Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-25343239-20150319182007/@comment-24.185.108.132-20150320194550

Again, one does not need to conquer the province in which it is located to deactivate a Tower. The Aldmeri Dominion has already proven time and again that it is more than capable of infiltrating its agents into enemy territories without suspicion, and indeed its network of spies, agents, and saboteurs is implied to stretch across Tamriel regardless of province. Even more importantly than that, no one aside from the Thalmor leadership themselves has any idea about the Thalmor goal of unmaking Mundus: beyond the fact that Thalmor agents are more or less free to covertly roam about Skyrim as they please, the Nords have no reason to believe they want anything with the Throat of the World. This is of course assuming that the other Towers even stabilize Mundus to an appreciable degree, as only Ada-Mantia (in High Rock) and Talos himself are confirmed to stabilize Creation.

Further, Talos is not dependent on mortal belief: mythopoeic forces only affect the Aedra and their Aspects, while Talos was/were men who achieved CHIM and later apotheosized (again) through mantling Lorkhan. It should be evidence enough that the Ban on his worship was not the Thalmor attempt at weakening him, but rather a stipulation aimed at causing the Nords to secede just as their stipulations on Hammerfell caused the Redguards to secede, given that even after Numidium erases mankind from the Aurbis and breaks Nirn to pieces, Talos continues to persist and Creation is not unmade. We do not know how the Thalmor plan to remove Talos from the mythic, only that they plan to do it. We do know, however, that they are not successful, given C0DA.

On the note of the Empire, they have not been "co-opted" by the Aldmeri Dominion at all, and neither has the fact that the Emperor had no choice but to sign the Concordat given the information available to him been disproven at all either.

It's a commonly parroted misconception that the Redguards somehow routed the Dominion in Hammerfell alone, and one can clearly see the real course of events outlined in the text The Great War. Lady Arannelya's host had previously been drawn into a number of bloody clashes with the Legion under General Decianus, which were largely inconclusive and left both sides severely weakened. Upon being recalled to Cyrodiil in order to participate in the Battle of the Red Ring, Decianus decided to leave behind a large number of veteran Legionnaires under the pretense of medical discharges: these veteran troops made up the bulk of the forces that later played instrumental in fighting Dominion troops after the Concordat. However, even with the local Yokudan armies bolstered by Legion veterans, and even facing a severely depleted Dominion host that had been cut off from supply lines and harried across scorching deserts, the best they could manage was a stalemate that left large portions of the province devastated. The Dominion host ultimately withdrew, as its campaign goals had been more than accomplished, and Hammerfell was proving far too much trouble for what it was worth. It was not routed, it returned to the Summerset Isles as extending the Hammerfell campaign was pointless.

On the note of the White-Gold Concordat, understand that while we may be privy to the information that the decimation of Lord Naarifin and Lady Arannelya's hosts was a blow to Dominion military might, given sources written after the war's conclusion, Emperor Mede had no way of knowing this at the time he had to make the decision. All that he knew for certain was that the Empire had nearly been destroyed: the Imperial Heartland had been pillaged and the Imperial City sacked, scores of men from High Rock, Hammerfell, Skyrim, and Cyrodiil had been put to the sword or burned in mage fire, and he had only barely been able to recapture portions of Cyrodiil through his own shrewdness, the skillful command of his Generals, and the tenacity of his Legions. He had no way of knowing whether the Dominion had more armies that it could send if he once more refused their offer, and what kind of leader risks the lives of thousands on a remote possibility? Even if he knew that the Dominion armies were depleted, they were still not nearly as depleted as the Imperial Legion itself was, and he knew for a fact that the Empire stood no chance of invading the heavily defended and perfectly intact Summerset Isles. The best case scenario in event of continued war was a bloody stalemate, the worst was Dominion conquest of Tamriel. Thus, it's rather plain to see once you analyze the facts of the situation that Mede had no choice but to sign the Concordat: it was a choice between signing it and being derided by his subjects as a coward, or being seen as a hero and having thousands of his people die. It takes a greater man to choose the former, it takes a foolish gloryseeker to choose the latter.

Even further than this, understand that signing the Concordat was by no means consigning themselves to defeat. You must understand the fundamental nature of the Cyrodiilic people: they are a merging of two cultures, Colovian and Nibenese. Mede exemplified the best of both: he fought with everything that he had at his disposal like a true Colovian, but was wise enough to know when to acknowledge a temporary defeat and plot for a future victory like the skillful politicians of Nibenay. The White-Gold Concordat allowed the Empire time it very sorely needed to recover from the great damages incurred during the Great War, where it suffered massive casualties at the hands of Dominion forces. Mind you, the Empire suffered much greater losses as a result of the War than the Dominion did: not only did it suffer greater casualties in both troops and commoners, large portions of Hammerfell and virtually the whole of Cyrodiil were pillaged, torched, and otherwise devastated. By contrast, the whole of the Dominion was perfectly intact, leaving it ample infrastructure to support its campaigns: the fact that the Dominion Navy was the finest in Tamriel at that time also made a counter-invasion of the Summerset Isles impossible. The White-Gold Concordat offered the Legion an opportunity to recover from this devastation, and indeed the Empire could recover more quickly than the Dominion in manpower at least, by virtue of the fact that the birthrates of Men were greater than those of Mer.

Ultimately, the secession of Hammerfell and the Civil War in Skyrim were the Dominion's counter to this: their stipulations in the Concordat and their own careful manipulation of Ulfric Stormcloak directly led to these events. Depriving the Empire of these two provinces leaves only Cyrodiil, High Rock, and Morrowind, with Cyrodiil still recovering from the Great War and Morrowind still recovering from the Red Year and the Argonian Invasions. And without a doubt the Dominion are also likely working hard to instigate some form of conflict in High Rock, in order to completely disintegrate the Empire. Whether the Civil War in Skyrim ends in a Stormcloak victory or an Imperial victory, it is ultimately a Dominion victory above all else: while an Imperial victory is slightly less ideal, the Civil War has still made the Empire waste men and resources fighting a rebellion that never should have happened in the first place. Keep in mind, the Empire never enforced the Concordat: many sources, whether texts or actual characters, explain as much, and the typical relationship between Thalmor and Imperial authorities can be summarized as the Legion and Imperial Governments playing dumb to the Talos worship that was quite clearly practiced in secret by nearly all Imperial citizens. Justiciars are only present in Skyrim, and even then were only allowed to operate in Skyrim due to the ongoing Civil War: before this point, the Nords were free to worship in secret. Besides this, Talos is a far more important figure to the Cyrods than he is to the Nords: he founded the Third Empire, ruled from the Imperial Heartland, and indeed is more an iconically Imperial figure than anything else: the rampant Septim imagery in Imperial culture is evidence enough of this. Even by origins, only Ysmir Wulfharth was a Nord: Hjalti was a Breton, and Zurin Arctus an Imperial (or an Akaviri, but that remains speculation). With this in mind and the fact that it was Cyrodiil that bled in the Great War rather than Skyrim, it's plain to see that the Imperials despise the Dominion far more than the Nords could ever imagine: they're simply smarter about their response, and arguably at least half of Skyrim is as well.

On the Stormcloak rebellion, it is by no means supported by a majority of the population. Mind you, before the Dragon Crisis it was a roughly 50/50 split with the war going in favor of the Empire, especially considering Ulfric Stormcloak's head was quite close to rolling off of the execution block. Even if the hold capitals are captured by Stormcloak forces, it remains a fact that a significant portion of the population supports the Empire, and will not sit idly by as the man they see as a tyrant and usurper tries to dominate the land they've lived in for as long as they can remember. Thus, insurgency, and I've already outlined why the Stormcloaks are ill-prepared to be the authority rather than the rebels. More or less, you're severely overestimating the popularity of the Stormcloak movement, which is dependent on its leaders rather than its people. Of the examples you've outlined, none can be properly compared to the Civil War in Skyrim, as none were nearly as divisive, dependent on a single man, and far more popular. Further, in the case of America and Cuba, these regions already possessed de facto independence and infrastructure by virtue of being colonies far removed from the primary empires. Remember that Skyrim has always been a part of the Empire: it has never been a truly independent entity for anything more than very brief periods of time, and has inevitably reintegrated after these short stretches of separation. It is dependent on the Empire, and indeed is inseparable as Skyrim is as much a defining part of the Empire as is Cyrodiil.