What race and culture do you most identify with in TES, specifically the lore behind them, and why? Playable or not doesn't matter to me. I'm just bored and like hearing what other fans of the series like concerning the races and their lore. Walls of Text welcome.

Argonians for me. It's partially because they were my first pick in my first Elder Scrolls game. I usually tend to skip the standard races, so I just glanced over the elves and humans. Argonians were something new, so I tried it.
As for the other reasons, here we go:
We still don't have much knowledge about their lore, but what we know makes me rank it along with Altmer lore for the most interesting.
I really like their resistance to disease and poison, as well as water breathing ability
Their Skyrim designs are beautiful (Oblivion not so much and in Morrowind nobody looked good)
The backstory of Black Marsh being a hostile place to every other race, but Argonian makes me happy. Why? I wouldn't call it elitism, but an affinity for mysterious, unknown, hidden, reclusive or however you want to call it
Lastly, I'd like to note that I could never really identify their culture with "me", as their lore is alien, but they've still become a favorite of mine

Anyway, my thoughts about their lore? I think it got more awesome as we got new details. More specifically, I really love anything related to the Hist. It's not much that we have, but it raises imagination. Hmm... if we only got Kirkbride to write Elder Scrolls: Black Marsh.... ahem, sorry for this digression. I felt they were quite under represented in lore until the books came out. They never got any kind of spotlight, I can only guess why Bethesda decided to make them a playable race and keep them throughout the games. They've just been there, on the sideways, for the most part. That may be the reason why ES boks focused on them a lot more. With the successful banishing of daedra during oblivion crisis and devastation of Morrowind, I think the author maybe overpowered them a bit in his try to make them relevant. However, I do not object to it, my hope is that they get more integrated into the "Tamriel wide plot" more, in the future games.

My two cents:

I don't want to identify with any of the cultures on Nirn. I want them to be unique, interesting, and foreign to me. I don't consume fantasy because it is familiar or relatable. That's why I have a hard time reading "High Fantasy" novels that are all set in the same generic, pseudo-medieval setting that's ripped out of Tolkien's world-building. The thing I like best about TES is how far outside that generic fantasy mold it is willing to go (In theory.)

Lore-wise, there are tons of very inventive, bizarre, and unique cultures which I find gratifying. Unfortunately, when it comes to actually creating a game in that setting, TES seems to throw out a lot of the unique elements and make it boring: oblivion being the most egregious example. That's why Morrowind and the Dunmer will always be my favourite. They were not afraid to make the setting weird, uncomfortable, and unwelcoming. Their unique culture was unprecedented in fantasy. Not only that, but it was detailed and internally coherent, which are just as important to me.

There are lots of other cool, unexplored races, and I hope that when we get to go there, they retain their "weirdness".


I liked the way Argonians looked in Morrowind. It's Oblivion that made everyone hideous!

Unless you're a fan of eastern fantasy or D&D Drow, I guess.

My favorite race is, has been, and probably always will be the Cyrodiils. The lore added in Oblivion about their roots and early history (the Alessian slave revolts and the Ayleids, the Reman dynasty, Pelinal Whitestrake, and the origins of the Nine Divines cult in particular) is some of my favorite in the series, and I like that their main strength is their shrewdness and skill at diplomacy rather than brute force.