User blog comment:Hippogriff12/The Scarcity of Racists in Skyrim/@comment-5280592-20120730061537/@comment-3472264-20120731034959

@Thedoucheinthenorth Ulfric is easily manipulated because while he may not be aware of it the Thalmor are the reason that he started the whole civil war and that's exactly what the Altmer wanted so that Skyrim would be weakened by the war, and he is ignorant of this fact. The Empire I will admit is somewhat under the Dominion's thumb at this point in time, but the difference is that the Empire is aware of this fact and is waiting for the best moment to do something about it, now simply is not the time given that they haven't had the appropriate amount of time to rebuild and recover.

Also Elisif/Tullius doesn't ask you to get the crown, I doubt if Elisif even knows that you are sent to retrieve it and Tullius doesn't even think it exists, Rikke sends you to get it and yes she does somewhat want it for the purpose of giving to to Elisif in the event she takes her position as High Queen but her main purpose is to prevent Ulfric from getting it so that he doesn't have a symbol for people to rally behind.

His point about Ulfric being a bad leader is somewhat valid because if he understood tactics better he wouldn't have walked blindly into that Imperial ambush with only a few men by his side or he at least wouldn't have been captured and would've gotten away. Also if you base your military tactics exclusively on ancient tradition as Ulfric does, that is a recipe for disaster. Just because someone is capable of killing one Ice Wraith does not mean they'd fare better against a group of men (I know that the player character does but they are the Dragonborn so that doesn't really count).

If Ulfric had simply kept worshiping Talos in private and let the whole thing blow over until the Empire was capable of destroying/subduing the Dominion so that people could worship Talos publicly again, hey no big deal and everyone would be happy in the end. Instead he made a huge fuss about it and started a war over it, if you escape with Hadvar and ask Alvor about the war he'll even tell you that until Ulfric caused all the fuss about it nobody really cared about the Talos ban because they could still worship in private and there's really no difference between worshiping in public and in private.