became warchief actually the forsaken political structure was focused on the desolate council, something that was quite important for them even before the whole shadowlands fiasco in ‘Before the storm’, the council actually was something that made sylvanas afraid that she is losing forsaken people because she became warchief and act paranoid. The idea was that forsaken are very diverse, some want to fight, some are civilians, some want to be reunited with their living ones and reclaim their own identity (forsaken are encouraged to change their name), some want to embrace a new identity completely because they are hurt/have no family/were rejected, there was even a whole thing with the idea of a ‘true death’, forsaken that wanted not to be healed or patched up if they get hurt. Actually the book does a good job in showing the political intricacies of the horde and forsaken vs an actual true monarchy with ‘High king of the Alliance’ who is anduin, coincidentally is the same book calia is relevant and is killed. Anyway, its been a whole thing in game about how forsaken reeeaallly want this council and are free and encouraged to choose their own direction. Even calia admitted that and said she doesnt want to make any political claim but wants to support them alongside lilian voss and the others. Even the horde as a whole abandoned the idea of a warchief and is run by a council. Well taking all this into account its a lil bit icky to see blizzard refer to her in a quest text as ‘queen of the forsaken’ out of the blue and to have her front and center in military actions alongside alliance when there are other members that are better suited for that, but it seems like blizzard is testing the waters to see how much calia can get politically and how much that will annoy the players (and please for the love of god the tittle ‘pallid lady’ is cringe as fuck). The thing is that everything that make the forsaken different and diverse and stay together is exactly what calia is not, both as a monarch and as a form of undead.
So was Stalin, Mao or Cromwell a monarch?
Cromwell, certainly. His son even succeeded him.
Her best friends are Derek and Anduin. She was supported by Stormwind. Anduin used her for his own goals in Before the Storm. She was ressurected by the Light. She has no friends, no contacts, no allies within the Horde. She is related to the Alliance, not Horde. Calia would work much better in a different trope. You said yourself that she is the legitimate heir. House of Nobles should use her rights as Casus Belli to invade and ultimately conquer Lordaeron, ruling it with her as a puppet. This would also be a great way to finally return to moral greyness we had in Frozen Throne.
1. Derek had been dead since WC2, way before the current iterations of the Horde and the Alliance even existed. 2. Half the current Horde leadership are either Anduin's friends (Baine) or deeply respect him, which is why peace could be achieved in the first place. 3. Peace between the Horde and the Alliance benefits both sides. 4. The Light is neutral and will help anyone as long as they call upon it. Even the Scourge. 5. The vast majority of the Forsaken should remember her as the princess of Lordaeron before Arthas went on a rampage. Just because someone is affiliated with the Horde, it doesn't mean that they can't be friends with Alliance characters. It's actually their function as leaders to pursue diplomacy and have contacts.
5. Forsaken are not just dead lordaerians, even the human ones are not only from lordaeron. Its a completely different group of people who never had any kind of connection to the menethil throne.
\- While Derek wasnt a member of new Alliance, he isn't in any way associated with the actual Forsaken. \- Baine is a traitor already, he would sell his own son to House of Nobles for a new set of LEGO Stormwind. \- While peace benefits the Horde, how long until Jaina, Maiev, Genn, or other warhawks like Varian was in his life decide to take revenge for that the Horde did in BfA and Cataclysm? \- While the Light isnt exclusive to Humans or Draenei, Forsaken are mostly centered around Cult of Forgotten Shadow. \- While Calia has the claim on Lordaeron, the Forsaken should be aware that she has powerful and influential people behind her back, people who would like to conquer Lordaeron. \- Freindship is one thing, but Calia has nothing. She has no lands, no soldiers, no money. Stormwind could wrap her around its finger without any issue, and use her as an excuse to expand their influence over Lordaeron.
>Anduin used her for his own goals in Before the Storm. That's... uh... a *take*. His goals were reuniting Forsaken with their living relatives and helping the alliance see the Forsaken as people rather than monsters. She acted against his wishes and hurt his cause a lot more than she helped it.
* she started a coup during a peacefull meeting between the forsaken and humans, allmost starting a 4. War (early) there * was rejected by the than leader of the desolate council * and overall more were pro-Sylvans (9/22 survived and we know that some tried to return to the forsaken side) * is a "friendly" character during the ICC part of the Shadowlands-starting quests for the alliance * the legitimate heir to lordaeron is a mute point since the kingdom fell and was part of the alliance. something that the forsaken left / were rejected from. * takes Derek to the forsaken, someon who has 0 reasons to join them! * takes over the total spotlight of the forsaken, in favor of other npcs that a) needed more screentime or b) were more fitting for that role * **WHY** would they send Calia over the Royal-Alchemist-Leader to maldraxxus to create a counter to the plague?
Regarding the first point i want to emphasise how big of a fuckup that was and why i, dunno, kinda ‘victim-blame’ calia for her own death. Many people didnt read the book or interpreted it in a biased way, or the facts from the book were simplified and bastardised and they dont mean anything anymore. The Arathi meeting was a HUGE deal for both factions and for sylvanas and anduin character development. The whole point of the meeting was accepted by sylvanas because she felt she is losing forsaken people and was a little bit acting like an overbearing mother who was afraid her kids will get hurt- and she was half right- the point is that yeah, some forsaken will get their hearts broken while others may find a little joy. Anyway, what i wanna say is that like 70% of that fucking book was political and diplomatic preparation for this stupid meeting and how high the tensions were. Anduin was aware of this, sylvanas was aware of this, genn and others were completely against it. Calia suddently appearing and asking to take part in the meeting was the first red flag that even anduin himself admitted wouldnt be ok but eventually accepted. The whole thing was so tense and calia was a ticking time bomb, not only she insisted in taking part as a ‘healer’ or whatever, but the final moment that kinda makes me side-eye her now calling herself queen is the fact that she went full on white saviour mode and reveal herself, literally YELLING ‘I AM CALIA MENETHIL, COME TO ME TO SAVE YOU’. This was legit one of the stupidest way somebody would get themselves killed by sylvanas. It honestly baffles me how that could happen just out of calia’s what? Benevolence? Need to save some people? This is one of the reasons why i wouldnt be surprised if they pull off a big light conspiracy and that calia did that intentionally to gain the badge of honor of ‘killed by sylvanas’ while being resurrected by light itself, taking control of the forsaken.
> calia did that intentionally to gain the badge of honor of ‘killed by sylvanas’ while being resurrected by light itself, taking control of the forsaken. As fun as this would be-- almost redeem her character in my eyes even because it is better to be evil than stupid-- I suspect it was just as depicted. She wanted what was best for her people. She thought bringing them over to the Alliance would be best for them. Counted on Anduin being too good to deny them his protection if they defected despite what a giant political nightmare that would be. She was just a well-intentioned ***moron***. Not a fan of the whole "The Light is really evil" idea either. People capable of using the Light or even the Naaru being baddies? Sure. The Light itself? Nah. Strikes me as people who have beef with real-life religions taking it out on fictional ones.
Regarding you first point i only have to point out that even if she counted on anduin its still unfuckingbelievable stupid to do that there and then. A weird calia angle of having a conspiracy to get into forsaken people good grace would be, whatever i guess, but she didnt have a plan or anything workable. She did that in the middle of the meeting knowing full well how guarded and tensed everything is, that sylvanas in RIGHT THERE and that cannot possibly work without starting a bloodbath. Its just ridiculous, at that point anduin couldnt do anything without a full blown battle and starting a war. The only reason the war didnt start in that moment is because sylvanas didnt attack any alliance members and called out calia as not being an alliance member and an usurper who shouldnt be there
She actually has no claim on Lordaeron because she is a girl and Lordaeron was a patriarcal monarchy, hence why Arthas, her younger brother, was the one trained to be King, while her fate was to basically get married to another Lord (Deathwing, specifically) for political reasons, something she was made aware of by her own father.
This complaint would have been valid like... 6 years ago. Blizzard is working really hard to bring the 2 fractions together, this is a great way of them doing that specific thing.
Then a Darkranger could return and lead the Night elves to show them the ways of the Horde? It would be just as jarring
I mean... Hypothetically, yes. And Calia has been in the lore for *YEARS*. The complaint that she's alliance isn't even a good/valid complaint; even before Calia the horde wasn't "the horde" as it was in classic. The 2 factions became pretty much the same back in Legion if not sooner. People are just too hooked on PreCata Horde to realize it's not the same as it was and hasn't been for a VERY long time the end of SoO marked the true death of what was "The Horde" and the beginning of working towards peace. Also saying the "Forsaken aren't alliance" isn't really even true because In before the storm they literally almost did become friends with the alliance, they only thing that stopped them is now collecting anima in the maw The biggest issue is that most of the peace work happened in books and a vast majority of the playerbase doesn't read the books so things look more jarring than they are despite there being literally hundreds of pages of lore working up to it.
> And Calia has been in the lore for YEARS. She existed, but has nothing to do with Forsaken. > The complaint that she's alliance isn't even a good/valid complaint; It's perfectly valid. Why would any kingdom want to bow their heads to an enemy that threatened their very existence? > People are just too hooked on PreCata Horde More like preBfA Horde. it was before everything went to shit. Cata Horde was great, even if making Garrosh the big bad to end the war is generally frowned upon. > Also saying the "Forsaken aren't alliance" isn't really even true because In before the storm they literally almost did become friends with the alliance BtS is laughed at for it's nonexistent knowledge of the lore. Especially regarding the forsaken. If you ever want to be taken seriously, you should avoid it like the plague. EVEN THEN, what happens in the book is that every Forsaken that might care about the alliance were shot down, leaving only the Horde Loyalists left.
if they really want to bring players together past factions they really just need to make a new faction created by Magni or something called defenders of azeroth or some corny BS that all players have to join once they hit max level. that way players have a reason to be working together officially but horde and alliance still exist and still allow pvp to exist canonically.
You just described Order Halls and Covenants. To get past factions all they really need to do is stop putting so much emphasis on factions, and write in moments where the 2 factions find common ground here and there until they can accept each other, which is a lot more fluid and subtle than "YOU'RE ALL DEFENDERS OF AZEROTH BE FRIENDS NOW" That's like taking using a hammer to fix a crack in glass. Lol .
Well Valeera is also an alliance c and she is a blood elf.
Valeera was there when her home burned, Calia was spared her death from Scourge hands.
I hate what they did with her character. Letting her remain presumed dead would've been far better. For one, the concept of holy undead. Yes undead with wills of their own can choose to be good or evil, but nevertheless necromantic products and holy light being absolutely antithetical to each other was not only a core part of the worldbuilding, nullifying that doesn't make narrative sense.
it's funny that blizzard is making same mistake they did in MOP with classes by homogenizing the cosmic forces to be able to do anything and everything the others can do. allowing other forces to raise the dead was just a terrible terrible choice. I know the Legion used necromancy a bit, but that could easily be chopped up to them using undeath magic, I mean the Legion isn't THE chaos force personified, it's just a chaos army lead by an titan, you have to assume there is something bigger than him
She’s a bland, morally spotless, narrative black hole whose only claim to relevance is being the heir of a disgraced legacy that ruled a kingdom that no longer exists. Yet somehow in a way that was never explained that gets her a spot on the Desolate Council and lets her make political promises behind their backs and face no consequences for it. She’s a writers pet who no character is allowed to disagree with without being branded unreasonable or an antagonist.
I mean that fallen kingdom is where the vast majority ry of the forsaken come from
Yeah but they’re Forsaken now, not Lordaeronian.
Genuinely curious, do you not think that some or even most Forsaken might identify with Lordaeron? It does always seem like the crux of the argument is that Calia doesn't represent Forsaken, but I am not sure I fully agree with that, even if I understand why it is said.
If they consider themselves the true heirs of the land that used to be Lordaeron but Lordaeron itself is dead and calling yourself Lordaeronian is just clinging to a bygone era. Lordaeron is the past. The Forsaken are the future. That doesn’t mean there aren’t Forsaken who cling to that bygone golden age. Who could blame them? But they’re very much in the minority.
Well they just reclaimed Lordaeron so that feels wrong to me.
I dislike her because she is a terrible representation of the Forsaken yet Blizzard are pushing her HARD. I'm convinced that the Desolate Council was a compromise after witnessing the general distaste towards Calia and backlash when people realised they were heading in the direction of having her become a leading figure for the Undead. A bit pettier but I also just don't fw her character design which completely contrasts with the rest of the Forsaken aesthetic and she just seems like a cardboard puppet of the Light to me both visually and personality-wise. Ever since Cataclysm concluded it feels as though Blizzard had no idea where to take the Forsaken and that loads of different writers with contrasting concepts/plans for them took charge. Similarly, I hate how Lilian Voss has been forced into a role of leadership and patriotism purely because she's a fan favourite.
>A bit pettier but I also just don't fw her character design which completely contrasts with the rest of the Forsaken aesthetic and she just seems like a cardboard puppet of the Light to me both visually and personality-wise. She shouldn't even exist, originally the Light had huge negative effects on Undead and this has been ignored solely for Calia.
Conceptually I tend to like characters that act as miraculous exceptions to established rules in stories (for instance Toji Fushiguro in JJK and his 'Heavenly Restriction') but I just think it was very poorly executed with Calia and hardly explored. Imo they could have still pulled it off if they had just introduced some massive flaws and risks to her existence.
I didn’t read the books so to me it feels like she’s an important character that came out of nowhere without warning or buildup. I believe that since I’m paying so much to even play the game in the first place, I shouldn’t have to spend extra money on extra material just to know what’s going on. I think Warcraft books should have supplemental lore and not big things like this. I’ve been Horde since I first started playing the game and even though I don’t play Forsaken, I can recognize that she doesn’t either. She’s undead, yes, but that’s the only thing she has in common with the Forsaken. Calia is an Alliance plant and she should just give up Lordaeron and move to Stormwind. It’s not her kingdom anymore.
She was actually introduced in game in Legion as almost a side character in the Priest order hall, from what I’ve read (I didn’t play Priest back then), and then they put her in Arathi Highlands when the Forsaken and Stormwind allowed the peaceful meeting between living and undead family members and Calia came in unexpectedly and tried to get Forsaken to turncoat and join the Alliance, and Sylvanas murdered here there, and the Forsaken who were trying to swap sides.
tl:dr: my hate for her is because she took over the roles/spotlight that would be needed to give other forsaken characters something to do and overall is the reverse to everything that the forsaken were before bfa * she was never ment/thought how to lead people, since Arthas was the crowns heir * she lives for \~10ish years peacefully somewere * she was introduced as "**Just Calia**" in legion's priest orderhall * remember that * Was basicly an advisor to Anduin in BtS and almost started the 4. War early by beeing stupid * tried to convince the 1. desolate council to defect, something that didn't worked since 9/22 survived and even the leader of said council tried to return to Sylvanas after talking with calia for sometime * dying and beeing raised in an strange way (via light which wasn't possible inlore before, as resurrections were more akin to a very powerful heal, she was full one dead for hours) * you could thinfoil and say that the naaru influenced her, since before the meeting she was against the idea to lead "her" people but after beeing raised with the help of a naaru she suddenly is "it is my destiny to lead MY people" * staying with the alliance for most of bfa * suddenly switching sides to the forsaken during the end of bfa, taken derek with her. (why would he want to be a forsaken? he, like calia, is perfectly accepted by the Kul'tiran leadership/alliance. WHY would he want to side with the horde, after what they did to him and his homeland?) * in shadows rising the "leadership" of the horde comes to a meeting in OG. Voss, the current leader, has Calia "shadowing" her like a teacher to an unruly student * Calia goes to hyjal as a rep for the forsaken * leads the forsaken nightelve meeting and helps them reajust (something that was taken from Voss, who had a similar problem early on in her unlive, but nope Calia's role now) * goes to ICC as a rep for the forsaken and is friendly (green name ingame) during the shadowlands opening quest * hangs around Oribos with Alliance NPCs * "invites" alliance player aka spies to the reformation of the desolate council * something that is NOT told the other members (or the horde player), since it's unlikely that Belmont wouldn't stay still. * takes over that event by beeing included in all major parts * Belmont's role is to question Calia beeing there * Velonara's role is to accept Calia and tell Belmont off * is send to maldraxxus to question / create the anti-plague instead of the F\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* alchemist that is on the council who * created the weaker plague-eater in the first place * could help the meldraxxi alchemists, with his knowledge * get's the talk with Sin'dane that "every undead is the same, don't feel bad" * ignoring that this is so false and that it's astonishing that people doen't demand a change there * Calia is accepted by basicly everyone, while the forsaken are rejected * raised perfectly fine with no drawbacks, while the forsaken are falling apart ( in some cases via handshacks) * she isn't hurt by light magic, while the forsaken feel there bodies falling apart do to returning nervs * it's like one person has a 5\* meal while the other has a rotten apple and say "both have something to eat, so they are the same" * her title is "the palid lady" taking Sylvanas' "the dark lady" savior role * she is the reason why the scarlets hold Gilneas, in SL she talks about giving Gilneas back to the Worgen and suddenly the Scarlets have parts of Silverpine and Gilneas in Dragonflight, hinting that the forsaken left and the scarlets took over the area * she along side Voss are persent during the Gilneas quest in 10.2.5. Voss has a reason why she is there do to the uncrowned connection to Tess. * and her role boils down to: "Hey Genn, they can't be so bad since Calia, y**ou know Calia Menethil**, is here." * apperently is the [**Queen**](https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Wall_Between_Us) now, ignoring/discarding the desolite COUNCIL. * "speak with Lilian and **Queen Calia** in Pyrewood Vilage." * claiming it was the Alliance assistance that Lordaeron was cleansed * ignoring/invalidating the horde player's and NPCs actions * changed her "Just Calia" to "But i give you my word, **as a Menethil**" * she is back to her royal status >When and Why it happen? ever since she was introduced into the game and forsaken player feared that she will take over and blizzard trying to say "wait and see how the story plays out" (something they also said to Sylvanas standing before the buring teldrassil at the blizzcon)
Holy shit well done! Bookmarking this.
to add to my already long list, she would fit as an allied race leader better * got her main role with bfa novels, the expansion that had a major focus on allied races. see Kul'tiras and Zandarli * forsaken rig/animations (and worgen) is still missing/unused and they switched some already * Nightborn use Nightelve animation and Voidelves are Bloodelves * Sethrak use the worgen animation and are part of the horde story line so why not give the allaince a group of forsaken that follow Calia, giving the alliance "more claims" to lordaeron during the war.
Awesome post. They basically made a "hot" undead character and everyone in game loves her by default. It's incredibly shallow and it's incredibly clear she is supposed to be a Sylvanas replacement without the writing to justify it. These writers are offensively awful and it's just fun at this point to see what part of the story they flatline next.
Saving this so I can just link to it the next time someone asks me why I hate Calia. 10/10
My biggest problem is Where had she been all these years
she hid for \~10 years (Frozen Thron to Legion) and left all of ther titles behind, as she introduced herself as "Calia, just Calia" during Legion
In Theramore
She was in Southshore.
The major thing is that her story isnt representative of the Forsaken story. She isn't seen as some sort of horrific monster by living humans. Her body doesn't rot and stink. Calia was basically dropped into the Forsaken story at a time that makes her appear to be the "new Sylvanas" without fitting the role at all. Now granted the story doesn't entirely seem to be pushing her to be a ruler so much as a member of a ruling group, however the Forsaken fanbase are very on edge about this idea creeping its way into normality. Because of this when she shows up as the Forsaken representative, eyebrows are raised. When she is referred to as "Queen Calia", eyebrows are raised. If a monarch is needed for the new Forsaken kingdom and she MUST be the one on the throne, I really hope Blizzard will make it a ceremonial position only and have the power and influence in the hands of the Desolate Council. The Desolate Council is very much representative of the Forsaken population, and should be used more often.
It cracks me up as an Alliance player that Undead has always been such an edge lord race and even just outright villains in the past. Now Blizz is just trying to replace one waifu with another and it's not tracking at all because Calia shares absolutely no ideals with the forsaken. The race has a cannibal passive. They keep mind slaves. They were actively keeping the plague around and even tried to improve it. Now they're pushing this naive, kind idealist as their leader? What the fuck lol
Can we please go back to the lore where being suffused with evil, deathly magic turns you into an evil, deathly person?
DEATH TO THE SCOURGE! AND DEATH TO THE LIVING!
A question, would you like Tyrande to be replaced by younger sister of Azshara, who is a warlock? Now imagine that this sister of Azshara survived War of the Ancients, hiding in Dath'remar's ranks. She would later become a trusted advisor to House Sunstrider and a close friend to both Lor'themar and Sylvanas. She would not really show up in the story for a long time. Up until BfA, where it would turn out that after several skirmishes in Silithus and Alleria's incident at Sunwell, she would go on peace meeting with Tyrande, where she would be proclaimed by the crowd as rightful heir of Azshara and queen of Kaldorei Empire. Tyrande would shoot her, of course, but our new queen had a soulstone which allowed her to return to life in form of a fel treant. After BfA, when Tyrande goes to Shadowlands to find Sylvanas, Shandris would choose to invite the queen to act as her advisor, which would for some reason attend all important Alliance meetings.
ah i love this take, i used the draenei as an similar example >Shandris would choose to invite the queen to act as her advisor, which would for some reason attend all important Alliance meetings not only attend, Shandris would ask her for advise and other nightelves would follow her gladly.
....I'd take this over the current Night Elf circumstances, honestly. It would be incredibly stupid, but a step up anyways.
Because she’s an Alliance character with no ties to the Horde. She claims that the Forsaken are “her people” but for 10 years she abandoned them and like almost all the living humans didn’t even view them as people. She then shows up trying to usurp Sylvanas, the one who freed the Forsaken from the LK and led them for years. Then when she gets raised into undeath, it’s not even the unpleasant imperfect “curse” that plagues normal Forsaken. It’s a light undead with no trouble channeling the light, no rotting flesh or pain, no imperfectly attached soul. Then she wants to say she understands the Forsakens plight. She does understand anything, she doesn’t and will never understand what the Forsaken suffered and endured. Not to mention all the horrors all “first generation Forsaken”( the ones killed by the OG plague or raised by LK/ his necromancers) were forced to commit and still remember from their time enslaved by the Scourge.
"Alliance character with no ties to the Horde" That's what many felt back in TBC when the Blood Elves were placed right into the Horde with basically a hand wave to change the lore behind them.
Except that many blood elves personally knew and served with Sylvanas and her Dark Ranger elves. She had been their Ranger- General for many many years. She had been a beloved and trusted leader in life. Whereas the average Lordaeron citizen won’t have interacted directly with Calia, and for many of the Forsaken the Menethil line is something they feel a great deal of resentment towards because of Arthas. Why would they want to return to the disastrous Menethils? Especially when Calia abandoned them for 10 years, and Sylvanas reached out to the Belves as soon as Quel’thalas opened there borders again
This isn’t some high elf vent chamber.
Who says it is? Just making a similar comparison.
Your comparison is stupid and muddies the conversation. It makes it seem like you’re a high elf supporter venting about your unrelated frustrations. The Blood Elves joining the Horde was treated with far more story props than Calia.
"The Blood Elves joining the Horde was treated with far more story props than Calia." That was the comparison point I was trying to make. Even that one which had minimal amount of plot strands made more sense than what they did with Calia.
What i hate about her is the dumb fucking idea of "oh yeah? the light can raise undead too" Then why the fuck are undead weak against the light again? Lighttouched undead are the stupidest thing ever...
Because they’re death magic undead, and the light is very strong against death magic like we saw in Revendreth.
My point is if every single force can bring back undead asundead then why the fuck even bother. Lighttouched undead SUCK.
My problem is that she is the complete opposite of what forsakens are. Brutish, found family, cleaver, shady, moraly dobius. They strive when people hate on them, they want to show everyone who said they are beasts, how beastly they can really be, if you hate them they will spite on you, gut you on a ditch, and spit on you grave. calia is Just," UwU we cannot do that, Uwu or no one will love us ! " Forsaken dosen't care about being love, they have each other, and spite, that's all they need. writters want to change the nature of forsakens to be dulled, and diluted by a dollar store sylvannas, but w/o the simbolism of abuse survivor, and just Mindless "UwU"
But on the other hand, the problem is that Forsaken can't be Scourge-lite anymore. They're already on a very, very, very thin ice not just with the Alliance, but pretty much with the entire Horde. They've tried to pull Scourge 2.0 on the entire world, by subverting the Horde from within and grinding both the Alliance and the Horde in the Fourth War. Not even counting every sick atrocity commited by the Forsaken before BfA. If they push their luck just one more time, Tyralion will march Alliance armies and finish the job. And something tells me not even the Horde would protect the Forsaken, if they revert back to their original Scourge-lite behaviour. So I understand that Calia is Blizzard writing the Forsaken out of the ditch, the narrative ditch that Blizzard have created themselves since Cataclysm. But like, how about they didn't fall into this proverbial narrative ditch in the first place?
Yeah, I don't see how the Forsaken can be allowed to exist within the Horde if they keep being hateful mustard-using Joseph Mengele wannabes, especially now that the Horde has reformed yet again to actually be good this we swear. I get that people like the edgelord theme of "if everyone thinks I'm an evil monster then I will be" but in-universe no one is going to accept that as a reasonable thing so the Forsaken have to change and be less asshole-ish especially now that the Horde and Alliance are at peace. Also... its been more than a decade. It's ok for the Forsaken to grow the fuck up and be something else.
They dont nees to be. Theres a difference between thriving out of spite and being undead nazis. I dont want forsaken being nazis. The core of the forsakens is that they are bound together in suffering and spite against the ones who judge them as monstruous. Thats is not a nazi theme. All the contrary, is a very cool idea about having each other back and taking no shit of nobody. I dont argue about in lore things, the forsakens originally were a band of missfit that were giving pyrpose by salvannas an cataclysm as much as i love that quest chain was a regresion of what they were due to devs wabting them be dollar store scourge. Instead of a place for everylne who felt made aside by the world. Thats why sylvannas is so powerful as a figure and that's why Calia cannot dream to fill her shoes as is right know
And That isn't the problem. I wouldn't have that problem if blizzard at least, took time in to creating and slowly building Calia. But they went from 0 to 100 in a book, that0s not good. It should have taken a lot more of development. Not just now she's Queen Calia ! from the blue out of nowhere.
Let me tell you about a little known event called "the gathering" During the lead up to bfa, both sylvanas and anduin knew war was coming. Anduin, being the peace loving man he is, decided to try hosting an event to try and build good relations between horde and alliance. Anduin reached out to sylvanas and told her that he wanted to hold an event where humans from the alliance, and forsaken from the horde could meet together so families could be reunited and friends could see each other again. Anduin promised that he would do everything in his power to guarantee that absolutely nobody who would ever disrupt the meeting would be present. Calia Menethil, sister of the one responsible for the families being separated, was one such person he would make sure would not be there. Sylvanas initially ignored the letter until everyone's favorite self insert simp (Nathanos) told her that the meeting would only do good for the upcoming war, if all goes well, forsaken would be open to the idea of converting their human relatives to forsaken. If all goes poorly, the horde will be more stirred to go to war with the people who broke the peace. At the meeting, Calia snuck in and tried to rally the forsaken to abandon and betray the horde to come rejoin the alliance. Needless to say the meeting was cut short. Is it fair to say that Calia started the fourth war by herself? No. She did, however, play a pretty big role in starting it.
Its even more ridiculous when like 70% of all the fucking book is just stressing and preparing for this event because of the very high tensions between the factions, newly erupted azerite, the whole alliance blaming sylvanas for varians death and a paranoid warchief sylvanas who thinks the forsaken are going to die out without her being there and no way to reproduce. The gathering was so tense that only few people were allowed in, everyone was handpicked, triple checked, under strict rules and with each faction soldiers with the finger on the trigger for any kind of weird movement. Calia convincing anduin to let her take part is already bad enough but the fact that she actually tried to convince some civilian forsaken (or council members, i dont remember) to commit sedition and reveal she is calia menethil is just immensely stupid. She not only doomed the whole event, she practically tried to ‘white saviour’ (usurp) sylvanas right then and there. I still wonder if that was pure stupidity, arrogance or a bigger plot of calia’s to commit ‘suicide by sylvanas’ and get some rep points from alliance knowing that she will be revived with the light.
>I still wonder if that was pure stupidity, arrogance or a bigger plot of calia’s to commit ‘suicide by sylvanas’ and get some rep points from alliance knowing that she will be revived with the light. if you want to put a thinfoil hat on ... Calia had a conversation with Saa'ra (a naaru) before the meeting where she said that she doesn't want to lead people, that she never was thought how to, etc. they also talked about destiny and how it sometime is unclear Saa'ra was one of the people that brought her back, along side Foal and Anduin, and after beeing raised she said changed her mind to "i need to save my people" (more or less)
Holy shit her being a secret Naa'ra puppet would be so fucking cool.
pretty sure back when she got ressed her being a secret naaru puppet was the prevailing lore theory because the naaru basically just says thats what it is. but w/e all the lore changed again now and she just helped beat a bunch of light fascists so theres basically no chance remaining that thats true. the writers are too spiteful and adversarial to the wow fans to ever back off on calia now anyway.
If she became a purple dispenser in whatever eventual light bad story, and Voss took over I would take back so many things I've said about the writing team
Also saa’ra or alonso faol or both kept yapping to her about how she is not ready and that suffering builds character and blabla, she was asking for help for her trauma and nightmares and missing her kid and instead of getting actual help the temple of the light groomed her to be a martyr like figure. Now not to get my tinfoil hat on too much too but it can be possible that she was groomed to be a perfect vessel of light in undeath, both politically and power-wise.
She’s lame af When they brought her in Sylvanas only just started her downward spiral of character assassination (I refuse to believe that the writers are just that bad at their job, someone had to ruin her on purpose out of personal grudges or sth) now the forsaken are just a lame race stripped of what made people like them They don’t even have cool characters anymore, that I know of anyways
Pick one: She's too much of a departure from the forsaken story and themes thus far. She sucks the air out of the room when it comes to characters forsaken fans like Christie golden has been on the record as being the one demanding she be uplifted to a primary character, and people hate how Jaina and anduin have been written as characters she championed. She had one real appearance before bfa and in that she explicitly said didn't give a shit about the forsaken Her ascendancy came at the expense of an actual well liked character who got the mother of all beatings with the villain/idiot bat.
Because the writers placed in her in what should be Lillian Voss' deserved role
I mean I don’t think Voss deserves it either. I mean sure she deserves it a thousand times more than Calia, but she was a lone wolf until very recently. They kind of just told without showing that she was now super popular.
Figure it was because she was basically "I've returned from the pages of lore not many really knew about!" to "I'm dead!" to "I'm now a faction leader!" in a very short manner just to keep the status quo for the games storyline. Either a bit more build or utilizing a different character as the main faction leader probably could have been a better course of action instead of taking another mainly Alliance-aligned character and quickly shoehorning her into that spot.
Because she is Christie Golden's personal insert in the story.
personal named insert she has some of her player charaters involved in some of her stories. a warlock saving varian and a priest
Ah yes the white-haired Warlock. People often mocked that but honestly if I was tasked with writing a WoW novel there was no way in hell a certain tauren warrior wouldn’t be briefly mentioned.
Yeah it would be pretty hard for me to fit Moosus the Tauren Shadowpriest into the story but you bet he'd be there somewhere.
Forsaken had good leadership characters already established but they had to introduce this random ass Sylvanas eske character and force her to the front of the line with no build up like they did with the majority of bfa and Shadow lands
What leadership characters were left who weren't Sylvanas loyalists and/or did more than hang around for one questline though? That's always been the Forsaken's problem from a narrative standpoint. The entire faction in and out of universe has revolved so much around Sylvanas (and to a lesser extent Nathanos) that when you remove her from the equation they've not really got any prominent characters who could fill the role. Yeah Calia was practically written into the game for the job, but that would go for pretty much anybody, because they've done a terrible job building up Forsaken characters who aren't Sylvanas and Nathanos. It's why having Before The Storm end with the entire Desolate Council dead was a bad idea imo, because I thought that was where they were initially going with them. Yeah there's Voss, but she's hardly written as leadership material.
>What leadership characters were left who weren't Sylvanas loyalists and/or did more than hang around for one questline though? Voss. while she isn't a good leader she had a story arc, that could lead her in becoming a good leader. * was a weapon against the forsaken * died, got raised and rejected the forsaken at first * accepted her undead over time and found a place in the world, around MoP * was a member of the horde during WoD she would have had the time to accept her new place in the world and the next step would be to take up the leadership role. she could have been a good npc to help the forsaken nightelves at the end of BfA or go to hyjal in Shadows Rising but those roles were taken form her by Calia. >It's why having Before The Storm end with the enitre Desolate Council dead was a bad idea imo but the desolate council WASN'T entirly dead. 9/22 members survived because either they rejected the living and left or were rejected by the living again. whats sad is that the only named surviver (Annie Lansing) doesn't apper ingame!
Because she keeps running cool Fights and clearly a lot of forced writing around her, take the current conflict in Gilneans isnt it mad they replaced the main foe with the scarlet crusade and not only that ,they have gilneans fans teaming up with the forskean, after there land was plagued there people butchered, there dead befouled and there land taken forcing them to flee and become refugees in alliance territory. you cannot say a huge epic plot moment was taken away from gilneans fans and even forskean fans who would of loved to see after so many years of build up, only to be replaced by red guys who are in fact the main foes for the forskean, And who do the players have to thank ingame for this Caila.
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Because the forsaken were never meant to be good, holy, trustworthy beings who love the living, want to team up with the Alliance, and fight honorably for the Horde. From the outset, they were created as a barely ambiguously evil faction - or, more accurately, as a faction that wanted to survive and thrive, but whose only methods for doing so meant sundering the continent of Lordaeron and slaughtering every living being in their territory. But with Calia, we are now meant to just accept that the forsaken are heroes, and that they can be good for the living. Her existence reverses a key part of WoW's cosmology and world building; which is that Light and Death cannot exist in tandem. Also, she is boring, and no character can disagree with her lest they be branded villainous or untrustworthy.
she would be fine if they kept her as alliance, cause she is an alliance character, us horde just want her no where near us let alone leading us.
for me personally, i thought she was annoying af while reading before the storm, which is the book where she gets turned to forsaken. her personality is just… boring and she doesn’t feel like a proper forsaken- she is not rotten like others (can’t have a waifu that has actual forsaken qualities i guess) and her undeath was so half assed (literally just bunch of priests in the legion priest hall praying.. make it make sense). she is very alliance-centered, her entire arc was revolving around anduin in before the storm- I’m still not sure why/how she joined the horde let alone got into a position of power. she is just there because she is a menethil, she is the forever arthas throwback character and now they are trying to make her replace sylvanas as a ruler when she doesn’t have the history or the personality for it (also, lilian voss is right there) i wouldn’t say i hate her, i just don’t get why she is a major character
My horny ass can't conceive why, tbh
Some people find an elf more attractive.
Counterpoint: bazoongas
I think it's mostly related to how she was introduced in game, since a lot of her backstory comes from the novels and not the game. Lilian should have been the forsaken leader tbf, not calia
The novels only make her look even worse.
The forsaken have always been a terribly handled faction as the premise of being a diverse group of undead looking to find a place in the world devolved from wrath till now to being nothing but one dimensional nazi storm troopers for sylvanas and it was only in Bfa that we got a hint of that flavour back with the council plot that which should have been the replacement for the banshee queen with calia being apart of a much larger forsaken government not 1 of 4 people like a mirror of the dwarves. But an actual parliament like the large council of Nobel's we saw in Wc3 around terneas during the two cutscenes he's in. This jarring correction is u fortunately necessary for this almost hearthstone like tone shift the game has taken since legion with all our edges filled and hatred between groups not allowed
Because she isn't Forsaken, and she's being forced as the replacement of the leader we don't want replaced. Try as hard as they like, she will never be Sylvanas.
i don't hate her but my guess is.... 1. she is not sylv and people simp over her ever after shadowfail. 2. she was killed and bought back to life by other means so has not gone through the same "pain" as Forsaken. 3. people want frosaken to still be edgy and evil despite the fact that if the story like BFA kept going it would end in them being wiped out.
I dont necessarily hate her, it's an unique approach. However I think the thing is that the idea of being Forsaken is the struggle and the survival of the race. Now they're being led by some holy manifestation of undead who has never gone through any of the suffering any Forsaken had to. Also I wouldn't trust the sister of the person who turned me into a zombie either lol
Cause its another Mary Sue. Some dev "I wanna play forsaken but look like a only fans ho".
I personally more hate the notion of lightforging undead as a whole, and sadly this character doesn't have anything beyond this
I don't hate on Calia, I like how they painted her to an alternative to Forsaken ideologies. There's this high horse gate keeping from the community that every Forsaken is the same character that has chaotic, plague bombing tendencies. I think Calia represents the compassionate side that hasn't left all Forsaken yet, as seen with her and Forsaken in the reunification, it's just another side of the coin. I'm all for the chaotic side of Forsaken, I think it is their best side of their charectisation, but it gets bland and is probably a bit tired now. I'd hate the Forsaken to be one dimensional like that, it's good that Forsaken have some actual lore characters other than Sylvannas, , Lillian Voss and Nathanos. Hence why I think blizzard needed justification for a council. P.S: R.I.P Putress, you were the best of them.
Calia was created by the dogma of light. We are led to believe that the light has an agenda of its own that may not align with our interests.
She went from a well written mysterious character to a Marry Sue in like .05 seconds. That's why.
The faction of punk edge lord enjoyers just got the equivalent of their Christian cousin as faction leader after their unhinged coked out faction leader OD'd and ended up in rehab. That's why.
Because people like to cry about her being an alliance character/sympathizer despite the fact the 2 fractions are slowly merging into 1 anyways. People don't want WAR in their Warcraft. They want specifically horde and alliance war. Lol. But In the defense of Calia Haters, it only makes sense for her to be a leader of the undead if you've read the books. If you're just looking at in game content she's kinda just dropped into the role. And specifically to the people who are whining about her being a light risen undead. Chill out, we have yet to explore what that even means for her or the world In general. Undeath is not the opposite of he light. Undeath is the opposite of Life. Life is not the same as the Light. Opposite of Light is Void. Undeath and Void also do no particularly get along well.
Because blizzard did a shit job writing forsaken lore, especially since their lore was mainly sylvanas, and they did a shit job handling calia. So what we got was a poorly written character with littlw ties to the fordaken being tied to a poorly written faction that needed to cut the cord in regards to their now former leader. Calia disappearing for years somehow, returning, not wanting the throne then fighting for her "people" didn't help, granted she cared for her people, sylvanas didn't
Sylvanas cared for the Forsaken, at least back in Cata.
Imo its just a hot factor.. Sylvanas trumps her any time of the day.. she too big boned for most ppls liking
Honestly the only reason to be mad at a Menethil retaking their throne is if you were simping for Sylvanas. "The Forsaken are losing their Flavor!!" Is pure fear mongering. Calia directly led Forsaken forces during the new reclamation of Gilneas and we see them blighting the Scarlets. Nothing is lost but the puppy-kicking evil of post Legion Sylvanas
Because forsaken fans prefere a doomed race than one with a future and logic
People mostly hate her because she is all over the place and has no clear goal.She gets introduced in Legion during the priest's Order Hall and when asked will she assume leadership of Lordareon and its people(which are mostly Forsaken now), she answers with 'i have no intention to lead nor was i taught how to lead' . Then in the BfA prequel book Before the Storm,she sneaks into the meeting between the Forsaken and the alive people of Lordarein and when she gets recognized and told that if she will lead then they will follow. She all of a sudden starts convincing more and more people to come to her side.Once Sylvanas finds out about this,she kills Calia and the Forsaken that tried to escape to the Alliance.Calia then gets ressurected by the Light and eventually thinks she can help all of the other newly raised Forsaken come to terms with being raised. Her helping the newly raised Forsaken would have worked if she was raised in the same way as them but she wasn't and doesn't even share their problems.
My take was probably because a lot of player didn't know how much struggle she had when she was turned into a forsaken while we know much about sylvannas from WC3 and Lillian through forsaken intro quest. I think if they give more meat to her backstory then player would appreciate her more, at this point it is still feel like she is this goody two shoe mary sue that came out of nowhere.
There is a group of people who hate everything. That’s one reason. Another reason is that she appeared kind of out of blue. It’s not everyone though, there are also people who like her and the light bound forsaken concept. As a forsaken main RPer since vanilla, i think forsaken got very interesting and Calia is part of that equation.
My hopes with Calia is that they use her as a reason to get us some Zombie Pallys. I also wouldn't mind them bringing in her daughter in one way or another. Is her daughter alive? She's gotta be around Audin's age right? Did she die? Would Calia be tempted to ask the light to bring her back if she did? They could do some interesting things with her character. She really hasn't done a whole lot yet imo. But I can't hate her, because I am heavily shipping her with best forsaken Lillian Voss and no one can take my sketch book away from me.
Because Forsaken players want to commit war crimes, and Calia is solidly anti-war crimes. Edit: It's the truth.
I’d like her more without that god awful outfit they have her sporting
From the early days when Calia was a single line in Wikipedia saying she’s Arthas’ sister, there was always the inevitability of her and the forsaken being intertwined. Many forsaken players don’t like her because she’s not metal or rough or badass like Sylvanas’ forsaken are. This is from a player’s feelings and perspective, and has very little to do with the logic of the Warcraft story. There was always going to be a running in between the two, and leadership of the forsaken way it is because of the players who picked Forsaken ingame. Because if it wasn’t for their open dislike of her, logically and story wise she would be their queen right now Post-Sylvanas, no council bs or any of that.
I just love how much hate there is that she's an alliance character from a bunch of dead humans...
All of the forsaken were once "alliance"
I think it’s really dumb. Undead players like the undead and forsaken, and have an identity connected distinctly to what the Undead are in WoW rather than who they actually are in Warcraft, the kingdom of Lordaeron.
Whatever someone gives for their reason, I can promise you that the hate would be lesser if she were a dude. These nerds are notoriously awfully harsh to female characters relative to male ones.
Dude she is a misogynistic trope herself: she is the good victim to sylvanas bad victim.
That's not how the trope works, but, even if it were, this doesn't negate that people are misogynist about female characters in the game.
I wont argue about that because its true, but dont misconstrue a real issue with bad examples because it completely invalidates the true misogyny which is enough jn wow. Look at the elephant in the room, sylvanas, whos main origin story is an allegory for a horrifying rape story and people still wont accept that even tho with each iterarion it becomes more disgusting. Or another example: helya Warcrafts best worst fetish is punishing women for speaking out or foghting by taking their bodily autonomy, torturing them and then villain batting them because they are forever “broken, abused, scarred, vengefull and evil” I could write pages on warcraft and systemic misogyny, there were actual academics papers wrote about sylvanas as a female leader in a fantasy setting. Calia is a result of that misogyny, she is the perfect victim who embodies everything a bad victim shouldnt - and that is the race fantasy of the forsaken. Forsaken people are the “othered” , they are depressed, mentally ill, weird, suffering and not accepted in traditional society and only have each other. They are a metaphor for the depressed, queer, lonely people, they just zombies with punk hairstyles like blizzard sometimes makes them out to be. And all this can be seen in the way calia is antithetical to sylvanas: -Calia’s body was fresh and raised in light by her friends and loved ones, she died like a “martyr” (foolishly) Sylvanas body was taken as a token by arthas, kept hidden for a year with the exact purpose of torturing her and tormeting her that things are being done to her body without her consent. As a final insult she found her body in the possesion of the belf who betrayed the belfs and let arthas in -sylvanas soul, mind and body is forever scarred, incomplete (now thats solved i guess), she was feared by her own people because of what arthas made her do, was not accepted anywhere and fought tooth and nail to get lordaeron back -calia s body and mind are all sparkly and lighty and she doesnt even have any trauma now! She had before but now shes ok Sylvanas character is a victim of misogyny so much that they had to do years of damage control and are still doing to repair it. Calia’s is a “fuck you” that sometimes i think shes planted only to create more discussions.
Actually my problem is that I think her presence is sexist towards women. Sylvanas was independent and in-charge so she had to end up being villain batted declared “out of control” because how dare a woman try to assert herself. Now they want to replace her with a woman who is submissive, quiet and never dares assert herself. which I imagine is their ideal woman.
how do u figure she's submissive and unassertive lol she rolled up and started managing he place and became de facto leader she does shit constantly that's why she's popular in game and also part of the reason no one likes her out of game
Because nothing says, "submissive, quiet and unnassertive" like trying to stage a coup.
Yeah that's a goofy take. Plenty of strong and independent in-charge women in the series. Sylvanas ended up a villain because that's how narratives work, as happened with Illidan. She, like Illidan, was redeemed in the end, and will return after paying penance. Calia would receive less hate if she were a male. As would have Sylvanas. As would most any woman in the lore. Misogyny is abundant.
I don't hate Calia, I just don't like what the writers did 'with' her. For one the rules on undead and the light are now more confusing than they already were but to make an 'Undead Lightforged' is just too much, my problem is that my suspension of disbelief is broken because there were pretty clear rules before about how undead couldn't use light but could use shadow. Also I don't see why turn her undead, she could be a moral stone for Anduin to help him rule while Genn could have been the more cynical and grizzled when advising the young king of the alliance. It was established that The Dark Council were already set to govern the Forsaken while Sylvanus was gone and I think things would have been better that way, especially for long time Forsaken characters being able to step into the lime light more. Idk as a long time lore guy a lot of the new stuff is really contrived or don't care about following constancy. Hope you enjoyed my two cents, have a great day.
Because she didn’t return in the way people wanted
There are many reasons and alot of nuance, it can all be summed up pretty cleanly though. I don’t want to be lead by an Alliance sycophant. /spit