Swords swing faster, but Maces not only hit harder, they stagger your opponent more often, making up for the lack of speed in my opinion, especially when fighting an opponent who uses a shield. Also, in some of the previous TES games, skeletal monsters took half damage from bladed weps, while blunt weps did full damage. Skeletons in Skyrim are weak as hell though.
If a patch/mod comes out that ups the amount of Armor that Creatures/NPCs have, then Mace is definately a clear winner then.

There's no doubt about the veracity of your statements. The 'Mace's do double damage against Skeletons' rule has been in Role Playing Games since their inception. From table-top D&D and Vampire: the Masquerade (both of which I still love to play), it has most always been the rule that Maces and Skeletons mix as well as a Mob Enforcer with a baseball bat in a room full of kneecaps.

As I said though, I think that the speed advantage of the Sword makes up for its lack of damage when compared to the Mace. The almost constant Stagger effect is quite nice with a Mace (it's like almost having the 'Impact' Perk affecting 1H weapons...), but by the Gods, it's like swinging around a Sherman tank. And about as slow IMHO.

Like I said, I firmly agree with your assessment of the benefit of the Mace, but as for my opinion and personal play style, the Sword more than makes up for in speed what it loses to the Mace in damage.

Due to the lore of the daedra lord meridia and hatred for all undead the dawnbreaker would be an ideal weapon of choice in terms of role playing skyrim style.

I have seen a lot of other lore with paladins weilding 1 or 2 handed maces aswell as scepters which are usually one handed complimented with a shield and heavy armor.

outside of rp I am curious about the calculations invloved with critical hits so I tend not to spend perk points into sword spec and usually stick to axes and maces due to the variety in bonuses.
I normally will carry both an axe and mace of some sort if playing a melee character.
Elemental fury (dragon shout) - Increases weapon swing considerably, especially on a 2hander so the lack of attack speed is easily faster than base sword swing speed.
Yes a sword would still ultimately swing faster with the elemental fury buff but as I said the perks for axes and maces I feel over power the one for swords.
Axes and maces don't say 10% chance to bleed/ignore armor.

Its a passive.

Regardless of what weapon you do decide to role play with.. I recommend elemental fury to compliment!

I always used shield and mace with my Nord warrior character. It felt kind of badass haha.
I also kept a sword around in case I felt like doing some dual wielding.

I second this.