Did the blood elves oppose burning Teldrassil?

[Specialka]

Maybe she should inject not modern ideals, concepts and ideologies in an unrealistic manner into the world, so a large number of people wouldn't consider it ridiculous writing / unsuitable for the genre.

In a world where all the races and factions are hardened by constant warfare, there is 0% chance of anything such as the concept of a "war crime" ever rising to the forefront - unless it's meant as some form of political mockery. A parade of vanity and abuse of power by the victors. Which is honestly what the entire novel 'War Crimes' seems to be about. The novel makes as much a case for the vanity / arrogance / hypocrisy of those who try to throw the terms 'war crime' and 'genocide' around - eg, that they're just throwing emotional rubbish around and hope to see what sticks.

It makes as much of a case that the concept of 'war crimes' actually has no place within Azeroth.

Yeah, you are right, maybe we should go all the way to the Warhammer franchise, after all, Wow comes from that (as Starcraft comes for Warhammer 40k). Let's go there and PURGE THE XENOS!

[Super Dickmann]

There is, as I mentioned above. War Crimes, as much as you will hate on it now, makes that clear. On top of that both Saurfang's reaction as well as Baine's are clear indication that such an attack is in the Horde's eyes at least dishonorable which for a society based on honor like the orcs is a serious offense.


Again, unless Blizzard puts out a statement saying that Golden's book are not canon they simply are. You hating their plot or author does in no way change that.

No, it's genuinely a show trial. Reading the book is what tells you this, not ignoring it. You could only come to the conclusion you have by not reading the book.

Setting aside that the trial is based on Pandaren rules that neither Horde nor Alliance were bound by or even aware of for the majority of the war going on, that multiple people in the room had done the exact same shit, or that both the defense attorney and the prosecutor had conflicts of interest when it came to the accused and assorted procedural crap, the result was rigged. The Celestials knew that if things went on Garrosh would be freed and purposefully enabled it and say outright that the whole thing was done not to assert his guilt or innocence but to test the other people present and call out the above hypocrisy. It doesn't even rise to a kangaroo court or victor's justice, because it's not the winners cloaking a victory as being legastically right, it's a third party fucking over the winner to enable the loser while having preassumed the loser's guilt. Everyone loses except the Celestials, but joke's on them when the Legion bomb their temples because of the retarded chain of events they helped bring about.

It's a total sham and the only one to call those Zen motherfuckers out is Garrosh.

[Raisei]

Not really. Even christians don't agree with every writer that ever contributed to the Bible and they make their own selection on what is true or not.

Honestly that is how I feel with Golden's writing right now. You can claim it's canon and believe it's canon and for you it might then be canon. But I reject the notion and for me it's not canon, and never will be considered canon as it's just too ridiculous to wrap my head around -and- makes the Warcraft universe seems quite idiotic.

I cannot refute this, because you are of course free to believe what you want and that is all fine, one of the great things of our modern society.

It is however questionable to just base an argument about something on nothing more then your own believe and telling other people they are wrong because they do not believe in your personal head-canon. That may be possible in a theological debate (though even those use bible verses as source material) since they usually discuss spiritual topics that by definition cannot be proven or disproven, but it is problematic for a topic where clear information exists.

As I am generally more based in facts and evidence that I can see, I will stick to the established lore and canon as has been created by the company who owns the game world and all the writers that worked on it.

- - - Updated - - -

No, it's genuinely a show trial. Reading the book is what tells you this, not ignoring it. You could only come to the conclusion you have by not reading the book.

I think we had this point before. And I still do not understand how the fact that it is a show trial changes anything about the words used and the reaction of character who did not know it was a show trial. They may or may not be hypocrites, though I personally fail to see any of them on Garrosh's level at any point, even if the Celestials believe that, but their reactions are still genuine.

but joke's on them when the Legion bomb their temples because of the retarded chain of events they helped bring about.

Quite amusing that we are at the moment saving them again from N'zoth, despite them being just as responsible as anyone for the Legion Invasion... Wrathion at least got punched in his smuck mouth.

[Super Dickmann]

I think we had this point before. And I still do not understand how the fact that it is a show trial changes anything about the words used and the reaction of character who did not know it was a show trial. They may or may not be hypocrites, though I personally fail to see any of them on Garrosh's level at any point, even if the Celestials believe that, but their reactions are still genuine.

A trial based on laws of a foreign state that no participating state was even aware of, let alone bound to, is not a genuine trial by default. It's not that they weren't genuine in being upset - obviously they would be, they all suffered some consequences from Garrosh's policy, it's that their being upset has no legal character and is also disproportionate. This affects both content - the fact that Garrosh neither started the war nor waged it in any way that no one there present didn't do as well, what with a single troop of dwarves engaging in more killing of non-combatants than Garrosh ever managed during his entire tenure, and means - the Forsaken used the Blight, abominations and necromancy. But more importantly, that the trial is used as an excuse is a core point of the narrative itself - when Baine and Vol'jin acknowledge the legitimacy of Garrosh using his authority to go after Vol'jin given Vol'jin's insubordination and threat to his life or when Tyrande tries to spin the enslavement of Alexstrasza as being Garrosh's fault. The core thematic conflict between Anduin and Sylvanas in regards to Garrosh being between reaching out to him and killing him irrespective of the trial, tellingly done by one of his victims and someone much more morally bankrupt than him respectively.

It's not just that it's demonstrably a sham, though it is, or that things he's being accused of are for the most part absurd in terms of being treated as crimes in a war, it's that it being a sham that sought to make those present better people in the eyes of the Celestials is the reason it took the course it did and that that's the entire throughline of the book.

[Raisei]

A trial based on laws of a foreign state that no participating state was even aware of, let alone bound to, is not a genuine trial by default. It's not that they weren't genuine in being upset - obviously they would be, they all suffered some consequences from Garrosh's policy, it's that their being upset has no legal character and is also disproportionate. This affects both content - the fact that Garrosh neither started the war nor waged it in any way that no one there present didn't do as well, what with a single troop of dwarves engaging in more killing of non-combatants than Garrosh ever managed during his entire tenure, and means - the Forsaken used the Blight, abominations and necromancy. But more importantly, that the trial is used as an excuse is a core point of the narrative itself - when Baine and Vol'jin acknowledge the legitimacy of Garrosh using his authority to go after Vol'jin given Vol'jin's insubordination and threat to his life or when Tyrande tries to spin the enslavement of Alexstrasza as being Garrosh's fault. The core thematic conflict between Anduin and Sylvanas in regards to Garrosh being between reaching out to him and killing him irrespective of the trial, tellingly done by one of his victims and someone much more morally bankrupt than him respectively.

It's not just that it's demonstrably a sham, though it is, or that things he's being accused of are for the most part absurd in terms of being treated as crimes in a war, it's that it being a sham that sought to make those present better people in the eyes of the Celestials is the reason it took the course it did and that that's the entire throughline of the book.

Yes, I am not disagreeing it is a sham. But that was not my point. How does any of this refute that everyone that is in a leading position on Azeroth knows that War Crimes and Genocides exist. Even if they are hypocrites about what is strictly classified as such, they know that there are things that you simply do not do even in a war, among those the willful genociding of defenseless civilians. This is clearly shown by how disgusted/ashamed everyone is by the Draenei genocide shown by the Vision and then Theramore and numerous other examples.

I did purposefully exclude Sylvanas and the Forsaken, since we know she does not care and either had no understanding or no interest in the basic morals of the living. And yes, even now I am still baffled how Thrall could ever invite her and the Forsaken into the Horde.

[Aucald]

Maybe she should inject not modern ideals, concepts and ideologies in an unrealistic manner into the world, so a large number of people wouldn't consider it ridiculous writing / unsuitable for the genre.

In a world where all the races and factions are hardened by constant warfare, there is 0% chance of anything such as the concept of a "war crime" ever rising to the forefront - unless it's meant as some form of political mockery. A parade of vanity and abuse of power by the victors. Which is honestly what the entire novel 'War Crimes' seems to be about. The novel makes as much a case for the vanity / arrogance / hypocrisy of those who try to throw the terms 'war crime' and 'genocide' around - eg, that they're just throwing emotional rubbish around and hope to see what sticks.

It makes as much of a case that the concept of 'war crimes' actually has no place within Azeroth.

The first incident of what is considered a trial about "war crimes" is circa 1474 CE, the trial of Peter von Hagenbach by the Holy Roman Empire for "conduct unbecoming of a knight of Lordly standing," butchery, and command misconduct - for which the accused's rationale was that he was "simply following orders." It should be noted contrary to your position that Hagenbach served the Holy Roman Empire as a knight and "protector" of the Upper Rhine territories, but was so brutal in putting down a citizen revolt against his excessive tyranny that he was convicted of war crimes and beheaded in Breisach.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly that is how I feel with Golden's writing right now. You can claim it's canon and believe it's canon and for you it might then be canon.

But I reject the notion and for me it's not canon, and never will be considered canon as it's just too ridiculous to wrap my head around -and- makes the Warcraft universe seems quite idiotic.

In the end we will not see eye to eye on this.

This is also not how canon works - whether or not you agree with or like certain developments doesn't determine what is or isn't canon in a shared fictional universe. It's fine to discount it, IMO; or to criticize it, but one still has to argue within the framework of canon when discussing events of said universe. Otherwise you're comparing apples and oranges and can't really come to any kind of reasonable consensus about anything.

[Aucald]

I'm aware of the case. You'll also note that it's most definitely an outlier, as the first cases really only started appearing consistently since the 1890-ies when liberalism and humanism started spreading through the world. Also note that his conviction was based more on the fact that he had taken an oath as a knight, more so than anything else. In the end you could argue it was the first momentary show of 'liberalism' in the world, and the trial was more of a means to end violent riots / rebellion in the area than anything else.

You'll also note that the word 'war crimes' and 'genocide' were not used during the trial, but that they simply kept referring to oaths and duties related to knighthood. It is also an outlier because typically knights and lords and kings did plenty of all he had been accused of and generally they were allowed to.

Still the first accepted case where the concept was created - as "war crimes" at the time was not a common term of use. The concepts of command responsibility and the ethics of soldiering even appear in the writings of Sun-tzu in the late BCE (Sun-tzu's Art of War, 160), establishing the concept is far older than you imply here and not entirely a product of modern liberalism and humanism. I'd agree the modern stance on war crimes is more encompassing that in days of yore, with indictments or punishments for excesses in war being relatively rarer than they are today, but the argument is that the concepts themselves still existed and were occasionally held up by governments and military command structures well before the modern era.

The idea of "war crimes" specifically didn't exist in the era of the Holy Roman Empire, and von Hagenbach's actions didn't constitute genocide even by our standards - but the nature of his crimes and the reasons for his punishment easily parallel the modern concept we uphold today. Basically he crossed a line of decorum, a line that in his age was fuzzier and set further back, but still extant despite the general barbarity of the era. Still quite applicable for underlining the concept, and a basis on which we built the laws surrounding the concept in the modern era.

[Aucald]

Sure, the concept of "military ethics" goes all the way back to ancient China where generals generally agreed that it was not done to 'poison the wells' of villages (but mostly because they were afraid they'd accidentally end up poisoning other generals).

And the modern concept of "war crimes" is borne out of the doctrines of military ethics made in those past eras - it is the pillar upon which the more modern precedents rest.

I take offense to the term 'war crimes' though. Even the trial you refer to never used the word or concept of 'war crimes', they referred more to knightly honor and duties... Which is no different from Saurfang and Thrall talking about honor. Not having honor wasn't ever considered a crime in itself though... And dishonorable deeds were rarely punished (still today) until there started to be concise frame works.

This is more or less semantic drift and not really an argument on the basis of the term itself - you're taking exception to the words, not the concept. "Yeah, he stole a huge amount of things, but it wasn't grand larceny because that crime didn't exist then." Sure, yes, in the most meaningless sense possible it wasn't that specific crime - but using the term to describe it is what most people would do.

Even today the world superpowers are immune, back in the old days when society was much more fragmented, you had multiple people and families who were all immune to it in their own territories and fiefdoms. Also let's not forget that it typically in ancient days was a very bad idea to try and piss off your own military with rules and trials for misbehavior. Military equaled power in those days and if they turned on you, you'd lose your power.

Being immune from punishment doesn't imply that no crime was committed in an objective sense - we judge history the same way our descendants will later judge us for our misdeeds. Murder is murder and genocide is genocide even if those who commit it aren't held to account. Your argument is like implying Jack the Ripper is completely innocent of their crimes, and more never even existed, because they were never caught and convicted.

The concept of right and wrong however is very... subjective and has changed a lot through history. In the Roman Empire it was actually considered a religious sin to feel empathy for the weaker and those in need. People who celebrated slaughtering over a hundred elephants, children and women in gladiator games in Circus Maximus on a daily basis had a different mindset about right and wrong than us... or than the way Christie Golden tries to portray Azeroth.

I won't argue the mores and morals of their society were quite different, and yet obviously we share some elements of it even today in the form of people being tried and convicted for excesses in war. Call it an outlier, yet it still occurred and forms the basis of legal precedent today.

I mean, it's her right to try and turn Azeroth into some sort of high-fantasy world where values of liberalism and humanism are the guiding ideologies... Tbh, I'm not even sure what their guiding ideologies are, but they seem to be all over the place from slaughter to forced slavery and torture to patting each other on the back after a war. I can't say I've ever been able to read what the core values of 'the Light' are. But for me, with the view I have on history and the world of Azeroth it seems entirely like Christie is just trying to force modern views into the setting - and it feels very out of place.

Personally I'd feel a lot happier if there is some 'historic' influences in Azeroth. Different cultures and mindsets.

I think Azeroth is a bit further along on the technological/historical curve than you do, to be honest - you seem to place it in the mold of a medieval setting but I think it is actually closer to the 1800's when compared to our own history. They have industry, mass transit, fabrication, and a growing civil bureaucracy. Obviously not a 1:1 comparison given the variances of the cultures of Azeroth, but they're not completely mired in medieval feudalism either. I also find such religions as the Light to be very in-line with modern humanism, giving more credence to the idea of the concept of "war crimes" to cultures influenced by the Church of the Light. That the Orcs might not have such a concept is less than surprising, but many of the races of Azeroth might have similar ideals.

[Minikin]

That's weird, the Alliance High Elves/Silver Covenant were already banding together as far as WC3 in Mount Hyjal. The High Elf Priests(and probably Paladins too) were even credited as the MVPs of the Summit Defense.

I know but they had to make the story somehow lol. It ain't perfect but they had to give the horde something based on a crumb. I mean just take a look at the source in my signature.....

[Aucald]

To me it's actually really bad writing. An oversight by the writer, which more attentive writers might take issue with.

Which is why I preferred how they described it in the Shattering. Not using the words 'war crimes' or 'genocide' directly.

They're terms of use, not really literary devices. Garrosh's trial in Pandara is basically Azeroth's version of the Nuremberg trials, the first incidence of its kind and the creation of analogous concepts in Azerothian history. Modern authors tend to use modern terms of use so that their reading audiences understand the concepts being conveyed - same reason why books aren't written in Middle English anymore, really.

No, I'm more saying that the people in those ages might not really have considered it crimes or wrong. I mean, we might be judged as criminals and barbarians for a lot of things we do today which we think are 'alright' and 'good'. The concept of right and wrong continuously evolves and changes. Perhaps in a few hundred years from now it'll be considered a crime to address a woman with a different pronoun than a man, and maybe Christie Golden's great-great-great-grand daughter will then write a a fiction book about how everyone in the year 2020 were perverted men that took pleasure in insulting women with discriminating pronouns. Which would be a complete misrepresentation of how society actually feels about these things today. Readers in her time might then say: "Yeah, this is just how it is. They knew they were doing wrong. Everyone knows what is right and wrong since ancient China...", but we know better.

The writings of ancient scribes, historians, and other luminaries do well to show us human morality isn't quite as mutable as you imply here - we knew things like pillaging, enslaving, and mass-murdering people was wrong from an ethical standpoint, but the organs of enforcement often didn't exist in a manner that would forbid them. I think your example about what future civilizations would think of 2020 is also pretty far-fetched, insofar as that goes; means of address is a cultural element and not one of morality either way you cut it. It would be more like how we think of the color pink, and how it was thought about 150 years ago (when pink was considered a manly and macho color more associated with rugged men than women). Cultural elements shift and mutate with time, but the cornerstone of ethics remains mostly unchanged all the way back to Hammurabi's Code in 1754 BCE (and even earlier).

It's actually important to note that it's an outlier. Because it points out how rare it was, during a time period in which such behavior was very common.

We actually don't know how rare it was - von Hagenbach's trial was wrote about extensively which is why we know of it today, but it's unknown how many other examples of this kind of indictment and punishment might have otherwise existed and not been written of quite so much (or didn't occur at the height of a region-spanning and well-organized empire). Legal scholars believe the idea of "war crimes" and punishments for violating military ethics are not as rare as we once thought.

Sure, that is a possible interpretation, but I find it very boring and dull and it shows a bit of a disregard for different cultures and the value of history.

I mean, people would probably also be upset if she started writing about Thrall using his mobile app to contact his wife on Draenor after taking a selfie.

I personally don't understand why Christie felt the need to remind us of Nazism, Hitler and World War 2 by using the word "genocide" in her writing. Completely unnecessary and out of place. She could've used more thematically suitable words instead.

She used common analogues people could immediately grasp and which would remove the need for semantic arguments about what did or didn't occur, and what these actions did or didn't constitute. Pretty common rhetorical device in writing, really; there's seldom a need to reinvent the proverbial wheel when you can use concepts everyone easily understands and has in common. Thrall suddenly having a smartphone would be an entirely different problem in writing than using modern analogies to describe similar actions and/or contexts. Genocide, as a term of use, has a specific meaning on both a practical and emotional standpoint for most people. It's also not a term solely connected to Nazism, just as mass-murder isn't a term solely connected to any specific murderer or spree killer. That doesn't make it the wrong term, either; as it definitely circumscribes what happened at Teldrassil insofar as most people are concerned.

[Aucald]

I disagree with that. In writing every single word is a literary device. The Shattering shows us that they were perfectly capable of describing the events without having to use or reach back to World War 2 aftermath concepts and words. I mean, in the grand scheme of things the war waged by Garrosh wasn't even considered a major war. We have the Third War and then the Fourth War... Garrosh was just a blip, so it seems really weird to make such a huge deal out of the events on Pandaria then by throwing in these hugely loaded concepts.

That's an overly romantic view of the writing process, in my opinion; as well as an exceptionally and unrealistically high bar. The events of "The Shattering" and those in the War of the Thorns are also not the same - although I disagree on your assessment of Garrosh's conflict as a "blip." The destruction of Theramore was a pretty significant and seminal concerning the faction conflict, and while Garrosh's atrocities weren't necessarily as total as those of Sylvanas later on, they were still numerous and in the aggregate close in terms of their horrific nature. Disagreement with the terms doesn't really remove their overall relevance.

I strongly disagree with that. This is a very modern and humanistic interpretation of history.

When one interprets history, one tends to do so from the vantage of the present - hence the very phrase "interpretation of history." Neither of us can really know what the actual stance on events as they happened in history was, as we were neither present nor capable of time travel. We use our modern framework and interpret what we know to be true insofar as it can be concluded. We judge the past, in other words; just as our descendants will judge us as previously stated. The idea of trying to analyze the past on its own terms is a flawed one, because we don't really know what those terms actually were and new information is showing us all the time that our previous views of how those people viewed their relative present is flawed.

Now you're just making grand assumptions and hypotheticals. We know how great of an outlier it is because it's the only recorded record of such a trial. There are records of plenty of stuff and if this had happened elsewhere we would've known about it. The 1400s didn't exactly suffer an historical black-out, lots of events were written down of all sorts of mundane events at various courts through the continent at that point.

A cursory look into military ethics and their connection to the modern idea of "war crimes" proves differently. The case of von Hagenbach is simply the most topical of its kind from that era, having been written about extensively and even used as a framework for later laws - it's not the sole case of such a thing occurring, either. The same logic is why we correctly call the outbreak of the Black Death in medieval Europe a pandemic, but the people of that time didn't have a word for what was happening beyond "plague." That doesn't make the term "pandemic" incorrect to use because it didn't exist in the era - it technically and more accurately defines what was actually occurring.

I consider it bad writing. There are a hundred and thousand different ways in which she could've described those events without referring to 20th century / World War 2 terminology. It feels forced, tbh.

Possible, but still seems a pedantic and fussy quibble with a specific term and not really a blanket condemnation of any kind. She could've called it a "massacre beyond any previous scope," but that wouldn't really change the essence conveyed.

[Super Dickmann]

Yes, I am not disagreeing it is a sham. But that was not my point. How does any of this refute that everyone that is in a leading position on Azeroth knows that War Crimes and Genocides exist. Even if they are hypocrites about what is strictly classified as such, they know that there are things that you simply do not do even in a war, among those the willful genociding of defenseless civilians. This is clearly shown by how disgusted/ashamed everyone is by the Draenei genocide shown by the Vision and then Theramore and numerous other examples.

I did purposefully exclude Sylvanas and the Forsaken, since we know she does not care and either had no understanding or no interest in the basic morals of the living. And yes, even now I am still baffled how Thrall could ever invite her and the Forsaken into the Horde.

Stepping away from it being a sham to the acknowledgement of war crimes, then it's simply victor's justice if that. Invoking that Sylvanas is there is the easy way to debunk the thing, but it's not needed. It's easier to point out that the majority of the things Garrosh stands accused of that aren't outright absurd (like how he's responsible for enslaving Alexstrasza) or rebuffed by Baine and Vol'jin (the assassination attempt on Vol'jin) are standard military conduct. Garrosh is accused for attacks in Azshara, Ashenvale and Gilneas despite the orcish role in all these things being the most standard possible warfare imaginable that everyone present practices. Given that Garrosh perpetrated no genocide, whether they all agreed that genocide existed is immaterial. This is because we wantonly wipe out gnolls, ogres, quillboar etc. but also because when it comes to lesser crimes the things he's accused of are things everyone present has practiced. Hell, even when it comes to him using the void, he's home free retroactively since everyone does it now - hell, the only reason we beat N'zoth is because we do it.

[Aucald]

Ah, but that explains our different views then.

I am indeed very passionate about writing and history.

In my opinion all the great fiction writers do put a lot of thought in every word their characters use or think. Like say for example someone writing about the 1800s Mississipi river and knowing quite well how the words dinner and supper were used at that time (and how the usage changed over time). It gives a sense of authenticity when you can read a book like that and actually learn something from it, instead of ending up bothered by unthematic and out-of-place word choices.

I generally find it a matter of context. If a book is sold or crouched on its closeness to history then obviously I'm going to have that in mind when I read it. In the case of the Warcraft universe specially, though; it's never really been a big component of the franchise which has always showcased in-jokes, memes, lighthearted humor, and even zany out-of-context happenings in its events. The Warcraft universe isn't really a serious setting like the "Game of Thrones" or "Lord of the Rings" universes, and it's never been long on historicity or strong elements of consistency. This is actually something that's improved in more recent offerings, in terms of narrative cohesion and storytelling, but it's still a largely laissez-faire undertaking.

[Destinas]

I'm sure there were some that opposed it. But, there would be those that supported it, and those that actively fought in the War of the Thorns.

Lorash Sunbeam was an active part of the war, for instance. He resented the Night Elves for exiling his people long ago. The Highborne themselves did burn the forest, which is part of why they were exiled in the first place. There would likely be many others like him.

But there are definitely Blood Elves that wouldn't have liked burning Teldrassil, and some that aren't as hostile to the Night Elves/Alliance. Many Void Elves were Blood Elves until recently, and they openly worked with Shandris in BfA. Valeera and Caerania are Blood Elves on the side of the Alliance. They simply don't talk about dissent in the factions that much in-game (or at all, really).

[Minikin]

Ofc they did, Sylvanas was the one pushing htis, and Saurfang. ALthough he didn't think she'd burn the tree. Blood elvs aren't the type to be so petty, they aren't a genocidal race.

Lorash Sunbeam would like a word.

He can't speak very well though, cuz he got decimated by Malfurion.

[Aucald]

Lorash Sunbeam would like a word.

He can't speak very well though, cuz he got decimated by Malfurion.

Wasn't Lorash raised as undead by the Val'kyr, though?

Update: apparently so, he's found with a Dark Ranger-type model in Bashal'Aran during the Darkshore Warfront.

[Minikin]

Wasn't Lorash raised as undead by the Val'kyr, though?

Update: apparently so, he's found with a Dark Ranger-type model in Bashal'Aran during the Darkshore Warfront.

Yessir he was hence the difficulty in talking XD. I imagine that smack by an archdruid wouldn't have been pretty. Cuz he crushed his throat.

[Yarathir]

No one, really opposised burning Teldrassil, barely even the Night Elves themselves.

It wasn't until Tyrande lost her marbles and officially turned to the dark side, Alliance deemed it appropriate to comment on the situation.

>Tyrande
>turned to the dark side

What are you smoking?

[Aucald]

Yessir he was hence the difficulty in talking XD. I imagine that smack by an archdruid wouldn't have been pretty. Cuz he crushed his throat.

Decapitating him entirely, apparently; at least according to what he says during the Warfront. I don't think a rematch is going to end any differently for him, either.

[Yarathir]

You can't oppose something you don't know about, which no one other than Sylvanas did. If it was part of the plan, I imagine some like Rommath would be all for it, and some like Lor'themar would be against destroying more elven civilization.

Can't speak for the blood elves, but Sylvanas didn't solo Teldrassil with catapults. She gave an order to burn it down, which was followed. Shamans helped fan the flames, too.