User blog comment:Thedoucheinthenorth/The Civil War - Why it is great/@comment-5469467-20121101051603/@comment-3492791-20121103024455

Mede may have been able to negotiate, or perhaps he felt that if he tried the Dominon would just reject his surrender. Who knows.

What I do know however is that the Empire had no intention of upholding the Concordat any more than they were required to do. The entire treaty was only to appease the Dominion, the Empire really does not truly care for it. It is shown several times throughout the game that the Empire treats the ban on Talos worship very loosely. They don't really bother to pursue the issue unless the Thalmor start looking over. As long as you aren't erecting public shines to him the Empire really doesn't bother to enforce anything. It's said by Alvor that after the war many people still had their "little shrine to Talos", but Ulfric and the Stormcloaks were the ones that took up arms about not being able to practice their belief publicly.

Even during the Markarth Incident, the Empire only bothered to do something about it after getting pressured by the Thalmor.

The Empire makes no effort to stamp out Talos worship. They only react to it when it comes up publicly to not give the Thalmor the excuse of saying they are violating the treaty and starting another war before they are prepared to fight it.