I read on elderscrolls wikia/uesp and even on the loading pages that the 'not so evil' daedra are Azura, boethiah and mephala.
How can they be considered not so evil, since some of them are even more evil than others?

Azura cursed the Dunmers, Boethiah is interested in murders, betrayal etc and he is definitely more evil than other daedras this way. And Mephala is the lady of whispers where you use the ebony sword and kill people. Mephala is also the prince of lies, deceive and plots, and is associated with the Darkbrotherhood i think. How can these 3 daedras be less evil than any other daedras? perityte isnt that evil, haemus Mora is just a knowledge daedra and shegorath is funny. Should these 3 daedras be less evil than mephala, azura and boethiah?

next, who is meridia? Is she a new daedra? From wiki, in the 3rd era(oblivion) there are already 16 daedras if u considered Jyggalag(same guy as shegorath). After jyggalag is gone there are only 15 daedras left. So is Meridia a new daedra? Can she be considered not so evil?

Meridia isn't new. She is the one that hates Undead and is considered one of the few 'good' ones. Azura is considered 'good' as she cares about her worshipers more than other daedra. She warned the Dunnmer about Red Mountain for instane. Also Jyggalag isn't dead, you can't kill a daedra. In fact im wondering why theres is no quest assosiated with him now that he's free of his curse...

Smas

There are plenty more daedric princes than just the sixteen.

'Funny' as in more like the Joker than your friendly neighborhood clown.

Well Sheogorath 1.0 was.

The new one might be good or evil, though he's now a god of a realm of chaos.

Keep in mind, that Azura's curse was to make the Dunmer look cool. They went from being your ordinary goldenrod high elves to badass-looking dark elves. Talk about a win for the Dunmer. So we cannot fault her for that.

The other ones like Mephala and Boethia helped the Chimer (which the Dunmer were called at the time), when they first left Summerset and colonized Morrowind. Deceit and murder being useful when taking over a foreign land. So after that apparently the Dunmer just learned to turn a blind eye to the two of them slaughtering their Dunmer worshipers, in respect for what they did for them in the old days. Okay, I have trouble believing that as well.

Meridia was always around too, though I cannot recall if she was considered to be one of the 'good' Daedra by the Dunmer. She is a goddess of life energies, and opposes the undead. But that did not stop her from obliterating an Ayleid city in the past (Go to Sideways Cave in Oblivion, don't want to spoil any more than that). She also backed Umaril the Unfeathered against Alessia and Pelinal. So apparently she could not make up her mind about whether she wanted to wipe out the Ayleids, or protect them. But then again, IRL deities can be fickle that way too.

Peryite is a god of diseases, as well as "ordering the lower echelons of Oblivion" whatever the latter means. Maybe he is the Daedric slum lord, who gives folks a bonus of syphilis on the side.

Herm Mora is a god of knowledge. His realm of Apocphrya is basically a huge library with literally everything recorded within. People who have managed to go there never come back, because they lose themselves in the stacks. I do not mean just get physically lost. They lose their sense of self, their personality, their individuality. They are swallowed up by the realm. His quest in Oblivion was to have you murder a member of every race.

Sheogorath, at least the one most of us know before the Shivering Isles expansion of Oblivion, is best compared to the Joker. He's a homicidal lunatic whose idea of fun is skipping rope with someone's intestines. Or cheese for everyone. It just all depends on which mood strikes him at the time.

Azura isn't that bad. Yes she cursed the Dunmer, but she's continued to help them. She foresaw the coming of Dagoth Ur and helped stop him. And she also foresaw Red Year and led those that listened to her away from Morrowind before the eruption.

Boethiah and Mephala, on the other hand, are pretty nasty.

I think the Daedric Princes can't really be called good vs. evil.

But some really are.

yes they are all evil, or they're just buttholes. Its more the latter, they lack perception into the mortal mindset, like a child burning ants with a magnifying glass. Some of them are less buttholeish, sheo apparently made music and art, meridia opposes undead of all kinds,

the velothi worshiped them, and they wound up with anticapations, which i think are what the daedra would have been if they were "good"

Meridia, daughter of Magnus, was an Aedra who was kicked out Aetherius for 'consorting with illicit spectra'. I do not know what it means. But that's the Lore.

Only the Dunmer are strange enough to consider Boethiah or Mephala anything but evil.

The Daedric princes aren't necessarily "good" or "evil".At least not in their eyes.Only men,mer, and Aedra pass judgement onto them because they can distinguish the differences.Each prince has control over a few aspects and that's it.It's all they know.They cannot change.Mehrunes Dagon rules over destruction,change, revolution, energy, and ambition. He is not Azura.He was not born to rule Dawn and Dusk.
Now you could say; "Well Sheogorath changes into Jygglag. Daedra can change." No, they can't.Unless another Daedra or Aedra places a curse or change upon them.As far as I'm aware.

Each Aedra and Daedra has their place.And their aspects and laws are what literally makes the world go around.

For example: Where one person might see Peryite's disease and pestilence as a vile and destructive thing, another might see it as a way to control population and balance out the eco-system.

Illicit means forbidden and spectra is the plural form of the word spectrum (conditions or values that vary over a continuum). So she was basicly manipulating things that shouldn't be tampered with.

There are three types of Daedra: Light Grey, Dark Grey, and EVIL!!! Everyone has their own personal views as well.
The Light Grey's are: Azura, who is the closest thing to a 'Good' Daedra; and Meridia, who hates undead.
All the other Princes are either Dark Grey or EVIL!!!
Jyggalag, Peryite, and Sheogorath are NOT Light Grey. They are Dark Grey, because unlike Azura and Meridia, do not really care to much about mortals beyond what immediate use they are.

Sheogorath is NOT a nice guy. Read 16 Accords of Madness, v. XII.

But that was a a different Sheogorath...

She turned their skin "as black as their hearts." Never trust a Dunmer, especially if your name is Indoril Nerevar.

Azura doesn't seem evil to me. She's doesn't seem good either. Most of the other daedric princes seem pretty darn evil though.

Meridia seems pretty nice though. I don't get the impression she'd stab me in the back or otherwise arrange my death.

I'm not big on the lore, but wasnt Azura's turning the Chimer into the Dunmer punishment for the Tribunal's actions at Red Mountain? Punishing evil deeds doesnt strike me as being evil.

EDIT: Yes, punsihing the entire race was extreme, et cetera.

Punishing an entire people because they were misled by their leaders strikes me as pretty evil.

Yeah, I was gonna say that, but meh.

Yes, because cursing an entire race and all of their decendants based on the actions of a few isn't evil at all.

That said, I think Azura is notably less evil than most other Daedra. In D&D terms I'd give her a neutral alignment, I think. Pretty much all other Daedra are definitely evil. Meridia might merit a good alignment.

Are you sure about that? The only ones I remember being called "not so evil" in the loading screens are Azura and Meridia. The UESP article on Daedric Princes says:


So the UESP does suggest that Boethiah IS evil. Are you sure you're not confusing the names?

Daedra are not good or evil they're spirits dominated by certain urges. Together as a whole they represent the change and the evolution: the driving force behind the constant shift and renewal of the plane.

They certainly seem capable of reasoning but they're prisoners of their role as they don't seem capable of acting in contrast to what they're tasked to preside. The fact that they appear to be apathetic towards mortals may be interpeted only as the impossibility to have true feelings on their own except the constant urges that bind them to act in a certain way.

And she also made the Khajiit look cooler than the wood elves Except the poor Ohmes

Although supposedly "Azurah" and "Azura" are not the same being

I don't see how any of that makes it so "Daedra are not good or evil."