Arthas kills King Terenas

Full History

King Terenas had led Lordaeron through the Alliance's struggle against the Horde, helping create the coalition that won the Second War. His son Arthas was trained as a paladin and had once represented the kingdom's future. When the plague spread, Arthas took up the defense of his people. His pursuit of the Scourge, however, led through the culling of Stratholme and to the cursed blade Frostmourne in Northrend. By the time he returned, the relationship between prince and kingdom had been transformed.

The returning Arthas was welcomed as the figure who had fought the undead threat. Instead of restoring peace, he entered the royal court and killed Terenas. The murder destroyed the center of the monarchy and signaled that the Scourge's greatest victory was not simply a conquest from outside. The heir to Lordaeron had turned against his father and become an instrument of the Lich King's designs.

The fall of the king was followed by the collapse of the kingdom's defenses and institutions. Arthas led undead armies against former allies, attacked the paladins and other defenders who resisted, and pursued further objectives in the service of the Scourge. Lordaeron's cities and countryside were consumed by war and plague. The northern human world that had helped defeat the Horde could no longer act as the united political power it had once been.

At the original World of Warcraft endpoint, the ruins of Lordaeron and the Plaguelands preserved the consequences of this betrayal. Sylvanas's Forsaken later occupied the Undercity beneath the royal capital, while human survivors and militant religious groups contested the surrounding lands. Terenas's murder was therefore both the climax of Arthas's personal fall and the moment the old kingdom lost its ruling heart. The history of the northern continent after the Third War begins with that absence.