I always liked to think that right after he was raised, Koltira would attack Thassarian hoping to kill him. However, since Thass had been killed earlier, (and a plate-wearer before he had died) he was bit more skilled than Koltira and would typically win. Eventually the goal moved from ‘kill Thassarian’ to ‘beat Thassarian’, and then eventually Koltira just enjoyed the fighting.I like that!
I’M GONNA GENTLY WADE IN
so, from my perspective, the thing is that thassarian actually did not kill faltora — in fact, he specifically elected NOT to do so, which is what prompted koltira to run thassarian down and be like ‘hey baby U GOT GOOD IN U. LET THE GOOD OUT. COME ON, SON’
(ofc faltora still died to scourge under thassarian’s command, but thassarian himself hesitated)
during their duel, koltira taunts thassarian, but it has the flavor of still trying to break him out of arthas’s spell, still trying to draw out the humanity that koltira recognized in him. the effort fails, of course, especially b/c arthas is like right there at time with his pom-poms out, but i don’t think that koltira really blames thassarian for his death. i can agree that there’d be complex feelings; possibly some bitterness towards the fact that thassarian held the sword that gutted him
but koltira knows that arthas was the puppetmaster. the largest portion of his anger is reserved for the lich king, imo
(i agree that thassarian was/is more skilled than koltira, though; this is shown p clearly in the training session depicted in the manga. they were both plate wearers, though! the manga seems to imply that koltira was a warrior of some kind — but it also implies that he had a pretty easy, safe life pre-Scourge)
See, I always thought that Koltira was mainly some sort of archer. He originally attacks Thassarian with an arrow, then switches to the sword. In the scourge attack, he’s dressed the same as the other archers while it looks like the plate classes have shields. And then when he fights he’s very quickly disarmed (ughhh why can’t I have a disarm as a DK) idk though, the art is very non-specific.