Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-10993011-20130618024431/@comment-97.67.246.168-20130819042109

The most likely scenario to me is that there will be a Dragonbreak and they will somehow stitch all the possible outcomes together (maybe Ulfric and Elisif, poor thing, end up married, that would be the simplest solution). Titus Mede II may not be killed by the Dark Brotherhood, but an assassin probably will get him later. Since we don't know what's going on in Cyrodiil while all this is happening, possibly Titus II has one or more successors, but this business with Amaund ties into a coup staged by the Elder Council and the successors are assassinated round about the same time as Titus II. The Elder Council takes over, with or without Amaund. He seems sort of incompetent anyway, so I think he's probably being manipulated by someone else. An interregnum ensues, during which the second war with the Thalmor happens. Some sort of Emperor emerges out of the ashes of the second great war and the Empire recovers lost ground by the time the next game comes around.

I really don't think that Bethesda wants to get rid of the Empire, so I doubt they're going to let it fall completely. I would LOVE to see our Dragonborn take the throne after the second great war and start another line of Dragonblood Emperors, but it does seem like it would be too difficult to reconcile the different character choices enough to write a stable history around that, even with a Dragonbreak. I think the most likely scenario is that the Dragonborn will beat back the Thalmor to give the next Empire a fighting chance and to restore Talos worship, possibly die as part of some final glorious battle thing, and be subsumed into the Talos complex.

I just hope that the next non MMO Elder Scrolls game that comes out relatively soon, because I really want to know how they're going to solve all these paradoxes.