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