The Lich King is arguably one of the most iconic villains from the Warcraft universe. He was a prominent figure in Warcraft 3, the game he first appeared it (although appeared might not be the right word since we never actually saw him). He is the driving force behind two Warcraft based expansions – Warcraft 3: the Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. The guy’s famous to say the least. More than that, he immensely powerful. If you look at it from a game perspective, it basically took the Light itself to step in and kill this guy. Azeroth’s greatest champions went up against him in Icecrown Citidel and we got killed…literally. He killed the raid party while Tirion Fordring was stuck in a block of ice. Tirion called on the Light as one last act of defiance against the darkness of the Lich King and that’s the only reason he breaks free and shatters Frostmourne. But is there more to it than that? Where did the Lich King come from? This is a big deal, especially given the Bolvar Lich King that is very active in the Legion expansion (play a frost death knight and you’ll understand). Now, first let me say that Blizzard has, to my knowledge, never fully confirmed the origin of the Lich King, and there’s a lot of things about him that make me think there’s more to it than what is on the surface. So let’s start with what we do know, and let me also add the disclaimer that I don’t pretend to know everything. If there is some piece of lore that I have wrong or negates the rest of what I say in this, please be kind (and also let me know what it is because I love Warcraft lore).

The Fate of Ner’Zhul

Way back in the early days of the wars between the Alliance and Horde, there was a Horde shaman named Ner’zhul. He had been the head of the shamans and in a way a leader for all of the orcs. Through this, that, and the other, he was tricked by Gul’dan into handing the orcs over to the Legion and Kil’Jaeden, who promptly corrupted them and sent them on a bloodlust, murderous campaign across Azeroth. If you want more details than that, you can check out World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume II. After the Alliance pushes through to Draenor and shuts down the Dark Portal, Ner’zhul starts looking for a way to take the remnants of the Horde off of the dying world of Draenor. Sadly, his efforts actually rip the planet apart and shove it into the Twisting Nether, but not before he managed to get through a portal himself.

Somewhere between that portal jump and the beginning of Warcraft 3, Kil’Jaeden finds the shaman, tortures him, and rips his body to pieces. He then shoves the soul of Ner’zhul into a helm called the Helm of Domination. This helm, based on what we see in The Frozen Throne and at the end of Wrath of the Lich King, seems to possess the full power of the Lich King, giving the wearer of the helm full control over the undead Scourge that was created by the plague we see in Warcraft 3. That’s the summary in a very rough nutshell. Now we get to dive into the fun speculative side of things.

The Nathrezim

One of the most intriguing groups in the Burning Legion are the Nathrezim, more commonly known as dread lords. These being are demons that serve the Legion, and like most demons, they obey the commands of the Legion’s creator, the fel corrupted titan Sargeras, because Sargeras has the knowledge and power to permanently kill them. Demons, when they die, go to the twisting nether. However, if they are killed in the twisting nether, they are dead forever. Not exactly a fate any semi-immortal being cares to have. The reason that the Nathrezim are so interesting is because they have a huge draw to shadow magic, which is borne of the Void. The Void doesn’t directly oppose the Legion. Both groups would be fine if the other destroyed the us, the champions of Azeroth. However, the Void wants to corrupt a world soul to create a void titan and Sargeras wants to burn all of existence, so they are at odds on that little detail. Based on the descriptions of the Nathrezim in Chronicle Volume I, there seems to be a high possibility that the dread lords are demons that are actually borne of shadow energy, which makes them very prone to liking shadow magic and the Void. This love of shadow calls into question how much loyalty they have to the fel infused titan. After all, Sargeras is going to destroy everything, and that includes them, even if they are not fully aware of that plan. The Void simply wants to taint all of creation and turn everything into a shadow land kind of thing, which basically be paradise to the Nathrezim.

In Warcraft 3 and it’s expansion, we see the dread lords having a fairly hefty role in organizing and commanding the undead armies that are supposedly part of the Lich King. This begs a certain question: why are the Nathrezim so involved with the undead, the plague, and the Lich King, especially if the Lich King is Kil’Jaeden’s pet creation. It would seem like there is more purpose or more connection to the Nathrezim and the Lich King than maybe has been revealed.

Why make the Lich King?

Another question that comes to mind about the Lich King: Why did Kil’Jaeden make him in the first place? Ner’zhul wasn’t exactly a great and loyal servant. In fact, he pretty much hated the Legion, even after becoming the Lich King. Everything he did was to break control from the Legion. Escaping Dreanor, shoving Frostmourne out of his ice block prison, corrupting Arthas so that the prince would put on the helm of the Lich King. All of these things were steps that were very active measures at throwing off the shackles of the Legion. So why would Kil’Jaeden take a person that, even before becoming and undead monstrosity, showed so much hatred toward the Legion and wanted nothing to do with them and give him so much power that he could control an entire army of undead? Yes, Kil’Jaeden wanted to destroy Azeroth, but let’s be real. Kil’Jaeden is proably the oldest, most experience warrior/tactician in all of Warcraft except for maybe Sargeras himself. The Legion revels in corrupting people to their cause, but at some point it seems like Kil’Jaeden would have realized that Ner’zhul would not be a good servant. And take a minute to revisit the level of power the Lich King had. Illidan Stormrage is easily one of the most powerful people to come out of Azeroth, and even he with all his power (which included the power he had absorbed from the Skull of Gul’dan) couldn’t defeat a weakened Arthas in Icecrown. So again, I ask, why would any brilliant tactician give that level of power to a servant when you know that servant is going to turn around and slit your throat the first chance he gets? It doesn’t make sense.

Unless…

The true reason for the Lich King was something other than Azeroth’s destruction. One of the interesting things about all three people that have been the Lich King is they were all good, upstanding people in their societies before their corruption at the hands of the Legion or the Lich King himself. Ner’zhul was a shaman of wisdom who was a great leader of his people. His only true mistake before the Legion’s involvement on Draenor was trusting Gul’dan. Arthas was a paladin when we first met him. That’s about as far from a vile, corrupt, monster of undeath as you can possibly be. All throughout Warcraft, the death knights and the paladins are direct opposites of each other. Not only was Arthas a paladin, he was being trained personally by Uther the Lightbringer. Bolvar served Stormwind and the Wrynn dynasty with utter dedication. This was a man with a strong sense of duty and loyalty. Due to the Wrathgate incident, he found himself neither dead nor alive, yet not undead either. With nothing left to go back to, he offered, in a fairly altruistic way, to take up the mantel of the Lich King to keep the Scourge in check (there is some debate about why he needed to do this, but the why is irrelevant to the point I’m making). We’ve already seen the horrors that Ner’zhul and Arthas have unleashed upon Azeroth. But now we even see Bolvar taking questionable actions. In fact, playing through the Death Knight campaign in Legion was me repeatedly saying, “Why are we doing this? This is a BAD idea.” And each time I thought that I felt like it was an even worse idea that the last thing proposed. My point is that there seems to be something inherently corrupting about the Helm of Domination, and I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some other dark entity residing in the helm that has true power over the helm. This entity could be any number of things, but with the points that I’ve made, I’m going to toss out a couple of possibilities.

Option 1: The Nathrezim Lich King

I don’t have a particular Nathrezim in mind for this. Mal’ganis’s absence amid the return of all of the other dread lords we’ve seen is notable, but it should be said that we saw him in person in Warcraft 3 while Arthas was being commanded by the Lich King through Frostmourne. While I don’t think it’s Mal’ganis at the helm of the helm, it could be a dread lord. Their loyalty to the Legion is in question. They love shadow, they don’t want to die, and they’re pretty smart so they might have figured out that Sargeras wants to kill everything. So maybe they caught wind of Kil’Jaeden’s plans for Ner’zhul, and decided to set up their own little twist on the plan as an effort to undermine the Legion.

Now, this possibility seems a little weak given that if the dread lords were behind the malevolent entity of the Lich King, I would have expected them to join with Arthas and rebel against the Legion. That didn’t happen. Nor is there any indication in game of the dread lords joining or rallying behind the Lich King at this point. In addition, a dread lord would not, in my opinion, augment the powers of Ner’zhul and Arthas enough to be what the Lich King was.

Option 2: The Kil’Jaeden Decpetion

Kil’Jaeden is called the deceiver. The guy is a genius tactician, and he is patient. If he’s okay taking over ten thousand years to hunt down Velen and enact revenge, you know he doesn’t have a problem playing the long term game. In the 7.2 patch for Legion, we caught a glimpse of something that we hadn’t seen before. Kil’Jaeden does not seem happy with Sargeras. And not just not happy, but like bitter, “I want to stab you in the heart” level of not happy. Now, we don’t exactly have a timeline for when this bitterness started to set it for Kil’Jaeden. But consider these things:

At the Sunwell, he stated that he would do what even Sargeras could not. The guy has a bit of an ego on him. He seems power hungry for sure, and he doesn’t like his master. Oh, and if Sargeras were out of the picture, he would be the most powerful person in the Burning Legion, which might even put him as the most powerful person alive, if he could kill Sargeras. Now, killing a titan isn’t exactly an afternoon task, especially when that titan singlehandedly killed six other titans without any help, five of which fought him at the same time.

Let’s consider something else in all of this. The Legion has tried on multiple occasions to destroy Azeroth. So far, every one of them have failed. We’ve killed Archimonde twice, stopped the Legion in the War of the Ancient, killed Deathwing, killed (and resurrected) Illidan, destroyed Arthas as the Lich King, and supposedly killed two old gods at this point. That’s quite the list of accomplishments. Kil’Jaeden is no fool. The denizens of Azeroth would make extremely powerful weapons against Sargeras, should he ever decide to strike at his titan master. Now, he knows that he’s already going to be attacking and killing people on Azeroth. Why not add a little necromancy to that, and bolster the army as well? One of the things that we see with the Lich King is the ability to raise the dead permanently in a sort of super undead state. This is what the val’kyr did for Sylvanas. We also know that they were drawing on the power of the Lich King to do this in order to make death knights. That means that power came from him, not the val’kyr. So if Kil’Jaeden could kill the inhabitants of the only known world to repel the Legion so consistently and then raise them as super empowered beings of undeath, that would greatly amplify his power base. This could be the foundation of a new super army for Kil’Jaeden to throw at Sargeras.

More than that, but utilize a force like the Lich King, it also makes it seem like this force isn’t working for him. Indeed, the Lich King may not be working for Kil’Jaeden, but that doesn’t mean Kil’Jaeden isn’t playing the puppetmaster. Kil’Jaeden imbuing the Lich King with all of this power makes more sense if there was some secret plan of his to use this undead army to kill Sargeras, even if it’s not directly him doing it. After all, the Lich King, even as Bolvar, has a fairly strong hatred for the Legion. This hatred started with Ner’zhul and has continued throughout the entirety of the Lich King as we know him. If this hatred was born through design, the Kil’Jaeden’s torturing of Ner’zhul and binding him to a helmet is the perfect set to ensure that the Lich King always actively tries to defeat the Legion.

Option 3: The Void is Calling

This option feels the most outlandish, yet most satisfying plot twist options out there. The Nathrezim have a heavy hand with the Scourge in Warcraft 3. They also have a strong tie to shadow magic, which also suggests that the dread lords might work with the old gods. So maybe, just maybe, there is an old god spirit or a void lord residing in the helm of domination. After all, we don’t know the origin of the helm. Kil’Jaeden might have forged it specifically for Ner’zhuld to live in. He might have also just stumbled upon an artifact that had obvious power and decided to play with and see what it could do. Whether or not Kil’Jaeden knows there is an old god or a void lord living inside of the helm is fairly irrelevant. The old gods want to stop the Legion from killing the world soul of Azeroth, so pitting the undead armies of the Lich King against the Legion is a natural step.

This theory also could play into the Kil’Jaeden Deception theory. Kil’Jaeden’s bitterness towards the cost he paid to serve Sargeraas might have driven him to seek out the void lords for aid in destroying the fel titan. If Sargeras were gone, he could claim the Legion for himself. He might also have discovered Sargeras’s true plan to destroy all life, which includes Kil’Jaeden and the eredar. That might prompt him to look for a way to destroy his master before his master destroys him.

All in all, the Lich King is one of my favorite characters in all of Warcraft lore. The origin of that character is still fairly mysterious, and with all of the activity going on with the Lich King in Legion, I’ve been contemplating what his motives are, where he comes from, and how did he become what he is. As I mentioned previously, this is all purely speculation. None of my ramblings about the Lich King’s origin should be taken as lore fact because the facts are that Blizzard has not made the origin of the Lich King public at this time. Heck, they may not even know themselves at this time. But, this was all pretty fun to think about and write and I hope you enjoyed it.

*All pictures are owned by Activision-Blizzard