"This is a Fantasy. You DO know that, right?"

"You don't mean--" 

"It took me a while to accept it myself, actually. Poledra was very patient and very determined. When she found out I couldn't accept her as a mate in the form of a wolf, she simply found a different shape. She got what she wanted in the end." He sighed.

"Aunt Pol's mother was a wolf?" Garion was stunned.

"No, Garion," Belgarath replied calmly. "She was a woman -- a very lovely woman. The change of shape is absolute."

"But--but she started out as a wolf?"

"So?"

"But--" The whole notion was somehow shocking.

"Don't let your prejudices run away with you," Belgarath told him.

Garion struggled with the idea. It seemed monstrous somehow. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "It's unnatural, no matter what you say."

"Garion," the old man reminded him with a pained look, "just about everything we do is unnatural. Moving rocks with your mind isn't the most natural thing in the world, if you stop and think about it."

"But this is different," Garion protested. "Grandfather, you married a wolf --and the wolf had children. How could you do that?"

--From Castle of Wizardry (The Belgariad, Book 4, page 290) by David Eddings

 

Garion and Belgarath, cropped from
the original cover of  Enchanters'
End Game, Book 5 of The Belgariad,
by David Eddings.

All eyes turned to Silvara.

She was calm now, at peace with herself. Although her face was filled with sorrow, it was not the tormented, bitter sorrow they had seen earlier. This was the sorrow of loss, the quiet, accepting sorrow of one who has nothing to regret. Silvara walked toward Gilthanas. She took hold of his hands and looked up into his face with so much love that Gilthanas felt blessed, even as he knew she was going to tell him goodbye.

"I am losing you, Silvara," he murmured in broken tones. "I see it in your eyes. But I don't know why! You love me--" 

"I love you, elflord," Silvara said softly. "I loved you when I saw you injured on the sand. When you looked up and smiled at me, I knew the fate which had befallen my sister was to be mine, too." She sighed. "But it is a risk we take when we choose this form. For though we bring our strength into it, the form inflicts its weaknesses upon us. Or is it a weakness? To love..."

"Silvara, I don't understand!" Gilthanas cried.

"You will," she promised, her voice soft. Her head bowed.

--From Dragons of Winter Night (Dragonlance Chronicles, Book 2, page 244) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Dragon of Mystery, by Larry Elmore.
You can go buy prints of Larry's work,
like this one, at his website.

I finally got my prior post about my dislike for the lack of mystery surrounding the Dragon Aspects out of the way when Shintar, in her traditional manner of getting me to think, poked me about my dislike for the Jaina and Kalecgos romance in a quip within her comment.

And I'll admit that it brought me up short. I have a specific aversion to that entire relationship, and I ought to be able to explain it better than I already have. Therefore, this short interlude will cover why I'm not a fan of a dragon relationship with one of the "mortal races" as is presented in WoW.

1. It's a power imbalance.
   
   Let's be honest for a minute. If we grant Jaina the title of "most powerful arcane wielder ever" --something that some Titans would raise an eyebrow at-- she's still a mortal human. She will kick the bucket. No amount of arcane power will prevent her death, and it won't even delay it without veering into necromancy*. However, A Warcraft dragon is immortal, and even if they are mortal their lifespan is so long compared to one of the mortal races as to be rendered moot. So no matter what Jaina can do, she will not be able to spend the rest of Kalecgos' life with him. There's also additional power perks of being a dragon, such as the physical dragon form itself. Being the alpha predator in the environment conveys a large degree of power in any relationship, no matter what the mortal might think, and the dragon ought to know this better than anyone else. After all....
   
   
2. They're a dragon, not a mortal. Their thought processes are different than a mortal's.
   
   The timeless Blizzard miscue of "You think you do but you don't" definitely applies here.
   
   A lot of ink has been burned in Fantasy novels and RPGs about relationships between dragons and protagonists, from Dragonlance (Gilthanas and Silvara, Huma and the Silver Dragon, etc.) to the Truth Series by Dawn Cook (who is better known as Kim Harrison). If you want to extend it beyond dragons to other non-bipedal species there's an additional rabbit hole to fall down, from David Eddings' Belgariad to a lot Urban Fantasy that uses were-creatures to all sorts of weird and dark corners of the internet. The stories tend to follow a few distinct patterns, from the "hey, when they're in human form you're having a relationship with a human, not a dragon" to "I can't forget that this person is not a human despite outward appearance, and that poisons the relationship" to "who cares? let's bang!"
   
   I fall under the camp of "this dragon/wolf/whatever is a different species and we might think we know its thought processes but we really don't." If the dragon truly becomes a human (or elf), then it is subject to the same biological frailties as that human or elf, --which means the dragon would have to give up all of their physical advantages-- and that includes emotions. However, the ability to shift back and forth --while retaining memories, intelligence, and their mental abilities (such as wielding magic)-- also implies they retain more than just that. So from my perspective, they may look human but they definitely aren't.
   
   I guess that puts me in the camp of how Michelle Sagara writes the Cast series of novels, where the dragons that Kaylin encounters might have a human form, but everything from the carriages they ride in to how they walk implies that their entire dragon weight is still there, only just "hidden" by something that's better than an illusion but not as good as a total change of form.
   
   Since I fall under the camp of "they retain enough of themselves that they shouldn't fall in love or feel jealousy or anything else the same way we do," that leads me to...
   
   
3. A dragon falling in love with a human is likely a lot closer to a human falling in love with a dog.
   
   Dragons are the apex species --Old Gods and Gronn notwithstanding-- of Azeroth. The mortal races can see them in their human form and experience the usual gamut of emotions, but a dragon still views us through their eyes, in which we have a lot more in common with the cattle that they may decide to feast on than as equals. After all, Onyxia said the quiet part out loud when she makes the quip during the initial pull about how she typicaly "must leave [her] lair in order to feed." The other flights aren't so blunt about it and may avoid eating the mortal races as a general rule, but the cat is out of the bag: dragons look on us as "talking meat" or "talking pets" than anything else. And if they do care a lot about mortals, it's more of the paternal, often patronizing type of caring. A dragon falling in love with a human would likely also be frowned upon by draconic society in the same manner as a cross species romance would be in human society. Even if a bonobo or a dog or a dolphin could love in a similar manner to that of a human, the species are still different enough that our society certainly wouldn't view it as a love between equals.
   
   Fantasy novels have an end run around these problems, of course, and typically involve wish fulfillment more than anything else. These relationships in a Fantasy or Science Fiction setting can --and frequently are-- a stand-in for commentary about our own racial prejudices, merely taken to an extreme. Being able to use a character's inner voice to demonstrate that the dragon or elf or draenei has the same mental and emotional acumen as that of a human allows an author to demonstrate that despite outward appearances, "we're all the same inside".
   
   But as a practical matter, there's a huge difference in falling in love between species versus different races of the same species. And despite authors (or the Blizzard story team) waving their hands and allowing inter-racial children to exist (gee thanks, ancient Mythologies!) what we know of genetics basically renders that sort of outcome impossible. And before anybody starts catcalling "Mules!" from the rear of the auditorium, let me remind you that the genetic differences between burros and horses are a lot fewer than humans' closest living relatives, the bonobos. And we can't interbreed between bonobos. Those relatives of modern humans we could interbreed with are those that no longer exist, such as Neanderthals and Denisovians.
   
   But still...
   
   
4. I can't swim against the tide forever, and a story team --or an author-- with the blessing of management is going to get their way, whether I like it or not. And that, more than anything else, gets my goat. It's their vision that is implemented, and their story to tell, not mine, despite that I'm the one playing their game. It obviously has no direct impact on the game, because it all happens "off screen" in the novels, but the concept of the whole thing just kind of bugs me. And that it happened to one of the two characters in the WoW-verse that are most in Mary Sue territory probably annoys me even more. If it was anybody else, I'd probably not care, but I look at it as a continuation of the storyline concerning the destruction of Theramore for no other good reason than to make sure we know that Garrosh is "the bad guy". Again, my complaints about setpieces versus good storytelling fit perfectly here. Blizz' teams are enamored of a nice setpiece, and frequently confuse those setpieces or cutscenes with good storytelling in general. And the Jaina/Kalecgos romance is an omnipresent reminder that those scenes do not necessarily make for a good story.

So there you have it.

I know that this post is gonna get buried in a few hours by people excitedly talking about the new WoW expac --or the release date for Wrath Classic, or Diablo 4-- but I felt I ought to get this out there. At least I can say that I explained my position; not well, perhaps, but at least I explained it. 

And if anybody has wondered about where I learned to write dialogue, these two series quoted above provide part of the answer to the puzzle.

 

 

*Ars Magica notwithstanding. Yes, in Ars Magica, you can use magic to artificially extend a Magus/Maga's lifespan, but at the cost of being rendered infertile. For a Magus or Maga, this is pretty much a tradeoff they're comfortable with, but even then they can't extend their lifespan indefinitely. At the very least, a Final Twilight will eventually catch up to them, or an enemy will finally end their life.

EtA: Corrrected a grammatical error.