WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for the novel Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, and the final battle with the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel. They're all pretty much contained on Page 2, and I'll give you another warning later just in case you forget about it.

Most players are, by this point in Wrath of the Lich King, more than familiar with Arthas Menethil and his fall from supposed grace into the arms of the Lich King. Players may be slightly less familiar with Ner'zhul, the orc shaman who originally took on the mantle of the Lich King, but we've got an article for that.

This article on the other hand, isn't so much about Ner'zhul, or Arthas, as it is about the Lich King -- the position that Arthas, and Ner'zhul before him, had foisted upon them. What exactly is the Lich King? What is its purpose, and why does it exist? To answer these questions, we have to go very, very far back into Azeroth's history.

Azeroth was created by a group of creatures known as the Titans, a group of almost god-like giants that roam from world to world for a very distinct purpose -- to create and make order. There are a lot of conflicting stories surrounding the Titans, their origins, and the creation of Azeroth -- however, one story stands out above all others; the story of the corruption of Sargeras, champion of the Titans.

Sargeras led the army of the titans and was charged with defeating and imprisoning demons of the Twisting Nether so that their demonic brand of evil wouldn't spread to other worlds and mess up the Titans grand vision of an orderly universe. There was an innate problem with this -- Sargeras, a creature of good that was unable to even fathom the thought of pure evil, found himself suddenly confronted with it. With the knowledge of this kind of evil existing in the universe, Sargeras began to go insane, convincing himself that the Titans themselves were responsible for creation's failure -- that the order they sought was unnatural, and a direct cause of the corruption and evil present in the universe. Sargeras devoted the rest of his existence to destroying the work of the Titans, forming an army known as the Burning Legion to aid him.


Enter Azeroth, a world teeming with life, order, and on top of all of that, the Well of Eternity. It was a source of limitless power, and Sargeras wanted it for his own purposes. This story of course ends with the War of the Ancients, and the fall of Sargeras at the hands of Cenarius, the night elves, the dragon aspects, and a couple of time travelers. Sargeras found himself abruptly destroyed -- or rather, his physical being in the world of Azeroth was destroyed.

It is my speculation that this is the precise moment when the destruction of Azeroth went from a simple plan to foil the Titans' work, to something far more personal. It wasn't just that Sargeras was defeated -- it was that his defeat came not by Titans that were his peers in power, but by the little dinky wee creations the Titans made. These things weren't even remotely godlike, and yet they were capable of cutting off his plans for world domination? Inconceivable. Since then, Sargeras has tried time and time again to take over Azeroth by many methods, all of which have failed to this date -- and his army, the Burning Legion, are just as obsessed with this eventual outcome as their leader is.

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