Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-27007772-20140611204941/@comment-70.134.49.246-20141130053043

First time playing through Skyrim, with my only previous experience being Oblivion. I was all ready to be a good little Stormcloak--hey, these guys tried to kill me, and besides, empires=bad while rebel freedom fighters=good, right? Right!

I put off advancing the Civil War as I just wanted to get the lay of the land. As I adventured, I encountered the books detailing the evil scheming of the Thalmor among their own people. Then, in the Dragonborn questline, I obtained and read the Thalmor dossier on Ulfric. Put these two together, and it was obvious that a) the Thalmor are the greatest (mortal) threat to Tamriel, and b) Ulfric is their Manchurian Candidate, a sleeper agent helping them to subvert Cyrodiil just as they subverted the Aldmeri Dominion. Once I realized that, I could not side with him, regardless of all the social and political window-dressing that the game includes to support the idea of this choice being neutral or muddied.

Some of this in-game neutrality includes statements that Ulfric is less receptive to the Thalmor than he was, and that their main interest is to keep the civil war going--that either side winning would be less advantageous for them. But with Ulfric having been their brainwashed pawn before, I refuse to trust him with consolidated power.