OK, this is a pretty complicated question, I'll try my best to explain it well.

So, from Oblivion to Skyrim, they kind of had to say what happened in the 200 year gap, right? My question is, how did they decide what actually happened? The player character is the same guy, and from a realistic point, I can hardly see them saying that it was this one guy who became Arch-Mage, Listener, Leader of the Fighters Guild and the Gray Fox. Did they just not tell us these things? Like I said, difficult to explain. I guess I could say it like this - is it written in stone that, in the games lore, the player character in Oblivion did all of those things?

And my question continues. In the next game, 1) who will have actually won the civil war? Surely, they have to make a choice. | 2) Did the DB kill the emperor and did the Dragonborn save the world whilst being Arch-Mage, Guildmaster of the TG, Listener of the DB and Harbinger? Or will, in the next game, this not have happened as far as lore is concerned?

It's as I said, pretty complicated to explain. But hopefully you get my general idea. Is stuff that happens in 1 TES game remembered in the next, I guess?

They decide what is canon the same way anyone else would. Its their story, so whatever they want to tell becomes canon.

As for all the different guilds, I think the player character doesn't personally do all of them, but the events of the quest lines are canon, so "someone" killed the emperor, someone became arch mage, etc. But that is just my thought on it. As it really wouldn't make sense for someone to support the empire in the civil war, and kill the emperor, though one could easily roleplay as such, but from a canon perspective, I couldn't imagine it being the same person.

And as for who won the war, I have no idea. I think it could go either way, unless someone has anything to tip the balance on the matter.

Shouldn't this be in the Spoilers section (mainly because of the Emperor stuff)?

As for Oblivion, canon states that "the new Archmage did this and that" - without specifying his or her name. It's the same for other guilds. It could be Champion of Cyrodiil, it could be someone else.

Skyrim will be more complicated because they have at least two major decisions to make: who won the Civil War and what happened to the Dark Brotherhood. I suspect the Emperor will die, but the circumstances will be lost to history. The war... I don't know, but I hope they're not going to pull another Warp in the West, that would be terrible.

OK, I think I get the idea. They don't specify who done those things. And yes, I think it will be more complicated from Skyrim to TES6. But may I ask, what is "Warp in the West"?

For the DB it's really easy, not much is left of it no matter what you do during your playthrough. And if you decide to finish the DB off, Cicero is still out there with corpse lady. For the civil war thing we have the Thalmor who appear to manipulate both sides, so probably both Tulius and Ulfric get killed in the future and the Empire and Skyrim will be united again, even if it's just an alliance instead of Skyrim beeing actually part of the Empire.

And hey, the Dovahkiin could still become the Emperor, wouldn't be the first Dragonborn to do something like that.


Without spoiling too much, it's the events of TES2: Daggerfall. It had multiple endings and thanks to a Dragon Break (kind of a time anomaly) and all of them became true.