The Truth of the Lich King: We Were All TRICKED!

i could sense a dark presence at the edge of my consciousness not arthas not nesul something else it is that very presence i sense lurking beyond the shattered sky above shortly after saying that bolvar was able to put a name to that presence the one that he had felt for years that is zoval the jailer the antagonist of the shadowlands expansion and this is a massive revelation in this the first of our two-part series on the scourge you are going to learn the answer to the age-old question who is the lich king who was actually in control what was going on within the helm you're going to understand who and what he was from inception years ago right up to the fall of bolvar this is what makes the lore click what makes shadowlands the expansion click and in part two you are going to learn the nature of the scourge themselves so strap in for better or for worse blizzards are making big moves with the lore and you are in for quite a ride if chronicle 3's account of arthas felt off to you and of course if you played the game during wrath of the lich king and paid attention to the lore then doubly prepare yourself because when uther spoke to jaina in the halls of reflection i don't think that any of us knew how important his words would be how fundamental the questions raised by and of course the conclusion of wrath of the lich king would be well today that's what we're going to deal with and it's going to be quite a video of course you should not be like the lich king you shouldn't let your home be that sparse and that's why you've got to head up today's sponsor diss plate they are just really cool and if you follow my link you are going to get 20 off for seven days which is a pretty sweet deal now okay look at this this was our meeting table at uh at the game dev office right it was a bit bear wasn't it so first i slapped up the included magnets and once that's done i can put up whatever disc plate i want they just snap on and off now the team is currently working on a science fiction project that you'll learn more about soon enough and i think that's why this lovely hubble one was a perfect fit now of course if you want blizzard stuff good news they have official blizzard disc plates it is so easy to customize the look of your place be at home or work great for your office and work from home and their range is just bloody ginormous and of course you're seeing the ones we've got now one thing i particularly love as well is they offer a matte finish option which i think is just super clean looking i mean come on matte finish printed and metal it's just cool then the whole form factor with the swapping is just great for variety and of course the magnets are perfect if you are a renter like me displayed are also great to artists they plant a tree for every one that they sell and soon we'll be getting our own made you will get 20 off for the next seven days with my link and 20 of the proceeds go to us it's a win-win and it's much of what's actually letting us do so much more these days so thanks to display for sponsoring this is a video the teams put a lot of heart into and i hope you enjoy it i should note that for full contacts you really should watch this video it covers how the force of death the jailer have for countless millennia infiltrated and manipulated other cosmic forces now this is rock solid it is based off a lore book that is found in revendrath and it's quite the video we even voice acted in it it's very fun before now the drought lords though have been essentially always working for death that's the key thing to know but you really should watch that video for the full context just who is the lich king anyway the push and the pull between the various personalities locked within the helm has long sparked debate within the lore community but now with shadowlands we know a hell of a lot more the jailer has a presence within the helm i mean you heard what bolvar had to say at the top of this video didn't you well here's what followed just in case you had any lingering doubts i dare not travel with you even free of the helm i fear i would become bound to the will of its true master yes without a shadow of a doubt the jailer is the true master of the helm of domination and on its own this is something that raises significant questions but when placed within the context of wrath of the lich king's events it directly answers many questions and indeed it does make much of what happened during that expansion including some of the things that were a bit confusing at the time actually make sense and this all comes back to the question was the lich king in fact a puppet of the jailer we had long wondered who was actually in control within the helm but now that we know the jailer was there we have to work out how much of that was arthas how much of it was ner'zhul how much was the jailer and indeed you then have to think is there a reason why only beings plagued with arrogance and guilt were so easily overcome by the helm's dominating powers and then indeed why did the noble bolvar not just turn against us seemingly he was able to resist to begin answering these things we're going to start by re-examining afterlife's bastion the runes on his blade were unmistakable this dark agent runs free on a mortal world with the power of the maw itself in hand our realm is imperiled impossible yes here you see a carrion call arthas an agent of the maw now at that point you should note that arthas was not yet the lich king he merely held frostmourne he was a servant of the previous lich king meaning that yes even ner'zhul the neruzu lich king was under the jailer's thumb and of course as we know from bolvar the jailer is the true master of the helm the helm that ner'zhul wore and this would make you wonder if it is his helm the jailer's helm and therefore his source of control on azeroth why would he have sylvanas destroy it and that's where i think the answer is extremely clear plan a failed and to understand this is to understand the true nature and the origin of every lich king and that's exactly what we are going to do in this video the jailer kicked off the lich king project by having the dreadlords slot into kil'jaeden's plan for ner'zhul you see kil'jaeden wanted to soften up azeroth for a legion invasion and the jailer wanted to exert his influence on the planet with the eventual goal as he does tell us quite shortly in shadowlands of consuming azeroth's world soul ner'zhul only got them so far of course ner'zhul was the lich king his power had grown but the legion were still a problem especially since in those early days the lich king's powers were still limited enter arthas an arrogant fragile man he was identified as a perfect host and he was lured north by the dreadlord malganus who based on documents found in ravendrath we do believe was in fact an agent of death embedded deeply within the legion arthas an arrogant flawed man with all of his insecurities fell for the whole thing he was drawn north he took frostmourne forever dooming his fate yes malganus did appear to be fully sided with the burning legion and kil'jaeden but again i would implore you to watch our video on the dreadlord documents that are found in raven draft they are foundational quite some time though after taking up the sword arthas and kel'thuzad actually worked together on what they thought was the lich king's command to stop the legion from controlling the lich king this is what sent arthas north again where he defeated illidan thwarted kil'jaeden's plans and took his place as the new lich king and he merged with the helm what this did is this secured the jailer center of power on azeroth he had a scourge army up in the north he had a lich king whom he could control and the legion were done away with five years later then arthas awoke and clearly the arthas lich king was supposed to overrun azeroth that is what we prevented from happening in the wrath of the lich king expansion so yes arthas failed the life of the arthas lich king then requires deep thought you see during wrath of the lich king many questioned who was actually in control at the time we wondered was it arthas or was it ner'zhul of course we now know from bolvar that the jailer was also in the helm and was the helm's master and because of that i would say just listen to the spirit of uther arthas is not here arthas is merely a presence within the lich king's mind a dwindling presence yes uther's own words do make it clear that arthas was not in full control and if that is not clear enough for you well here is what uther goes on to say i suspect that the piece of arthas that might be left inside the lich king is all that holds the scourge from annihilating azeroth yes even though the arthas lich king tore out his own heart and tried to purge his humanity it seems there was a small part of arthas still left in there and this does actually make you wonder if the lich king did succeed in defeating us a top ice crown and killed tyrion then would the last slivers of arthas have tried to resist the jailer's ultimate ambition of consuming azeroth's world soul actually that might have been the case but as you can see from wrath of the lich king arthas was quite clearly not in full control i think those words from uther really do spell it out rather clearly now warcraft chronicle vol 3 then makes things initially far more complicated with what it says but upon a deeper investigation of what's there it actually does make complete sense now much of chronicle 3 has been recontextualized by the shadowlands expansion such as the origins of frostborn which blizzard have confirmed are not exactly what's in chronicle 3 things like the origins of the plague of undeath which we will cover in our second and final part of this series and then as we're going to discuss today arthas's account of events while he was the lich king you see in chronicle 3 it is suggested that arthas utterly obliterated ner'zhul that he had complete control and that arthas himself was interested in defending azeroth against void and fell the chronicle 3 account of course makes absolutely no mention of the jailer or the shadowlands as we now know it to be yet as you heard from listening to bolvar in the beginning of this video the jailer is the master of the helm of domination the helm that makes the lich king the lich king so then when we read warcraft chronicle volume 3 and we see this sort of first-person-ish account of arthas and really how it says that he was in so much control how does that make sense if the jailer is actually the master of the helm and it looks like arthas was in complete control and that's where the answer is actually extremely simple the arthas lich king completely believed that he was in control right that the dominant persona of the helm truly thought that he was arthas menethil the lich king but that in reality that was an arthas who via his personality flaws had been dominated and controlled by the helm and this makes complete sense when you re-watch the fall of the lich king cinematic father is it over at long last no king rules forever my son [Music] i see only darkness before me i want you to think about how he looks up and asks his father is it over are those the words of a man who had been in control for years no that implies that he felt as if he had woke up from a waking nightmare and this is where we return to chronicle volume 3. in his dying moments arthas felt the corruption of the frozen throne fading away from him and he was faced with the enormity of his crimes arthas felt that right as the helm lifted his head and left him right when he was no longer under the jailer's influence and remember here the frozen throne canonically speaking is just a lump of ice cast down to azeroth from the twisting nether it is the helm that is the power so arthas was defeated the helm had no host and azeroth seemed to be safe plan a for the jailer had failed and it was about to fail harder have a think about all the bolvar four dragon went through during wrath of the lich king and how he seemingly retained his sanity through the lich king's hideous tortures he is clearly somebody who is strong of will too strong and too pure of character for the helm of domination to work on him in the way that it worked on ner'zhul and arthas let us then return to chronicle volume 3. bolvar fought to maintain his sanity he had been a mighty paladin all of his adult life but the moment he donned the lich king's helm the holy light had abandoned him it took nearly all his strength to keep the undead contained again note how chronicle specifically states that it was the moment he donned the helm just like how arthas's perspective changed the moment the helm left his head and then how hard bolvar's struggle actually was bolvar clearly could resist the forces of the helm but only barely four this is how by the time shadowlands happens he describes his experience as the wielder of the helm when the hell rested upon my head it took all my will to keep its insidious power in check many times i nearly faltered i could sense a dark presence at the edge of my consciousness not arthas not ner'zhul something else yes the helm was trying to break his mind and dominate his will but bolvar resisted this is clearly not what the jailer wanted as evidenced by the words of the jailer's ally sylvanus the veil between life and death are you serper sits on a frozen throne yes bolvar usurped the power of the shadowlands and when sylvanas later says you are unfit to wear this crown it really is quite literal bolvar is just not the type of man the helm is made for he is too strong of will he is too pure he is a man without the flaws that made arthas and ner'zhul so easily played and when bolvar said to sylvanas that the helm would be her prison he was clearly talking about the immense will the immense power that it took for him to resist the helm obviously at that time the cinematic he was surprised he was clearly unaware that sylvanas was working for the presence that he had fought to resist for all of those years and indeed that is why she defeated him so easily she was using the power of the helm's master against its wielder plan a had failed and this the cinematic is when plan b truly kicked into gear arthas failed and the jailer's helm ended up atop the head of a man who could resist it what option then did that leave the jailer with clearly having a lich king to do his bidding was not working and clearly his plan was to recruit a new agent in sylvanas as we see in the edge of night's short story and then years later to have her kick off the first thrust of his grand plan by defeating bolvar and destroying the hound now as to why the helm's destruction would then cause the veil between worlds to shatter well we do know some things we know that the lich king project involved ner'zhul and arthas setting up a parallel to tour ghast in the material plane and again if you thought the dreadlords were truly servants of the burning legion well it's actually said in chronicle 3 that it was the dreadlords who did and architected a lot of the construction of icecrown well why would they make it to be the parallel of torgast if they were actually servants of the legion it just does not make sense the helm was clearly linked to that such that its destruction would pierce the veil between worlds giving the jailer access to the material plane and to azeroth his ultimate price now this all seems a bit far-fetched to you then i totally understand there is ample evidence but i do get that a lot's going on here but this is all stuff with very solid sourcing within official blizzard materials now again bolvar spells it out very clearly that the jailer was in the helm of domination and we know that the helm and frostmourne are his i mean as soon as the kyrians see frostmourne what happens she thinks oh this is obviously wielded by an agent of the maw and that means an agent of the jailer then additionally there are a number of legion error quotes from none other than arthas himself that we should re-examine now these are echoes of arthas that appear to the wielder of the blades of the fallen prince and let's just take a listen you exist by his swim alone you imagine yourself to be free but you will always be his instrument i would especially say to think about that final line and then think about how arthas is described in warcraft chronicle vol 3 thinking that he is free but as we now know from the modern lore in fact being an instrument and that's not even from the modern lore that's the thing the shadow lands lore actually more than anything here directly backs up wrath of the lich king's lore when wrath of the lich king started to ask the question of who is really in control of the help and that is what is key many thought at the time that this was arthas's echo warning us about the bolvar lich king perhaps hinting that bolvar may indeed turn against us now that did make sense at the time bolvar had been acting in a very creepy fashion but it also doesn't make sense why would an echo a memory of arthas be talking about current events that he did not see and did not experience when he was in fact in the maw himself i do believe that these echoes are likely arthas talking about his own experiences as the lich king suggesting that the jailers helm of domination did just that dominate it's interesting in fact how the jailer revelation actually favors the in-game lore of wrath of the lich king over that of warcraft chronicle vol 3. you know chronicle 3 its account of arthas makes us believe that he really thought he was under control and that's the thing it only makes sense if it's arthas's account where he believes he is in control but really is not that much in control and indeed chronicle three's account of arthas it was very first person feeling it was very much talking about arthas's own thoughts on his experience but the thing is that any time we have heard a being other than arthas such as say uther talk about it it's been very clear that there is complete doubt over arthas's control uther said that arthas was merely a dwindling presence in the lich king's mind in the halls of reflection then think back to the mathias leonard quests in icecrown that name matthias leonard well that's an npc that appears as a small child and the name is an anagram of arthas menethil and it's a character that is clearly a representation of arthas's humanity now this is something that is then backed up by the novel arthas rise of the lich king wherein arthas sees visions of a young boy urging him to reject the helm of domination now that matthias leonard questline ends up with tyrion vordring destroying arthas's heart and this actually greatly weakened the lich king now the thing is if arthas wanted to purge his humanity then why didn't he destroy his own heart why did he lock it away why did it grant him strength was a bit of arthas struggling against who he became i mean if you actually listen to him uther clearly believes that is the case and as you can see the wrath of the lich king era of lore is just full of information that causes us to question just how much arthas was actually in control culminating of course with us seeing him wake up from the living nightmare that was being the lich king seeing his father and seeing only darkness so yes wrath of the lich king was correct in hinting that arthas was not in full control warcraft chronicle vol 3 seems to state that arthas was and you would think that would have ran counter to wrath's lore and even shadowlands lore but that problem is resolved when you then understand that chronicle is covering arthas's perspective of his let's say lich kingship how does he whose mind has been subverted know what's truly happening keep chronicle three's account in mind and reconsider this line you imagine yourself to be free but you will always be his instrument yes chronicle arthas imagined himself to be free we now know he was an instrument so where does this leave us what's going on well the jailer's ultimate ambition of course is to consume azeroth's world soul in chronicle vol 3 it was said that arthas was concerned about existential threats to the planet such as void and the burning legion you know the burning legion that wanted to destroy the planet kill the world soul and the void that wanted to also consume it and here you can see that chronicle three's arthas's goal was right in line with the jailer's goal to prevent the other cosmic forces from claiming the most powerful titan world soul that ever existed the jailer had great control over arthas and that is wholly unsurprising when you look at all of the evidence and now that we've covered all of the lore and we've exhaustively looked over all of this evidence let's just spell out from start to finish a clear version of events so we can all rebase ourselves and understand what's going on yes the true history of the lich king the jailer used the legion via his dreadlords to kick off the lich king project with ner'zhul then later once things were established he used kel'thuzad and arthas to remove legion influence from the lich king that of course is when arthas defeated illidan he then dominated the arthas lich king via the helm's power intending to wipe azeroth clean of life to use it being united in undeath to fend off attacks from his cosmic rivals and then ultimately to use the link between realms at icecrown to free himself from the maw and to claim his ultimate prize our world soul and that is just what he says he wants to do in the shadowlands opening scenario this plan failed with arthas's the lich king's defeat and that forced the jailer to ally with the likes of sylvanas and helya and mussala and eventually to remove bolvar from power to destroy the helm and to kick off his new plan a plan the stopping of which is our goal in the shadowlands expansion and that is it that is the complete situation with the lich king this video was an absolute maddening blast to write took quite a while was all quite involved but i think you can see how we've been able to mesh lore from wrath of the lich king lore from chronicle vol 3 little bits from legion and shadow lands and bring it all together to actually create a version of events and an understanding in a framework of the lich king that actually makes the whole thing make sense and allows us to proceed into the shadowlands understanding what came before and i think this will be vitally important when it comes to future patch content where it very much does seem likely that uther and arthas may actually make more of a reappearance than we may have first thought i hope you enjoyed this video thank you very much for watching and with that i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: BellularGaming

Views: 488,393

Rating: 4.86309 out of 5

Keywords: world of warcraft, warcraft, wow, bellular, bellulargaming, bellular news, shadowlands arthas, shadowlands lich king, the lich king wow, lich king, arthas menethil, jailor lich king, the jailer lich king, jailer helm of domination, jailer frostmourne, zovaal the jailer, zovaal arthas, lich king ner'zhul, dreadlords lich king, dreadlords shadowlands, dreadlords death, shadowlands lore, lich king lore, the truth of the lich king

Id: GOjRiCWtaMo

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020