Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-25343239-20150319182007/@comment-121511-20150319202233

Heroes disappear after their events: by the time a Second Great War can rear its head, the Last Dragonborn will be long gone. This has been the case with every Hero, and for good out-of-setting reasons: Heroes are easily powerful enough to safeguard the realm from any threat, and writers cannot account for every player's characterization of a particular Hero. Some players' Last Dragonborn may be Thalmor sympathizers or Altmeri Supremacists. Thus, Heroes depart after their prophecies are fulfilled: thus was the case of the Nerevarine, thus was the case with the Champion of Cyrodiil, thus will be the case of the Last Dragonborn.

Besides this, the Dominion has no need to conquer Skyrim, only to destroy the Empire. It knows that an independent Skyrim, an independent Hammerfell, so on and so forth poses no threat to their long-term goals, which is to say the unmaking of Mundus. One does not need to conquer the province that houses it in order to deactivate a Tower: the only reason the Dominion actively seeks to destroy the Empire is due to the fact that it is the only military power that is remotely capable, if it knew the Thalmor Endgame, of foiling their plans. The Dominion are perfectly content to continue carving up the Empire province by province, until all that remain are a lot of squabbling independent states that pose no threat to them. With the largest threat to their long-term goals ended, they are free to set their greatest minds upon figuring out how to deactivate the last of the Towers and undo Creation.

And of course, even disregarding the Dominion, a Stormcloak victory does not mean peace and happiness in Skyrim. On the contrary, I would argue it would lead to even more turmoil. A significant portion of the population remains sympathetic to the Empire, guaranteeing a post-war pro-Imperial insurgency. The difference here is that while the Empire has had a great deal of experience in counterinsurgency and ample resources to draw from to combat it, the Stormcloaks have neither. Skyrim's population has been exhausted by the Civil War, the Dragon Crisis, and the Vampire Crisis: many of the men and women of fighting age are dead or too injured to fight again, the local economy has taken a shock, and the entire province is in sore need of reconstruction. While the Legion can draw on recruits from the Orcish Strongholds, the lands of High Rock, or the Imperial Heartland, the Stormcloaks can only draw on this already battered population. Further, the Stormcloaks are a movement whose momentum is a result of rebellion against authority: one needs to look no further than real-world history to see how new regimes that come about from spontaneous and poorly-planned rebellions that do not hold majority lead quickly to more Civil War.