Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-24587225-20150902024621/@comment-32889533-20170818160723

If no one wins, the Thalmor keep weakeining 2 enemies for free. If the Empire wins, the Thalmor need to win a war against Cyrodiil, High Rock AND Skyrim, but they'll be weakened, and they would have dropped the cult of Thalos, both of which are things they want. If the Stormcloaks win, the Empire will be massivelly weakened and ripe for the taking, but that leaves them with Skyrim being hostile to them and still worshipping Talos. Both results have their advantages and dissadvantages.

Ellenwen seems to "side" with the empire, but still throws more logs to the fire in the meeting at high hrothgard by saying it's the Empire, not the Thalmor killing the nords. The Legate's answer seems to imply she was under the impression Ellenwen is on their side. Ellenwen preffers the war to keep going, but it seems they preffer an imperial victory in the end, probabl because that makes it so they succeeded in rooting out the cult of Thalos.

While in th elong term the Thalmor have some weird theological goals, their immediate goal is to create an age of elven supremacy, like the last 2 or 3 have been of human supremacy. The Altmer have understandably long been sick of the humans always rulling everything. Presumably they want to either fracture the empire and make it so each province is important by itself, making Alinor the most powerful province and as such the center fo the world (althogh for that they'd have to open their borders a lot more) or capture the Imperial city and establish themselves as the 4th empire. I mean, Ayrenn, the creator of the first Aldmeri dominion -did- want the Empire to be led by elves for once instead of humans.