Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-25343239-20150319182007/@comment-260563-20180324023719

Take a good look at the other two provinces of the Aldmeri Dominion:

Valenwood: taken over by "Thalmor Sympathizers" before the Great War, by the time of the war, its people have been reduced to servitude like Brelas, or are openly plotting against the Thalmor like Malborn because the Thalmor killed their families. No Thalmor soldier is of Bosmeri descent.

Elsweyr: Swore allegiance to the Thalmor for "solving" a crisis involving the moons, once again, like the Bosmer, the Khajiit have no military presence in the Thalmor. Instead, what we do see are people trying to get out of Elsweyr. We have Khajiit who join trading caravans, who would rather face persecution and harassment from foreigners in Imperial lands rather than stay back home, just so they can make a buck.

We have Khajiit who want to learn magic like J'zargo, who would rather go hook up with either the Synod or the College of Winterhold rather than stay home or go to Alinor. Why is that? Why would he pick politicians and a small college on the ass end of the Empire rather than go to the Thalmor to learn magic? Because the Thalmor don't open their borders to their "allies". They just let their allies rot in squalor, or in the case of the Bosmer, they kill them off or make them servants.

And this is all coming from the games and the lore, which is, of course, CANON.

Unlike what we see in the Imperial half of Skyrim, where Imperial businesses and the Imperial Legion are liberal with sharing their coin with the locals, the Thalmor don't invest in their provinces. They don't cultivate armies there, they don't even bother giving aid such as giving Thalmor bodyguards for Khajiit caravans so they don't get looted. Instead, the Thalmor are content to just let their allies rot, whereas the Empire treats its allies like friends and lets them join the Imperial Legion, or trade with businesses like the East Empire Company.

And that's why the Aldmeri Dominion owning three provinces DOESN'T MATTER FOR SHIT. They can't use those provinces for war. They didn't cultivate military or economic assets there that can help with a war. All they did was let one province rot in poverty while killing off/enslaving people in the other.

And when we go back to the Dominion capital province of Alinor, what do we have? A population that doesn't breed as fast, that LOST MOST OF ITS ARMY IN THE LAST WAR. What they project is a mere illusion of power, not ACTUAL power, since the last time they tried to project real power in places like Hammerfell, they lost. While their remaining forces are more than a match for the Stormcloaks, they cannot face two to three provinces whose armies and peoples are held together by a common cause. And while they're still recovering from the last war, humans have a faster breeding rate than the Elves, and it's been decades since the last war. By that time, with their population growth and coin, the humans would have raised enough men, while the Altmer, having a small population rate AS PER TES CANON, cannot recover as fast.

And if the Dominion tried to draft the peoples of the other two provinces to go to war with the Empire, that won't end well either, because they've already alienated the Bosmer, while their apathetic treatment of the Khajiit means that the cat-folk won't be eager to die for the Altmer. More likely, if they suffer enough casualties, they'll pull out, while the Bosmer might even go so far as to rebel and join the Empire.

So yeah, the Empire will win. That is an indisputable fact.