Dueling Evils: Lich King vs. Darth Vader

Today, while 4-man farming regular Halls of Reflection with my husband and our best friends, and after seeing the intro a half a dozen times, this question popped into my head: who’s more evil, Darth Vader, or The Lich King? Maybe it was because I love Star Wars, or maybe it’s just seeing Arthas in that huge armor that made me think of Vader, and more than likely it’s a little of both.  I know it sound a little strange, but when I posed the question to my friends, by way of vent, it was met with a whole host of varied responses.  Everyone had a different opinion, some for Arthas, some for Vader, and each person seemed to have their reasons except for my husband who couldn’t quite make up his mind.

Lovete, my husband, said: “First you have to define evil” which is a very typical response from him, he’s very philosophical.  For the purposes of this discussion, evil will mean exactly what everyone thinks evil means: “morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked; harmful; injurious.”  Pretty standard, and I only include it because it came up and to appease him should he see this.

Okay so, which is it?  Vader or Arthas?  Honestly, the group couldn’t come up with a good answer, but here’s what we did come up with:

Arthas Menethil (The Lich King):

• Eradicated a whole town full of people, but did wrong for the right reasons.
• Single-mindedly hunted for something that would turn him evil, falling prey to it’s power.
• Turned against his own people, burned the ships to keep them from escaping, had the innocent mercenaries helping him killed.
• Killed his own father
• Built a huge fortress filled with nasty monsters, from which he controls his huge scourge army.
• Speculatively killed Bolvar Fordragon and made a lot of girly-gamers cry at the Wrathgate!
• According to the quest Frostmourne:  Uther the Lightbringer says: “No, girl. Arthas is not here. Arthas is merely a presence within the Lich King’s mind. A dwindling presence…”  Arthas may still be in there, somewhere, redeemable.

Anakin Skywalker (DarthVader):

• Was prophesied to destroy the Sith, not join them.
• Single-mindedly hunted for something that would eventually turn him evil, ultimately falling under the spell of the person he thought could give it to him –though to his credit he thought he was doing it for the right reasons.
• Turned against his own people and helped to hunt down and destroy (almost) every last Jedi in the known universe!
• Killed the younglings and made Natalie Portman cry (ha!)
• Tried to kill his mentor, which he would later succeed at doing… sorta.
• Killed his wife… sorta.
• Helped to build a space-station rumored to be the “ultimate power in the universe.”
• Tried to kill his own children… more than once.
• Is redeemed and returns to the force when Luke sees something good still in him.

They’re very broad lists, but not everyone’s a lore junkie, whether Star Wars or Warcraft.  Either way, you see the point and the reasons we just simply couldn’t decide.  Of course, Lovete and I are much bigger Star Wars fans than our friends, who were more on Arthas’s side.  I think I’m personally leaning towards Vader, I mean, he killed the younglings for cryin’ out loud!

In the end, we ran Halls of Reflection about 10 times and walked away with half the stuff we went in there for.  I got the Tapestry of the Frozen Throne from the chest at the end.  My best friend’s husband, Anddrol, got his newly-80 DK the Mourning Malice.  Two more cloaks like the one I got tonight, and we can call it quits and move on.   In the mean time, we’ve got the regular HoR run down to an art, finishing it in about 20 minutes per run, and though we’re all getting pretty tired of it, mindlessly killing waves of undead has made for some interesting conversation!