Sylvanas Windrunner is the ruler of the Forsaken of the Warcraft franchise. At first she was an Elven Ranger-General but then she was killed and revived by Arthas Menethil and forced to kill for him. After the events of Frozen Throne, she manages to free herself from his control, becomes the ruler of the Forsaken and looks after her people. As a result of her actions that caused the Horde to be divided, Sylvanas becomes one of the two main antagonists in World of Warcraft.

She is voiced by Patty Mattson.

Her Evil Ranking[]

What Makes Her heinous?[]

• After she was revived by the undead, she was forced to participate in the massacre of her own people.
• She later helps Arthas massacre the inhabitants of several villages.
• After this, she manages to free herself from Arthas' control and is able to make her own decisions. Sylvanas proceeds to betray Arthas, injects him with a poisoned arrow which paralyses him and wants to inflict a fate worse than death on him (though you could argue this is justified considering that he slaughtered her people, killed her, revived her and forced her to commit atrocities and tortured her). However, Arthas escapes before she is able to exact her revenge.
• When the Dreadlord Varimathras tries to overrun her base and kill her, Sylvanas uses her banshees to enslave and brainwash various creatures and force them to fight for her against their will.
• She allies herself with Garithos and his men to defeat the Dreadlord Balnazzar and liberate the capital city from his demons and promises that she would return the lands to the humans. However, after the battle, she doesn't keep her promise and instead kills Garithos and slaughters his entire army. While Garithos himself is presented as an asshole, betraying your allies is still not okay.
• Established and oversaw the Royal Apothecary Society with the goal of creating a new plague (later known as the Blight) that could the living in and the Undead Scourge. While the Scourge deserve to be killed, Sylvanas wants to eventually wipe out all the living in the world to bolster her forces.
• In order to create this plague she conducts horrific experiments on many war prisoners. There is also a concentration camp where prisoners of war are buried alive, experimented on or turned into monsters such as Flesh Beasts.
• She regularly raises the corpses of killed creatures as undead. this is frowned upon in the Warcraft universe and is considered a fate worse than death because it's a form of enslavement. At some point, Sylvanas learns that all the souls of those who are raised as Undead will eventually go to the Maw where they will be tortured and twisted into Mawsworn soldiers by the Jailer.
• Sylvanas then attacks the kingdom of Gilneas and uses her blight against the civilian population, slaughtering large portions of it in the process. She successfully conquers the capital and kills Prince Liam Greymane.
• She also used the Blight to destroy the town of Southshore, slaughters its population and hunts down and kills the survivors.
• Sylvanas captures the Death Knight Koltira Deathweaver and sends him to Undercity where he would be tortured and brainwashed until he becomes her loyal puppet.
• She attacks the titan keepers aligned with Odyn, attempting to capture and enslave his Val'kyr.
• During the Gathering, an event where Forsaken and living humans were to mingle in peace, she ordered the deaths of all Forsaken who did not immediately return when they were recalled (including those who were returning, but didn't do it right away), as well as personally executing Calia Menethil. This basically destroyed most of the interim governing body the Forsaken had set up in her absence known as the Desolate Council.
• Sylvanas started the Fourth War with the Alliance. This is a devastating conflict where many people on both sides died. The high body count was exactly Sylvanas' intention because at that point she was working for the Jailer. Since the Arbiter has fallen dormant, it means the souls of everyone who dies is sent to the Maw for him to torture and turn into the Jailer's minions.
• Sylvanas convinced Saufang to start the War of Thorns, a surprise attack against the Night Elves. The Horde soldiers swept through Ashenvale and Darkshore, destroying and massacring the populations of at least the cities of Astranaar and Lor'danel.
• Sylvanas then personally ordered the burning of the Teldrassil tree. The Night Elf capital, Darnassus, is nested on its boughs. The city was destroyed and countless of Night Elves died as a result and their souls were then sent to the Maw to be tortured and twisted into Mawsworn soldiers for the Jailer.
• She deployed Blight on the field during the Battle of Lordaeron despite that Horde troops (her allies) would be caught in it and killed.
• Against the wishes of the rest of the Horde, she raised both dead Alliance and Horde troops to fight as skeletons during the battle.
• She blighted and destroyed the evacuated Undercity and City of Lordaeron, rendering it uninhabitable.
• Sylvanas ordered the complete massacre of the neutral and civilian town of Brennadam in Kul Tiras, before it had joined the Alliance.
• She raised Derek Proudmoore to turn him into her servant. She deprived him of free will and attempted to use him as a sleeper agent to assassinate his sister, Jaina Proudmoore, as well as his mother, Katherine Proudmoore.
• Upon being thwarted in the above scheme by her own people, had one of her people, Baine Bloodhoof, imprisoned and tortured, with the intent to secretly execute him and successfully managed to execute Thomas Zelling.
• Sylvanas then made a deal with the evil queen Azshara to destroy and kill most of the Alliance and Horde fleets in exchange for giving Azshara an evil artifact of power, in full knowledge that Azshara plans to use said artifact to release N'zoth and inflict death and mass destruction on a large scale.
• She fights Varok Saufang in a duel and kills him. His soul would also go to the Maw and be tortured.
• It is revealed that all this time she had been working for the Jailer and had been assissting him in his goals. The Jailer wants to free himself and destroy all reality and then remake it in his own image and Sylvanas knows this, wants this to happen and this is why she tries to release him from his imprisonment and help him succeed in his plans.
• She attacks Bolvar Fordragon, destroys the Helm of Domination, rendering the Scourge leaderless and breaking the veil between the world of the living and the Shadowlands, so that she can capture the heroes and take them to the Jailer.
• After she captures Anduin, she gives him a chance to join them willingly. After he refuses, she brainwashes him against his will into serving them, forcing him to fight against his former friends and do terrible things.
• She kills many people during her attack on Ardenweald to take the Winter Queen's sigil which would help the Jailer escape imprisonment.

What Makes Her Inconsistent?[]

• Sylvanas has an extremely tragic backstory which is played for sympathy. During the invasion of the Undead Scourge against her homeland of Quel'thalas, she does everything in her power to save her homeland and her people, The High Elves, from being slaughtered but everything she does is in vain. She is killed by Arthas, resurrected as an Undead instead of being left to die in peace and then is forced to participate in the genocide of her own people against her will. She also gets brutally tortured by Arthas and used as a slave by the Undead Scourge who is forced to commit atrocities in their name. Even after she is freed from the control of the Lich King, she and her fellow Undead still experience discrimination from the other races of Azeroth. All of this left her deeply traumatized and her main goal is to ensure that she and everyone in the world have free will and can make their own decisions. At some point Sylvanas also learns that after death, the souls of the Undead go to a place called the Maw where they suffer for all eternity (this includes Sylvanas' soul as well). This makes Sylvanas extremely paranoid about her life as she doesn't want to suffer for all eternity and does everything in her power to preserve her people and her own life.
• Sylvanas also regards the Forsaken as her own people and she cares about them and even though she is tyranical at times in how she rules them that doesn't subvert her care for them. After being sent to the Maw, she sends a message where she states that even though she has many regrets, one thing she would always be proud of is helping the Forsaken find their place in a world that shuns them and stand against those who would cast them out and call them monsters. In the same message, she expresses hope that one day she would be able to walk among them once again.
• Sylvanas also cares about her two sisters (who weren't raised as Undead like her). At one point she plans to kill them and then raise them as Undead as well but then she changes her mind because she realizes that they would hate her if she does this and that she would deprive them of their free will.
• Sylvanas also genuinely loves one of her minions, Nathanos. The two of them are lovers and she is genuinely shocked when she learns about his death.
• Sylvanas also wants to convince Anduin to join her side willingly, so that she wouldn't have to brainwash him because she doesn't want him to be deprived of his free will like her. When he refuses, she still does it but feels remorse about it. After she had helped the heroes defeat the Jailer and free him from his control and she is punished to the souls of all those she had sent to the Maw and send them to the Arbiter, Anduin goes to her because he is not sure to what extent he was really brainwashed or if he commited his crimes of his own free will, Sylvanas comforts him and her words give him the strength to move on with his life.
• It is also revealed that Sylvanas is well-intentioned in her actions. She genuinely believes that after the Jailer destroys reality, he will create a better reality where everyone will be free and there will be no more injustice.
• During her service to the Jailer she slowly starts to doubt his good intions. After he is victorious and announces that in the new reality he would create everyone would serve, Sylvanas realizes that she had been tricked and turns on him and tries to kill. She is then captured by the good guys and Uther helps her soul heal and she joins the heroes and helps them in their mission to kill the Jailer and free Anduin from brainwashing. After his death, Sylvanas leaves her fate in the hands of her former rival, Tyrande Whisperwind, who punishes her to retrieve all the souls she had condemned to the Maw to be properly judged. Sylvanas accepts her punishment without complaining because she wants to make up for her previous crimes. She later sends a message from the Maw where she admits she has many regrets but each soul she rescues helps her own feel a little more whole.
• When the Jailer returned to her a part of her soul that was frozen in time by Frostmourne, it was shocked by the atrocities Sylvanas had commited which drives Sylvanas into a coma. This is played for sympathy by the story and Uther helps her come to terms with what she has done.

Trivia[]

• Sylvanas Windrunner and Sarah Kerrigan are the only two female Inconsistently Heinous villains to come from a Blizzard Entertainment franchise.

External Links[]

• Sylvanas Windrunner on the Villains Wiki
• Sylvanas Windrunner on the Warcraft Wiki
• Sylvanas Windrunner on the Heroes Wiki
• Sylvanas Windrunner on the Character Profile Wiki
• Sylvanas Windrunner on the Heroes of the Storm Wiki
• Sylvanas Windrunner on the Wikipedia

Navigation[]

Inconsistently Heinous

Video Games Warcraft Arthas Menethil | Sylvanas Windrunner | Ner'zhul | Kil'jaeden Starcraft Sarah Kerrigan | Zerg Overmind

Inconsistently Heinous

Arthas Menethil | Sylvanas Windrunner | Ner'zhul | Kil'jaeden