Nords were already part of the empire... they could already have Nordic leadership from within the empire. The secession is about some god that they could still worship secretly (along with the empire) until ulfric got his panties in a bunch and put talos worship all over the radar.

Instead of building strength with the rest of the empire, the shortsighted ulfric let's pride dictate his actions instead of brains. Milk drinker doesn't understand war. He's so fail. If he really cared for Skyrim, he'd offer his nomination of dovahkiin for high king.

Nothing contradicts it. Ulfric didn't hold the city hostage from Igmund (or rather, Igmund's father), he barred the Legion from coming in. In fact, there's nothing specifying that the promise was made before Ulfric entered Markarth.


No, Cedran (guy at the stables) says (regarding Jarl Igmund):
Igmund says his father was killed trying to negotiate with the Forsworn. Hence, he died after the Forsworn had been driven out but before the Nords and Empire stopped trying to negotiate with them.

Reading through the parts of the discussion after I left I can see that people are too worried about the "right" choice. Bottom-line is there is no right choice here. Both sides have their good and bad sides, and with the staggering amounts of unknown factors we have to calculate we do not know how independant Skyrim vs. Imperial Skyrim will fare in the future.
At the end of the day one should side with the ones one believes is the better choice, or what your character would do if you roleplay.

I was a Dunmer, so I took it as the best interests of my race to back the Imperials. Those racist Stormcloaks would have surely eradicated or atleast abused all of my Dunmer kind, so I reasoned that my race (especially those in the Gray Quarter) would be better off with Imperial rule.
In any case I couldn't care less about that stupid quarrel over whether Talos should be considered a Divine or not, and I knew that the Empire would have a far better chance against the Dominion (and other threats) if they had the power.
I mean I'd love to back the notion of an independent province ruled by its own people, but in the case of the Stormcloaks it just wasn't realistic in my opinion.

Got me thinking lets say if the stormcloaks were to win and gain their independence from the empire and the thalmor would invade a weaken empire/cyrodill right after they lost skyrim, would an independent skyrim help cyrodill in fighting off the thalmor or would they just watch as the thalmor destroy and take over another province in tamriel?

What you should do is edit your post and use that second icon from the left in the top row. The one that says "Remove Format". It will make everything have default formatting. That should fix things.


What the Legion does won't matter to Skyrim right away, no. It will matter in about 75 years if the Thalmor manage to take over Cyrodiil. At that point Hammerfell will be wide open to invasion and 75 years after that, the Thalmor might well have dug themselves down all across Skyrim's southern border and have complete naval domination.

Both of these are true, but what you should not forget is that Summerset Isle hasn't been plot nuked for centuries. The Empire has walked into one plot-based disaster after another and that's not going away in 25 years. It takes time to build up the infrastructure required for a population boom and with first the Oblivion crisis and then the Great War being rather costly, and with time in the TESverse being what it is, I don't see a single generation changing all that much.

But what I really was getting at is the idea that the Thalmor don't have any army left because of Red Ring. They lost an invasion army, yes. An army, not "the" army. It would've been bold as hell if they'd sent everything they had into Cyrodiil with nothing held back in reserve. It would also have been odd, had that been the case, that they could find troops to invade Hammerfell so relatively half-arsed. To me the more plausible explanation is that they simply had a go at Hammerfell with what they felt they could spare without weakening their Elsweyr and Valenwood garrisons too much and obviously without making Summerset Isle vulnerable. And that "reserve army" was still able to reach a stalemated five year offensive against possibly the best melee fighters in Tamriel, who were fighting for their land and their lives.

Since I don't believe for a second that the Thalmor would've invested everything they had in invading Hammerfell, this obviously indicates that if they had invested everything, they would've won easily. Why wouldn't they invest everything? Because that would leave Elsweyr open to Imperial recapture, Valenwood open to rebellion, and the Empire open to send forces along the coast and encircle the Thalmor forces in Hammerfell, resulting in Red Ring II. I see the Thalmor-Empire conflict post WGC as a cold war and in a cold war you don't go out of your way to expose yourself to the enemy.


I agree. What it tells me is that the Legion still kicks ass in an open ground war while the Thalmor definitely have their strengths in other aspects of warfare. The Legion was and remains the best fighting force in Tamriel, assuming it can fight the way it wants to fight. It's just very badly equipped to cloak and dagger warfare, which is exactly the kind of warfare that the Thalmor prefer to engage in.


Of course the Empire could've defended against the Thalmor Blitzkrieg quite a lot better. If it had been ready then the invasion might have been stopped dead in its tracks. The risk of another such invasion probably wasn't what caused the Emperor to sign the WGC either, but imagine countless Thalmor raiding platoons making small raids into Cyrodiil all across the southern border. How do you stop that? The Legion is made for beating back enemy armies with a much smaller mobility than small groups of 10-20 men. Such small groups, effectively operating like bandits with military training, could be in and out before anyone notices that the inhabitants of this or that farm had their heads cut off.

By the time of the Great War, the Thalmor were not involved in Hammerfell, were they? And "all available forces" is fairly ambiguous, isn't it? After all, what troops would you say are "available" for a risky move against a very strong enemy?

I agree that they can't currently invade all of Tamriel. That would be a logistical nightmare and just the garrison forces required to keep that much territory would far outnumber what they can be expected to have. That's why I'm operating with such a long time frame. The Thalmor are patient and have the life span for such patience to be justified. If they have to take all of Tamriel a small chunk at a time and spend half a century breaking the population down into total obedience then that's just how it has to be.

If they can potentially take and hold a weakened Cyrodiil at this point or in the near future then look at how large they become. Summerset, Cyrodiil, Elsweyr, Valenwood. All that territory is under their control. So what if they have to spend another century in order to fortify their position and ensure that they keep control over those areas? That time can be spent playing cloak and dagger games with Skyrim and Hammerfell, inciting squabbles in local politics, assassinating or bribing people of importance, and maybe starting a "plague" or two. That sort of thing is what the Thalmor are actually good at, after all.


I don't doubt that the war didn't directly turn the nothern part of Hammerfell into rubble, but war-time economics usually isn't healthy or any good at maintaining the land. Things fall into disrepair and are costly to rebuild back to their original standard. Resources are harvested at a greater rate than what is generally sustainable. Able-bodied men spend their time fighting instead of working and many die or become maimed and incapable of working after the war.


For any reconciliation to happen, Skyrim has to stop trying to become independent. Political concessions can be made but Skyrim can not be afforded independence. That just won't do because it would destroy the Empire, much like the Dixies pulling out would've destroyed the Union.

Absolutely not. As it happens, I haven't argued anything about morality in this topic at all. The Empire is merely the big player that is too big for the Thalmor to chew while individual kingdoms would seem to be much more manageable. The Thalmor lost their army when confronted with the Legion. What was left after that simply had a stalemate against the Redguards. A stalemate is not a crushing defeat or a total extermination.


Yes and no. I don't think the Thalmor see Ulfric as a threat but I do think they'd rather he bleeds the Empire dry as much as possible before winning the war. If he could last for another 5-10 years and then win then that's a hell of a lot of effort on both sides and a split empire. Even if the Empire wins, Skyrim might well be so battered that no force can be raised to come to the assistance of Cyrodiil in case of invasion.

I have to leave the rest out due to time constraints. Sorry.

Ulfric is a Thalmor asset. His purpose for them is to drag out the conflict. Decisively defeating him is the best way to present the Thalmor with a united opposition. Keeping him in power just drags out the conflict and weakens any opposition the Thalmor have.

Go ahead and support the Thalmor if you please.

That's not what Igmund says. He's admitting they made a mistake in promising Ulfric and his men freedom of worship. It might not make sense to you, but that's what the game dialogue says.


Q: Why did you imprison the Nord militia?

Igmund: The White-Gold Concordat. Our treaty with the elves after the Great War forbids free worship of Talos. But that's what we promised Ulfric and his men. It seems foolish looking back, but at the time we were hoping the elves wouldn't find out. So when they did find out, it was either we arrest Ulfric and the militia, or enter into another war with the Aldmeri Dominion.


A swift victory for either side does not benefit them, as the dossier says.

A Stoemcloak victory isn't desired by the Thalmor either. By the end of the Civil War Ulfric will either be dead or openly hostile to the dominion making his status as an asset expire.

And as I said before, it was Ulfric that demanded said right to worship Talos, and in turn they promised that they'd give him what he wanted. That doesn't mean that they can't later regret relenting.

Edit: This is precisely the reason he was considered a Thalmor asset.

Not quite, certainly eliciting Ulfric to openly attack the empire has its uses to the thalmor.

Or a province wide purge...

A Stormcloak victory isn't desired by the Thalmor. Of course they gain on the civil war, they supposedly orcestrated it to begin.

It isn't the ideal choice for the thalmor; but I imagine its better than the alternative.

An independent, isolated Skyrim surrounded by enemies makes easily targets.

Your only source for that is a highly biased secondhand account, though I don't see why it matters anyway. It was obviously a mutual arrangement.

Ulfric's holdings are Eastmarch, not the Reach. It makes sense to think that Igmund's father was shopping around for warriors to fight his war for him, maybe tried to offer coin, but we know of Ulfric that that isn't the sort of inducement he cares about. Freedom for Skyrim's people was what he wanted. Igmund made a deal and reneged.

On a micro scale, it's just how the empire has operated throughout the whole Aldmeri campaign. They seek support, but when it suits the interests of the emperor and the Imperial City, they sell you out. I'm sure that was the realization Ulfric came to, sitting in Cidhna Mine- that after thirty years and every province gone but Skyrim and High Rock, staying in the empire and just watching them hand Skyrim over piece by piece like they did to Hammerfell would be foolish.

Biased how again ? Its been mentioned dozens of times the writer of the account also have written other books that portray the empire unfavorably. So that would make an author biased against both sides then ?

One could easily say the Jarl is just as a biased source as any; given his father was killed in the conflict with the natives.

Didn't Ulfric went to the Jarl himself and offered "assistance with conditions" rather than the Jarl went to him ?

And Hammerfell wasn't handed over as much as abandoned for lost. Partly for rejecting the white-gold.

You forget that in leading an army against the the Reachmen and using his Thu'um to defeat them, Ulfric emulates Talos. To Ulfric, not only was he following in the footsteps of his god, but it seemed like a win-win situation since technically The Reach wasn't part of the Empire at the time, thus the Concordat wasn't valid there for the time being. Unfortunately the Thalmor (who likely knew what he was doing from the start) insisted otherwise.

That's an interesting theory, but that's all it is. Ulfric is not especially religious. None of his dialogue about the war talks about Talos, rather about political freedom and Skyrim's independence. The priestess says he prays to Talos for strength, but that's no more than any other Nord would do in wartime.

Ok I'll give it a shot....

Ulfric is a racist a hole who's just real good at making speeches, try catching him alone to talk to him if you want to know how much of an a-hole he is....

And the Jarls who support him are blinded by loyalty or are complete incompitants, or both, only Laila Law-Giver is smart enough to see through Ulfric, and she's got problems holding on to power in her own provence, much less being an effective supporter.

Vignar Gray-Mane is a decent guy, but he ends up replacing and equally decent Jarl

And just take one look at the SIlverbloods if you truly believe the Stormcloaks are on the up and up.

On the flip side, Balguuf and Ingrid Ravencrone are awesome, if you doubt Ravencrone's awesomeness, become her friend then do the diplomatic immunity quest. Igmund might underestimate the Forsworn's resovle but he's not stupid either.

About the only Jarls that are unlikeable and downright horrible on the Imperial side are Siddgeir and Maven,

Elisif is young and inexperianced, but I'd rather have her on the throne then a complete [censored].

Also they Thalmor have made several mentions that they are "In" with Ulfric in intellegence reports.

Corse I'm a little biased cause the Stormcloaks don't like elves or mages, and I happen to be playing of all things a High Elven mage.

Umm quick notes, doesn't matter if you're dragonborn or not. An outsider is an outsider until you've saved the province. So unless you're talking civil war quest AFTER main quest, it doesn't make much sense to me. And on the point of Orcs being mer, ask an Altmer what they think. Perverted twisted green goblins don't make elves, even if they once were. Notice Orcs worship Malacath, not the traditional elven pantheon..

Quotes, please. I would like to see exactly the dialogue you say that makes him a "racist a-hole."

Ok you asked for it. Tullius and Ulfric in their own words. Decide for yourself who sounds a-hole.

This is the dialogue you first hear when you meet them, if you stop to listen. It gives a very good view of their position and attitude.
Tullius
Ulfric

Arrianus has one other book. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_%22Madmen%22_of_the_Reach in which he does nothing to portray the empire unfavorably. In fact he pretty much confirmed that the forsworn are pretty bloodthirsty. He does an awful job of portraying the forsworn as sympathetic.


Several Forsworn written documents tell of how they operate. Bathing swords in blood for rituals, giving their will to hagravens, declining peace under any circumstance.

If a jarl that is biased in favor with the empire is telling you that they were the ones that offered free worship, then there's something very wrong with your stance.



I did confirm Crimson Paladin's claim that Igmund's father arrested Ulfric. Never talked to the stable dude, and misinterpretted the jarl's statement about how his father died trying to negotiate peace.

[quote]What the Legion does won't matter to Skyrim right away, no. It will matter in about 75 years if the Thalmor manage to take over Cyrodiil. At that point Hammerfell will be wide open to invasion and 75 years after that, the Thalmor might well have dug themselves down all across Skyrim's southern border and have complete naval domination. [/quote]Problem is is that Cyrodiil isn't going to do much in the short term for the Dominion if they capture it, and Skyrim isn't going to just let the Dominion sit there, and definitely not for 75 years. Naval domination will never happen, the Nords are going to be far too good at sea for that. There will be fierce conflict out on the ocean, but domination will not happen for the Dominion.And no, Hammerfel will be open to nothing. The Dominion isn't foolish enough to go to war with them again unless it has the rest of Tamriel under its belt and time to surround the province, and that will never happen.[quote]Both of these are true, but what you should not forget is that Summerset Isle hasn't been plot nuked for centuries. The Empire has walked into one plot-based disaster after another and that's not going away in 25 years. It takes time to build up the infrastructure required for a population boom and with first the Oblivion crisis and then the Great War being rather costly, and with time in the TESverse being what it is, I don't see a single generation changing all that much. [/quote]The Empire may have faced more than the Summerset Isle did alone, but  you have to remember that the Empire is an empire. Strife that has struck it is not going to take as big of a toll on it as it would on a single province. You also have to remember that the last crisis the Empire faced before the Great War took place a little under 200 years prior, and the most damage that has been done in between that time and the Great War occurred in Morrowind, which would not have had that big of an effect on the Empire's military might, particularly when the Empire had 160 years to recoup from whatever losses would have been had.Another thing you have to remember is that in 25 years its not just one generation thats going to resupply the Empire. Its going to be at least 3, and those are the generation that was already at advlthood when the war started (but weren't in the Legion), the generation who were underage at the time, and the generation that was born afterwords.  Spread that across the 3 provinces the Empire has left (2 of which were never directly affected by the Great War) and add onto to that fact that it still had a fair majority of its army left (no matter how tattered it may have been),  and compare it to what the Dominion had. The Dominion had lost virtually all of its forces that either weren't in Hammerfel or were needed for law and order back  home. Then, the Dominion went on to continue warring for 5 years in a war they didn't even win.Because of that and the reality of Altmer reproduction, the Dominion simply will not have the military might to face even the Legion as it stands without trouble, very much less invade anywhere.  Give them a couple hundred more years and may be they might be able to produce something worthwhile, but they'll never get that time. Unless of course we're going to presume that the Dragonborn did not actually help out a faction during the Civil War and let the war sort itself. But that likely isn't going to be the case as far as canon is concerned because there hasn't been a Beth followup on past games events that didn't clearly show the players involvement.[quote] It would also have been odd, had that been the case, that they could find troops to invade Hammerfell so relatively half-arsed[/quote]They invaded Hammerfel and Cyrodiil simultaneously, with Hammerfel being the intended goal and Cyrodiil only a ploy to keep the Legion occupied. However Narifiin was taken by surprise when they managed to do so well in Cyrodiil and as such they switched gears into simply overthrowing the Empire entirely and capturing the Imperial City.  During this time all available Dominion forces (IE, those not already needed in Hammerfel and those not needed for law and order) were brought to bear on Cyrodiil.  The Dominion had no other wars going on during this time so it is fact that they committed the vast majority of the army to Cyrodiil, and that it was completely destroyed there.[quote]Since I don't believe for a second that the Thalmor would've invested everything they had in invading Hammerfell, this obviously indicates that if they had invested everything, they would've won easily[/quote]They wouldn't have because they couldn't have. They already tried that with Cyrodiil and they lost.[quote]Of course the Empire could've defended against the Thalmor Blitzkrieg quite a lot better. If it had been ready then the invasion might have been stopped dead in its tracks. The risk of another such invasion probably wasn't what caused the Emperor to sign the WGC either, but imagine countless Thalmor raiding platoons making small raids into Cyrodiil all across the southern border. How do you stop that?[/quote]The Dominion would have been far too occupied in Hammerfel to spare troops for raiding. And for what purpose would raiding serve anyway? At worse they'd be able to overtake small villages, but if they tried to hit cities they'd meet occupied forces who could hold such raiding parties that the Dominion could afford to send (presuming they were stupid enough to waste troops on such a pointless endeavor) off.  In such a time as that, small villages and farms would be acceptable to lose if by some off chance they got attacked. The bigger problem is losing the province itself, not a couple farms that can be moved or rebuilt if needed.Hell chances are if things did go this way, the south of Cyrodiil likely would have been mostly evacuated. If only for the sake of not having to divide up resources there unnecessarily.[quote]By the time of the Great War, the Thalmor were not involved in Hammerfell, were they[/quote]Except they were, because the Dominion started the Great War purely for the sake of capturing south Hammerfel, which is what they demanded in the original ultimatum they gave to the Emperor (and were subsequently denied).  Hammerfel was more deeply invaded than Cyrodiil was by the time Narafinn saw how well he was doing in Cyrodiil.[quote]is fairly ambiguous, isn't it? After all, what troops would you say are "available" for a risky move against a very strong enemy?[/quote]Troops that don't need to be there for law and order and troops that have already been committed to Hammerfel.  And the Dominion didn't think the Legion was very strong either. They had originally presumed they were quite weak, but with their quick success in Cyrodiil they went on to presume it was even weaker than they had supposed.  And they were mostly right. The Legion in Cyrodiil was quite weak, and they had managed to take every city in Cyrodiil except for Bruma, which had the Legion not counterattacked when they did would have likely been taken by the Dominion. It took reinforcements from Skyrim, High Rock, and to a lesser extent Hammerfel (as the Legions there had left a lot of their forces behind to defend it) to destroy the Dominion's army in Cyrodiil.[quote]I agree that they can't currently invade all of Tamriel. That would be a logistical nightmare and just the garrison forces required to keep that much territory would far outnumber what they can be expected to have. That's why I'm operating with such a long time frame. The Thalmor are patient and have the life span for such patience to be justified. If they have to take all of Tamriel a small chunk at a time and spend half a century breaking the population down into total obedience then that's just how it has to be.[/quote]Operating with such a long time frame is all fine and dandy, but thats not how Skyrim is going to operate. Nor the Legion for that matter.  The Dominion will have to deal with them well before they can use their patience to win.  A Stormcloak victory will bring such a thing far quicker than a Legion one could (and note, this is opinion here) and as such put the Dominion at a greater disadvantage.[quote]If they can potentially take and hold a weakened Cyrodiil at this point or in the near future then look at how large they become. Summerset, Cyrodiil, Elsweyr, Valenwood.[/quote]And out of all that territory only one and half provinces are actually going to provide them with any military forces. Unless Elsweyr suddenly decides it wants to go to war for the Dominion (which is far from likely, as the two kingdoms status as client states and their past actions do not indicate any willingness to really go to war) then capturing Cyrodiil will only provide the Dominion a powerful symbol against whatever remnants of the Empire are left.If anything its only Skyrim that will have a real tactical advantage in taking Cyrodiil, as Skyrim's mountains (and coasts that will be well defended before the Dominion can even get there) nullify any tactical advantage Cyrodiil would have provided to the Dominion.[quote]For any reconciliation to happen, Skyrim has to stop trying to become independent. Political concessions can be made but Skyrim can not be afforded independence. That just won't do because it would destroy the Empire, much like the Dixies pulling out would've destroyed the Union.[/quote]Well duh. If the Stormcloaks were to agree to reconcile with the Empire then Skyrim's independence would clearly be off the table. Thats just a given.[quote]Absolutely not. As it happens, I haven't argued anything about morality in this topic at all.[/quote]Nor did I say you did. I was just using it as an example to illustrate what I was saying.[quote]The Empire is merely the big player that is too big for the Thalmor to chew while individual kingdoms would seem to be much more manageable. The Thalmor lost their army when confronted with the Legion. What was left after that simply had a stalemate against the Redguards. A stalemate is not a crushing defeat or a total extermination.[/quote]They might seem more manageable, but Hammerfel shows otherwise, even with their devastated army.  Unless the Dominion was completely incapable at estimating what amount of troops they would need to successfully take southern Hammerfel (again, their original goal) then what forces were left in Hammerfel after Cyrodiil was lost would have been what the Dominion thought it was going to take to take the south of Hammerfel, and for that matter the entirety of Hammerfel, given the Lady's insistence at crossing the desert.  So, as the war in Hammerfel shows us, the Dominions army was incapable of doing what it thought it could do and quite frankly I doubt even with forces from Cyrodiil not being destroyed that they could have easily taken Hammerfel, if at all.And no, a stalemate is not a defeat, but it does show that if Hammerfel had backing that a victory could have been had.  And that is why Hammerfel is so critical in the present, because it has fought the Dominion, and for far longer than the Empire did. It has experience that neither the Legion nor the Stormcloaks will really have.  But because of the Empire's actions following the Great War, the Empire is not going to be able to regain the allegiance of Hammerfel. Skyrim on the other hand probably could.[quote]Yes and no. I don't think the Thalmor see Ulfric as a threat but I do think they'd rather he bleeds the Empire dry as much as possible before winning the war. If he could last for another 5-10 years and then win then that's a hell of a lot of effort on both sides and a split empire. Even if the Empire wins, Skyrim might well be so battered that no force can be raised to come to the assistance of Cyrodiil in case of invasion.[/quote]I would only agree with presuming its made canon that the Dragonborn had no involvement with the Civil War. (though you can't avoid the fact that he has involvement either way, and whose to say what cities would have been conceded by the Dragonborn at the peace council, as what the Dragonborn chooses to hand over to each side could potentially win or lose the war for either faction)[quote]This is the dialogue you first hear when you meet them, if you stop to listen. It gives a very good view of their position and attitude.[/quote]Using that example, Tullius looks massively bad. He's willing to give up Whiterun when he should defend it whether that city asked for it or not.

And if you think Ulfric was just a victim of the Empire when the Thalmor themselves say he proved himself as an asset at the Markarth incident (don't forget they actually established contact with him beforehand), there's something very wrong with your stance.

Of course, it's always possible we're both right: Jarl Igmund's father promised Ulfric freedom to worship Talos (which again, Ulfric probably mandated said terms himself), Ulfric retakes Markarth, the Legion is sent in, and Ulfric demands they honor the terms set previously by the Nords. They agree, then the Thalmor (who probably knew from the beginning) find out and demand Ulfric's arrest.

So you fled your homeland and were allowed to settle in Skyrim, but still have no loyalty to those that took you in. If you love the Imperials so much why didnt you settle there instead?