Convincing Anduin

[bagina]

I know and it makes my roll my eyes so hard. Sylvanas is made to be such a pathetic naive numbskull, like stop Danuser, she's dead already. If I see ANOTHER fucking shot of her sad face I'm gonna freak. OH SHE'S SO CONFLICTED SEE??? AREN'T WE SUBTLE AREN'T WE SO GOOD AT WRITING CHARACTERS??? Fucking stop it.

You're not doing what you think you're doing. You're not saving Sylvanas' character, you're only further destroying it.

[Newname1234567890]

Slyvannas likes to still pretend she still cares about free will. Andiun says as much to her in the cinematics. Hence the attempt to convince him.

As for why Andiun managed to escape I'm sure he was grabbed by Mawsworn the moment he stabbed the Kyrian.

[Caerule]

It's really hard to speculate on this, as we still don't really know the goal of Sylvanas and the Jailer beyond an abstract "Break the unjust system".

Sylvanas is fighting for a cause. A cause she considers worth all the atrocities she is committing. Like Sargeras, that doesn't mean those justifications are actually good ones. But they are enough to convince her to do what she does.

She was hoping to convince Anduin her path is justified, and to get him on board. It was indicated they had a lot more talks than we've seen in the two cinematics between them. She's explained her philosophy to Anduin in cinematic. But she's not explained her the details of her goals on-screen. Clearly, Anduin did not consider them worth all the terrible actions she and the Jailer are taking.

But if he were convinced, of course he would be willing to attack the Archon! Sylvanas thrust the world into war and burned down a civilization, throwing their souls into WoW hell. The Jailer's torturing infinite souls, destroying and reforging them to accomplish his goals. They are willing to go that far to realize their convictions. If Anduin had come to share those convictions, do you really think he wouldn't be willing to attack a stranger (the Archon) standing in the way of those goals?

So yeah, trying to convince him was definitely worth it. But Anduin made it clear that he rejected their convictions and could not be reasoned into them.

[Lochton]

Danuser said in today's Q&A; the Anduin was needed to get an audience with the Archon (and obviously, getting the key).

Did Sylvanas really believe she was able to convince Anduin to attack the Archon? Or the plan was to convince Anduin and then to convince the Firsbone to bring suicide? Obviously, this is not the case. How Anduin left the Kyrian territory without any harm?

I am also amazed the Kyrian are so adamant about receiving a soul like Uther, but if it is a living good human king that was trapped...they low their defenses a lot...

Sylvanas seems quite naive in the story: not noticing the Jailer created Arthas, no realizing that she is another pawn, and now with Anduin.

I hope Blizzard brings a world-changing reason for "convincing: arguments of the Jailer.

TL;DR: Sylvanas wanted Anduin to collaborate voluntarily. There was NO way to convince Anduin to attack the Archon. The only way was the Jailer to control him.

I have my theory that Sylvanas failed her plan, inevitably forcing the Jailer to actually do it in her place.

[Rageadon]

Anduin is like the super good character, so good that its uncanny, him doing something bad is so out of the park that he has to be controlled for that to happen, i dont even understand why they even tried to "oMg iS It rEaLly hiM?!?!?!" everyone, people that dont even care about the story knows that he wont to that unless he is controlled

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It's really hard to speculate on this, as we still don't really know the goal of Sylvanas and the Jailer beyond an abstract "Break the unjust system".

Their goal is to be in control of the unjust system, they just dont want to be on the bottom

[KOUNTERPARTS]

I think I understand what you're trying to say?


Sylvanas did not want to forcefully enslave Anduin via "being dominated" or transformed? She kept telling him to give in/submit and willfully serve rather forcefully serve?


If so... well, yeah. You can also see at the end of the 9.1 cinematic that Sylvanas looks at dominated-Anduin with sadness in her eyes. She looks like she has remorse, guilt for what she thrust upon him.

[Gimlix]

What I mean is: Sylvanas wanted him to collaborate. For me, there was no situation where Anduin was going to collaborate with her. The only path was being controlled by Jailer. All the talk of Sylvanas with Anduin was for nothing.

Welcome to real life, when sometimes things u do are worthless. Sorry but not everything has to have a meaning.
If Sylvanas couldn't convince Anduin, The Jailer stept in. Pretty straight forward logic and this stuff resembles real life quite well.

I don't see any reason to whine on this topic?

[Aucald]

On further review of the cinematic, I don't think Sylvanas is conflicted, per se - I don't think her hesitance or her later doubtful glance has anything to do with care for Anduin or Anduin's plight. I think she recognizes that she's now taken a final step toward becoming what she hates - in turning Anduin into the Jailer's slave, she's done to him what Arthas originally did to her in Quel'Thalas. I think she's starting to finally realize for herself what multiple people have claimed about her in the past, that she's essentially becoming the Lich Queen, or in this case that she's fully capable of doing to others what was done to her. What she'll do with such knowledge now is anyone's guess - she's never demonstrated a great deal of emotional intelligence, as it were. She could plow on despite her growing reservations, or she could attempt (or succeed at) a heel-face turn away from the Jailer and his plan.

[Jastall]

The entire sequence has some good animation to it and Sylvanas having any interiority at all should be an improvement, but the sole real result of this characterization is to make her out, as @Jastall says into a staggering moron, who puts inexplicable trust in someone not only associated with every bad thing that happened to her like Satan, but turn on him for the most bizarre reasons. We went on this whole painfully long rigamarole last expansion about how Sylvanas crossed a personal line by torturing one dude into compliance, yet not only does she now not remember this, but she also has long-term memory loss of the fact that her entire kingdom exists only because of mind control through banshees. At this point she's planned her sisters' assassination and waved off her long time lover to be able to complete her stupid plan and neither her family, nation or close people have any effect on her. Even basic pattern recognition is wasted on this intellectual midget, it's why Anduin can get that dig in about how obviously evil everything around her is. No, the only thing to get anything out of her is Anduin, with whom she's spoken to once.

Braindead evil caricature Sylvanas is a real piece of work in BFA, but braindead and naive Sylvanas who pulls all she did because she trusted the most untrustworthy man in the universe only to be woken up to this fact by the God-King is something else.

To be fair I've never seen her as a particularly intelligent character anyway. Her only real success was taking Lordaeron from the Dreadlords and Garithos, but given that the former have been mostly worfed into brainless "mwahahaha puny mortals" villains and the latter inexplicably trusted a dead elf despite being virulently anti-undead and anti-elf mitigates this somewhat.

After that? Her actions have been a comedy of failures, often brought upon her by critical errors of judgement or competence. Her gas fails to kill Arthas, she gets ousted in a coup by some of the least trustworthy people in the setting that she still trusted, she's not even there at Icecrown to finish Arthas, she commits suicide but fails at even that thanks to big blue man, fails to take Gilneas despite using her most lethal weapon against orders, gets killed once again due to her poor judgement, fails at Stormheim, and I'm not even going to begin to list her numerous brainfarts and ridiculously moronic plans during BFA. Which also retconned her death into a powerslide directly into Frostmourne, making it kinda hard to blame Arthas for that one at all now. At this point he probably thought he was putting a braindead vegetable out of her misery.

All that said, this latest outing still outshines all of the above in terms of staggeringly poor judgement. Blizzard aren't even trying to be subtle about portraying the Jailer to be as villainous as humanly possible. One could accept that an intelligent person would follow someone like Azshara or Denathrius, for example, but big blue man who looks evil, sounds evil, does evil and whose domain includes such lovely places as the Tower of the Damned, Perdition Hold or the Sanctum of Domination? Clearly there's no more trustworthy power in the cosmos and he's worth ditching literally anything and everything to follow.

[bagina]

On further review of the cinematic, I don't think Sylvanas is conflicted, per se - I don't think her hesitance or her later doubtful glance has anything to do with care for Anduin or Anduin's plight. I think she recognizes that she's now taken a final step toward becoming what she hates - in turning Anduin into the Jailer's slave, she's done to him what Arthas originally did to her in Quel'Thalas. I think she's starting to finally realize for herself what multiple people have claimed about her in the past, that she's essentially becoming the Lich Queen, or in this case that she's fully capable of doing to others what was done to her. What she'll do with such knowledge now is anyone's guess - she's never demonstrated a great deal of emotional intelligence, as it were. She could plow on despite her growing reservations, or she could attempt (or succeed at) a heel-face turn away from the Jailer and his plan.

I'm aware of that angle. But as I said before, it's contridactory to her previous characterisation. She's been shown MANY times to be aware of the similarities between her and Arthas. She's always had that self-awareness as proven by numerous interactions she'd had with other characters. She wasn't under the illusion that she was some sort of paragon of goodness. She's done bad stuff and knew it. She made no excuses to herself. I liked that. But now it's like she regressed and forgot about all that. Now turns out she was very confused and in denial all this time. Like she made Teldrassil happen WHILE recouting her encounter with Arthas no less, okayed Derek's mindrape and all the other funny stuff and she was in denial this entire time. Yeah, nah. That's character lobotomization right there.

She apparently starts thinking about the Lich King only when they mind-control Anduin (And let me emphasize:FUCKING TEMPORARILY!! IT'S NOT EVEN PERMANENT! THEY DON'T EVEN KILL HIM!) It's not even a comparable situation! This whole Lich King parallel doesn't make fucking sense in this instance! And what's more, it's for "the greater good" apparently. You know, what about that "free will" thing? His mind control is for the best. It's not gonna last, so why are you worried Sylvanas? You mean you DON'T actually believe you're doing something good? Huh? You don't believe in your own cause? THEN WHY ARE YOU IN CAHOOTS WITH THE JAILER? She's all over place and it drives me up the fucking wall.

[KSM899]

.. if the Jailer wanted her dead don't you think he would have stabbed her multiple times already instead of 1 stab? Come on man..

As if this never happened before ..
For all we know Jailer could have thought that she was dead since he stabbed her in the chest, or wanted to run away, or didn't want to lose control of Anduin ...

[Rustedsaint]

I think I understand what you're trying to say?


Sylvanas did not want to forcefully enslave Anduin via "being dominated" or transformed? She kept telling him to give in/submit and willfully serve rather forcefully serve?


If so... well, yeah. You can also see at the end of the 9.1 cinematic that Sylvanas looks at dominated-Anduin with sadness in her eyes. She looks like she has remorse, guilt for what she thrust upon him.

And yet she had no guilt trying to control Derek

[KOUNTERPARTS]

And yet she had no guilt trying to control Derek

True, but to be fair, she has more of a rapport with Anduin than Derek. At least Anduin tried to make sense of Sylvanas' actions while Sylvanas tried to make sense of Anduin's "unwavering faith" in everything and everyone, or whatever.

[bitterwinter]

Sylvanas seems quite naive in the story: not noticing the Jailer created Arthas, no realizing that she is another pawn, and now with Anduin.

Completely agree with this. It's odd. Sylvanas so far up until this point has been shown to be smart - playing 4D chess with all of us but when she convinced the Jailer to try and convince Anduin to join voluntarily them she didn't think "hmm..this is all a bit familiar."

[Aucald]

I'm aware of that angle. But as I said before, it's contridactory to her previous characterisation. She's been shown MANY times to be aware of the similarities between her and Arthas. She's always had that self-awareness as proven by numerous interactions she'd had with other characters. She wasn't under the illusion that she was some sort of paragon of goodness. She's done bad stuff and knew it. She made no excuses to herself. I liked that. But now it's like she regressed and forgot about all that. Now turns out she was very confused and in denial all this time. Like she made Teldrassil happen WHILE recouting her encounter with Arthas no less, okayed Derek's mindrape and all the other funny stuff and she was in denial this entire time. Yeah, nah. That's character lobotomization right there.

She's not really aware of it in any real sense, she's dismissive and contemptuous of the comparison, as one would expect her to be. When Garrosh makes the claim she blows it off by flippantly saying that the difference is that she serves the Horde, basically avoiding the substance of the comparison. Coming from Alliance characters she just tends to ignore it entirely. She's rationalized all her choices and decisions up to this point under the aegis of doing what she had to do, or acting in the furtherance of the Forsaken (whether she means any incident of that excuse being debatable). Even with Derek she could rationalize her actions both as necessary for the Horde war effort, and at least from her perspective Derek had been long-dead in any case. It's not quite as strong of a parallel.

She apparently starts thinking about the Lich King only when they mind-control Anduin (And let me emphasize:FUCKING TEMPORARILY!! IT'S NOT EVEN PERMANENT! THEY DON'T EVEN KILL HIM!) It's not even a comparable situation! This whole Lich King parallel doesn't make fucking sense in this instance! And what's more, it's for "the greater good" apparently. You know, what about that "free will" thing? His mind control is for the best. It's not gonna last, so why are you worried Sylvanas? You mean you DON'T actually believe you're doing something good? Huh? You don't believe in your own cause? THEN WHY ARE YOU IN CAHOOTS WITH THE JAILER? She's all over place and it drives me up the fucking wall.

Anduin being aware of his plight, aware of his enslavement, is what makes it so comparable to Sylvanas' situation as a Banshee in WC3. She too was aware of what had been done to her, that she was shackled to the Lich King's will and made to serve Arthas, fighting her own people in Quel'Thalas as Scourge. Whether or not Anduin's situation is permanent is an open question, and Sylvanas may well think there's no one powerful enough to now free him from the Jailer's designs. The fact that Sylvanas is operating on what she thinks is a "greater good" basis is evident in that she chose to plow ahead with it regardless, but I think it's easy to see why it would give her doubts in the rightness of her cause. It's especially pointed because both Anduin and the Jailer made her the agent of change in this regard - she can foist off responsibility onto someone or something else. Whether or not this will snap her aware or just her her a degree of pause that doesn't result in a change of heart remains to be seen, but I think it's finally good to see that Sylvanas is at least conflicted about what she's doing, that she's finally unnerved by what she's allowed herself to become.

[valax]

What I mean is: Sylvanas wanted him to collaborate. For me, there was no situation where Anduin was going to collaborate with her. The only path was being controlled by Jailer. All the talk of Sylvanas with Anduin was for nothing.

You kinda missed the point , she was trying to not be like Arthas , she ended up doing the same thing he did to her , the look she gives him at the end of the cinematic gives me the vibe of her realizing that

[Ophenia]

As if this never happened before ..
For all we know Jailer could have thought that she was dead since he stabbed her in the chest, or wanted to run away, or didn't want to lose control of Anduin ...

We'll probably have to wait a bit to understand more clearly what happened there, but maybe stabbing the Archon with Shalamourne may have also started the corruption of said Archon, so in the end she might become Jailer's ally

[KainneAbsolute]

You kinda missed the point; she was trying to not be like Arthas, she ended up doing the same thing he did to her; the look she gives him at the end of the cinematic gives me the vibe of her realizing that

Yeah, she tried, but about what? she was trying to convince Anduin to attack de Archon for the "good" of the cosmos? She was trying to convince Anduin to accept being mind-controlled by the Jailer? Anduin had the option to say no?

There was no option; Sylvanas tried to do something impossible. There was no way that Anduin was going to be convinced to consciously collaborate or become a puppet.

Maybe Sylvanas just wanted that Anduin admits the multiverse was messed and that's all.

[Kumorii]

Reason why Sylvanas probably wanted Anduin to surrender willingly would be that he would still be in control of himself. Which would help her and actually him later on when she turns on the Jailor. Which is why she says "he's not ready" to Zooval to get her more time to get through to him. However Jailor decided to go forth with the plans.

[Traveler Voltin]

you seem to think Sylvanas would have told Anduin he was going to be used to attack the archon.

you need to realize people dont get told everything.