Quote Originally Posted by honest_psycho View Post
But did it have to be the ENTIRE Expansion? Her Arc was pretty much done after she was crowned (or arguably after ZoraalJas Bossfight).
What exactly is her role after that in the story?
Yes, it did, because her arc wasn't done after she was crowned.

Putting it simply, up until the point where she was crowned, the story was about Wuk Lamat learning what type of leader she had to be, and how to be it; she wants to be a leader that promotes and celebrates peace, and she learns the nuts and bolts of being a leader across those first three zones.

The last three zones are about her leadership style and technique being put to the test. First, by being put up against raw military force: Zoraal Ja first appears to essentially be the rock to Wuk Lamat's scissors, the exact counter-force that foils her ideals: how do you champion peace if someone else won't stop waging war? If you're forced to fight, how do you?

Then, there's Sphene: like Vallavia said, her approach mirrors Wuk Lamat's instead of opposing it, but also brings it to an extreme; if you've decided you'll fight for your people's right to peace, when do you stop fighting? Where is your line? Because Sphene clearly didn't have one.

There's also a more functional element that, in the second half of the expansion, we see Wuk Lamat use the tools of peace, union and connection that she learned in the first half. Wuk Lamat isn't a ruler that stays back and sits on the throne, she's not the sort of leader that comes to a problem already having an idea of how to solve it, and she's not the sort of diplomat to just ignore the people she's surrounded by. In the last half of the expansion, we see her put into practice everything she learned in the first half, in a way that only works if she's actually there to do all of it.

In fact I've kinda had a thought about that sort of 'two-part' structure of her journey: I feel like every single claimant challenge in the first half of the story has an equivalent to something she does in the second half. I can reflexively think of a few, I'd have to go back over the whole expansion to see if I can find matches for them all.