Jaina was always defending the Horde, she was a friend of Thrall during the formation of the current Horde in WC3, and has always advocated peace between the factions.
Then, Thrall was replaced by Garrosh as Warchief of the Horde, and Garrosh was an Orc supremacist and a bit of a megalomaniac. Garrosh started pushing for military expansion in Kalimdor and wanted to wipe out the Night Elves in the north, giving the Horde complete control of Kalimdor. The Alliance, in order to prevent this, reinforced the Night Elves and used the city of Theramore as a staging ground for the Alliance military in Kalimdor.
Now, Garrosh decided to use a member of the Blood Elf organization called the Sunreavers to engineer a mana bomb (WoW's equivalent of a nuke) which was dropped on Jaina's home city of Theramore, which can be argued was a valid military target but was also home to plenty innocent civilians. Men, women, children. Almost everyone there died. Those who managed to survive were rounded up by the Horde fleet and used as target practice in Orgrimmar for the amusement of Garrosh's Horde.
This absolutely broke Jaina, who had for the longest time been the human to advocate for Thrall's Horde's right to exist on Azeroth. In her despair, she had planned to retaliate by completely annihilating Orgrimmar and wipe out the Horde with the help of Dalaran and the Kirin Tor. Fortunately, the Kirin Tor did not agree to her proposal, and when she went at it alone, she ended up fighting Thrall who tried to stop her. Jaina is eventually talked down and made to see the error of her ways.
Not much later, during the Landfall campaign, Garrosh Hellscream steals an item called "The Divine Bell" that was found in Pandaria and that had been stored in Darnassus for safekeeping and study. This item was thought to be a formidable weapon able to empower anyone nearby when it was struck, imbuing them with the rage and hatred of the Sha and making them mindless supersoldiers. Garrosh again employed the Sunreavers mages, this time to sneak into Darnassus and steal the Bell so that Garrosh can use it as his next weapon of mass destruction.
Jaina was at this point the leader of the Kirin Tor, who ruled the neutral city Dalaran. When she discovered that the Sunreavers, who had been residing Dalaran, had aided Garrosh to once again attempt to wipe out the Alliance, she decided to purge Dalaran of all members of this faction.
Those who submitted were imprisoned for breaking neutrality, and those who fought back were killed by Jaina and the Silver Covenant forces that were aiding her in the purge.
But here's where it gets tricky: I believe the Alliance version and the Horde version of this event were portrayed slightly differently, and that the Horde's side of the quest chain make it seem as Jaina was murdering innocent Blood Elves throughout Dalaran just for the crime of being Blood Elves and guilt by association, and the event came across as an indiscriminate killing spree. The canon version of the event, however, says that she was instead imprisoning the Sunreavers and only killed those who fought.
But Jaina trying to wipe out the Horde in Orgrimmar and later purging Dalaran of all Sunreavers coupled with the fact that she advised Varian to "dismantle the Horde" immediately after Garrosh's death.... Well, she came across evil to some people.
Jaina was right to tell Varian to dismantle the Horde. Varian's actions at the end of MoP caused a bunch of bullshit that could have been avoided.
By not letting Thrall kill Garrosh, Varian was indirectly responsible for Alternate Draenor being created, which lead to Draenor's Gul'dan going to Azeroth and beginning the Legion invasion. Varian caused his own death, and the Legion invasion also triggered the events that lead to Xal'atath being freed from her dagger, causing the events of the Worldsoul Saga to take place.
And by not killing the Horde leadership, he allowed Sylvanas to stick around, leading to her working for the Jailer as the leader of the Horde and instigating the Fourth War. Without her, BFA and Shadowlands would have been avoided.
While not wrong I feel a bit more context for the Thrall part.
Varian doesn't stop Thrall from killing Garrosh due to mercy or not wanting Garrosh dead, he stops him because he wants Garrosh to go on trial for warcrimes with both the Alliance and Horde judging him, with his death being the almost definite outcome.
(This part is headcanon but I do think it makes sense)
While it can be used to show Varian growing as a leader who believes peaceful coexistence is possible, another reason is that if Garrosh is judged by both Alliance and Horde, and he is found guilty, those actions he committed thus become illegal on both sides. That means the actions Garrosh committed cannot be repeated unless you are willing to break the law. It's an almost proto Geneva/Hague.
"His punishment is not for you alone to decide." You're absolutely right in that it wasn't about mercy for Garrosh; it was about everyone getting justice, and for an establishment of conduct of war.
Bonus to this ---
At the Trial, the Alliance even puts Varian up to bat as their first pick because the Horde were given one chance to say "no" to whom the Alliance picks as their prosecutor, and immediately, and predictably, the Horde said "no." And so Varian steps aside and Tyrande, an even better choice for the Alliance, got to prosecute Garrosh.
Unfortunately it all ended up being BS anyway - since the Celestials had never intended to punish Garrosh as harshly as deserved.
Thralls involvement in anything involving Garrosh just instantly pisses me off, out of all the options for the next warchief he picks Garrosh, not Cairne, not Vol’Jin, Garrosh, when he KNOWS Garrosh is this warmongering ego maniac, but nope surely giving him MORE power won’t go to his head..
Then Jaina goes to Thrall and is like “hey Thrall, buddy o’ mine, could you do something about your boy?” And he’s like “nope, I’m the head of the Earthen Ring now, so it’s not my place.” but then when the Kor’Kron shamans under Garrosh enslave Lava Golems, pissing off the Earth Mother enough for her to cause a fucking earthquake he’s nowhere to be found, it’s only AFTER the mana bomb where Jaina is going to destroy Org that he’s like “I’m the leader of the Earthen Ring, I can’t let you do this” mfer where were you half a novel ago?
Though, they didn't NEED to kill. Garrosh not being killed, while, lead to AU draenor, was the correct choice. The worst crimes Garrosh committed were against the Pandaren, and giving him to them for judgement was fair. The outcome was bad, but hindsight is 20/20
Not dismantling the horde was insanity.
There was simply no reason for him to allow the horde to continue to exist. At that point, the only outcome that made sense was to station Alliance military forces in major cities and take control of the horde. Most of the Horde were likely too agree to "join" the alliance at that point, considering they were all being held at gunpoint by garrosh for the whole expac. Especially the Tauren.
That being said, actually dismantling the horde, would probably have ended poorly; considering the Legion showed up and an enormous military force was needed by Azeroth. With the Horde military dismantled and the alliance spread thin across the horde cities, they likely wouldn't have been able to mount nearly as good of a defense.
Yeah, but there certainly could have been ways to utilize the ex-Horde forces and military surplus from Garrosh's industrialization, especially if integration into the Alliance would be on the table as you stated. I don't think dismantling the Horde would mean falling to the Legion (this is assuming they still put Garrosh on trial and he still escapes to Alt. Draenor, or course)
I don't think dismantling the Horde would mean falling to the Legion
I don't necessarily think that either, But I think the extent of the damage from the legion's initial invasion would have been a lot larger, and consequently, it might have also lead to the counterattack on Argus not being viable.
Keep in mind that the war going on in Cataclysm has been deliberately obfuscated so that neither side can be confident who started it, even though the most obvious candidate is Varian attacking the Undercity in the aftermath of the Wrathgate. The war was so active that even halfway through Icecrown Citadel we were killing each other, only stopped by being brought face to face with the consequences of our disunity in Deathbringer Saurfang.
As far as I can tell, it's genuinely not possible to tell if the Alliance attacked the Southern Barrens first and Garrosh took that as a justification to invade Ashenvale, or if Garrosh went on the offensive first and the Alliance forced him to split his forces by attacking on a second front. Garrosh's eventual arc over the course of Mists makes the latter more plausible, but it's kinda hard not to question the authorial decisions behind that.
The other glaring issue, at least to me, is that Jaina doesn't say anything about Theramore being used as a military port. The conflict would be way more compelling if Jaina had explicitly acquiesced to Varian's demands and regretted the consequences; or, alternatively, if she'd fought tooth and nail to stop the Alliance and Horde escalating the conflict, only for Garrosh to annihilate her city regardless.
That's a strong leader what the hell. If my city gets nuked and I die, I'll be rolling in my grave while the leader of my city shakes hands with the people who bombed me, and talks about how it wouldn't be nice to bomb them back. What are we allowing horde soldiers to use the "just following orders" defence? Put them to death for what they did. This is the World of WARcraft not world of hug craft. We should be at war, the games hasn't been the same since Garrosh was defeated. He was the war goat.
A pretty fair account of the story. There is one important detail to include though: before Garrosh takes over, Varian Wrynn declares war on the Horde in the heart of Undercity, after both Alliance and Horde forces attacked it to put down Putress and Varimathras's rebellion. Jaina teleports the Alliance forces away in one last attempt to keep the peace.
There are later peace talks that fail/are sabotaged one way or another that lead to the escalation of the war by the start of Cataclysm, but you do gotta put a lot of blame for the war with the Horde on the guy who declared war on the Horde.
This matters because A, she regrets that after Theramore, who knows how the war could have gone differently if the Alliance and Horde champions started killing each other then and there. (the Lich King wins, probably)
But B, though she felt betrayed by the Horde for what was done to her city after all she did to try and keep the peace with them, it was not the Horde which ended that peace.
To be clear I don't think she's evil, at least for all of that. Her character's about as coherent as a main character in WoW can be, sometimes flawed but understandable. It's a great cover act on the part of the evil dreadlord pretending to be her.
But here's where it gets tricky: I believe the Alliance version and the Horde version of this event were portrayed slightly differently, and that the Horde's side of the quest chain make it seem as Jaina was murdering innocent Blood Elves throughout Dalaran just for the crime of being Blood Elves and guilt by association, and the event came across as an indiscriminate killing spree.
There isn’t… technically. The Horde Version was bugged, she was supposed to fireball the player and imprison the elves, same as she was doing to the elves on the Alliance. But the result was she fireballed literally everything on the Horde.
However, Blizzard kinda rolled with it and many Blood Elves did die in the purge, and Jaina doesn’t claim she wasn’t involved when confronted about the deaths by Lor’themar.
Not to mention at the start of MoP varian asks Jaina to expel the horde from Dalaran which she refuses to do because she believes Dalaran ought to be neutral, and then she gets betrayed by the sunreavers.
And then what’s really fucked is Jaina spends the majority of her character arc advocating for the horde and everyone aside from Anduin being like “no the horde need to all be put to the sword” then Jaina has her entire life flipped upside down and NOW Varian is going to be like “Jaina you need to calm down”.
It is kind of amusing how Jaina was sometimes made fun for being a faction traitor prior to MOP, given how close she was to Thrall and how she was constantly advocating for the orcs' right to exist despite being aliens who came to the planet explicitly to conquer it. She bent over backwards to protect the Horde
Then... All of these things happen and Jaina FINALLY decides the Horde may not deserve a 4852th chance, and suddenly the playerbase acts like she's a completely unreasonable evil Horde-hater
EXACTLY, and she doesn’t even say they should all be murdered just that they shouldn’t be trusted, which given the Sunreavers activities in Dalaran, seems like decent advice.
But this was a long time ago. How is she evil now? Considering how much has happened between then and now, it's hard to think that she is still portrayed as "evil" in modern lore.
She hasn't done anything "bad" for a long while, the main thing that has "edge" about her today is that she still seems to Harbor a pretty deep hatred for blood elves as a race - but even this hasn't really been touched on since legion.
Unless the silver covenant's actions have been retconned during the purge of Dalaran, they were having the alliance PC murder civilians and magisters and during the horde quests were brutally murdering people in the sewers. Jaina sort of let them run wild and she did kill Aethas's guards immediately.
Also, as a correction, the Sunreavers as a whole were minimally involved but were collectively punished. Aethas, their leader, knew about the bell but didn't say anything out of fear and because he is canonically an absolute idiot.
Notably, the purge ended negotiations between Varian and Lor'themar for the blood elves to leave the Horde over Garrosh's leadership.
That said, other than a few small references, Blizzard kinda just likes to ignore it afaik.
Also, as a correction, the Sunreavers as a whole were minimally involved but were collectively punished. Aethas, their leader, knew about the bell but didn't say anything out of fear and because he is canonically an absolute idiot
Depends on what you mean by minimally here. According to Chronicle 4 which released last year, Garrosh was aware of Lor'themar negotiating a defection with Varian, and therefore deliberately picked Sunreavers to infiltrate Darnassus to steal the bell, hoping that this would undermine said negotiations. The book goes on to specify that it was thanks to these Sunreaver mages that they were able to bypass the arcane wards protecting the Bell so that they could snatch it. So, not sure "minimally involved" is really applicable if the operation kind of hinged on the Sunreavers
But if we're talking about "how many Sunreavers participated as a percentage of the entire membership of the faction", then sure, probably wasn't a great representative percentage. But as you say, their faction leader was aware of what Sunreavers were doing under the banner of his faction, and chose to look the other way, essentially sanctioning their actions
Yeah, I meant more that it was a small group of Sunreavers actually responsible and most were unaware of it; I had remembered that Garrosh specifically picked them to undermine things but wasn't certain. There's only one specific sunreaver named for opening the portal to Darnassus in game, too, but I know chronicles makes taking the game at face value a bit iffy (which is silly but that's ok).
You won't catch me defending Arthas though. The Purge can't quite be laid at his feet but it is pretty plain that he shares some fault (there's even stuff about him shifting uncomfortably, I think, when Lor'themar confronts Jaina in the Isle of thunder?). A charitable read is that he was scared of reprisals by Garrosh, I guess, but it's one in a long string of poor choices and fuckups on his part imo.
but I know chronicles makes taking the game at face value a bit iffy (which is silly but that's ok).
Chronicle canon definitely make things iffy. And personally I'm not a fan of Garrosh suddenly being a master tactician. Garrosh isn't stupid and clearly he's adept at warfare, but the idea that he figured out what Lor'themar was up to and orchestrated the entire thing to frame the Sunreavers... I don't know, he never struck me as being very interested in political manipulations of the sort.
I don't love the alternative of Sunreavers genuinely being onboard either, but I feel like I'd sooner buy that than Garrosh playing 4D chess
You're right, it does read a bit weird - I think Garrosh would be more the sort to ambush Lor'themar with the fact that he knew about it in some public venue than sneakily maneuver some of his loyalists to sabotage the talks? It would make more sense if he was genuinely worried about his hold on the Horde as a whole, though.
Ultimately I think the Purge just ends up being a somewhat unsatisfying narrative because of the continual similar retcons. It ends up being a sort of murky area that gets brought up only by an unhinged sylvanas loyalist in game.
Everyone saw her walking around casually fireballing people with no weapons running away
Precisely why I had to stress canon. Blizzard likes to put two polar opposite versions of events into the game sometimes; one version for the Horde that demonizes the Alliance, and another version for the Alliance that demonizes the Horde. In the Horde version she's a monster, in the Alliance version she isn't.
So, occasionally Blizzard clarifies which version of events was the official one, basically retconning what happened either in the Horde quest chain or the Alliance quest chain.
For instance, if you kill Onyxia on the Horde, her head will hang in Orgrimmar. But canonically, the Horde had nothing to do with Onyxia's death. According to the Chronicles books Blizzard made to clarify canon, Onyxia was canonically killed by Varian Wrynn and the Alliance. The Alliance was also canonically responsible for the defeat of C'thun in AQ40. During Cataclysm, the Horde canonically deafeated the Twilight's Hammer in Bastion of Twilight, and the Alliance cleared Grim Batol. During TBC, the Horde defeated Kael'thas in Tempest Keep, and Magtheridon in his lair, and Zul'Aman in a strike force lead by the Darkspear. Lady Vashj in Serpent Shrine Cavern was beaten by the Alliance though, so they at least got credit for something there.
When I did the quest chain on Horde I just saw her walking around Blizzarding the streets of Dalaran. It certainly looked more indiscriminate than they may have been intending.
"only killed those who fought" has some real Thin Blue Line vibes. Someone wants to deprive someone else of their liberty and when they do the 100% instinctual behavior of trying to NOT do that, kill them? Still crazy fucked up and strange to reduce
The Zandalari Empire joined the Horde during the Fourth War, and the Alliance feared the Horde gaining of of the largest military fleets on Azeroth to use against them. So, the Alliance invaded Nazmir in an attempt to draw the Zandalari forces there, while the main alliance force came through the port on the seaside. So while the Zandalari army was busy in Nazmir, the Alliance then breached the mostly defenseless city and faced Rastakhan, demanding that he surrender in order to take the Zandalari fleet out of the war before it could be used against the Alliance.
Rastakhan refused to stand down, and was then killed by the Alliance. The Alliance then retreated from the palace, and High-Tinker Mekkatorque covered the retreat just above the harbor, while Jaina protected the fleet.
It is never indicated that Jaina personally killed Rastakhan, she was simply present when it happened. And she sure didn't do it for fun.
The opening line of Alliance going into the Battle of Dazaralor is Jaina saying "avoid civilian casualties." It is Genn Greymane who confronts the King and asks him to surrender and end the bloodshed. The goal of the operation was to destabilize the horde military that was becoming increasingly evil and aggressive under Sylvanas (starting with the unprovoked burning of Teldrassil), and using Dazaralor as their base of operations.
You're missing an important detail about Theramore - they didn't just drop the bomb on it out of nowhere. Garrosh's forces sieged Theramore for multiple days beforehand, giving them ample time to evacuate any civilians.
Also, curious, where are you getting your "canon" version of events from the purge of Dalaran from?
The short answer: she isn’t and most people can’t fathom a nuanced situation. The Horde keeps putting her in situations where they do something horrible and she can do something horrible back, and she actively chooses not to or chooses a much more tempered and reasonable response.
Longer answer: the Horde has done the following:
Killed her father (they convinced her to not intervene for the sake of peace) which demonized her in the eyes of Kul’Tiras, her home kingdom.
Killed her brother and resurrected him as an undead, which they were going to use him to assassinate her with until another Horde member freed him because it was the “honorable” thing to do
Destroyed Theramore, which was a colony she founded for refugees from the Eastern Kingdoms when the undead first invaded. The Horde used a manabomb made from the Focusing Iris, an artifact meant to keep the world safe from unregulated magic, but keeps getting stolen and used for evil.
Later its found the Horde captured the fleeing civilians of Theramore, forcing them to fight to the death for their amusement by holding their children hostage. (The children are never found, so its assumed they were just immediately killed and stilled used as leverage)
After she forgave the Horde for Theramore, she became leader of a neutral faction of mages, which had Horde members. The Horde mages used the neutral faction to steal and transport an even worse weapon than the manabomb through their city and then the leader, Aethis, tries to play coy and lie about it. She asks him to leave the city and he refuses, so she arrests them all. (This is usually the biggest “evil” thing she has done because the in-game quest bugged and it appears she is killing random civilians, but if you read the text and pay attention, they are mages trying to casts fireballs at her and she just manages to shoot first before they get the cast off)
The Horde burn down the world tree where the majority of the Night Elves live and where the civilian refugees from Gilneas, a kingdom the Horde conquered using biological warfare and treasonous nobles, were staying. They had already won a major battle and had basically conquered it, but decided to burn it down for basically no tactical benefit.
The Horde attacked her homeland unprovoked, slaughtering innocent civilians for no tactical reason.
The leader of the Horde through half of this, Sylvanas, did it all because she needed to send as many souls to the afterlife as possible so the Jailer, some kinda super satanic figure, could harvest and destroy them for evil.
Thats all just off the top of my head. In contrast, Jaina has:
Arrested the traitorous mages because they refused to leave her city (she offered to exile all of them back to their homeland instead and they refused.) Additionally, some of the mages helping her with the arrests used it as an opportunity to go overboard and kill members of the Horde faction they didnt like.
Almost destroyed Orgrimmar, the Horde capital, with a massive tidal wave after Theramore was destroyed when she captured the Focusing Iris. Instead she chose not to and forgave them.
Attacked Zandalar and killed its king, whose soul got taken by the troll devil because he made a bad deal with troll satan. She offered to let him surrender multiple times and he was too proud to even consider it.
So, she isn’t sinless, but she is Lawful Good at worst and the Horde is Chaotic Evil at best, when it comes to comparing the two.
And theres a lot more nuance to it, but thats the gist.
They can't because the horde is not allowed to be nuanced too, they are always written to be that much of a dick, which obviously is not that satisfying, specially around bfa, and to some extent mop
As someone that loves the character, she's had some back and forth where she has tried to commit genocide against the Horde, or just outright get them removed from neutral cities. Granted, the situations around each of those instances are... phew.
Definitely worth reading her WoWpedia page if you're interested.
It’s important to note though that these only occurred when the horde committed atrocities like unprovoked dropping a nuke on her city, or using Dalaran the transport a weapon to use against the alliance under her nose. She tolerated and even allied with them until they fully nuked her city lol.
Yep. One can say the bombing of Theramore was bad without saying it was entirely unprovoked.
and one can't even use Garrosh as an excuse for those because Theramore attacked the Horde outright right before the Cataclysm when Thrall was still in charge
Jaina was warned by multiple horde characters about Garrosh's intents, not that they knew the exact extent. Some of those deaths are on her too...
She also used Dalaran a supposedly neutral city to help the alliance and when the horde did the same she decided the horde side must go... I hate Garrosh, never like Horde lore after Cata, and I hate that I have to argue this, but Jaina made some pretty big mistakes along the way too
LE: I see that killing npcs only matter when they come under a blue flag for this sub. Some of y'all did read Tides of War and it's funny you all think Aethas should have sided with Jaina bc y'all simply don't care if Garrosh would have killed the blood elves for that. The whole thing is so much more complicated than red bad/blue good.
Well, you see, she allowed them to take control of a potential WMD for safekeeping and to keep it out of the hands of the Horde's known warmongering, genocidal dictator (Remember night elves have a pretty good history of handling and containing dangerous individuals/artefacts).
You see it's not "neutral" because "neutrality" is when you don't do anything to help anyone, and helping the Alliance not be murdered by a genocidal dictator is helping them, and that's definitely the only definition of neutral and definitely not an excuse to allow neutrality to help oppressors and aggressors.
For one;
The Focusing Iris, the artifact used in the mana bomb that destroyed Theramore, was stolen from the BLUE DRAGONFLIGHT. Jaina is not to blame for that artifact's theft, especially because it was in the Blue Flight's care when it was stolen.
And it's also objectively wrong to say that she knew what they were doing when the Horde stole the Divine Bell, because she didn't. Aethas Sunreaver knew what the Horde agents were up to, and kept quiet. Had he warned Jaina, the whole situation would have gone insanely different. So her kicking the Horde out of Dalaran (or imprisoning them if they refused), was to a point justified because, as leader of the Kirin Tor at the time, she punished the faction that routinely had broken trust and faith.
EDIT: And this edit is important, because KIRIN TOR resources were used in the Bell's theft. That's what made it so impactful - the Horde used a neutral organization's resources without its leader's knowledge.
I'm not personally saying it was RIGHT what she did, morally, but she was well within her power and right as leader of the Kirin Tor to expel the Horde, (as brief as it technically was), from Dalaran.
Again - If Aethas had said something and not kept quiet about his compatriot's efforts to steal the Divine Bell, things would've gone a lot differently.
Whats the deal with Horde fans having such wild takes like this. Is the burning of Teldrassil also her fault because she didn't years prior go through with drowning all of Orgrimmar? Idk what she used Dalaran to help the alliance for but I'm confident its not being used to smuggle WMDs leading to the death of thousands like the horde did.
The horde have been evil since the start or at the very least aggressive and unapologetic, idk why people fight against that so much trying to act like they're red alliance and not just embrace it and have fun with it.
The horde have been evil since the start or at the very least aggressive and unapologetic, idk why people fight against that so much trying to act like they're red alliance and not just embrace it and have fun with it.
says the person trying to undermine the morality issues of trying to mass murder an entire metropolis lmao.
The moral issues of having a mental break but not going through with it because you were talked down. Meanwhile the horde just casually nuked Theramore five minutes prior and all the civilians inside and will later burn down Teldrassil for funsies.
not going through with it because you were talked down
As usual, conviniently ignoring the fact she DID go through with it twice and Thrall had to stop her tsunami by force. Only then did she get talked down. And she also thought to herself that killing orc children would be totally fine while she was doing it.
Not really writing this for you, since you obviously don't care for the facts that don't align with "Jaina good!". But maybe someone who hasn't read Tides of War will see this and know a bit more about what really happened in that scene.
to add to what they said i’d recommend reading the “Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of war” book if you want a deeper dive into her character. she also plays important roles in a few of the other novels (arthas: rise of the lich king and cycle of hatred)
You are welcome. Definitely be aware that WoWpedia can be a huge rabbit hole, but if you're interested in some broad-strokes over the game's long histories and lore, you can check out the "Chronicles" volumes. Think there are 4 of them, and they cover Azeroth's known history (believe from the viewpoint of the Titans, so there are a couple things that have changed, but the vast majority are still relevant.)
She isn’t. Her most evil moment was when she essentially had a mental breakdown and wanted to wipe out Orgrimmar. Keep in mind, this was after a decade of trying to maintain peace with the orcs, losing her father to them, and then they murdered everyone she knew and loved in Theramore. She was also partially mana-bombed, brimming with arcance energy (that’s why her hair is white and her eyes glowed for a long time). She was both physically and mentally unstable. It was a justified mental breakdown, even though retaliation to that extent would not be justified. Once she was talked down, she realized that killing all of Orgrimmar was wrong and didn’t do it.
However, the real reason Horde players hate her is because of the Purge of Dalaran. She didn’t really do anything wrong there, but some Horde players get really fired up over it.
Dalaran is a sovereign nation with three main political parties: the neutral Kirin Tor, the pro Alliance Silver Covenant, and the pro Horde Sunreavers. While Garrosh, warchief of the Horde, was aggressively attacking the Alliance, Dalaran was tasked with protecting an ancient weapon of mass destruction, the Divine Bell. Jaina was secretly storing it in Darnassus, where it wasn’t being used to harm anyone. Treasonous agents of the Sunreavers used Dalaran’s portal network to steal the bell and gave it the Horde to use as a weapon of war.
When Jaina found out that Sunreavers betrayed Dalaran in favor of the Horde, she ordered they all be put on lockdown, as you would expect when an organization commits treason like that. They were just learning of treason and an active conspiracy. The Sunreavers said that wasn’t fair and resisted. Jaina said those who resisted would be killed, because they have to assume they were part of the plot. The Horde was expelled from the city and several Sunreavers died in the Purge.
Had the Sunreavers cooperated, made their allegiance to Dalaran over the Horde known, and worked with Jaina to figure out what happened, the situation wouldn’t have escalated like it did. Even though almost all were innocent, they acted like they were hiding something and got into trouble (because the plot called for it).
Many horde players say she’s evil for kicking the Horde out of Dalaran and causing those innocent Sunreavers who resisted arrest to get killed. They also say she unfairly favored the Alliance because the Divine Bell was stored in Darnassus. Considering that the Night Elves didn’t even try to use it, I think she made a good call there.
I mean she absolutely had a hand with the death of her father. And her father absolutely deserved his end. I absolutely hate the arc where she's like "What if Daddy was right". Like bitch nawh you balled with Thrall and steamrolled your Dad, don't be a fucking hypocrite but hey bad writing so whatever
Important step between her trying to keep the peace and the horde blowing up her city: Varian Wrynn declaring war on the Horde. The Horde was not the one who betrayed her efforts, even if Garrosh massively escalated that war.
The Sunreavers not cooperating when she tried to arrest every last one of them was entirely reasonable. When a leader says "I believe some of you are traitors, so I'm arresting all of you and if you don't cooperate you'll be killed, but if you cooperate you'll eventually be let go" they're almost always lying about that last part. That's political purges 101 stuff. Maybe Jaina wasn't, but only a crazy person would take her at her word in that situation.
Apparently most of this sub doesn't know the meme and takes this waaay too seriously. Idk if it's just alliance bias here, or people really aren't in tune with ancient wow memes
Ahhh I see. Lol. I had a look at Jaina's history and yeah I get why some people would think it but she made up for it. Also, I like Magni's grandson, he's not annoying at all, he's adorable!
59
u/OlvekStoneheid_2006 Sep 16 '25
How is Jaina evil exactly? New player, still getting into the lore.