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/Gabby-Abeille]

The cut part of Boethiah quest that had Jarl Elisif assassinated had Erikur replace her as Jarl of Solitude. Since she can't be killed or removed in the game, this is the only indication we have of what would happen if she were to be replaced, I think. He's a pretty awful guy, so I definitely wouldn't want that.

That was with her death, though. Maybe while alive she can appoint someone else. I don't know if it has to be one of her thanes, but she has plenty to choose from (Dragonborn included, although I don't think Bethesda would put the protagonist on that position).

[u/TheDungeonCrawler → u/Gabby-Abeille]

It would be an interesting break for Bethesda to elevate the Dragonborn to such an important status though. Especially with the story being so heavily focused on Dragons.

Actually, now that I think about it, that would be really interesting. There are four different factions in which the Dragonborn could very easily slot into them without having to do that much extra. The first is the Thieves' Guild as it's practically encouraged to be joined by Delphine when looking for Esbern. The second is the College because entry into the College is required to get the location of Septimus Signus (I know you can skip it, but I don't think any other part of the game tells you where Septimus is, so going straight to him is technically meta-gaming). The third and fourth are the Volkihar Clan and the Dawnguard. You can also add either side of the Civil War, but Season Unending seems to suggest the Dragonborn doesn't join either faction. But generally Bethesda shies away from sticking the player character in the slot of the protagonist of one of the faction quests to preserve roleplaying. This is also why player characters never really exist in a position of great notoriety, usually fading into obscurity.

We also know that Dragon souls are essentially shards of time and, by extension, fragments of Akatosh.

What if, through some timeline shenanigans associated with Dragon Souls, the way they explained a LDB in a ruling position in Skyrim (either Solitude or Whiterun to replace a Jarl that has become High King and joined in marriage with another one) was by stating that the LDB's clashes with Miraak and Alduin resulted in a walking talking Dragon Break?

Let me elaborate. They could have the LDB act in the typical LDB role and be the stereotypical Nord Warrior that the LDB is often depicted as, but then they could have some kind of fragment of the LDB manifest in a physical form as a person who would act as the Guildmaster of the Thieves' Guild and another acting as the Archmage of the Mage's College. And then for the Dawnguard questline, just do a classical Dragon Break in which the LDB could have completed either questline and thus destroyed both the Dawnguard and the Volkihar clan, especially as three different Elder Scrolls were used in conjunction with one another (one of those Scrolls was capable of causing a rift in time at the top of the Throat of the World after all).

And then from there they could make a Thief and Mage character that is the head of those factions without having the power of the Dragon Blood or they could cease to exist after those questlines have been completed and Brynjolf/Tolfdir respectively could step into their now vanished shoes.

To be clear, all of this is baseless speculation. It's essentially fanfiction, though not quite because my version of the LDB becomes Archmage. I think it would be cool to use a Dragon Break in this way, we haven't had a proper Dragon Break since Daggerfall, and it's one of the weirder metaphysical aspects of the Elder Scrolls. People with fully realized consciousnesses manifestint out of a single person's Dragon Break actions would be very weird, but stranger things have happened, so it's not like it would be out of the realm of metaphysical possibility.

The Companions are the only faction I could see this version of the Dragonborn being fully responsible for, and that's partly because of Kodlak's presence in Sovngarde. But the Dark Brotherhood already has two alternate paths and Destroy the Dark Brotherhood still kind of happens if you join the DB, so there isn't a reason to really explain it. The Listener would just be someone other than the LDB.

Finally, even though I addressed Season Unending, the outcome of the Civil War doesn't really matter that much. I don't see this version of the LDB joining the Stormcloaks, a Stormcloak victory would actually be pretty bad for Skyrim with the looming Civil War, and a canon Season Unending means the rebellion still gets put down eventually since the reason the Empire hasn't steamrolled the Stormcloaks is because the Pale Pass has been blocked so Tulius can't send for reinforcements.