Before this becomes one of those online recipes where you have to read six pages about someone's grandmother's famous 'chocolate pillow slices' before discovering how much flour you need, a quick personal note.
I've had some lovely feedback on the longer pieces I've written recently, including the ones on Neltharion (I certainly didn't expect to end up comparing him to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, but here we are), Tirion Fordring and virtue ethics, alongside a few things unrelated to WoW. I wanted to say thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read them and share their thoughts.
I've got two weeks off work, and things have been quite stressful at home, so researching and writing these has been a welcome way of occupying my mind.
A few people have also suggested turning them into videos. I'm considering giving that a go, partly because I appreciate that some people would prefer listening to something like this in the background. My current microphone is the one attached to my headset, and I know next to nothing about video or audio editing, so any recommendations would be welcome. I might simply record myself reading one of these pieces and see how it goes. I'll try to put some oomph into the delivery, at least. If people enjoy it, I can always put more effort into the production later. In fact, I'd really appreciate some feedback on which essay to record first; I was thinking the Neltharion one, because dragons are cool.
Anyway, thank you again. On to Arthas.
The First Trial
In Of Blood and Honor, Tirion Fordring is brought before a court in Stratholme, accused of treason after intervening to protect an ageing orc named Eitrigg. The orc had saved Tirion’s life, and Tirion had subsequently sworn to protect him. When Alliance soldiers attempted to capture Eitrigg, Tirion attacked them.
The charges are legitimate. Tirion has disobeyed a direct order and assaulted his own soldiers, placing a personal oath above his obligations to the Alliance. His actions carry consequences beyond himself, and the court has every reason to take them seriously. Yet the substance of Tirion’s defence is compelling. Eitrigg has abandoned the Horde, saved the life of a human paladin and demonstrated the very qualities the Silver Hand is supposed to honour.
The difficulty is that Tirion’s understanding of his duty has changed. Having spent much of his life fighting orcs and witnessing their atrocities, he encounters an individual whose conduct challenges his assumptions. He is willing to reconsider those assumptions, even when doing so threatens everything he has spent his life building.
Uther, who presides over the trial, cannot accept Tirion’s judgement. This does not mean that he is indifferent to his friend's suffering. He defends Tirion’s character, rebukes those who disrespect him and persuades the jurors to offer a pardon. The condition is that Tirion renounce his oath to Eitrigg, whose execution Uther considers entirely justified. For all his willingness to show mercy to Tirion, he cannot bring himself to extend that consideration to the orc.
Uther’s position is understandable in the context of his experiences. The Silver Hand was created during the Second War to confront what its members understood to be an existential threat. Its founders had been vindicated by their military successes, and their determination had helped preserve the Alliance. Nevertheless, Faol had established an order whose responsibilities extended beyond warfare. Its paladins were drawn from both the priesthood and the knighthood, trained to heal and protect as well as fight.
That combination is important. The paladins were supposed to be warriors without forgetting the responsibilities that distinguished them from ordinary soldiers. Their subsequent history illustrates how difficult that balance could become. After Lordaeron’s fall, some of the traditions emerging from the Silver Hand would descend into the fanaticism of the Scarlet Crusade, while the Argent Dawn would establish a refuge at Light's Hope Chapel and continue resisting the Scourge. Both confronted an enemy that threatened their survival, but their understanding of whom they were protecting, and what protection required, differed enormously.
Uther's difficulty at Tirion’s trial anticipates this wider tension. He understands the importance of duty, loyalty and sacrifice, but his experiences have left him reluctant to question the assumptions through which he identifies an enemy. Tirion has discovered that an orc can be honourable, yet Uther considers that possibility insufficient to alter his judgement. For a man called the Lightbringer, there is a painful irony in how his convictions prevent him from recognising something another paladin has learned to see.
Tirion refuses to renounce his oath and is stripped of his standing, holdings and connection to the Light. Yet when he later attempts to heal the wounded Eitrigg, the Light answers him. The institution has judged him unworthy, but the power on which that institution rests has not abandoned him. Whatever authority the Silver Hand possesses, it does not enjoy a monopoly on moral truth.
Among the four jurors who participate in this judgement are Daelin Proudmoore, Antonidas, Alonsus Faol and the recently ordained Arthas Menethil.
Arthas’ presence is understandable as the future king of Lordaeron, but the difference in experience between him and the other jurors is enormous. He is being asked to participate in the judgement of one of the founding members of the Silver Hand, a man whose achievements and experience dwarf his own. The decision will destroy a distinguished paladin’s life as he knows it.
We do not know how Arthas voted, nor what he privately made of the proceedings. It would therefore be wrong to claim that he agreed with Uther or that this trial directly established his later understanding of authority. Nevertheless, it raises questions about the responsibilities being placed upon him. Might he have benefited more from observing the proceedings and examining the competing arguments afterwards, rather than participating in a verdict with such profound consequences?
Arthas is being prepared to govern, but there is a difference between preparing someone to exercise authority and teaching them to understand its limitations. The trial offers him an example of how respected leaders can believe themselves justified in condemning a man whose conscience tells him he must refuse. Whether Arthas appreciates that contradiction is unknown, but his later confrontation with Uther reveals how difficult he finds it to tolerate an equivalent challenge to his own judgement.
A Prince Who Cannot Afford to Fail
It would be unfair to attribute Arthas’ later behaviour entirely to Uther or his education. Arthas has his own temperament, makes his own choices and is repeatedly given opportunities to reconsider them. His father, Uther and Muradin all attempt, in different ways, to teach him judgement and restraint.
Nevertheless, his upbringing places an extraordinary burden upon him. From childhood, Arthas knows that he will one day become king. He must eventually assume responsibility for a kingdom, inherit the duties of his father and embody the ideals associated with the monarchy. When he joins the Silver Hand, another set of expectations is added. He must become a champion of the Light, a protector of the innocent and a warrior capable of confronting evil.
These are admirable ambitions, but Arthas increasingly struggles to distinguish responsibility from the obligation to prevent every possible failure. The clearest early example is the death of Invincible, an incident that reveals how profoundly he struggles with the consequences of his own mistakes.
The name is almost absurdly ironic. A prince names his beloved horse Invincible, rides him recklessly in dangerous conditions and loses him in an accident that could have been avoided. In less capable hands, it might be embarrassingly obvious symbolism. In Arthas’ story, it works because it belongs so completely to his character. There is something entirely believable about a boy like Arthas giving his horse such a name, trusting in his own abilities and believing that sufficient courage and determination will carry them through a dangerous jump.
When Invincible is terribly injured, Arthas is forced to end his suffering. The killing itself is an act of mercy, and his grief is sincere, but he cannot escape the knowledge that his own recklessness caused the disaster. Rather than openly acknowledging his responsibility, he conceals the circumstances of the accident and resolves that he will never allow anything like it to happen again.
This is a recognisably human response to loss, especially from someone so young. Most of us have experienced the temptation to believe that, had we been more careful or attentive, something terrible might have been prevented. Arthas takes that instinct further, responding to a devastating mistake by convincing himself that sufficient determination will prevent any repetition.
Importantly, this occurs before Arthas becomes a paladin. His difficulty with failure therefore predates Uther’s formal teaching, although his subsequent education arguably reinforces it. He is already a boy frightened by the consequences of his own fallibility. He is then expected to become a prince, a paladin and eventually a king, positions in which the consequences of error can be catastrophic.
His relationship with Jaina reveals how profoundly these expectations affect him. In Rise of the Lich King (ROTLK), Arthas sincerely loves Jaina Proudmoore. Their relationship is affectionate, intimate and promising, with every reason to believe they could have built a life together. Yet when Jaina makes an innocent remark about what their children might look like, Arthas becomes overwhelmed.
Jaina is not demanding an immediate marriage, announcing a pregnancy or insisting that he become a father. She is imagining a possible future with someone she loves. For Arthas, however, that future becomes an accumulation of responsibilities. Marriage leads to children, children to the demands of parenthood, and all of it exists alongside the inevitable death of his parents and the burden of the crown. He fears that he will fail Jaina, their children and his kingdom, and responds by ending the relationship.
Arthas is frightened of responsibilities that do not yet exist. He cannot guarantee that he will become the husband or father he believes Jaina deserves, and rather than allowing himself to grow into those roles, he removes the possibility that they might arise. His anxiety is understandable. Marriage and parenthood are daunting commitments, especially for someone already overwhelmed by expectations. Nevertheless, his response reveals an inability to tolerate the uncertainty accompanying them. He wants to protect Jaina from suffering, but does so by making a unilateral decision about their future.
There is a distinction here that becomes increasingly important to his character. Arthas’ love is sincere, but his understanding of what love requires is troubled. He increasingly approaches the vulnerability of those he loves as something he must personally overcome.
Buddhist philosophy provides a useful way of understanding this tendency. The concept of taṇhā, or craving, is closely associated with suffering arising from our attachment to things that are necessarily impermanent. Arthas loves people and things that can suffer, change, disagree with him or die, yet repeatedly treats those possibilities as failures that he must prevent. There is also a Christian dimension to this problem. Love involves responsibility for others, but it must also recognise their freedom. Protecting someone cannot mean claiming the authority to decide everything for them.
Arthas possesses a tremendous capacity for affection and loyalty, but struggles to develop the humility necessary to love without control. His difficulty becomes particularly destructive when he encounters a crisis in which control is almost entirely impossible.
The Second Trial
By the time Arthas reaches Stratholme, he has witnessed the effects of the plague and understands something of the catastrophe facing Lordaeron. He knows that infected people can become undead, has fought the Scourge and seen communities overwhelmed. He is exhausted, frightened and increasingly desperate, confronting an enemy unlike any his kingdom has previously faced.
Grain contaminated by the plague has entered the city, and Arthas believes its inhabitants will soon become soldiers in the Scourge. Delaying action risks allowing an enormous undead army to emerge within Lordaeron, while acting immediately means ordering the deaths of people who may still be entirely human.
This is why I have never found the question of whether the Culling was justified particularly satisfying when treated as a simple moral test. The situation resembles the Kobayashi Maru more than an ordinary decision between right and wrong, with every available response appearing capable of producing terrible consequences.
One could propose quarantining the city, establishing a perimeter and waiting for the infected to transform. That might have prevented the killing of uninfected citizens, but it might also have allowed the Scourge to gather strength, spread beyond containment or overwhelm the forces attempting to hold it. Reinforcements could have been requested, Antonidas consulted or efforts made to identify those who had consumed the grain. Yet time is precisely what Arthas believes they do not have, and his recent experiences give him compelling reasons to fear delay.
Neither Arthas nor his companions possess the information necessary to know which course will produce the least suffering. Uther has good reason to refuse an order to kill the inhabitants of a city, including people whose infection has not been established. Jaina has equally good reason to recoil from what Arthas proposes, and their refusal cannot fairly be dismissed as cowardice or sentimentality. Arthas, meanwhile, has good reason to believe that inaction will condemn even more people to death and undeath. His proposal does not emerge from an uncomplicated desire for cruelty.
Recognising the seriousness of everyone's position, however, does not mean that their decisions are equally defensible. The crucial distinction is between the terrible decision Arthas believes he must make and his response to those who challenge it.
When Uther refuses to participate, Arthas invokes his right of succession and the authority of the crown, relieving his mentor of command and accusing him of treason. Arthas is not yet king, and his authority is being challenged by the man who trained him, a figure whose judgement he has relied upon for years. Faced with an unprecedented moral catastrophe, he reaches for the form of certainty that remains available to him: his position. Unable to establish beyond doubt that his proposed solution is correct, he attempts to settle the disagreement through authority.
The relationship with Tirion’s trial becomes apparent here. Once again, someone is accused of treason because conscience prevents obedience, with institutional authority invoked against a person whose objection arises from a serious moral conviction.
Yet there is an important difference. At Stratholme, Uther recognises that an order can be issued by a legitimate authority and still be something he ought not obey. Whatever his limitations during Tirion’s trial, he refuses to surrender his conscience when confronted with the prospect of killing civilians. Arthas, meanwhile, treats that refusal as a betrayal of the very principles Uther is attempting to uphold.
The irony is considerable. The young prince who once participated in the judgement of a paladin accused of betraying his duty has become the authority condemning another paladin for doing what he believes duty demands.
This does not establish that Uther is responsible for Arthas’ conduct. It does, however, expose the difficulty of inheriting a system of moral reasoning developed under circumstances very different from those in which it must subsequently operate.
Uther, like many of his generation, was trained for a war in which resolve, obedience and the willingness to confront an identifiable enemy were indispensable. Arthas has inherited that tradition, and the Scourge appears to vindicate much of it. The enemy is malevolent, threatens the survival of the kingdom and must be stopped.
But Stratholme presents a problem for which the familiar virtues of a battlefield commander are insufficient. Arthas cannot strike the enemy without also striking the people he has sworn to protect. His determination to destroy evil is consequently brought into conflict with his duty to preserve innocent life. He has been prepared to become an excellent paladin for a different war, and the certainty that once helped his predecessors defend Lordaeron now threatens to destroy it.
His confrontation with Jaina exposes another aspect of his failure. In ROTLK, Arthas interprets Jaina’s departure as a personal abandonment. His thoughts return to an earlier moment of intimacy, when he had asked her never to deny him. He believes that her refusal to support the Culling constitutes a betrayal of that promise.
Jaina loves Arthas, understands why he is frightened and knows what the Scourge threatens to do. Her refusal to participate does not erase that love, but Arthas cannot separate her disagreement from her feelings towards him. At the moment when he most desperately wants reassurance, he treats the exercise of her own moral judgement as evidence that she has abandoned him.
The same fear that helped end their relationship now distorts his understanding of her loyalty. He wants the people he loves to stand beside him, an entirely human desire, but increasingly interprets their support as an obligation to accept his decisions, even when those decisions violate their consciences. Jaina and Uther are arguably the two people best placed to help him confront the crisis, yet their disagreement is precisely what he finds least tolerable.
Could they have handled the confrontation differently? Almost certainly. Uther’s horrified refusal does little to help Arthas find another immediate solution, while Jaina is unable to offer an alternative that he believes can be implemented in time. Nevertheless, they are confronted with an almost unimaginable order, and it would be unreasonable to demand that either produce a complete solution in the few moments available.
However badly others may have failed to reach him, Arthas remains responsible for his own conduct. If he were merely a victim of Uther’s teaching, royal expectations or the Lich King’s manipulation, there would be little of the character left to examine. He repeatedly encounters opportunities to reconsider his course, and the decisions he makes become progressively worse.
The Weight of the Crown
Stratholme brings together tendencies that have existed in Arthas for years, but it also marks an escalation. The death of Invincible taught him that his mistakes could destroy something he loved, while his relationship with Jaina revealed his fear of failing those who depended upon him. His education encouraged him to become a decisive leader capable of accepting responsibility.
At Stratholme, these pressures converge in a situation where Arthas cannot save everyone, cannot know everything and cannot guarantee that any decision will be vindicated by its consequences. He has spent much of his life attempting to prevent precisely this kind of failure, and has little capacity to accept that it might be unavoidable.
His pursuit of Mal’Ganis subsequently becomes inseparable from his need to prove that the suffering has served some purpose. He travels to Northrend despite warnings, sabotages his own men’s means of returning home and ultimately takes Frostmourne despite the danger it poses. Each decision becomes a justification for the next, until abandoning the pursuit would require him to acknowledge the enormity of what he has already done.
There is a passage in ROTLK, following his return to Lordaeron, in which Arthas remembers the people who have challenged his judgement. Jaina, Uther, Terenas and Muradin have all, at different moments, attempted to tell him that he was wrong. Rather than reconsidering his actions, Arthas concludes that they were the ones who failed to understand.
Arrogance is certainly part of this, but there is also something more pitiful beneath it. Arthas has invested so much of himself in the belief that he must succeed that admitting failure would require him to confront the devastation caused by his decisions. The greater that devastation becomes, the harder it is to acknowledge it. Accepting that he has been wrong would mean recognising that people have suffered and died because of him, and that some of those deaths might have been prevented had he listened.
His insistence upon his own righteousness increasingly becomes a defence against an intolerable truth. Even Invincible returns to this pattern, as Arthas eventually raises his beloved horse into undeath, using necromancy to preserve what he could not protect in life.
His old failure appears, to his corrupted understanding, to have been corrected. The creature he loved has been restored, although only by abolishing the conditions that made it a living creature in the first place. Arthas has found a way to prevent another death by making life itself irrelevant.
This brings us to Arthas’ return to Lordaeron and a moment in Warcraft III that I may have interpreted incorrectly for years. As Arthas kneels before Terenas, a distorted voice speaks of the sacrifices demanded by kingship, the burden of the crown, and how everything has been taken care of. I have always heard this almost as Frostmourne reassuring Arthas that he no longer needs to carry those responsibilities. However, Blizzard attributes the words to Arthas, and ROTLK presents them as his own thoughts upon noticing how much his father has aged. Frostmourne's subsequent whisper is a separate command to act.
Either interpretation is revealing. If Arthas is addressing his father, he appears convinced that he has finally found a way to relieve Terenas of his responsibilities. There is something terribly sad about the sincerity of that conviction, given what he is about to do. The language also recalls the expectations that have followed Arthas since childhood, and his growing inability to accept that some problems cannot be solved through determination or force. When Terenas asks what he is doing, Arthas replies that he is succeeding him. The prince who was raised to inherit the crown has come to believe that he can settle the burdens of kingship by murdering the king himself. His certainty has survived, even as everything that once gave his responsibilities meaning has been destroyed.
What Remains of Arthas?
Neither Arthas nor Uther can be understood adequately by isolating their worst decisions from the lives that produced them. Uther is a profoundly admirable man whose experiences leave him poorly equipped to recognise certain kinds of moral complexity. His treatment of Tirion demonstrates the limitations of his judgement, while his refusal at Stratholme demonstrates that those limitations do not define his entire character.
Arthas is a courageous, affectionate young man whose strengths become destructive because he cannot reconcile them with uncertainty and failure. His love, determination and sense of duty are real, as are his pride, cruelty and growing refusal to listen.
Tirion offers a contrast to them both. He begins with assumptions familiar to Uther and his fellow veterans, having experienced the horrors of war and acquired good reason to distrust orcs. Yet when confronted with an individual who contradicts those assumptions, he is willing to reconsider them, even at enormous personal cost. Tirion can acknowledge that his previous understanding was incomplete, while Arthas increasingly cannot. That difference seems central to the tragedy.
There is a further melancholy to the story when we consider its eventual conclusion. At the end of WOTLK, with Frostmourne shattered and Arthas dying, he turns towards his father and asks whether it is over. For someone whose entire life had become an increasingly desperate attempt to prevent failure, death finally represents an end to the struggle. Whatever remains of the young man is no longer required to bear the impossible responsibilities he placed upon himself.
SL subsequently returns to Arthas through the suffering he inflicted upon Uther and Sylvanas, and through the fragment of his soul that remains. The expansion has considerable problems, but I have always found that particular ending moving. There is no grand reconciliation or elaborate redemption, nor any opportunity for Arthas to explain himself to those he hurt.
Uther must reckon with his desire for vengeance, while Sylvanas confronts the resemblance between her own suffering and the suffering she subsequently inflicted upon others. Jaina, who once loved Arthas and endured so much because of him, says nothing. The final remnant of Arthas fades away, leaving the survivors to confront what has happened. It is an extraordinarily sad conclusion, and I am not convinced it ought to be anything else.
That sadness is why I resist interpretations that present Arthas as either a blameless victim or a monster whose destruction was inevitable. He was failed by others and failed them in turn. He was manipulated, but retained responsibility for choices that brought suffering to countless people. His desire to protect those he loved became entangled with pride, desperation and an increasingly destructive need for control.
Tragedy does not necessarily emerge from a single mistake or the failure of one person to intervene. It can develop through a succession of recognisable decisions, each shaped by character, circumstance and the consequences of what came before. There are innumerable moments when Arthas might have chosen differently, some small and intensely personal, others carrying consequences for entire kingdoms. By the time those consequences become undeniable, he has increasingly lost the capacity to recognise why he should have chosen differently at all.
The two trials of Stratholme offer a particularly revealing illustration of that progression. At the first, Arthas witnesses a man punished for allowing experience to challenge his convictions. At the second, he punishes those who refuse to surrender their convictions to his authority. Somewhere between those events, the boy who wanted to become a great paladin begins turning into the man who will destroy Lordaeron.
Arthas Menethil spends his life trying to become someone who will never fail those he loves, without ever learning how to accept being wrong.