Without its Stone, White-Gold has fallen. Its myth form is still intact, but the Tower is no more than a structure.

While White Gold may be in-active, you can't take the Book of the Dragonborn as support for that, since it could be referring to any number of "falls" for such a structure.

In the context of the prophecy, I am confident that "fall" is in reference to it being a tower of Mundus; I base this on the fact that almost every other line of the prophecy clearly refers to some of the other towers (it mentions Red Tower as opposed to Red Mountain, Snow Tower as opposed to Throat of the World, etc).

THe same prophecy with an arguably purely volcanic interest in Red Tower, and whose concern with snow tower is more about the politics of greater skyrim than the tower itself. While the prophecy does reference the towers, sticking with such a specific interpretation of such broad a word as "fall" is assuming a level of tower-talk that the prophecy just doesn't seem to engage in.

edit: Anyone else like that nice touch about the "eight corners" of the world?

Stone-Temple-Dragon makes White-Gold kind of redudant. The fall of the later is really only relevant in terms of prophectic fulfillment.

Well, if your asking about avatars that we've seen of other Aedra, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Ama_Nin should definitely qualify.

It did fall fulfilling the prophesy, but that does not mean it was not put back up again.

The prophecy:
The first thing I notice is that the events described are an outline of the main chapters of the Elder Scrolls series, and span a period of centuries. The second is that there's a device of implying parallels between the four Towers, the events described are not parallel. In particular, the bit about Snow Tower seems to be talking about the civil war in Skyrim, not about the destruction of the Throat of the World, or to its role in supporting Mundus. The Brass Tower succeeds in the tasks to which it was set. By contrast, Red Tower did more than tremble.

So with White Tower, I think this refers to the Altmer Dominion's sack of the Imperial City. But the city was retaken, and the physical Tower remains intact.

What do the Stones and Towers do? Somehow the Towers harvest creatia and the Stones focus it. Brass Tower changes history. Red Tower was the basis for the Tribunal, who were protectors of a land and a people that was, don't forget, prosperous and stable for millenia. We're still working out Snow Tower, but I believe it has to do with the refuge of heroes, Sovngarde.

White Tower maintains the barrier that keeps Mundus distinct from Oblivion. I think this be obvious from the plot of TES IV. We know it's still working because Mundus has not merged with Oblivion.

In the line about Snow Tower then, what do sundered and bleeding mean? Is this just the writer being poetic? Also, if Brass Tower changes history, then it still looks to me that the prophecy is referring to it as a tower, not just as Numidium. Lastly, as I understood it, the purpose of Red Tower is/was to help hold Mundus in existence somehow aswell. Little point in getting bogged down in this I suppose.

Hell, it's not even all that poetic. Sundered just means "split". Skyrim is split in the Civil War. Bleeding, well, the soldiers sure are!

I love TES lore. Most of it made up in a night and yet still has people arguing over it's details, partly thanks to it being impossible to tell what's metaphor or not. Is the wheel representative of Aurbis? In TES lore it could just as easily be an actual wheel. Which is why I love it, makes absolutely no sense yet still holds everything together perfectly

Here's how I see it.

Merish myth holds that the Mer are the descendants of the eight divines, who had to divide themselves and procreate in order to survive. This "killed" them, but they live on in their "children" albeit largely powerless to act compared to the Daedra, who remain intact, more or less. Lorkhan also divided himself into his offspring, creating men. Upon death, the purest of Lorkhan's children (the Nords) "rejoin" the whole, coalescing into a new being, a new Lorkhan. However, for Lorkhan to fully reform he must be whole, which means he must have his heart, so the Nords were fighting for their own apotheosis, acting on the gut feeling that the kinship they share with their god Shor is actually a oneness.

There's another place the prophecy manifests itself: Sky-Haven Temple. There it doesn't refer to Snow-throat, but to Man warring among themselves. There it doesn't show elves attacking White-Gold, but an Oblivion gate prying White Gold open.

And White-Gold is either offline, or being commanded by someone else (Akatosh probably), because if the Medes wielded the Tower of Dominion, they'd be the masters of Tamriel. But they're not.

Holding white-gold does not automatically make you the ruler of Tamriel or an invincible conquerer, see the 80 year war at the end of the first era the Aldmeri Dominion it's resistance to conquests before Tiber Septim or the failed Akaviri invasion for proof of that.

It wasn't active then. And no it doesn't. But you control a symbolic model of Tamriel and symbols carry a great deal of weight.

It was active during the Reman dynasty and it was active during Uriel his invasion of Akavir. I will not deny that there is a definite pshycological advantage to holding white gold, but much of that advantage remains today. Extra benefits, if any, are of course gone.

I'd say that the picture of an actual broken mountain on Alduin's wall is a quite clear reference to Snow Throat.

It's just talking about the civil war. Snow-throat is roughly in between the borders of the Imperial and Stormcloak forces.

Numidium can cause dragon breaks by being turned on. As Hellmouth might say, it flips the bird at Akatosh while smoking and turning the land into blasted waste. It's a clear reference to the Warp of the West. Nothing to do with Tower-talk.
Red Tower is referenced, but again, the prophecy has little interest in tower talk. Red Mountain trembling most likely references the red year, if anything.

I'm surprised that the idea that White-Gold Tower maintains the barrier to Oblivion isn't an accepted idea. I thought it was obviously the central premise of the entire plot of TES IV.

I'm wondering if part of it is that most people are imagining the barrier to be a static thing, like a stone wall, whereas I'm imagining it to be active: a vigorous assertion that Mundus is separate from Oblivion. It's like inflating a balloon through a straw, with the balloon under water: the pressure of the water will collapse the balloon, unless there's counterpressure injected through the straw. From within the balloon, it looks like the water is trying to push in, but it's really that the balloon is pushing out, and the water resists. Don't forget Mankar Camoran's fundamental claim: that Mundus is, in origin, part of Oblivion, and that Mehrunes Dagon was trying to reassert the natural order. More broadly, this is why we keep needing heroes to save the world: because the world is not, in itself, stable, and without active effort, it will cease to exist.

To me... this also can be expanded to imply that that the Unity of the Nords is integral to the functioning of Snow-Throat, and its function.

I've been re-reading the Commentaries to try and get a grasp of that actually; was too concerned with bashing Camoran's skull in during Oblivion to really take in his speeches and the implications of them.

The prophecy of the dragonborn describes Numidium, Red mountain, white-gold, and the throat of the world. The connecting link is that they are all towers. The prophecy refers to them as towers, using the names given by Hatta. To say the prophecy has nothing to do with their state as towers is to miss the forest for the trees.

I agree. Looking at the prophecy, I really think you can interpret it as meaning both the towers and the other events in the games.

What confuses me is why the prophecy has a sudden 200 year gap between the Oblivion Crisis and Skyrim Civil War. Shouldn't the Umbriel situation and Void Nights be in the prophecy somewhere?

I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think either of those had any relation to the towers.