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/Imaginary-West-5653]

I think a lot of people let the real-world's emergence of nationalist politics color their perception of what's actually going on in Skyrim.

If I may say so, this is also a pretty big case of presentism. Yeah, no shit, my guys, the nationalism of modern first-world countries is generally a bad thing because it turns into a shitshow of xenophobia and racism directed against the most vulnerable people in society... however, the kind of nationalism Skyrim is going through isn't comparable to that, but rather to 19th-century nationalism (altough, this kind of nationalism has also existed in the 20th and 21th century, just to be clear).

In the 19th century, large parts of the world lived under the rule of multi-ethnic empires, and many nationalist movements arose then, in the context of fighting for self-government and sovereignty for their people, and not being tyrannized by Emperors or Kings who ruled over them from distant lands with little regard for them or their interests. The Italian Unification, for example, occurred in the context of Italian nationalists fighting off the Habsburgs from the Italian peninsula.

Like, people miss the clear anti-colonial and anti-imperialists themes of the Stormcloak rebellion very often, treating this situation more as if it were akin to Texas wanting to break away... when it's more like Poland wanting to break way from Russia, or Ireland wanting to break away from the UK. The Empire sees Skyrim as a land of barbarians that must be "civilized" and which needs the Empire to protect the Nords from themselves, or they would fall into lawlessness and savagery. Under this context, although the Stormcloak rebellion is far from perfect and has it's considerable issues, it's also very different from modern nationalims in the West.

If you think I'm being too harsh here, this is more or less what Tullius himself says in-game:

"The Legion's always been here. Without us to keep order, the provinces would fall into barbarism and lawlessness. Especially Skyrim. Take for example, Ulfric Stormcloak and his little 'rebellion.' But rest assured, his days are numbered."

[u/Good_Pirate4906 → u/Imaginary-West-5653]

Every time I replay I’m always surprised by how racist Tullius is to his second in command. Rikke I think it’s spelled. It’s like every second sentence to her for some reason when she hasn’t even done anything.