Geek Couples: Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan

Alexander Wallace goes to war alongside Confederate officer Jim Raynor and the Queen of Blades Sarah Kerrigan.

War makes strange bedfellows; wars that involve three different species and a myriad of factions of each all mixed together in a miasma of bloodshed tend to exacerbate that notion exponentially. No, the Starcraft series has no interspecies romances brewing in that war-ravaged sector, but it has brought together two rather strange humans.

Explaining all the twists and turns of Starcraft lore can be perplexing even when not discussing it for newcomers. What the Koprulu sector has gone through, over the course of two games and backstory, feels like European history from 1914 to 1945 in miniature. Its people, of all species, die in the Guild Wars. They die in the rebellion against the Terran Confederacy and in the birth of the Terran Dominion. They die when the Zerg invade. They die when the Protoss intervene to stop the Zerg. They die in the Brood War. They die in Kerrigan’s renewed invasion of the sector. They die as the Terran Dominion falls. They die in the long and brutal slog against Amon.

All of that takes place in the span of about seven years. That realization is something that many Starcraft fans don’t dwell on much.

The Sarajevo of this massive conflagration (that lasts two games with full expansion packs) is when Jim Raynor, the marshal of the backwater frontier world of Mar Sara (this series’ Tatooine equivalent) on the fringes of the Terran Confederacy (the Terran authority in this part of space), fights of a Zerg raid on Backwater Station; the planet soon is under the brunt of a massive invasion, and the rest of Terran space must also fight off the Zerg hordes, and the Protoss that have come to destroy them.

As the Confederacy abandons Mar Sara, Jim Raynor is saved by the smooth-talking leader of an anti-Confederate guerilla group. That group is the revanchist Sons of Korhal, and that leader is Arcturus Mengsk. Among Mengsk’s coterie of ne’er-do-wells is Sarah Kerrigan, a former Confederate special forces operative who later defected to the Sons. Jim and Sarah took a while to acclimate to one another, sparring verbally but with mutual respect and hints of affection.

Arcturus Mengsk introduced them, and Arcturus Mengsk divided them. They all fought together against the Terran Confederacy. It was on the New Gettysburg orbital platform orbiting the Confederate capital world of Tarsonis where Mengsk left her to die at the blades of the Zerg they had brought via psionic beacon themselves. Jim was appalled; he thought he had seen the last of Sarah Kerrigan.

But this was not the case.

Kerrigan was taken by the Zerg and transformed into the Queen of Blades, first a tool of the Overmind, and then a leader of the Zerg in her own right after that being’s destruction. She fights Jim Raynor multiple times; he is appalled at what has befallen her, someone he had grown to care about. They fight in a series of miserable wars, his raiders and her broodlings shedding copious quantities of each other’s blood. It is not until that the Raiders, backed by an impromptu alliance with Valerian Mengsk of the Terran Dominion (the Crown Prince, and son of Arcturus), defeated the Queen of Blades that Kerrigan was once more a normal human being. It was only Jim Raynor and a few other humans that thought that Sarah Kerrigan was in any way saveable, or worth saving. But Jim had faith in her.

Arcturus Mengsk divided them, and Arcturus Mengsk reunited them. She became the Queen of Blades once more, at her own volition, after mistakenly concluding that the Dominion had the leader of the Raiders killed; she thought that she had seen the last of Jim Raynor.

But this was not the case.

Through many long battles, they marched together on Augustgrad, the capital city of the Dominion on Mengsk’s homeworld of Korhal. In urban combat reminiscent of Stalingrad, they besieged his palace. Kerrigan killed him personally for his betrayal, and the Dominion passed to his saner son Valerian.

Jim and Sarah would later fight together against the forces of Amon, and guaranteed once and for all the safety of the Koprulu Sector. She was feared lost in that final battle, when the Raiders, her swarm, and Artanis’ Protoss fleet took the war right to the feet of that which had doomed the sector. Jim Raynor disappeared soon afterward.

Rumor has it that they’re together, happily, somewhere where the wars of the Koprulu sector have no meaning.

Alexander Wallace is an alternate historian, reader, and writer who moderates the Alternate History Online group on Facebook and the Alternate Timelines Forum on Proboards. He writes regularly for the Sea Lion Press blog and for NeverWas magazine, and also appears regularly on the Alternate History Show with Ben Kearns. He is a member of several alternate history fora under the name 'SpanishSpy.'