Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-27007772-20140611204941/@comment-67.168.15.42-20150331035554

Man alive, I wish they went the New Vegas route and allowed the dragonborn to rule Skyrim. That way you could choose your own jarls (and kill Maven), feel more like you have an impact on the civil war quest line, and allow you to play how you want. Does your dragonborn wish to keep sovereignty over Skyrim? How do you want your relationship with the empire to be? One the will eventually become a strong alliance while maintaining independence. Obviously that didn't happen.

I agree with the reoccurring sentiment that there isn't really one clear option; that said I tend to ally with the empire.

I think people give the empire an unfair shake for agreeing to the idiotic concordat, however the alternative would have been a Thalmor military foothold within Cyrodiil which would have allowed them to regroup in the mainland so they could eventually take over the fractured nations. Or in other words, everything the previous posted, though the did an amazing job at explaining it.

Why did I call it idiotic? Well the terms are very much designed to split the empire in pieces. Give up a portion of Hammerfell? If it worked as mentioned then they would have a military presence in the mainland. If things went wrong it would sour the relationship with cyrodiil and Hammerfell. Which is why I think the redguard "won" over the Thalmor. The Thalmor might not have wanted to take Hammerfell at that very instance, but they could still achieve their secondary goal and divide the empire making Hammerfell a decent target in the future. The other stipulation was the banning of Talos. This is an orchestrated move as the Thalmor most likely gathered that the Nords were a sentimental and tradition based people and the worship of their ascended god is rather important to them. So again they have two win conditions; Nords rebel and fracture the empire further or Nords acquiesce and the Thalmor destroys another aspect of Lodrhan (sic). Ulfric is amusingly not as vital to this as one may think because even if the Nords agreed in the short term to the ban, someone would eventually get fed up (Nords are a sentimental people) and start a small set of rebellions. Ulfric is the ideal pawn though as he is very emotional, has a strong distrust of the empire, and is in a position of power.

The Thalmor can sod off.

So a united empire has somewhat of a better chance of defending itself, than a bunch of squabbling nations. If one of the bickering nations fall, the Thalmor has a foothold. The question isn't if Skyrim can defeat the Thalmor. It's a question if anyone else can do it alone.

The argument that I do think has validity on the Stormcloak side is why should the be part of an empire that is decaying; outside of the Thalmor threat, I can't think of many reasons.

DRAGONBORN FOR PRESIDENT 2016 : I might not be completely evil!