I think that's a pretty good way of marrying the original interpretation with Afrasiabi's retcon, honestly. Both seemingly contradictory statements are now true in a believable way.
It was always clear that Sylvanas knew what was going on with the blight, heck, from the experiments in the Undercity during Classic, to the Northrend quests. Even if he didn't order it to be used against the living, the opportunity to kill Arthas above all else is typical of the Forsaken. I just think that people misunderstood Afrasiabi's words (who, on the other hand, has messed it up a lot, one thing doesn't take away the other).
It'd be great if she could have been the lead architect of Sylvanas' storyline instead of just filling the plot holes left by years of incompetence
that's change nothing. You can make her less evil, she is still satan level.She did many more crimes than this, and her punishment in the maw is wayyyyy too kind for her.The fact she allows human and forsaken experiments make her evil.And I know, she will be free in the future because its your stupid waifu.She need a permanent imprisonment in the maw, nothingless. WE DONT WANT more sylvanas screen time, I hate her, many others like me hate her as well. I hate her so much , she take way too much space in the story and I dont want her in the future.
most of the snippets of the book I've seen have actually been pretty good writing.it's a shame that the in game story has been mangled to the point that I simply don't care about sylvanas enough to read the book.Books should exist to enhance the in game story, not fill key plotholes and fix stuff that's simply bad or broken.
It's kind of how I always saw it, really.Sylvanas had the plague developed, and wanted Arthas dead at all costs. I never doubted she'd have unleashed the plague herself where Arthas and those he was fighting were standing.But it was Putress that made it his own "Death to the Living!" thing, bombarding completely indiscriminately, throwing the Horde and Alliance into chaos when he and the Dread Lord tried to grasp control of the Undercity and Forsaken to be their tool.The only question I had is if it was possible that Sylvanas secretly knew of Putress' plans, and allowed it in hopes of killing Arthas, letting him take the blame if he failed. The question if that was the case has been answered. But if she was behind the Blight, and what her opinion on the Wrathgate would have been, were never really in question to me.Either way, the book was a decently good book. I just wish Blizz hadn't hidden the plot. We shouldn't need to wait 4 years to finally know the motivations of the Jailer and Sylvanas, as an afterthought to the whole two-expansion ordeal.
To be fair, if it was only Saurfang's son, Bolvar, and a bunch of nameless NPCs being the necessary sacrifice to kill Arthas... yeah I can see why Sylvanas would think this would've been a win if Arthas died.To me, it feels like Afrasiabi wanted to build Sylvanas up as this schemer type villain... but everyone else wasn't up for that idea or just saw her as a misunderstood character.What we're seeing with Sylvanas from Legion to Shadowlands is a clash of ideas of how they wanted to make her character and it leads to this confusing mess of ideas of trying to make her totally evil to suddenly trying to redeem whats left of her character in the span of a single expansion/content patch.And the whole "split soul fracture" idea is meant to be a metaphor of those differing ideas....but that's just my outlook of it. I could be wrong for all I know.
They can try and try to retcon her in a nicer light, but she was still blighted southshore and attacked andorhol unprovoked and even raised the people of andorhol as mindles scourgre and not forsaken with free will. all immediately after the events of icecrown where she immediately seized the lich kings valks to use as her own to enable her cataclysm actions in first place. Of course this has all been retconned too as actions the jailer lead her to do, but it's all just a poor attempt to roll back her evil story arc. "she wasn't evil, just really dumb and gullible" which even if that's true is still utter character assassination regardless. Whether you believe she was evil, or just really stupid, both aren't a good image for her.
Afrasiabi's was not a retcon, he knew where he wanted to take her, was it a bad story or of bad taste? In many ways, sure, in many others... well, some of her actions were just a mean to an end and become justified when you think... this is an actual war and some figures are willing to do ANYTHING, I mean, PTR night elves being dragged to concentration camps to be blighted speaks for itself, even with that not going into LIVE servers it tells us to what extend the writters are wanting to depict the actions of a group of characters. Do people forget that the original pitch for Sylvanas was that she wanted to kill all living AND undead? This was the plot she started with since WoW came to life. You can add more nuance into that and write her PoV but the idea, the core of what she was presented as, remains. The retcon happened when they decided to change that, not the other way around.They have been trying to wash her up since forever in an attempt to make her more relatable since the forsaken joined the horde and they decided to take the story away from an "enemy from within" that could have come to happen to something less cartoon evil and a message of unity between the very different races part of the horde. Let me put it like this, do you remember why you liked Arthas as a villain, or why you grew so attached to Thrall as a character?You got to experience Arthas rise and descent in WC3, then in WoW constantly taunting you through all of WotLK. While many have a point saying how saturday morning villain he seemed to be by leaving every time he could have wiped the floor with us, it was those actions that made him a memorable character even to people that didn't play WC3.Sylvanas is a poor attempt of recreating that alongside the Jailer. They failed, badly. She was focused for 3 expansions non stop and we still knew less about her than we did of Arthas even if you had only seen him in WotLK. Plus the creation of Zovaal as a master puppeteer does not help, book just goes downhill from there. You need more time spent with/as the character while knowing their goals and thoughts instead of just being told that they are cunning or a master strategist yet every single action they take shows otherwise just to have a monologue (in this case a book) later on explaining how EVERYTHING was part of their plan or how misunderstood they were. This was poor storytelling, and Sylvanas is not an Illidan in term of character or fanbase for them to achieve the same results he had. This can change depending on how she is reintroduced after her penance in the Maw, if she CHANGES as a character then there is yet hope for her, but she needs a very, very long time away from people's minds. I am talking 5+ years at the very least.Summary, she gave freedom to allow things to happen, things happened within the orders given by her. And attempting to wash her hands out of those things just makes her look more inept even though that we have been told over and over again how cunning, smart and almost flawless she is.Sylvanas has been a mess ever since they deviated from her being an evil character that somehow managed to become part of the horde (something that to be honest, was already very weird...), to a lets make her more likeable but keep her on a questionable path and gray area so we can do something with that later.Its understandable why they did, as she became a fan favorite very fast, but it does not change the issue that plagued her ever since.EDIT: And I want to also say, the ideals that Sylvanas had, were ALL shared by the Forsaken as a faction. The forsaken were always painted as a fervent group that would do ANYTHING their queen asked them to. And they all shared their hatred towards the living. This has also been getting somewhat washed up as they are trying to create an actual story around the meaning of undeath. The council, Calia and Voss are actually good lore points to continue on as they are the complete opposite of what the forsaken has always been described as.And Sylvanas death (literal or otherwise) NEEDED to happen for the faction to grow. In the same fashion as Varian had to die for Anduin to grow.But I strongly think that she should have died as a villain like Arthas did, that would had made her memorable, instead of trying to write a wannabe redemption arc through all of Shadowlands for her.
The word retcon needs to be deleted from every WoW player because the amount of times people like to throw this word around whenever anything story related happens is becoming a meme now.
Would be nice if we got all this lore in game rather than books.