I'm probably not the first person to suggest this, but wouldn't it be cool if you could be a Jarl. You would get control of a city or maybe create a new hold and manage the holds economic, diplomatic, and domestic affairs. You would also have the job of defending your citizens. As Jarl, you could hire guards, build walls and towers, establish guilds, attract citizens to your land, and create your own economy (blacksmiths, lumber mills, merchant shops, farms, etc). The dragonborn could hire advisors, knight soldiers, appoint thanes, and have diplomats to keep relations with other holds, the empire, and the Thalmor (and maybe other provinces). The jarl could customize his coat of arms, pick out the armor for his guards, and pick a guard captain. This might be pushing it, but maybe hold expansions? The jarl would also be in charge of building a chapel (worshiping the nine or the eight...or maybe daedric princes). The jarl would be charged with defending his people from foreign and domestic threats (bandits, criminals, stormcloaks or imperials, Thalmor). This idea has a lot of possibilities.
Another topic that was left unanswered was who will take the throne of Skyrim. For a high king to be crowned, the moot must convene. It would give the dragonborn a chance to test his/her diplomatic skills out...and maybe take the throne..that's just wishful thinking though.
The last thing is the civil war. Once the civil war is ended, the Thalmor threat is still at large. If you joined the Legion and ended the rebellion, maybe it's time for the second clash of the titans. The Thalmor know that the white-gold concordat is only a temporary calm between storms; it's only a matter of time before the final conflict. If you sided with the Stormcloaks and freed Skyrim, you have to know the Thalmor will invade sooner or later (probably the whole take over Tamerial thing...and the hating on Talos). Either way, the Thalmor conflict is inevitable.

Any thoughts?

My thoughts are that it hurts my eyes to try and read your post, maybe try a bigger font please?

Anyway - what would you be Jarl of? There are nine holds and all of them are spoken for already.

Re: I'm probably not the first person to suggest this, but wouldn't it be cool if you could be a Jarl. You would get control of a city or maybe create a new hold and manage the holds economic, diplomatic, and domestic affairs. You would also have the job of defending your citizens. As Jarl, you could hire guards, build walls and towers, establish guilds, attract citizens to your land, and create your own economy (blacksmiths, lumber mills, merchant shops, farms, etc). The dragonborn could hire advisors, knight soldiers, appoint thanes, and have diplomats to keep relations with other holds, the empire, and the Thalmor (and maybe other provinces). The jarl could customize his coat of arms, pick out the armor for his guards, and pick a guard captain. This might be pushing it, but maybe hold expansions? The jarl would also be in charge of building a chapel (worshiping the nine or the eight...or maybe daedric princes). The jarl would be charged with defending his people from foreign and domestic threats (bandits, criminals, stormcloaks or imperials, Thalmor). This idea has a lot of possibilities.
Another topic that was left unanswered was who will take the throne of Skyrim. For a high king to be crowned, the moot must convene. It would give the dragonborn a chance to test his/her diplomatic skills out...and maybe take the throne..that's just wishful thinking though.
The last thing is the civil war. Once the civil war is ended, the Thalmor threat is still at large. If you joined the Legion and ended the rebellion, maybe it's time for the second clash of the titans. The Thalmor know that the white-gold concordat is only a temporary calm between storms; it's only a matter of time before the final conflict. If you sided with the Stormcloaks and freed Skyrim, you have to know the Thalmor will invade sooner or later (probably the whole take over Tamerial thing...and the hating on Talos). Either way, the Thalmor conflict is inevitable.

Any thoughts?

Solitude......Take Elisif as the old wifey and its all sorted

I think that at the end of the civil war quest you should get the city you helped take over and become jarl there

I still don't see how it would work. The existing holds of Skyrim seem to be pretty well established, and the Jarls do hold their positions based on some variation on the right of succession, meaning that not just anyone can be a Jarl. Presumably you have to be descended from one of the accepted "royal" or "noble" Nord bloodlines to even qualify.

Also, I don't see how removing a current Jarl from his/her position is gonna fly, while the CW is ongoing it's imperative for the leader of each faction to retain the loyalty of the Jarls they've already got in their respective corners, and removing one of them in favor of some upstart would run the risk of turning the deposed individual into an enemy. Removing one of them after it's all over would be little better, as it's not much of a way to thank them for the loyalty they showed all during the conflict.

Creating a new hold would be just as difficult, where's the land going to come from? You'd have to take it away from one or more of the other existing holds, I don't think that's going to win you much goodwill from the Jarls whose territories you are reducing just to give a token throne to someone else. Not to mention the fact that having ten holds could be a problem when it comes time for the moot to vote on anything, if you get a 5-5 tie then who's going to cast the deciding vote?

For me personally, nah I don't want to be a Jarl, all they do all day is sit on their thrones and then go sleep for a few hours and get up and do it all over again. If I wanted to micromanage the adminstration of a city and all its official business I'd be playing the type of game that caters to that, not Skyrim.

Just my two cents, FWIW.

Or kick her out and take her clothes

We should have become the Jarl of the opposing city in the end of the civil war quest IE. Solitude or Windhelm .. Such a missed opportunity..

lol

I think make Ulfric king and marry him sounds good to me

But I wouldn't want to be Jarl of Windhelm. The place is too cold and uninviting.

I'm with you there. AND get Elisif's clothes. And if I could move to Dragonsreach and get that view from my bedroom as well, oh what a perfect game it would be! ;D

This sounds like a completely different game. As big as a game skyrim is, I don't think you should be controlling a city from your throne. Sounds more like the Sims : Medieval times version.


Then again, who am I to tell you what you want?

All this diplomacy, hiring people and building things just isn't practical. You're lucky if anyone even notices you're head of a guild as it is. Not to mention all this stuff would require massive amounts of work to ever be implemented.

Personally I'm glad you can't become a Jarl. Being able to be thane of every hold and head of every guild is pushing things too as it is IMO.

id make a vampire city dedicated to molag. id be a a vampire lord and have loads of slaves. Thered be a temple to molag bal and evry day thered be a sacrafice in his name.

Yes! Dragonsreach does have an amazing view! Ah...if only!

It's funny, I actually love WIndhelm. It's my primary residence and I enjoy wandering around the city. But then I prefer winter over summer, and tend to like my scenery a little more sparse and rugged. I feel like I'm in a place with some genuine history.

Solitude may well be the most "objectively" beautiful major city in the game by popular standards, but I hate it. It has very little character as a city IMO and it's almost like it's intended to be so perfect that it's just boring instead. And the interior of Proudspire, that architectural style, is far more cold and uninviting IMO than any other house in the game, including Vlindrel Hall. And given my feelings about Dwemer ruins and things that remind me of them, that's really saying something.

I go to the Reach for my rugged beauty. But I'm not a big fan of the Understone Keep, either.

And Solitude just plain annoys me, but for very different reasons.

I'm not a big fan of Understone Keep because of the Dwemer machinery in there that emits that "steam hiss" sound every few seconds. I've been conditioned to associate that sound with the imminent appearance of Falmer who very much want to kill me, therefore it and Understone Keep always give me the willies.

Not a big fan of Markarth at all, really, generally speaking I don't like the Dwemer style very much (probably to do with the preponderance of Dwemer metal, and yellow/gold being a color that I absolutely hate). But overall it's the fact that the whole city is just rotten to the core and the deeper you dig the worse it gets.

I'd like this on a smaller scale.

Why is it that when I become Harbringer or the companions I can't assign people to do different jobs, or something similar? Wouldn't it be awesome to manage all of the dark brotherhood assassins out of the dawnstar sanctuary?

Yes because being what is essentially a stay at home politician is fun... Jarls are too important to go gallivanting around underground Dwarven ruins or shirking their duties to run around in someone else's hold killing dragons and bandits.

If you become a Jarl you have to sit at home all day every day, dealing with whiny nobles, messengers and the duties of city managing.

Look at for example a Prime Minister or a President, they don't get to gear up and hop on a plane to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban personally.

Sure it is nice to have a funky title, but you don't want the responsibility, otherwise you'd end up playing one of the Civilization games and not Skyrim.

Somehow a Khajiit thief/assasin, as Jarl of Solitude, just doesn't seem quite right.

I guess because the whole point of a game like Skyrim is for the player to go out and do things. Not hang out at some HQ somewhere giving other people orders to go out and do things.

But I agree that, at the very least, once you become the head of a faction, there should be some subtle changes that indicate your new position. They are there sometimes in Skryim, but often negated by the next thing that a faction associate says (prime example: Delvin or Vex in the TG will refer to you as the boss or leader, then berate you for not taking whatever piddly job they just offered you. Or you turn around to find Vekel standing there, still making the same disparaging comment about you to your face that he did when you first walked in the door as new meat).

Stuff like that is extremely irritating and immersion-breaking. And I've said elsewhere that the continuation of the faction radiant quests without any acknowledgment of your new status is also kinda lame, it would be nice if something were added so that when you asked if there was work to be done you would have the option to tell the would-be questgiver to assign that job to another member of the faction, instead of just doing it like you're the one taking orders, or turning it down and getting sassed by a subordinate about it.

That way if you still wanted to do radiant quests for the faction now and again, you could ask your "field commanders" (for lack of a better term) what jobs are available without it seeming like you're still a newb taking orders from everybody else.

I want there to be more power in your military position. All you get for completing the Civil War questline is a title that means nothing.

For example, I'm a Legate in the Legion, but all that means is I get to influince one or two very minor quests in Solitude. I want the rank to actually grant you something, like having Guards under the Legion listen to you, or have an extra options when being arrested (similar to the "I'm the Thane" action.)

I'll make a post in my own thread on this later.

That would actually be pretty cool.

The one thing I found that worked to my advantage after finishing the CW was that it turned out to be much easier to become Thane in the holds that changed hands when my side took control of them. I had not become Thane of anything prior to completing the war, except for Eastmarch, because I was playing for the Stormcloaks so that one was almost a gimme. So I fully expected that I would still have to do special quests for each Jarl in every other hold.

However when I went to Markarth and approached the new Jarl there to start the process of getting the title, he told me immediately that as a reward for my military service I was granted the right to buy property in the city. Then when I asked if there was anything else he needed, I got the offer to become Thane if I bought a house there and helped the people of the hold. Did the former immediately, had already taken care of 5/5 of the latter, so went back to the Jarl and was made Thane then and there. Happened pretty much the same way in Morthal as well, I didn't have to do any prerequisite "befriend the Jarl" quest to be offered the title, just help the people of the hold and report back. Apparently helping to put the new Jarls in power was all the "befriending" they required.

Probably serves me right that I can't seem to get Elisif to grant me the title for Haafingar, I've done all the requisite quests and the "helping the people" bit but something's got glitched and the dialogue options aren't there for her. She told me when I got the right to buy the house that it would be the first step in becoming Thane, so I've bought the house and followed up on the Potema thing and got the Shield but no love from the Jarl when it comes to closing the deal on my title.

Marry Idgrod the Younger.

Kill Idgrod Ravencrone

Usurp Morthal

???

Profit!