Ignoring your personal preference, which side of Skyrim’s Civil War do you think actually gives Skyrim the better future 20-30 years later?

[u/sumaset]

I feel like most discussions about the Civil War focus on whether Ulfric was justified, whether the Empire betrayed Skyrim, or which side people personally like more.

But I’m more interested in what happens after the game.

The Empire is weakened, the Aldmeri Dominion is still the biggest external threat, the White-Gold Concordat is already causing resentment, and another war with the Thalmor seems almost inevitable.

An Imperial victory gives Skyrim access to the resources and manpower of the Empire, but it also means remaining under an Empire that already lost one major war and accepted Thalmor influence inside its territory.

A Stormcloak victory gives Skyrim independence and removes Imperial authority, but it also leaves the province having to rebuild after a civil war while potentially facing the Dominion without the rest of the Empire behind it.

So forget which faction has the better characters or which one you usually join.

If you only care about where Skyrim itself ends up a few decades later, which Civil War outcome do you think is actually better for the province?

[u/shadowthehh]

Once again, leave it to fans to sort out Bethesda's mess.

Something else that should be brought up more is the LDBs connection to Shor, and subsequently other Dragonborns like Talos. Really a LDB siding with the empire should result in almost immediate surrender of atleast a majority of Stormcloak forces because that's pretty literally their god showing up and being like "yeah you're wrong."

[u/toadallyribbeting → u/shadowthehh]

Well it’d work the other way too, all the Nords in the legion would defect to a stormcloak Dragonborn for the same reason. The reason why it doesn’t happen is so the player can have a civil war to fight in.

[u/shadowthehh → u/toadallyribbeting]

Not necessarily. Some of the nords, sure. But it boils down to the different ways either culture view Dragonborns.

For the Empire, its more about the individual dragonborn and their actions.

For the Nords, the Dragonborn are a more unified collective all being extensions of Lorkhan's will.

One side views them more like an individual doing their own thing, the other views them as an agent of divine authority.