Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-93.209.251.189-20150202043536/@comment-1255618-20190420192603

Huh. Wow.

You definitely put a lot of thought into this, esp. you original poster, but I've got a number of counterpoints to make. Especially about Boethiah.

Boethiah is definitely a lot more neutral, or even good, than people make her/him out to be. It's pretty frustrating really. I get that people are generally biased towards the views of man over mer because we are man, but honestly to call Boethiah evil is to ignore the whole of Dark Elf civilization. Boethiah is responsible for the vast majority of their know-how and reason for being, and has helped them to survive on multiple occasions. Whereas Azura and Mephala tend to be more hands off, Boethiah actively helped the Dark Elves on more occasions than can be counted. I don't know how people can not also dislike Lorkhan if Boethiah has similar ideas; a lot of what we know about Lorkhanic philosophy comes from Boethiah, since Lorkhan himself isn't around to tell us what his philosophy is or was (and even supportive civilizations like the Nords tend not to want to go into what he believed other than "man is the best thing ever").

Plus, Boethiah is the Daedric Prince of "unlawful overthrow of authority", i.e. rebellion. Rebellion against tyranny has been an extremely important tool in the advancement of human civilization. Without it, our modern way of life would not exist, nor will it ever exist for the people of Tamriel. This video has a very in-depth look into Boethiah and makes a strong case about her/his philosophy, and the video's definitely worth a watch.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_kMQZs8cM

More than any other Prince, Boethiah tends to go back and forth, not just in terms of gender but behavior as well, which makes her/him very hard to pin down. And I think Boethiah does this on purpose, because her/his sphere is all about pushing individuals past their limits and towards anarchy and radical freedom. Only subjectively good, but not inherently evil either.

Maybe the reason unlawful characters tend to get universally or just mostly grouped into the "Chaotic Evil" category is that most people don't value freedom very much, which terrifies me honestly (so I hope it's not true). In this same vein, there's this weird idea that chaotic characters are somehow "more evil" than characters who are lawful, and vice versa. I'm not giving chaotic evil a pass or arguing that it's any less evil than the lawful variety, but lawful evil has been responsible for a lot of the worst atrocities that have ever taken place in history. It's organized. It's systematic. And it doesn't care about you, especially if you're deemed to be a "lesser" being. All submit to tyranny, or die, and you're probably going to submit but end up in a life worse than death.

Following that line of thought, Molag Bal is definitely more Lawful than Chaotic. Like all the Princes he defies simple moral classification, such as in D&D terms, but to show some contrast compare Molag Bal to Mehrunes Dagon, for example, who is a good enough example of a chaotic-leaning entity. Molag Bal is far more orderly than any of his Daedric rivals except Jyggalag and perhaps Hermaeus Mora. He is the Daedric Prince of domination and enslavement, forms of suffering that are systematic. Molag Bal isn't very interested in destruction. He's interested in making people submit to him. That's analogous to the behavior of devils in D&D. As an aside, it's also weird to me that people hold vampires to a different standard than werebeasts. Vampires can exercise greater self-control. Far too many werebeasts have no control over themselves in werebeast form, and sometimes even kill friends and loved ones in their wild frenzies. Due to these episodes of lack of control, Lycanthropy may be more dangerous than vampirism.

In any case, I'm a big fan of Lovecrat and Lovecraftian mythology, so I don't consider any of the Daedra to be evil but rather otherwordly agents with bizarre inhuman morality. They may appear evil to us, but they're amoral aliens whose purposes are unknowable to mortals; they do the things they do for reasons we wouldn't suspect or may not even comprehend. Why is Azura supposedly allied with Molag Bal? They seem to mortals to be almost exactly opposite. But their workings don't have to make sense to us: they're aliens.

With respect to Molag Bal, he seems super-happy whenever someone manages to best him. He's going to do everything he can to intimidate you and make you submit, but if you still come out on top he's nothing but impressed. He appears to just love seeing domination, even if he's the one being dominated. He seems like the kind of crazy mother-f*cker who would actually reward a follower for being able to rape him, which would be perfectly consistent with his alien morals. I'd definitely love to read a book or whatever that goes in-depth about the weirder aspects of Molag Bal's sphere, maybe from a vampire or someone with uncommon knowledge.

I would agree that by-and-large the Daedra are utlitarians though; it's just that it's not clear what ends their utilitarianism is towards other than seemingly just perpetuating their sphere. Also note that none of these entities have the ability to act outside of their sphere; it's been mentioned by characters like Vivec that the Daedra are not "free" beings because of this.

2602:30A:2EEF:B110:8A78:73FF:FE4E:E34B wrote: I definitely do NOT think Vaermina is evil, because she's only the Prince of dreams and nightmares. Also, Clavicus Vile isn't evil, more like neutral. Sheogorath is kind of more Chaotic lesser evil I'd think. Also, Jyggalag and Peryite are basically the princes of the EXACT same thing, which I find kind of funny. Interesting point about Vaermina also being the Daerdic prince of dreams. Weirdly, it's heavily implied in-universe that unlike most Daedra, Vaermina is actually responsible for dreams as a phenomenon as Quagmire has a "connection to the mortal plane". There's definitely some connection she has directly or indirectly to the Aedra that we don't understand.

As for Jyggalag and Peryite, they are both Princes of Order but princes of different kinds of order. Peryite is the Prince of Natural Order, and Jyggalag is the Prince of Rational Order. When a lion eats a gazelle, that may come across as unacceptably savage and disorganized to Jyggalag, but it may make Peryite exceptionally happy because it's an example of that ecosystem being in balance. Conversely, the Dwemer's civilization may come across as offensive to Peryite if they are not existing in harmony with nature (and he may very well call a plague on them to cull their numbers), but Jyggalag would be extremely pleased with them because they show a high degree of social order and an obsession with science and facts. Both of them enjoy the completion of tasks, but Jyggalag would rather they be done deliberately and methodically, whereas Peryite doesn't care how they get done as long as they are done quickly and don't mess with nature's balance. So while the two are similar, they are different.