Third Era

For thirty eight years, the Emperor Tiber Septim reigned, bequeathing the throne of Tamriel to his grandson Pelagius on his deathbed. The Septim family, occasionally inclusive of adopted and married members, has ruled ever since.

Within a few generations, however, the family had begun to develop rivalries and jealousies which exploded into a civil war in the year 3E 120. The War of the Red Diamond ended with the death of Uriel III and his mother Queen Potema of Solitude, but its reverberations may still be felt today. The unity of Empire was never again to be assumed.

The Emperors who followed, such as the Sheogorath kissed Pelagius III, yielded to the authority of the Elder Council to keep some semblance of order in the land. It was only to evident what occured when the Empire was without a strong leader. In the most horrible example, the people of Valenwood, the Colovian West, and Hammerfell suffered under the depredations of the Camoran Usurper, who ravaged the land with undead and daedric hordes for nearly twenty years before his defeat in 3E 267.

Beginning with the Empress Morihatha, however, the rulers of Tamriel have been extraordinarily strong and capable. This has not meant that the last one hundred and twenty years have been the most peaceful in Tamriel's history, utterly devoid of bloodshed, merely that the wars and troubles of the recent past are a pale imitation of what has occured before.

The most famous trouble of recent years came early in the reign of Emperor Uriel Septim VII. By wile and sorcery, his trusted battlemage Jagar Tharn imprisoned and impersonated his liege. The ten years that Tharn reigned, the so called Imperial Simulacrum, was a time when old troubles resurfaced, forgotten grudges rekindleded, and wars flared throughout the land. In the east Morrowind attacked Black Marsh in the Arnesian War, in the north, Skyrim battled High Rock and Hammerfell in the War of Bend'r-Mark, in the south, Elsweyr took arms against Valenwood in the Five Year War, in the west, Valenwood also lost land to its old ally Summerset in the War of the Blue Divide.

Yet all of these troubles, and even more recent bizarre circumstances in the Iliac Bay and Morrowind, paint only a picture of blood. In the year 3E 422, the Empire stands strong and united.