Really, not trying to start fights, I just really enjoy this Imperial/Stormcloak debate. With that said I’m curious to hear response on the following points:

1. How can The Empire be too weak to continue to fight the Aldmeri Dominion but would rather fight Skyrim rather than let it secede like other nations already have?

2. Do you really believe The Empire cares about the people of Skyrim when they would allow the Thalmor to enter Skyrim and aggressively and violently persecute worshipers of Talos? Seriously, wouldn’t a better option be to let Skyrim secede and then tell the Aldmeri Dominion, “hey, we’re following the treaty.” Yes, then Skyrim is left to fend for itself but can the Aldmeri Dominion really invade Skyrim at this time and who says The Empire has to help or give passage through their land?

3. Don’t you think that an alliance of Cyrodiil, Hammerfell, and Skyrim would pose a serious threat and would make more sense than fighting Skyrim?

1. It's a matter of global police. At the start of the game, the Thalmor are not actively instigating war. The Stormcloaks are. It is both the duty and ethics of the empire to ensure safety in a nation and Ulfric is the current threat to that safety.

2. It is a matter of practicality. The empire allows the Thalmor their persecution because it is unable to stop it. However, the persecution is not right. Freedom is one of the principles of the empire, evident through its anti-slavery laws. It desires all people be free. Including Skyrim. Allowing Skyrim to stand on its own is rather inefficient in regards to securing that freedom. Also, Ulfric tends to have very prejudice views which can lead to more persecution, and by some accounts, already has. So Ulfric himself goes against the belief of freedom.

3. The empire already is an alliance.

Note: I have effectively made up my mind to be a Stormcloak. However, if I may play "Devil's Advocate"...


It's the fact that Skyrim possibly could secede that is making the Empire fight so hard to keep it. Not only do the Nords compose the best and strongest of the Empire's troops (Especially with the loss of the Redguards of Hammerfell), but Skyrim was generally untouched by the disasters that have afflicted so many other provinces. Ulfric makes a point to mention that the Empire is taxing the citizens of Skyrim into poverty to pay to rebuild Cyrodill. Effectively, Skyrim is a "Bread Basket" for the Empire, and losing it and its revenue would be a blow to the coffers, just as losing its citizens would be a blow to its Legions.


First, even as a Stormcloak, the crackdown ban on Talos was a direct result of Ulfric calling attention to the lack of enforcement (Which could conceivably be constructed as his last act as a Thalmor Agent and why he and the Thalmor had their split).

Secondly, the Aldmeri Dominion marched an entire army across Cyrodill and into Hammerfell unopposed during the Great War. Odds are, they could do it again especially with a Empire reeling for the loss of the Nords.


Titus Mede II basically used up all the political capital he ever had when he surrendered to the Dominion. Hammerfell certainly isn't going to willingly rejoin the Empire any time soon, and if the Stormcloaks unseat Imperial Control in Skyrim...

Let's just say Titus Mede is hard pressed to find very many friends right now if the Aldmeri Dominion came calling.

1. Aldmeri Dominion = Summerset Isles, Valenwood, and technically Elsweyr
Skyrim war = 1/2 of Skyrim (If that)

BIIIIIIG population and army size difference. Also seccession of Skyrim would leave only Cyrodill and High Rock in the Empire. Yeah,not much of an Empire. Hammerfell will come back when the Empire is ready for round two with the Thalmor. The Empire needs the Nord if they are to have any hope of defeating the Altmer.

2. Well, the empire isn't ready to start TW2, so they are very non-confrontational towards the Thalmor and vice-versa. The Thalmor are just taking advantage of the situation. If Skyrim goes independant, the Thalmor can invade them without breaking the concordat, and completely annex Skyrim. With Skyrim under their control, they could invade the Empire from two fronts and obliterate them easily. Not good.

3. They're not fighting "Skyrim", they're fighting Ulfric and his supporters. Most people don't really care all that much.

You can see it one of two ways imo, either as a rebellion... no empire looks kindly on a rebellion or as a civil war. Personally I see it more of a civil war; on one side you have stormcloaks who want skyrim only for the nords and on the other hand you have the empire who want to maintain the status quo.

First; the Thalmor did not start enforcing the ban on Talos worship until Ulfric rebelled. Ulfric basically challenged them to do it and so they did.

Second the empire is basically a puppet of the dominion that is trying to break free. Right now they can't do much, if they can become stronger than can push back. Ulfric would make any hope of pushing back the dominion nearly impossible.

Yes it would. Again though Ulfric makes it impossible as he refuses to cooperate with anyone and wants skyrim to be all for the nords and to hell with everyone else.

[quote name='Uriel_Septim_VII' timestamp='1323131866' post='19650560']
Hammerfell will come back when the Empire is ready for round two with the Thalmor.
[quote/]
Hammerfell won't return to you weak worthless scum, you threw them too us as a sacrifice, but instead of bowing as you fools did they fought, and even managed to push us out, but it is only a matter of time, soon Hammerfell will be our ally.
Who'd you rather be allies with, the cowards who sold you out in order to save thier own skin? Or the people who you were sold too?
And down with Talos!
EDIT: Thalmor unite! we shall start an anti-Tiber Septim blasphemy thread soon, we shall crush these imperial and stormcloak dogs!

1) The Empire *will* as in the future tense, be too weak. Plus the Empire consists of 3 Provinces Skyrim is the one that links the other 2 together. So if Skyrim rebellion is sucessful it will effectively end them as an empire.

2) The Stormcloaks is JUST as bad as Empire in the regards of killing Nords. More or less Half the Skyrim is actually loyal to the empire. As for the Thalmar stopping Talos worship. They purposely did that, then let loose their Agent - Ulfric. With the sole purpose of ending their biggest obstcale in unmaking the world. As for caring for Skyrim - the empire does more good for Skyrim than Ulfric ever did. Watch "Life of Brian" when they talked about hating rome and you get a pretty accurate picture of the relationship between Empire and the people of Skyrim. You just have to take one look at the lands of the 2 sides to know which side is better for Skyrim. Empire has Malkreth (not run down), Solitude (not run down). Storm Cloak have Riften, Winterhold, Windhelm (all have clear signs of destitude).

The most important sign. When the Dragon Attack right in the beginning of the game. Tallius's first command is not "FINISH Ulfric Off, we can end the war" his first command is "Protect the Civilians." Ulfric's first action is not to take care of his men, instead he ran on his own and leaving everyone else behind.

Need more proof which leader/side cares more for the people of Skyrim?

3) Would it? You think Ulfrid will just give up his power for the good of his people? Considering that all his actions are for personal power? As for making sense, why would Hammerfell follow honorless rebels who overthrown their king via betrayal? Ulfric killed a young man with the voice. What honorable combat is that? Is the killing a young man just because you can the intention of "Way of HOnor for the Nords"? Would that put you in Soverngard? As for Alliance, a loose alliance will NEVER stop the Thalmar. Nords are not campaigners. Hammerfell is too embroidered in their own petty politics to be effective. An alliance of those groups will only lead in failure since they cannot stop Thalmar.

1. They sure didn't care when Valenwood was conquered. Or when Black Marsh seceded. Or when Elsweyr seceded. Or when High Rock/Hammerfell took out Orsinium. Or when Hammerfell seceded

2. The only reason is because mede is unwilling to give up the imperial city. He's sacrificing everything else so that it won't happen. He's forgotten that an empire is made of its people, not the emperor. If he really wanted to have a good game plan, he would have let skyrim secede and make an alliance with them. After all this garbage is over, he can reconquer skyrim if he really feels up to it

3. It isn't. It gave up Hammerfall. It leaves high rock to itself. And tried to force unacceptable terms on one of its clients.

From what little I've read, the only real reason the Redguards were able to stall the Thalmor advance is because the Thalmor plan for the area was just establish a 'beach head' while the main focus was the imperial city. The Legions then were able to eventually push the Thalmor out of the city. The way I see it the Thalmor had neither the resources nor the manpower to continue the fight against the Redguards, who are fierce warriors no doubt, but I think it's disingenous to say they stopped the Thalmor dead in it's tracks when the main army was fighting over the imperial city.

Didn't Mede II take his troops and leave the IC for a while before retaking it at Red Ring? The Aldmeri had control for a bit at that time. Seemed pretty willing to give up his throne and White-Gold Tower then, he only got it back by leading the Imperial remnants to retake the city.

1. Many, many reasons. As already mentioned, the Aldmeri Dominion is a lot larger than one province. Further, the more provinces secede from the Empire, the less Empire there actually is. Skyrim is a founding province, Tiber Septim was, at least in all popular accounts, a Nord. A majority of the Empire's troops come from Skyrim, especially since Hammerfell is gone. The Empire is in desperate straights, and needs Skyrim's resources to even hope at rebuilding for the Great War Part II. Further, the Stormcloak rebellion is not the same as Skyrim rebelling: the Nords are anything if united about the war. At game start, a minority of Jarldoms support succession, which means that the Stormcloaks are fighting their own people as much if not more than the Empire itself (even the Imperial troops seem to be majority Nords, as one might expect for the province's soldiers). Perhaps the most basic and important reason is that the two provinces that still remain with the Empire and which haven't been torn to bits by disasters (see: Morrowind, and Morrowind was never all that thrilled to be a province) are Skyrim and High Rock. If you'll look at a map (the one here will do http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Tamriel) Skyrim is the land route between High Rock and Cyrodiil, now that Hammerfell is gone. If Skyrim goes, there effectively IS no Empire, as both provinces will be isolated and fully open to attack from the Aldmeri Dominion.

2. See above. Letting Skyrim secede and then telling the Thalmor 'hey look, following the treaty!' will have the Thalmor going 'good boys, and now we're going to invade and decimate you, so you can use that treaty to wipe your tush'. As other people have mentioned, Ulfric's making the issue public has backed the Empire into a corner and given the Thalmor free reign to tromp around the countryside arresting people. Either the Empire turns a blind eye and gives lip service to persecuting Talos worship (despite many of the Imperial supporters still worshipping Talos in secret), or they kick the Thalmor out...and then the war is back on in earnest, which is not something the Empire is remotely ready for. Prior to the Markarth incident, the Thalmor weren't in Skyrim, or at the very least, their Justiciars weren't running an inquisition on Skyrim soil. Going by the map, I doubt the Aldmeri Dominion would invade Skyrim until the Empire was properly decimated, which Skyrim seceding does a good job at. At which point it would be Skyrim and possibly Hammerfell versus, well, everyone else.

3. Yes, but an alliance seems terribly unlikely. Wars bring bad blood. Hell, even in the face of THE LITERAL END OF THE WORLD by a blood crazed dragon-god, getting the Imperials and the Stormcloaks to agree to stop shooting at each other for a tiny period of time was like pulling teeth from the mouth of a fully awake and VERY cranky giant. And that was just over the matter of 'hey, how about you NOT invade Whiterun while we take care of this thing, okay?' Expecting the shattered remains of the Empire to team up with a province that just committed bloody rebellion, killed their general, displaced their supporters, and kicked them all out, and a province that they themselves threw to the wolves in order to try and save Cyrodiil, is like expecting the Middle East to suddenly realize that all of their differences should be set aside in favor of teaming up with the US to combat global warming and other environmental disasters. Nice thought, NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN because people are people and all sides have some pretty legitimate grievances with the others.

How does that conflict with what I said? The thalmor didn't keep it did they? He let every other province go, but hey once the IC is taken the gloves are off. After that, to remove the risk of losing it again, he signed the concordat which basically screwed 1 of the 3 remaining provinces, and royally pissed off another one. High Rock might have taken offence, but they're probably busy thinking how they can use it to their advantage to gain political favor.

He even had a bargaining chip with Lord N captured and he surrendered to the terms without any adjustment to them.


30 years is more than enough time for the empire to have a decent defense built up again, but not the thalmor. Elves don't reproduce so easily as humans. They're playing the same tactic they did in The Rising Threat. Trying to scare the empire into leaving them alone until they can get back on their feet again.

Well, to be fair, the Aldmeri general was, ahm, let's just say he wasn't particularly tradeable by the time the White-Gold Concordat was finalized. The Great War book goes into detail as to why.

Another wonderful testament to Mede's genius.

Letting Skyrim secede weakens the Empire.

The Empire is what's keeping the Thalmor from conquering Skyrim.

In the letters in the Thalmor Embassy it's made known that the Thalmor are secretly egging on the civil war because it weakens both the Empire and Skyrim and plays right into the Thalmor's divide and conquer strategy. With each Province on its own without the help of the others, they're ripe for being squished by the Dominion and then the Thalmor are that much closer to their ultimate goal of genocide of every human race.

My Breton is against that. The Stormcloaks are naive and shortsighted, and their leader is basically an unwitting pawn of the Thalmor. The Nords will have to buck up and deal with the loss of a few liberties they've enjoyed in the past at least until the Dominion is dealt with by a strengthened Empire.

While I do have to agree with this estimation of the situation.... I just can't do either "side" in this civil war thing. First thing - I really hate "war" in my CRPGs. That's not the sort of thing that I find fun. Too much war in real life-real time.... For another thing, getting involved in a large scale war (okay, right now in this game it's small scale.... doesn't obviate the point....) means that you may not feel as if you can just go explore and have fun.

I'm a LOT more into explore and have fun than I am into messing about with a stupid little civil war, no matter what the Thalmor et al may be planning.

So The Empire chooses to fight Skyrim because it is the easier fight? At what point does the Empire stand up for its people. The people of Skyrim are asked to give their life to defend the Empire but the people of Cyrodill can't do the same for them? They would rather kill them and make the Empire weaker at the same time? Who's calling the shots from the Imperial City?

To me it seems the Empire and Titus Mede II is about the Imperial City and Cyrodill (like Cecilff2 mentioned). He accepts the Gold-White concordat is the same deal offered by the Aldmeri Dominion before the war but Mede justifies accepting it after the war because his people are now more willing to accept. Which of his people are more willing to accept? The people of Hammerfell and SKyrim? No, likely the people of Cyrodill.

For the naysayers that believe an alliance can't be formed due to bad blood, I disagree. If The Empire withdraws and recognizes SKyrim as an independant nation with Ulfric as it's high king an truce can be worked out. Heck, Mede worked out a truce with the Nation that invaded and wants to end life as we know it. Yes, I'm asking a lot of the Empire but if they are truly doing things for the good of the people of Tamriel, don't you think this is a legit option?

I sided with the Stormcloaks with the hopes that with the loses in Skyrim the Empire will come to their senses and break off the remaining provinces into 3 smaller nations (And no, Skryim will not be only for Nords). Then to the benefit of each of their own people they form a Union/Alliance rather than an empire, that way each separate nation is fairly represented. Also how do you think Hammerfell, Elsweyr, Valenwood, and the Black Marsh see this compared to what the Aldmeri Dominion is offering?

The Civil War weakens the Empire because all the human races are killing each other. The Empire can easily end this by accepting Skyrim as a separate nation and allowing them to secede. Also, Ulfric is no longer a pawn of the Thalmor, his aggression can be a thorn in their behinds.

It is hypocrit to say the empire stands for freedom and cares for its provinces, the only thing they want is self preservation, and they are willing to give up alot for it, including let a thalmor "inquisition" do whatever they want, from blades to talos worshipers, just to get to anyone they want. After destroying the Altmer army in the batle of red ring the empire could had got a better treaty, but they lacked vision.

Just imagine to have lived trough a long war, defeated the enemy army (Dominion invasion lost its army in the batle of Red Ring) in your land, and then sign a peace treaty were they have military acess, and have a say in just about any political/legislative decision you make has a state, effectevly making you a vassal.
To give an example in world history, this is has if Russia had accepted to be under control of Nazi germany after defeating the german army in Stalingrad, thats how stupid the white gold concordat is.

The Imperial City became the focus of the war once the Thalmor realized how weak the Empire was.
The point isn't (or shouldn't be) that the Redguards defeated the Dominion alone, but that the Dominion didn't have enough strength left to conquer a single province after Red Ring.

If Stormcloak concentrate on attacking Thalmor first instead of Empire, I will fully support them.

The Empire is not fighting Skyrim. Ulfric does not speak for all Nords, or even a majority of the Jarldoms. He's staging what is, in effect, a hostile takeover of those other Jarldoms in order to rule Skyrim, but if Skyrim as a whole wanted Ulfric as high king and the Empire out, you wouldn't be overthrowing Jarls and invading cities as part of the civil war quest. Arguably, the war would already be over.

It is not entirely dissimilar to the Thalmor takeover of Summerset, now that I think about it. A small, loud majority staging a coup in a time of strife and general weakness, and kicking the Empire out of their province...

There's a reason it's referred to as a civil war.

Of course Ulfric does not speak for all Nords, nor obviously does the Empire. If the majority wish it, what will it take to allow Skyrim to secede? Who in Skyrim has asked for the Empire to intervene and stop Ulfric?

At the end of the day I want the best for the people of Skyrim (that includes all races) and to stop the Aldmeri Dominion. I feel the Thalmor have claws sunk deep within the Empire and The Empire's complacency is just allowing the Thalmor power to grow and their claws to sink deeper.

I do like the parallel you draw of the takeover of Summerset, though. The only difference is I don't see Ulfric marching on Cyrodill even though I believe it will eventually happen with one of the nations looking to once again unify The Empire. I only hope it's after the Aldmeri Dominion is put down.

1. How can The Empire be too weak to continue to fight the Aldmeri Dominion but would rather fight Skyrim rather than let it secede like other nations already have?

2. Do you really believe The Empire cares about the people of Skyrim when they would allow the Thalmor to enter Skyrim and aggressively and violently persecute worshipers of Talos? Seriously, wouldn’t a better option be to let Skyrim secede and then tell the Aldmeri Dominion, “hey, we’re following the treaty.” Yes, then Skyrim is left to fend for itself but can the Aldmeri Dominion really invade Skyrim at this time and who says The Empire has to help or give passage through their land?

3. Don’t you think that an alliance of Cyrodiil, Hammerfell, and Skyrim would pose a serious threat and would make more sense than fighting Skyrim?


1. It's said in the game that the Imp's in Skyrim are like 2 legions, Compared to the empires main force this isn't even a fraction. And to be honest if you read the books Valenwood did not sucede by choice, and the Bosmer that live there are being heavily persecuted, and example being Malborn whos family was "purged".

2. They only began to persecute heavily after the MArkarth Incident which was induced by Ulfric. Before that, according to Hadvar, most people still worshiped Talos they just didn't do it overtly. Skyrim provides alot of reasources to the Empire, such as troops, metal, food, and Ports. Ceding them would mean the empire would have to give up valuable reasources to ensure Skyrim would still provide them, assuming that Skyrim woulden't just give the EMpire the finger.

3. One, Hammerfell is Po'ed at the Empire for some of the concessitions made in the White-Gold Concord and have already pushed the Thalmor out of their territories so they may just leave the empire to fend for itself. Two, your again assuming a free skyrim would do anything with the Empire, a faction they just fought a war against.

im guessing it more along lines as do they really want the entire nord race against them if they join with the altmer their army would be unmatchable ferocious melee fighters and magics users and in all reality the nords created the empire if they leave the legitimacy of the empire would be 4 nil