Rebellion or Legion

[Feanoro]

What I meant with that was that the Empire bribes Jarls into supporting them (it's not only the Stormcloaks who say this but at some point there's a Jarl, I think either Igmund or Balgruuf, who admits they got bribed like that).

 

What the Empire TAKES from Skyrim are its resources, whether that means Silver from Markarth or men to swell the ranks of its quickly-depleting Legion (cause Hammerfell and other places aren't helping with that anymore...).

 

Also, just because the Empire looks like the Roman Empire, it doesn't make it the same. And if you knew Classical History you'd know that Rome was in many ways a much better place as a Republic than an Empire, and the various lands surrounding it (which later became provinces under the Empire) were better off as well back then.

 

But I digress...in Skyrim we know of the recent fate of other imperial provinces and it's easily argued that Skyrim is better off as an independent province on its own than eventually to be betrayed the way Hammerfell was. Apparently Black Marsh did quite well for itself in this fashion after basically splitting from the Empire. Feel free to correct me on the lore here if I'm mistaken, but I've seen this posted by quite a few people in various threads around the forums.

[thesapien]

Why is it always Imperial or Stormcloack, as if you must choose?

 

Werewolf or vampire? Well, if I had to choose...

 

But you don't.

 

If you ever want your character to try joining a faction, then do so. If not, don't. I don't get the impression that the game developers wanted there to be an incorrect faction to join. The only "faction" you kind of must join is the College of Winterhold. But it's not a faction. It's just a public school with an opened door policy for anyone with a little magic and interested in learning.

[thesapien]

Do racist Nords enlist in the Stormcloak army? Sure. But that does NOT make the Stormcloaks racist. That's like saying the US Army is a bunch of criminals because they allow former criminals to enlist.

 

:facepalm:

[Khorak]

The Nords are certainly 'racist'. So's everyone else though. The Dunmer aren't quite so, because the developers seem to hate them and they've gotten the poo end of the stick for two hundred years, so they're too busy being the victims this time round; we know full well they were the exact same kind of bag of d***s when we played through Morrowind though. No, scratch that. They were worse. SO MUCH WORSE. You see all those Dunmer in Windhelm? And those Argonians outside? Yeah? See how they're not slaves? Score one for the Nords, who are racist and apathetic to helping the Dunmer, Argonians and Khajiit, but at least stop short of actively enslaving and murdering them. Nah, they just walk around drunkenly insulting them. Clearly, Stormcloak supporters have taken the teachings of the Dunmer.....and made an EPIC FAIL of trying to emulate them. Still, keep it up lads, maybe you can one day be as massively horrible as the Dunmer themselves were.

 

Obviously the Orcs have had a hilarious time of it for their entire history. These guys are pretty much the racial chewtoy for the Bretons, though the Redguard also got involved with flattening Orsinium. So yeah, real friendly. It's a beautiful, happy family in Tamriel, I can tell ya. Obviously the Orc strongholds in Skyrim have been similarly destroyed by the Nords because unlike Nova Orsinium, the Orcs don't even have any kind of claim whatsoever to the land their strongholds occupy. No wait, I got that wrong, no-one seems to give a damn because they work hard mining, share a cultural preference for punching faces, and mind their own business.

 

In order to dispel the spectre of racism in Tamriel, I am forced to turn to the noble Wood Elves and friendly Khajiit.

*turns to see a group of Wood Elves ambush and slaughter a load of Khajiit before cannibalising the bodies*

Obviously, everything is going well in the south.

 

I guess the cultured and long-lived High Elves, those great Altmer, will have to conclude this argument in my favour.

*watches a horde of Thalmor slaughter the previous Wood Elves for not being High Elves, and thus Untermensch*

Oh FFS, I give up.

*walks off as Numidium stamps past in the background, forcing everyone to declare fealty to Cyrodiil and accept superior Imperial culture*

 

The only guys who aren't cartoonishly horrific in some fashion towards at least one other species in Tamriel....is the Argonians. They're the eternal victims. We can't even blame them for hating the Dunmer, because it's reactive to the Dunmer inventing top hats entirely so they could look more evil when twirling their mustache while dumping on the Argonians. The Redguard also get away pretty clean, presumably because after they'd transferred their tabletop D&D campaign into a computer game, the original creators suddenly realised they'd made the only black people in the setting into a desert dwelling, scimitar wielding, African warrior culture cliche complete with bonuses to fighting and sprinting, and they'd have to be damn careful about it in the hopes that if they did nothing else untoward, maybe this could just slide by and everyone wouldn't think about it. People like to pretend the Empire are all lovely, which requires some mind boggling and certainly very impressive moral relativism, some serious mental acrobatics, to really justify how the guys who crushed everyone else, imposed their rule and culture, and then actually called themselves The Empire (could have at least gone for a transparent lie, like any good modern dictatorship....the Peoples Republic of Tamriel perhaps), are exempt from the whole issue. Ok, I'll let them off insofar as they're not cartoonishly horrific. Just the bog-standard 'We come in vast columns of heavily armed occupational forces to enforce our own peace' kind of horrific.

 

--------------

 

When it gets down to it, the 'provinces' of Tamriel are basically their own nation states. This already makes it entirely predictable that everyone is going to protect 'their' land for 'their' people, and 'their' people naturally also includes an entirely unique and distinct culture to boot. The Empire is no longer strong enough to maintain hegemony and thus their own Imperial City based culture....hell, the utter morons signed away a major culturally unifying element in the White-Gold Concordat. That one, single cultural issue has resulted in Hammerfell leaving and Skyrim rising up.

 

Saying 'the Nords are racist' is becoming painfully hollow as the rallying cry against the Stormcloaks. They're not particularly worse than anyone else. Tamriel has been carved into the current provincial boundaries now for more than a few millenium. Think about that for a moment people. Not a single nation in Europe has even existed for as long as the people of Tamriel have been in their respective lands, with their respective borders, with their respective cultures. Surely some comprehension can be made of how this would affect peoples mindset even without there also being a whole pile of different species? It's no wonder the Bretons keep flattening Orsinium, it's built on land the Bretons have owned for longer than quite a lot of real life recorded history! It's like a bunch of Orcs turning up in Egypt and building a city on the Great Pyramids! There are 4451 years from First Era zero, to now. There's more than that, but not sure how much. With that in mind, you couldn't take a damned inch of land out of any of the provinces without getting your nipples cut off by the locals.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Khorak

[thesapien]

The Nords are certainly 'racist'. So's everyone else though.

 

Sorry, didn't quote the whole book. (By "book" I mean book length in Skyrim word count.)

 

I think you go too far in defending their racism. But let me go further, before going back. It's not racist when a race of people is actually out to get you. It's like calling someone paranoid when someone really is trying to kill them.

 

However, their reaction makes things worse. Peace and equality is off the table when both sides continue seeing things as black and white. They perpetuate the problem. Evil begets evil.

 

I understand their sentiments. It is hard to rise above a painful history.

 

Also, I'm not sure everyone else in Skyrim is the same. I've met many that don't come off as racists, though they tend to be in the western part of the map. The Thalmor are just as bad, granted. But saying someone else is racists too doesn't justify it, anyway.

[Hanker109]

I actually identify with the Imperials more than the Stormcloaks, but I went Stormcloak. The Stormcloaks are racist, barbaric bastards as a whole, and the "King" is an ambitious, self serving butt-hole. But I witnessed too many times where the Imperials were acting more like an occupying, evil entity that cared nothing for the people of the land, than the unifying police force they should have been. When I came upon them demanding a "toll" out on a wilderness road, it was the last straw.

 

A nice expansion to the story would be where I get to then overthrow the Stormcloak king and seat a new, more benevolent ruler.

 

The "toll" demanded came not from the Imperials but bandits. If you look around you will see several dead imperials without clothes, stolen and warned by the bandits.

[InAComaDial999]

The Nords are certainly 'racist'. So's everyone else though.

 

Of course. The difference is that the Nords are white, so it's acceptable to hate on them for it. That's really all it comes down to.

[faifh]

Do racist Nords enlist in the Stormcloak army? Sure. But that does NOT make the Stormcloaks racist. That's like saying the US Army is a bunch of criminals because they allow former criminals to enlist.

 

:facepalm:

 

Ha, or otherwise said:

 

I hear nothing,

I see nothing,

I say nothing,

[chanchan05]

But unlike the Stormcloak army, the US army is not trying to clear US soil of all non-Americans (Ok that's a poor comparison, by definition everybody but the indians should leave).

[Khorak]

To be fair actually, when you sign up you get exactly zero trouble from the Stormcloaks. None. Not a bit. They love you, even if you're a High Elf.

 

Another facet of why the 'Nords are racist!' thing is getting boring is the lack of comprehension why. This isn't happy, friendly, cosmopolitan modern London here (where you get stabbed for sounding literate), it's a rocky, snowy hell that has caused the locals to actually evolve an unnatural resistance to cold. As I already said, we're talking about ludicrously well entrenched nations, and it's all about the cultures. And with how Elder Scrolls is set up, cultures are heavily linked to species. If you think about what really happens, you notice that the Nords aren't 'racist', it's cultural discrimination. Racial insults and the like get tossed around (by everyone, really) because race is linked to culture in Tamriel, and it's the culture clash that's the big issue.

 

Notice how Niranye (who wears the face of the ultimate enemy) says the Dark Elves make it harder by not just knuckling down and working their way through it; as far as she's concerned, if you put your head down and work with the Nords, instead of clashing with them, things turn out alright for you. Dunmer don't do this, they're very confrontational, they don't want to change (rightfully so, I'm pointing stuff out instead of really judging it right now). The Orcs shove off to someplace in Skyrim no-one cares about and....basically already act like green Nords, so not much problem there. The Khajiit complain no-one likes them because they think they're smugglers and thieves. This is a tragic sob story until you play the Thieves Guild questline and find out they bloody are. As per usual, the Argonians are still eternal victims and getting screwed for basically no reason. Sod the Dunmer, they're a-holes, arguments should be entirely about the Argonians. They're often friendly and don't really do anything to deserve what they get.

 

So....off you go and join the Stormcloaks. Lets say as a High Elf, the single thing that sends Stormcloaks into paroxysms of hatred. In you go and talk to Ulfric. He lets you sign up. Not a peep out of him. You talk to Galmar, and don't get a peep out of him when you tell him Skyrim is your damn home and you're willing to die for it. He sends you off on a traditional Nord trial (which you get even as a Nord, it should be noted). When you get back, you all have bloody adventures and the Stormcloaks constantly lay new, apparently flattering nicknames on you to represent how you're freaking awesome. That....doesn't sound racist to me. Nords are culturally discriminatory, they respect you if you act like a Nord. They're only racist by extention because Tamriel is a typically racially segregated fantasy setting where hating the opposing cultures means hating the opposing, singular species attached to that culture.