Let me introduce you to Logan Thackeray. 

Logan is one of the central human characters in the online RPG “Guild Wars 2.” In a way, he’s probably one of the more important characters in general, specifically because of a decision he made. His story is detailed in the rather badly written “Edge of Destiny” novel. 

He’s descended from two characters in the first Guild Wars, who we actually helped to get together. In his youth he was a caravan guard and outgoing adventurer. He met up with a few other adventurers, each representing another race in Tyria, and found common cause in fighting the Elder Dragons, which had arisen and were a threat to the world at large. 

Logan butted heads with the Charr member of their party, Rytlock, mostly because of historical grievances. The Charr had conquered Ascalon, his ancestral home, and were still fighting the humans on different fronts. Over time they bonded as friends and grew to trust each other. 

Logan had some big brother issues. His brother served as a guard to the Queen of the last standing human kingdom in Tyria. They differed over what was a more important duty: guarding royalty, or getting out in the world. 

Anyway, so Logan and his friends start having successes against the various champions of the Elder Dragons, and start feeling competent enough to take on a dragon themselves. They bait Kralkatorrik, the crystal dragon, into attacking them at their prepared position. 

One thing to understand is that these dragons really aren’t just any normal dragons of other fantasy settings. They are much more like manifestations of primal forces. When Kralkatorrik flew south across Ascalon to meet them, the land beneath him corrupted and crystallized, all the living creatures turned into his minions. So it’s a really big deal but they think they can take him down. 

At the crucial moment, Logan’s role was to support Rytlock in dealing the killing blow. But right as this was happening, the queen was under attack, his brother being slain. Logan abandons his friends and rushes to defend her… and he does so successfully, at the cost of one of his friends dying and the dragon continuing to be a threat. It’s suggested that she called to him almost psychically, so it’s possible that he wasn’t in full control of his decisions. 

In any case this, in my view, is a classic case of the Spock Dilemma. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Logan fell in love with the queen, but not quite in the romantic sense. He fell for her in the way that lots of stories depict that people love their monarchs. But he went a little further in his obsessive need to defend her. Frankly I find it kind of creepy. 

Logan justifies the decision he made by saying that it was more important to save her. She’s not a bad queen, and there are other political forces in power in the human government which would do much worse, so it’s possible he made the right big choice… but it’s still hard to reconcile. 

Over the course of Guild Wars 2, if you play a human, he’ll guide you through your earlier levels and follow parts of your story. He comes to the eventual conclusion, however, that while the dragons are alive nothing is safe, especially not his queen. 

Honestly, watching him come to that conclusion made me say “FINALLY” out loud. 

What’s even more annoying is that when he and his friends do try and get back together, they butt heads over the old wounds… and you spend practically the rest of the game getting them to stop acting like jilted teenagers. Indeed, it’s easier getting the various nations and orders to cooperate and ally, than it is getting this group back together.