Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-206.74.175.104-20151018163917/@comment-26893431-20160206181117

Draevan13 wrote:

To be fair, only 2 people have tried to conquer the Summerset Isles: the Maormer, and Tiber Septim. The Maormer only failed because the Psijics stopped them, and as we see in Skyrim they don't support the Dominion.

As such we don't really have a baseline of how difficult it would be to conquer the province. No one's really tried before. Tiber's conquest was nearly 1000 years ago, lots could have changed since then. Since it never happens we could also expect the Altmer to be overconfident.

Also, if I remember correctly, it's not stated that Tiber was incapable of conquering it without the Numidium, only that using it made the conquest much easier. Tiber couldn't have won, the Aldmeri navy is too superior.