It was pointed out to me that in my future-lore post about the Night Elves I left out a significant piece of the puzzle: Tyrande Whisperwind, Malfurion Stormrage’s significant other.
With all eyes on Malfurion it’s easy to forget he’s only half of a greater whole. It is he and Tyrande together who form the true leader of the Night Elves. To say Malfurion will serve as the catalyst for Night Elf civil war is to say Tyrande will as well.
As of now, Tyrande is in Darnassus serving as an obvious counter to Fandral and his ideas. If you’re curious what Fandral thinks of Tyrande just click on him a few times in game and he’ll be happy to tell you.
When Malfurion returns, however, this will set change in motion. Fandral will now have, what he views as, a true superior to contend with. Remulos will no longer feel the need to bide his time. But what of Tyrande? If Malfurion were the one to begin a catalytic change, then she would be the one to finish and set it in stone.
Consider this:
Malfurion returns. He is in Moonglade (where he woke up). Change begins.
Fandral and Remulos must account for this, but so what? Tyrande is key.
Should Tyrande leave Darnassus to join her love in Moonglade, the priesthood will follow.
And with the priesthood now gone from Darnassus the Darnassians would be forced to finally make a choice. Fandral’s ideals? Or Malfurion/Tyrande’s?
When the dust clears, one would see the sides now galvanized. Moonglade standing bolstered, ready, and Darnassus completely populated with only Fandral’s loyal followers. The gray area would be gone, and that is what I think Tyrande’s role would be in any form of this situation, galvanizing her people.
Malfurion would shatter the status quo with his return and Tyrande would build the new one by rejoining her lover’s side.
Even if the Night Elf civil war were to start for a different reason, Tyrande would still have to choose sides, and by choosing Moonglade would galvanize her people.
The seeds are there. It’ll be fun watching where they grow.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I think one possible scenario, like you said, is the total separation of NEs, in Darnassus we have all the Fandral’s followers and in Moonglade Manfulrion and his crew.
But this, from a technical/quest line point of view is very difficult, since many horde/alliance players need to go to moonglade to make quests (and there’s also the moon festival special quests) and Darnassus as a capital city won’t allow all this (guards attacking horde, etc.)
Another scenario is Darnassus as a divided city (just like Shatt with Scryers and Aldor) but then the question is: who’s the utter ruler of the city?.
It would be rather interesting to see how Blizzard would deal with these ideas. The setup is already in place to definitively say that the entire Night Elf faction is sided with Staghelm and Darnassus, and the Cenarion Circle is their own faction outside of the Alliance (how would the druids feel about siding with the magic-loving humans and gnomes, especially with a rebuilt Gnomeregan?)
Thanks for your comments on Tyrande. She’s one of my favorite characters in WoW lore, and I’m very interested to see where the Temple of the Moon would be taken.
Also, thank you for the site. I love talking lore, and there are very few of my friends who would talk on it.
Yeah same here, I’m the only one in my guild interested in lore, in fact I made a new char just for an in-deep questing, reading all the quests introductions and not just rushing the levels.
I agree it’d be difficult to implement and that’s why I think this lore goes past the time-line of WoW.
I think this is the stuff we’ll see in Wow2/Warcraft4.
From a design standpoint, I see WoW2 having two completely separate NE factions, and Blizzard allowing us to play one of them. Probably Moonglade, since I’d imagine most players “in the know” would want to be on Malfurion/Tyrande’s side.
If you really wanted to push this train of thought, Fandral could be a raid boss, and Teldrassil an instance hub.
I’m glad both of you like the site. Tell your friends. 😉
Thanks for writing this.
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