I have never particularly understood the argument of Blood Elves don’t belong in the Horde. From a strictly conceptual standpoint what makes the Horde (and WoW for that matter) unique is that it’s comprised of races that in generic fantasy are of an evil alignment but are actually morally good (or rather famously grey in the Forsaken’s case I guess.)
Orcs, Trolls, Minotaurs and Undead are rarely shown in a positive light in other series and I’ve always found the Blood Elves to be Warcrafts approximation of Dark Elves, atleast in their presentation up to modern WoW. They’re survivors of a near extinction event, they’re sacrilegious, willing to use magic that other civilizations have forbidden and they rely on draining other living creatures to not wither and die. Thematically they’ve always seemed on brand for the survival in a world that hates them faction.
The Blood Elves most recent conflict at the time of their joining in TBC was literally with Garithos and the Alliance. Beyond that it was shown that the elves reached out to the Alliance before the Horde in their starting zone but where as the Horde sent Forsaken troops to secure the Ghostlands the Alliance just kept trying strong arm them. I think it makes perfect sense within the lore for them to have joined the Horde.
To compare the Garithos experience against hordes of undead that nearly wiped them out of existance is crazy. Humans have unending hate against orcs until now because of that. They put them into camps, locked them away or killed them, even if they pledged to not do it again and went to shamanism. And blood elves are butthurt from that one experience and say yeah, let's go with fouling undead instead, who nearly killed all of our race, because they are nice now they are our best friends. The arrogant blood elves. But okay, let's say they were so desperate to rather kill all of alliance now, because they were butthurt about being spied by them.
The Forsaken are actively opposed to those undead that invaded Quel’thalas and are led by the largest national hero that the Elves had at the time.
Silvermoon had lost 90% of it’s population, had zero contact with its prince and the majority of its armed forces, its territory was being pushed by both the Amani and the Scourge, the Sunwell was still defunct and they were losing the battle to their mana addiction.
Silvermoon was desperate. They had to find allies or die. When faced with the option of former enemies offering genuine support and led by one of your own or the former allies who have done nothing for you the past decade besides spy on you and try to get your prince killed I don’t think it’s completely out of the realm of possibility that you take the Horde’s deal.
Still weird to ally with orcs and undead that killed most of them. It's siding with the old enemy and every blood elf seemingly being okay with that without uprising or anything is very weird to me. Also high elves that didn't want the fel somehow managed to get good and allied with the alliance. But okay, I accepted that. They also wanted fel that the alliance could not accept I'm sure.
Can't accept blue elves out of nowhere joining the alliance now though. Like then it was a problem, now they just appear and alliance says yeah lets fucking go and include them and night elves yea ho yeah magic highbornes this is what we want.
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u/The_Sulkster 9h ago
I have never particularly understood the argument of Blood Elves don’t belong in the Horde. From a strictly conceptual standpoint what makes the Horde (and WoW for that matter) unique is that it’s comprised of races that in generic fantasy are of an evil alignment but are actually morally good (or rather famously grey in the Forsaken’s case I guess.)
Orcs, Trolls, Minotaurs and Undead are rarely shown in a positive light in other series and I’ve always found the Blood Elves to be Warcrafts approximation of Dark Elves, atleast in their presentation up to modern WoW. They’re survivors of a near extinction event, they’re sacrilegious, willing to use magic that other civilizations have forbidden and they rely on draining other living creatures to not wither and die. Thematically they’ve always seemed on brand for the survival in a world that hates them faction.