Was Velcinda "Elsie" Benton the only loyal Desolate Councilor?

[Aucald]

This echoes my own understanding of the events that played out. We have no way of knowing who among the Desolate Council would have turned traitor and who would have stayed loyal. We only saw the intentions of a couple of them. This did not matter one iota to Sylvanas and she killed them all except for the handful who were spurned by their loved ones and returned to Thoradin's Wall early. They, Sylvanas claimed, are now "truly Desolate...". It's about making sure that the Forsaken believes what she believes: the living do not care for them. If anything, the living resent and despise them and their existence.

Allowing loyal Desolate Council members to return to the Undercity who had seen differently was a threat to what Sylvanas believed to be true and what she wanted the Forsaken to believe to be true. Whether they were loyal to the Horde was irrelevant to her. Whether or not they were traitors to the Horde, they were traitors to Sylvanas' ideals the moment they met with the living and had a positive interaction with them. At least this is what I took away from these events.

This is also dovetailed with the revelation in "Before the Storm" that the Forsaken are pressured (sometimes strongly) to break away from their pre-undead lives and assume entirely new identities as Forsaken to separate themselves from who they once were. This is taken as far as assuming entirely new names like Velcinda did in an attempt to be someone entirely else in undeath than they were in life. The Forsaken truly seem to operate as a cult of sorts, with Sylvanas at its head as the source of all direction and culture. Before "Before the Storm" I always considered the flow of power as deriving from the Forsaken and moving upward to Sylvanas, with Sylvanas at the center of a cult of personality more or less created by her followers (those she freed from the yoke of the Scourge). But more and more it seems that Sylvanas has deftly manipulated her original support she would've had in the early days of the Forsaken to create said cult of personality - engineering their society and culture to lionize herself, and slowly and surely eroding the Forsaken's self-sufficiency and making them dependent on her in every way.

This is possibly a change in the society post-WotLK, stemming from the traumas she suffered and the change in her worldview following "Edge of Night." But this kind of social change seems like it would take longer to bring about than just that, all considered.

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I don't disagree that she would be the most visible target both figuratively and literally. But is it again plausible that she was just the closest? Maybe it was just pareidolia paranoia that led Sylvanas to think they were defecting, but what if it wasn't?

What if most of the Desolate Council was on the other side of Elsie Benton from Sylvanas's perspective and she intuited that they were defecting en masse, and was correct in her guess based on the admittedly loose evidence provided?

If Elsie Benton was the only innocent person on the field, the only one who wasn't defecting, so caught up in talking to Calia that she didn't notice people moving around her, and Sylvanas recognized the truth that they were actually defecting but assumed the wrong motivation on the part of the Desolate Council, with all of that in mind:

Does it change the morality of her actions?

The morality of her actions? No, probably not - she personally still doesn't know who is or isn't legitimately defecting (she says so in the text itself), meaning she was still acting on essential paranoia or the mere suspicion of treachery. Does it justify them? Well, perhaps more than otherwise, yes. If the Desolate Council at large were traitors and Elsie an unfortunate element of collateral damage then Sylvanas' actions aren't quite so beyond the pale from the objective standpoint - few leaders would permit figures high in the government of their coalition to freely defect to an enemy state without consequence. The fact that she doesn't know (or seemingly care) who is or isn't guilty before executing them is the moral quandary here, not the substance of those actions as concerns potential treason.

[Steampunkette]

This is also dovetailed with the revelation in "Before the Storm" that the Forsaken are pressured (sometimes strongly) to break away from their pre-undead lives and assume entirely new identities as Forsaken to separate themselves from who they once were. This is taken as far as assuming entirely new names like Velcinda did in an attempt to be someone entirely else in undeath than they were in life. The Forsaken truly seem to operate as a cult of sorts, with Sylvanas at its head as the source of all direction and culture. Before "Before the Storm" I always considered the flow of power as deriving from the Forsaken and moving upward to Sylvanas, with Sylvanas at the center of a cult of personality more or less created by her followers (those she freed from the yoke of the Scourge). But more and more it seems that Sylvanas has deftly manipulated her original support she would've had in the early days of the Forsaken to create said cult of personality - engineering their society and culture to lionize herself, and slowly and surely eroding the Forsaken's self-sufficiency and making them dependent on her in every way.

This is possibly a change in the society post-WotLK, stemming from the traumas she suffered and the change in her worldview following "Edge of Night." But this kind of social change seems like it would take longer to bring about than just that, all considered.

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The morality of her actions? No, probably not - she personally still doesn't know who is or isn't legitimately defecting (she says so in the text itself), meaning she was still acting on essential paranoia or the mere suspicion of treachery. Does it justify them? Well, perhaps more than otherwise, yes. If the Desolate Council at large were traitors and Elsie an unfortunate element of collateral damage then Sylvanas' actions aren't quite so beyond the pale from the objective standpoint - few leaders would permit figures high in the government of their coalition to freely defect to an enemy state without consequence. The fact that she doesn't know (or seemingly care) who is or isn't guilty before executing them is the moral quandary here, not the substance of those actions as concerns potential treason.

Yeah, that's close to the position I wind up in, too.

The only way it really works is if she was right that they were all defecting, except Elsie, and her doubt over whether the ones running back were actually loyal rather than just scared came up, later. And only as a result of their running back, essentially being tricked into believing that maybe they were loyal.

If that were the situation then Elsie would just be a casualty caught in a nasty-ass Crossfire. But I think the writers just screwed the pooch on trying to have any kind of moral grayness in this situation. Both Christie Golden in the writing of the novel, and whoever handed her the outline which included the Gathering as an importance lore event.

[Broken Fox]

I was quite sad that Elsie got killed. I can understand the killing of the defectors, but the one running back towards the wall? Can't grasp that..

It’s their own fault. They should have zig zag’d.

[Niwes]

I don't think anyone is saying that Sylvanas didn't murder a bunch of people based on her own fear or paranoia as concerned their loyalty - "Before the Storm" makes that pretty much indisputable, and we know that several of the Desolate Council members massacred at the Gathering were still loyal to Sylvanas (e.g. Velcinda/Elsie Benton and those who were retreating back to Galen's Fall with her). The question here is whether or not Sylvanas' actions were justified by the threat that the Council posed if it were defecting en masse, whether or not they were "innocent" as they were being cut down.

As has been said previously, in the context the Warcraft universe we're all murderers - Sylvanas, Anduin, the PC's, pretty much anyone who plays a role in the events have impressive tallies of victims.

yeah, ofc. sylvanas isnt much different to the rest of us. ofc. like garrosh was too. keep telling you that. lol.

/sarcasm off

result: i think i have a way another oppinion here than you (what is fine).

[Broken Fox]

yeah, ofc. sylvanas isnt much different to the rest of us. ofc. like garrosh was too. keep telling you that. lol.

/sarcasm off

result: i think i have a way another oppinion here than you (what is fine).

Well considering we’re just killers for hire half the time and have done plenty of dirty work for BOTH of those people I’d say were just as bad, sure

We’re this guy