Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-209.7.3.188-20160303204000/@comment-26459635-20161102102635

Terawolf119 wrote:

''' 1 . Do you know why? Highlight this message if cant see it- The premise for an official state is to sign off armed protection to a community that will en able what we call civilization (for people to do things not directly related to survival). Tax es are in basic form money for protection, both socially and militarily. When the Empire signed the treaty, they gave away a part of their citizen's social and military protection in favor of saving their image as an empire (being an empire depends on them having control over another region that is not considered part of the core state, see: Roman Empire, British Empire, Mongolian Empire etc.) '''

To sum things up, the Empire didn't hold up their part of the bargain in terms of protection and it's citizens are therefore free to refuse paying taxes and joining opposing forces without being morally wrong.

2.Ashely already explained that, but here, chew on this,  Probably one of the biggest reasons why people dislike the Stormcloaks is for racial reasons. They believe the organization to be racist against elves and wary of outsiders in general. Are there racists within the Stormcloak army? Of course, quite a few in fact. If you promise a nation that you will eradicate the Thalmor from their homeland you will naturally get a lot of racists coming into your ranks. These are people who have lived under the oppressive tyranny of an extremist group. Many of them know little of elvish culture other than what the Thalmor have showed them. That doesn't exactly bode well for the acceptance of a foreign race.

'''The next biggest argument is that Ulfric himself is racist because of the way he treats the Dunmer. What people fail to understand is that the Dunmer came to Windhelm after the destruction of Vvardenfell as refugees... over a hundred years ago. Would you be pissed if a bunch of foreigners were given land in your city free of charge and didn't even make an effort to leave or return to what is left of Morrowind? Probably. Ulfric has no reason to let them stay in his city. The fact that they are essentially parasites which have turned a significant portion of the city into a slum  which they then blame the Nords for forcing them to live on  doesn't exactly give them the moral high ground. I love Dunmer culture, but you can't look at me with a straight face and say that the Dunmer haven't created their own problems in Windhelm.'''

 please don't make text unreadable like this, it's fucking annoying

the empire still does protect the security of its law-abiding citizens. the thalmor can't just do whatever they want, they can only act out the white-gold concordat. also, the stormcloaks are incapable of guaranteeing the security of skyrim's people, as they cannot win a war against the thalmor