Guild Wars 2

Trahearne is a textbook example of a writer having a “pet” NPC and that NPC getting way too much attention at expense of main character(s) of story. It isn’t that he is player character’s superior, it is that player character is forced into role of Trahearne’s yes-man lackey, a roadie- type forced to devote his/her life into making someone else (Trahearne) look good. No matter what kind of character you play, from a curious Sylvari to a fierce Charr, your dialogue with Trahearne ends up practically at level of “Yes, Marshal Trahearne. Right away, Marshal Trahearne. Good choice, Marshal Trahearne. I admire your courage, Marshal Trahearne”.
Trahearne would have worked nicely as background figure. However, as writing is now, GW 2 does indeed have a personal story. Trahearne’s personal story. Or perhaps player character’s story, as in “My Life As Lackey – First to (one of three orders), then to Marshal Trahearne” or “(player character’s name) – How I learned to stop thinking and to obey Marshal Trahearne”.

GW 2 story has great, if also unintentional, symbolic value. It gives one insight to “lives” of all the NPCs who do their best to fight and yet are doomed to obscurity because Great Storyline Script demands that glory goes to someone else, no matter what that someone else really does.
GW 2 does indeed have a personal story. What isn’t mentioned is that apart from those early-level “personal” elements that become totally meaningless after level 20 or so, the personal story is Trahearne’s personal story. Your character is just the anonymous unknown roadie/dirty-work-doer whose only purpose in life is to do all the hard and nasty work so that someone else, at this case Mr. Woody, can be a hero.

While somewhat similar to Kormir from GW 1, Trahearne isn’t just “Kormir 2.0”, he is far worse. Like people have been pointing out, your character gets repeatedly referred to as “Trahearne’s right hand”, NPCs are repeatedly praising Mr. Woody and so on. While for story purposes it is understandable that there has to be a single definite hero, at least with GW 1 they kept Kormir mostly in the background, while with Mr. Woody the story misses few if any chances to heap him praise and glory.

Trahearne and his role in story are just extremely bad writing, no way around that harsh fact.