Yellow Ledbetter wrote:
Quote:
How are the elves from some small island chain able to overwhelm nearly an entire continent of humans under one Empire? Â I don't understand the story and logic. Â The Thalmor should have had their clocks cleaned trying to fight Cyrodill (the most populous province), Skyrim, Hammerfal, and High Rock all at once. Â
The Empire would have a 10 to 1 population advantage over them. Â Perhaps the Thalmor had better magicians and that played a part but I don't see how they won (or nearly won) the war.
Well, size doesn't matter at all as a positive trait, it's quite the opposite.Â
The ES Empire is a parody of the Roman Empire, look what happened in reality: they were bigger, had ridiculously huge territory, were adamant fearsome soldiers, civilized, ruled for generations and had a strong surviving culture. Result? Several tribes, possibly running from the Huns, invaded the Empire, destroyed everything and put an Empire that endured for thousands of years into basically ruins. They were called barbarians, uncivilized, madmen, but they were victorious.
And why? Well, there are several motives, size is one of them. You can't control at all that many people. Also, religion was another problem. Christianity had shaken the Roman Empire, and their army tradition was bad, they were mad. We can also quote that the Emperors were getting weaker, coups everywhere, and they weren't getting so many slaves to sustain that enormous empire.
That's the point of the Mede Empire. The Mede rulers weren't as strong as Septim rulers. The Oblivion Crisis had shaken them, and also have given power to the Altmer. The Mede Empire also were very negligent with their own people. Now imagine that a huge force of Altmer, all powerful in magic, are all reunited under an extremist banner and attack this sensitive Empire. That's why they won, they had power, ideals, merpower (lol).
If you look closely, to see the difficulty of the 3rd Aldmeri Dominion winning the Mede Empire with all those aspects should lead to the difficulty of understanding how the 1st AD battling the other alliances in the 2E as equals (as they did), and also to the very unlikely event that the 2nd AD would be smashed by the army of a single individual that would reunite an entire continent. I know it's all fiction, but most wars in reality are won (and Empires fall) by very particular and special events that sometimes we wouldn't believe, but they do happen.
I'd like to bump in here for a second.
The Mede Rulers are, arguably, stronger rulers than the Septims, generally speaking. In the ±200 years they've been in charge, the only reasons they've lost territory was either from coups or a peace treaty. They did not suffer any fighting inside their own territory, which was quite the opposite with the Septim rulers. The Oblivion Crisis is also the very thing that brought the Medes to power.
As someone who has read the Novels, I can tell you that the Medes are good at what they do. When Titus Mede I took the throne, only Skyrim, and 7/9th of Cyrodiil was still part of the Empire, the rest was gone; had abandoned the Empire. The Medes personally reclaimed Hammerfell, High Rock, Leyawiin, Bravil, and Elsweyr, and that's not even counting their losses by the Umbriel Invasion.
Bethesda seems to be making something quite clear with the history of the Medes we have; they have always been in a bad situation, and they never get a chance to recover, but they are still standing. It's meant to show what the Empire's going through; rough times, but it will keep standing, and one day, recover.