factions as parallel to the political structures of late capitalism ). The Alliance are the traditional “ good guys ”, including humans , elves , gnomes , and dwarves . This faction tends to have visually appealing races whose lore emphasizes commitment to some form of established moral and social order . The Alliance is led by a hereditary monarch who often exemplifies the “ good king / wise prince ” trope . The Horde , the opposing faction to which Sylvanas belongs , is in many ways more interesting , consisting of ill-assorted outcast and dispossessed races allied mainly for reasons of convenience . These races include Orcs ( traditional villains in the worlds of fantasy and gaming , with a culture valuing hypermasculinity and martial prowess ), Trolls ( voodoo and Caribbean themed ), Undead , Taurens ( human-cattle hybrids whose culture is based on Native Americans ), Goblins ( amoral , acquisitive merchants ), and Blood Elves ( physically attractive humanoids with an affinity for , and history of corruption by , magic ). The Horde is led by a Warchief , appointed by a predecessor and confirmed by acclamation .
As the historical core of the Horde in WoW lore had been a group of orcish clans that unified under a single leader , the position of Warchief was initially held by orcs , all male . Within the actual period of the playable game world , Horde players have served under four successive warchiefs , the orcs Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream , the troll Vol ’ jin , and the undead Lady Sylvanas Windrunner . Vol ’ jin was the first warchief who was not an orc . He had been the leader of a troll rebellion against Garrosh Hellscream , a previous orc leader whose own violent and arrogant temperament made him vulnerable to possession by various evil influences . When Vol ’ jin was dying from a wound received in a battle at the Broken Isles , he proclaimed that he had seen in a vision that Sylvanas Windrunner , the Queen of the Forsaken , a high elf transformed into an undead “ banshee ” by the evil Arthas , should be the next Warchief of the Horde . Thus as of the August 2016 release of the World of Warcraft Legion expansion , shortly after Hillary Clinton ’ s nomination as the first female presidential candidate of a major United States political party , Sylvanas Windrunner became the Warchief of the Horde , the first woman and the first character of the undead race to hold that position . Unlike Clinton , a middle-class white woman , Sylvanas bears a double burden of racial and gender marginalization , and her rhetorical construction is located in this intersectionality , a phenomenon defined by Collins as grounded in the “ and ” linking race and gender ( 2015 ). Like Africana and Latina women , she is sexually festishized , often portrayed on fan sites as a dominatrix , a form of double marginalization that trivializes her as a leader by reshaping her as the object of a predatory male sexual gaze . On
33