To be fair, Ulfric IS willing to join with the free provinces to destroy the Thalmor. If you talk to him during the civil war quest, he comments on how he's reached out to other provinces, but so far they do not wish to help him. He then says it looks like Skyrim will have to stand alone. Ulfric is clearly willing to unite with other provinces, the question is whether they will be willing to join HIM. I think Ulfric has proven to be way more than competent as a leader. He isn't perfect, but even the people who have major problems with him admit that he is a great leader.

There are no certainties in war and there are no saints in politics. And there isn't a single political cause that is the equivalent of the quest of the holy grail. That doesn't mean sitting on the fence is the right choice. Deciding to be neutral is also a choice. It always is.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" (Edmund Burke)

What about Redguards? Didnt the empire abandon them?

Ah, I didn't know that.

He is a good leader, a bit volatile. He snaps at me quite a lot when I am just asking a simple question, but I guess he doesn't have a lot of patience for words and is more a man of action.

Yeah, he's far from the perfect ruler, but at the end of the day, i just say "That'll do, Ulfric. That'll do."

My solution : join neither of them, if they're seeking any sort of power, I disagree with them. Leave the people(and beasts) to their own devices, and they will be infinitely richer and more prosperous. Because I'm not taxed I have been able to get most of the homes everywhere. Besides, both sides are foolish and racist.

But if neither of them wins, then that means the Thalmor wins D:

Here is some more food for thought:



here we see that Titus Mede I was not even emperor when the Thalmor took Summerset Isles, how could he stop them. sure we don't know when he took over, but we know it was seven years after the assassination of Ocato, the Potentate of the empire.

just food for thought

True, but when Mede took back the Imperial City he should ave pushed the attack. Even if he didn't completely wipe out the Thalmor, he at least could have pushed them back even further.

That's kind of easy to say but we don't know if that's possible with his assets. Yeah, hindsight says that negotiation with the Thalmor bit him in the rump but that's always 20-20.

Only Captain Hindsight could tell us what was the best answer.

Yeah,

I figure the important thing is to have an in-game rationale more than you have a "which is the right answer."

My Imperial worships Tiber Septim (NOT Talos) and thinks that the Thalmor are a blight who needs to be wiped out, yet when the going gets tough he's going to side with the Legion because the Empire must endure even if he has to break its law (by killing every single Thalmor he can - at the start). Breaking Skyrim off basically invalidates everything that Talos accomplished in his life - plus he thinks Ulfric is a murderer who preyed on a weak king.

("You thought him being weak made him worthy of dying? Well, let's see how you do in a dual with me!" *DRAGON SHOUT!*)

Others may have the view that the best thing to do for the Thalmor is make it impossible for anyone to gain a foothold. While Empires are very good at repulsing other empires, determined resistance units tend to wear down tyrannies much better than people imagine. The Thalmor might be able to crush any single army in open battle but the fact is they'd have a NIGHTMARISH time in Skyrim given every single person from the eldest to the youngest hates them with a passion + the terrain is nightmarishly difficult for them.

That "Resistance To Cold" Nords get would be a serious benefit.

Really, the only "good answer" is that whatever gets people hurting the Elfstoppo.

The Imperials tried to cut off my head for no reason at the beginning of the game. No way I'm siding with them after that.

Titus Mede II had to make a ballsy move when The Thalmor came to him demanding he surrender to them

He could

• Accept immediately and probably cause a massive civil war throughout the Empire that could have brought it to a state of nonexistence
  
• Fight a war he knew he probably couldn't win, due to The Empire's already fractured state, but possibly keep The Empire together

He chose the war and eventually stalemated The Thalmor, and yes I say stalemated because after the Battle of the Red Ring both sides were terribly whipped and neither side had the ability to continue. At that point he had to make another REALLY hard choice, he could eaither

• Continue to fight a stalemated war for possibly years upon years until the point in which one sides people eventually crack under the pressue of it all and revolt possibly destroying both sides completely
  
• "Surrender" to The Thalmor and give The Empire the chance to rebuild so it can take on The Thalmor later with renewed vigor, with the consequence of a lot of his people hating him.

Now some would say he should have continued the fight but I must point out after the Battle of The Red Ring both armies were nearly annihilated and most of the cities in Cydroill were burning or had been destroyed, however The Thalmor's lands were by comparison in much better shape giving them an advantage in resources.

Attacking into Valenwood or Elsweyr to get the Alinor, as attacking and taking Alinor would be the only way to get The Thalmor to fully stop, with Cyrdoill in its current state would have been disastrous and would have cost Titus Mede the rest of this soldiers and possibly The Empire, and there was simply no way to both rebuild Cyrodill and continue the fight through Valenwood and Elseywer at the same time.



Now we get to the Hammerfell "betrayal". The Redguards of Hammerfell are steeped in a ancient tradition of fighting, to the point they literally destroyed their original homeland with it. The Empire's surrender would have been the most un-Redguard thing to do, and as such the Reguards continued to fight, as is their tradition, even after the war was "over". Their ways threatened Titus's plans to rebuild The Empire and so he had to let them go.

Some might say him doing so was unfair, or that he was leaving them to death, but I must remind everyone here that The Redguards were known as the best fighters in all of Tamriel. I don't believe Titus "abandoned" them, in fact I think he knew very well they might drive The Thalmor from their lands and hoped they would. However while any progress against The Thalmor is appreciated the simple fact was that neither he nor the Reguards could take the fight to The Thalmor yet, nor could he fight them with Cyrodil in such a state, and that was what needed to happen to truly win.

Furthermore I think Titus believed that once The Empire had rebuilt sufficiently and started the renewed attack against The Thalmor, that the Reguards, regardless of The Empire throwing them out would help them as a way to get revenge against how poorly the Thalmor treated The Redguards during the occupation. The Redguards may not like The Empire to the point they may never rejoin it, but they dislike The Thalmor more and that is what mattered. I believe Titus was willing to lose a province, permanently, but still have the possibility of them helping The Empire, to win the war.



While Titus may have allowed the persecution of his people at the hands of the Thalmor due to the signing of the WGC, I do believe he knew WTF he was doing, and made many calculated moves to keep his [censored] together.

Were may of them unfair? yes Were many of them unjust? yes

However Ulfirc's cause only weakens both Skyrim and The Empire, his ideals can only result in a Thalmor gain, while it isn't fair that the worship of Talos is banned, I think they just need to sit down, Please continue, my good sir., and deal with if for a little while longer so they can get rid of it.

I consider the matter settled when I decapitated the officer who ordered it.



Edit:

Re: The defense of Titus Mede II

I think that Titus made a group of exceptionally hard choices under horrific circumstances. I don't think he was a coward, given how he reacted to his assassin, but I also think that he made serious errors in judgement. The first error is the fact that the Thalmor can't be dealt with in a normal manner - primarily due to the fact they have a plot to END THE WORLD and destroy all humanity. Next, you're going to rend your Empire apart if you begin large scale religious persecution. Third, rebuilding works both ways.

I wouldn't have surrendered in this war, primarily because the alternative was worse, but I don't think it was insane or stupid of Titus to try and find a diplomatic way out of this.

Titus Mede's real problem is the Elder Scrolls universe runs on PCs and there were no PCs 30 years ago or the war would have been won.

I don't think that's widely known. Sure, the Thalmor hate humans, but Nords have just as much hatred for elves. I don't think the destroy-the-world part is known to many people.

Which they never did. The Empire was perfectly okay with letting Talos worship continue in private... High King Torygg was known to worship Talos, and General Tullius knows that Legate Rikke does as well, and even when Ulfric demanded that public Talos worship be allowed before he'd let the Imperial Legion into Markarth after he defeated the Reachmen, they willfully agreed to it in full violation of the Concordat. It wasn't until Ulfric made it a point of contention with his civil war that it became such a hot issue.

Which the elves do slower since they reproduce less due to their long lives (with Altmer being the longest-living elf race). Anyone born when the Battle of the Red Ring took place is now old enough to be drafted to war, and humans have a tendency to have more babies than elves.

Yeah, it was a gambit that failed.

Worse, it backfired.

All it basically did was give the elves an excuse to release the Elfstoppo on the people of the Empire and shove the Thalmor's influence everywhere. They also now had the ability to hunt down and eliminate the Blades too plus move their agents anywhere in the Empire.

I agree, time SHOULD favor the humans. I also think the Aldermari are doomed because they're a bunch of insane psychotic zealots who don't even have an evil god backing them up.

However, I do think that the Aldermari can rebuild fast enough to break the Empire in half if they screw this up.

Keep in mind that this is probably Bethesda's fault a little. We keep getting told just how powerful the Thalmor have become but the player has yet to see it. So far the only experiences we have had with them has been pretty underwhelming. I have yet to see an organization that could track down and behead every blade agent in valenwood.

IIRC don't The Psijic order say the whole "kill all humans unmake the world" stuff is all BS and really they only just want to rule everything.

I just keep in mind that they're (mostly) an army of mages who are hundreds of years old.

To be fair, the truce between the two sides actually might work out to their advantage. Some truces have lasted a ridiculously long time in RL. It might also prevent Ulfric and the Empire from wiping out enough of each others troops that the two sides can eventually work out their differences to fight the Thalmor. Amusingly, war with the Thalmor might lead to peace with Skyrim faster.

Ulfric as High King under the Empire, free to worship Talos.

Though some of his followers might see that as a betrayal.

The thalmor hates everything Non-Altmer and the Empite needs support from all provences to win the next war against the Aldmeri Dominion!

Ulfric is a Thalmor Agent, read his dossier.
They brainwashed him and then let him go to make Skyrim weaker and thus the Empire Easier to beat.

Uhm.. I am with the Stormcloaks as my argonian... But little do they know that all i actually want is to kill that commander guy from the Imperials!

Seriously? Is that true?