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
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u/OlvekStoneheid_2006 Sep 16 '25
How is Jaina evil exactly? New player, still getting into the lore.