Is the Alliance a monarchy? Why does Anduin automatically become "High King"?

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

Velen gets his side story, but the draenei in legion just participate in the legion invading the exodar, it would be strange if they were absent there as well. Anudin seems to have the more important role as leader of the main forces, while the night elves and draenei don't do much. Also the Illidari aren't part of the night elves, they do Illidari things, the actual night elves get very little story and don't have a meaningful presence.

Which is weird, because as you said before, the night elves got a major army. I would guess that their army is even stronger and more skilled than the human army.
And with the few Draenei that came with us from draenor, added to the battle-trained draenei (that have been saying for years they wanna kill the legion), you got a pretty decent addition to the alliance military!

It just sucks that it always has to boil down to humans...

[endersblade]

Because most of the other Alliance leaders are older and smart enough to know they don't want to be the ones responsible for the shit storms that that position entitles. If humans, essentially the babies of the Alliance with their short lifespans and all, want to take charge, by all means, let the responsibility fall on their shoulders.

[Every Pwny]

Which is weird, because as you said before, the night elves got a major army. I would guess that their army is even stronger and more skilled than the human army.
And with the few Draenei that came with us from draenor, added to the battle-trained draenei (that have been saying for years they wanna kill the legion), you got a pretty decent addition to the alliance military!

It just sucks that it always has to boil down to humans...

Yeah it gets really tiring that the only people who are allowed to have a story or actually do things on the alliance side are the humans. Even Maraad venturing to save the draenei in WoD was the lone draenei from our universe. It would seem like something more draenei would have been interested in doing. Instead it was just mostly humans.

I'm still wondering why the general of the sentinel army hasn't done anything or hasn't shown up in legion. It would make sense that the bigger names would be involved at the very least, especially the military commanders, to help fight the legion. The story of the alliance races just gets transformed into "humans and others".

[bufferunderrun]

I was scrolling Battle.net us forum and stumble upon this thread http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...8524947?page=2
Anduin liking black dragon sausage make sense and close the circle of alliance leadership.

Meanwhile in Orgrimmar Nathanos is selling Silvanas nude pick next Grommash Hold.

[kamuimac]

DISCLAIMER: I am primarily an Alliance player and this bugs me.

I don't know if this has been posted before but it kind of bugs me that Anduin automatically becomes "High King" of the Alliance. He is the prince of the humans of Stormwind, but not the prince of everyone else. I feel like Varian's appointment as leader of the Alliance was warranted by his experience and prowess as a strategist and skilled warrior. Anduin barely has any experience leading, and that is paltry when compared to the likes of Velen and Tryande who have had thousands of years of experience, and wisdom, and, well a lot of things that Anduin doesn't have. He shouldn't be the leader of the Alliance. I see people complaining about Slyvanas' appointment by Vol'Jin as the new leader of the Horde and to me that makes more sense than Anduin becoming the leader of the Alliance just because he was the son of Varian. The Alliance is, well, an alliance, not a monarchy. There shouldn't have been some dynastic transfer of power.

/endrant

they caertainly open up many new lore posisbilities of possible cracks in allience when her proves unfit for the position during legion - he is a pussy and nobody want to follow a pussy.

[Deleted]

A more obvious choice for leadership of the Alliance would be Jaina Proudmoore, especially now that she's not shackled to the interests of the Kirin Tor. She's actually led troops into battle, knows all the players diplomatically, and needs a job right about now. She's 100% anti-horde right now, so that would be usefull to prop up the horde/alliance conflict fiction.
She's fought the Legion before. She defeated Archimonde. She's a badass.

But no, someone (coughKosakcough) decided for feels to put an untested, uninteresting, uninspiring character on the throne and in charge of the Alliance, at a time when they most need strength and leadership. Makes no sense, and it makes Varion's death pointless, if it's only to showcase Anduin more as a character, because they're either going to have to dismantle his character and make him Varion 2.0 to get any traction with players, or kill him off, too.

Anduin becomes King of Stormwind by his birth right. Jaina can’t, because she is no royal of Stormwind, but Kul’Tiras. She couldn’t even become queen if Anduin died and there was no royal successor, the throne would then fall onto a noble of Stormwind. That’s how monarchies work, simple as that.

The Army of Stormwind won’t move a finger without King Anduin’s approval. She can’t become Commander, either, because Anduin is strickly against her Horde campaign.

As for the High King. Anduin currently isn’t the High King. After Varian’s death all leaders were there and involved in the discussions and Anduin could not stop Genn or Jaina, which pretty much proves it (unlike Varian who was able to command the other factions including their leaders around).

As for your hate on Anduin: It totally makes sense to waste resources on the war against the Horde when the BL pops in threatening with the destruction of the very world they live on – even if the Legion wasn’t coming:
Several apocalyptic events took place in like the last 5-10 years, so avoiding unnecessary wars should be the prime goal of a king (in order to preserve your army and your people and to let the economy relax a little).
That aside: What would the Alliance gain when they invaded Horde territory? Lordaeron is blighted for years, central Kalimdor is nothing but a desert, while the Alliance already has the majority of control over the world’s resources. They have the majority of control over farmable lands, over mountains to get ore from, and they have control over the left healthy forests. If anything they should solve their inner conflicts and secure the neutral lands surrounding them if they prove value.

[Wildmoon]

The title of high king does not give SW's king the absolute power to rule other leaders of the AA. Jaina said fuk you to Varian in MoP and she just did it to Anduin which are perfectly within her right.

[Deleted]

Whatever he is, he's the wrong person for the Job. It's one of the issues with the story line in general. It's what caused Jaina's character to go to the point that people called her "psychotic". Anduin aswell as most of the Alliance leadership now is what Jaina used to be up untill MoP. Heck after the Theramore incident she initially went back to it once again, before more stuff went down.

The Alliance at large isn't acting as one of the two factions but more like a neutral one would, this is a huge issue for the story itself. Because while "pulling together" and "cooperation" are constantly pushed they at the same time keep the Alliance in perpetual neutrality, relativism and outright apologism for the Horde's action. It's quite weird because people who claim that cooperation is needed will in the next sentence justify backstabbing, betrayal and using the Alliance as cannon fodder because "they're not friends".

Blizzard cares about the Alliance side of the story, about consistency (Dalaran is neutral, Dalaran is Alliance again yay fistpump you'll never see it ingame but you get it for Theramore, whoops Dalaran is neutral again and Jaina quit in a huff HAHA!) and the characters behaving logicallly about as much as they care about the Priest class in Hearthstone. They'll bend and change the Alliance and it's factions whatever way they need to make it fit the Horde story.

For example the Kirin Tor the Alliance's counterpart of the Sunreavers/Blood Golems and so on is now effectively gone. The group they worked with throughout the last two expansions and that was part of the Alliance story is now neutral once more. And where Horde factions and heroes reluctantly and temporarily cooperate with their hated adversaries, the Alliance ones go neutral for good or act in good faith often against the long term interest of their own faction.

[Slythan]

When you really think of it compared to Magni/Velen/Malfurion/Tyrande Varian was basically the least qualified person for the job as well until the writers starting making every other racial leader an idiot to make Varian look better. The whole high king never made sense to me. Alliance Leadership should have been something like the council of three hammers from the get go.

[Morgromir]

Jaina would have been a good candidate as high queen of the alliance, but ever since the bombing of Theramore she turned into a fanatic that hates the horde more than everyting else. This makes her unfit to rule as high queen.

I hate blizzard for doing a complete 180 turn on her personality from diplomatic character to "fk the horde kill them all"

[Deleted]

So the Alliance is a military organisation and Varian is the leader of the Military.. making Varian the leader of the Alliance, as I stated in my first post?

Props to you for sticking with this thread so much. Responding to a lot of people.

Ok, if that is your argument, I agree. The Alliance being just a military organization and thus, the High King being its leader as he leads the military.

I argued so much against it since there are many people who think the High King rules the other nations 100%, as in, not only in matters of war, but rather in the matters of the policies of each nation, which I fully disagree on.
I still think however they should have given him a better name for his function... or explained it better in-game.

Also, thanks for sticking out as well for so long.

he is not the high king tho

Are we talking about Anduin now? I was talking about Varian in that post, and he was "High King".
If we're talking about Anduin, I admit I didn't see where he's stated to be High King either.

Genn is following order from Anduin, you see this in his story arc in Stormheim I believe. But the Gilneans don't really have a home of their own currently, I don't know if they are still living in Darnassus but serving the humans, but that has never been clarified.

The one thing I did notice is when the SW throneroom was under attack Malfurion shouts "protect the king" and all the racial leaders make a semi circle around anduin, as if any of the other leaders lives are disposable but anduins is not. Also the demon hunters go to anduin for admission into the alliance. It seems at this point he is the defacto leader of the alliance, but that is also because the night elves and draenei aren't really involved, and the gnomes, dwarves and worgen all seem to be integrated into the SW army.

Most likely he would say to protect the king as, let's be honest, Anduin is still a child so I think even Malfurion realizes he's not going to go fighting demons with them. On the other hand, most of them have experience doing so already.

Also, Anduin is a priest. What would Anduin do if a wrathguard came at him? He wouldn't have time to cast a spell, will he talk it to death? It's like in a dungeon, they're protecting the healer.

Blizzard really screwed the pooch (kinda hard) when they misused the term "High King" with Varian.

There was a famous sci-fi/fantasy author (i want to say Heinlein, might have been Aasimov, too busy to look right now) who had a simple maxim:

if you're using words people already know, stick to what they know; conversely, dont make up new words for things unless you really have to.

In his example, he uses the rabbit - if you're going to have a rabbit-like-creature exist on the planet - just call it a rabbit. Or a near-rabbit. Whatever - but use the term rabbit in there somewhere.... that tells the reader everything they need to know without you having to create a new word and explain in detail how it is like a rabbit but not - etc. You use the term "alien rabbit" and boom, point gotten across, done.

In another example, he does discuss things like "King" - if you're going to use that word, you're using that word with all the baggage and expectations that come with it. So if you call a guy a King - he's got to be a king. If he's not -really- the King but sorta this .. king-like, sorta, really cool specific thing for your awesome setting - make up a new name. Dont prime the reader with the expectation of "King" and then have it be something completely different.

Varian never should have been High King unless he was actually going to be High King. By using that title, they implanted the notion of "King of Kings" in everyone's head automatically.

Should have just called him Supreme Commander, or made up another title that fits better.

That being said, as a million others have said - Anduin is just King of Stormwind. He has not inherited "High King/Supreme Commander" from his father.

Now... he MIGHT have some legitimate claim on "High King" of the humans - as all of the other human nations that still technically exist (Arathor, Alterac, Lordaeron) with the exception of.. possibly Kul'Tiras (since we have no idea what the hell is going on there despite them being within easy travelling distance of all of the Eastern Kingdoms) and Gilneas (still technically a "human" kingdom, even if they have had a race change very recently) are kingless and in many cases outright leaderless.

The case could be made that Varian/Anduin have taken those lands in trust and added them to Stormwind's empire - as vassal states potentially - and the case could be made for being "High King" of the humans... as he IS the defacto ruler of all those human settlements that are not part of Stormwind proper but still Alliance territory (like the settlements in the Arathi Highlands, Wetlands, etc).

Fully agreed with this. The term High King was both badly chosen and poorly explained. In-game we don't really see it explained how is it supreme commander or leader of everyone so it's easy for people to take it as "King of Kings". There were many more better choices of words... in the end though, it also ties with not having proper explaining on how the races of the Alliance interract with one another. Sure, we might know that, as you say, humans of leaderless nations are some sort of vassals to SW... but what is... Gnomeregan's relation to SW, for example? Nobody knows. You sometimes see gnomes in Alliance armies and that's mostly it.

[Deleted]

SNIP

I agree with all who says that High King was a poorly chosen title.

The way it would make sense to me was with 1 ruling council with a member from each faction(maybe including kirin tor) and then a military leader.

The council could consist of: Velen, Anduin, Jaina, Moira, Mekkatorque, Malfurion(or Tyrande), Aysa Cloudsinger and Greymane.

The military leader could be Greymane or Mekkatorque.

The title as military leader would ofcourse go to Turalyon as soon as he joined the alliance again

[Deleted]

Whatever he is, he's the wrong person for the Job. It's one of the issues with the story line in general. It's what caused Jaina's character to go to the point that people called her "psychotic". Anduin aswell as most of the Alliance leadership now is what Jaina used to be up untill MoP. Heck after the Theramore incident she initially went back to it once again, before more stuff went down.

The Alliance at large isn't acting as one of the two factions but more like a neutral one would, this is a huge issue for the story itself. Because while "pulling together" and "cooperation" are constantly pushed they at the same time keep the Alliance in perpetual neutrality, relativism and outright apologism for the Horde's action. It's quite weird because people who claim that cooperation is needed will in the next sentence justify backstabbing, betrayal and using the Alliance as cannon fodder because "they're not friends".

Blizzard cares about the Alliance side of the story, about consistency (Dalaran is neutral, Dalaran is Alliance again yay fistpump you'll never see it ingame but you get it for Theramore, whoops Dalaran is neutral again and Jaina quit in a huff HAHA!) and the characters behaving logicallly about as much as they care about the Priest class in Hearthstone. They'll bend and change the Alliance and it's factions whatever way they need to make it fit the Horde story.

For example the Kirin Tor the Alliance's counterpart of the Sunreavers/Blood Golems and so on is now effectively gone. The group they worked with throughout the last two expansions and that was part of the Alliance story is now neutral once more. And where Horde factions and heroes reluctantly and temporarily cooperate with their hated adversaries, the Alliance ones go neutral for good or act in good faith often against the long term interest of their own faction.

Indeed. It appears as Blizzard does not have a notion of what they actually want to do with the Alliance. On one hand, they make the Alliance always forgive and push for peace, and we have small moments of peace here and there. However, most times the general relation between the 2 factions is war or cold war. And when you have most of the Alliance pushing for peace all the time except 1-2 players, it just makes no sense whatsoever, in the end, why would the Horde fight the Alliance but not... the Kirin Tor, who, in the end, acted the same to them? It just makes no sense. So either they should have some sort of cold war but they should have it with some factions that are neutral as well but also have the Alliance act like in a Cold War or have full peace, but then have the Horde not have their plotting either.

When you really think of it compared to Magni/Velen/Malfurion/Tyrande Varian was basically the least qualified person for the job as well until the writers starting making every other racial leader an idiot to make Varian look better. The whole high king never made sense to me. Alliance Leadership should have been something like the council of three hammers from the get go.

Agreed. It could have had just 1 from each race so that we wouldn't have to have 3 dwarves, 2 night elves etc, for example.

[Deleted]

Who cares about Monarchys when you have Dictatorships.

[Deleted]

Who cares about Monarchys when you have Dictatorships.

A real Monarchy vs a real dictatorship amoutns to about the same.

The monarchy have more titles and live in castles :/

[Deleted]

I agree with all who says that High King was a poorly chosen title.

The way it would make sense to me was with 1 ruling council with a member from each faction(maybe including kirin tor) and then a military leader.

The council could consist of: Velen, Anduin, Jaina, Moira, Mekkatorque, Malfurion(or Tyrande), Aysa Cloudsinger and Greymane.

The military leader could be Greymane or Mekkatorque.

The title as military leader would ofcourse go to Turalyon as soon as he joined the alliance again

Agreed that there should be one ruling council.

The pandaren shouldn't necessarily be there though. Because there were very few anyway and tehnically at the end of MoP their leaders said they want to be together so... yea.

Could have Muradin as military leader, even better. He actually commanded troops, know diplomacy from his time in Lordaeron and managed to survived stranded in Northrend battling a mass of undead (both before Arthas came and after he became amnesiac).

[Deleted]

Agreed that there should be one ruling council.

The pandaren shouldn't necessarily be there though. Because there were very few anyway and tehnically at the end of MoP their leaders said they want to be together so... yea.

Could have Muradin as military leader, even better. He actually commanded troops, know diplomacy from his time in Lordaeron and managed to survived stranded in Northrend battling a mass of undead (both before Arthas came and after he became amnesiac).

Agreed, i was just being polite. I'm not sure how many pandarens are actually part of our fighting force(from a canon perspective).

And yeah Muradin would be a good military leader aswell, and not as unpredictable as the other two

[Daedius]

mekkatorgue: Circus folk

#clm !!!

[Deleted]

The alliance overall is not a monarchy but Stormwind is.
What I know wonder is what kind of government do the other races have?
Draenei and NightElves got a theocracy.
Dwarves did have a monarchy too but now it's an oligarchy.
Gilneas, or what's left of it has a monarchy.
So what kind of government do the gnomes have?

[lockybalboa]

This spineless wimp is not worthy of his father's throne