There is spoilers here about the end of the Imperial Legion questline, look away if you don't want the quest line ruined.


So after completing my pro-legion campaign I returned to Riften to find that the old Jarl had been ran out of town and this woman who's extorted the poor, ignorant and the innocent much to her benefit had achieved an official ( formerly unofficial ) role in politics in the rift in the absence of the former Jarl. We know that Maven has contacts with the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood and the Aldmeri Dominion's "Thalmor" Administration. This combined makes for a very deadly cocktail.

So lets set up a hypothetical situation.

In the two-hundred and second year of the fourth era a moot is convened to decide a regional ruler of Skyrim, Maven Black-Briar nominates herself. In the time since the Dragons returned and the Dragonborns conquest over them as well the Stormcloak rebellion being history she had solidified herself in the role of a Jarl and began bribing the votes of other Holds which lets say does not have any effect on the outcome. Now lets suppose she has nominal support and the decisive vote for high ruler is awarded to Jarl Elisif of Solitude, she wears the jagged crown of King Harald to rally the other holds to her cause and proves herself to be qualified for the high throne not because her late husband was High King. Incited by this Maven having the contacts in the Dark Brotherhood could hire them to kill every Jarl in the province along with Queen Elisif which would make her the only noble legitimate for office. Being the only reigning noble, Maven Black-Briar ascends to the seat of High Queen with no opposition. If rebellion breaks out over this Maven has another trump card to solidify herself as high queen, she can call for Skyrim to part from the Empire and could ally with the Thalmor which would plunge the Empire and Dominion into another war over the territory. In the end she would still remain in control of all of Skyrim, ruling through fear and corruption.

Your thoughts?

That can't be true, I killed the Brotherhood.

Jumping to a lot of conclusions, but I suppose it's possible. She does wield a lot of power and have a lot of connections.

Still, even with the connections, groups like the Dark Brotherhood seem somewhat autonomous. I doubt they'd do her any favors on that kind of scale without a significant personal gain.

Also, not sure Maven's the type to go after the crown, she seems more the type to find someone to manipulate into such a position.

They basically assasinate the Emperor just to prove they can. Why not further their reputation as slayers of monarchs?

First of all, they have the reputation thing pretty much down.

Secondly, I believe they would help Maven, I'm just not sure they would bend to her will unless they saw a direct and personal benefit in doing so. Maven has a lot of power, but when she has the most power, it's possible that they could become something for her to fear. Keep 'em in her back pocket as long as she needs 'em, that sort of thing.

She seems the type to keep someone around as long as they're useful, once they become a potential threat, doing away with them. I think the brotherhood would be keenly aware of this.

Furthermore, after killing the Emperor, the DB seems to return to a more religious/apolitical order revolving around worship of the Nightmother/Sithis.

On the part of the Dark Brotherhood, if Maven where High Queen they have free reign and operate across the province with impunity where as currently they are just restricted to the Rift only because they provide such a service. Basically they'll never be wanted criminals if Maven became High Queen, they'll have complete immunity from crime unless they slay someone who is in Maven's favor.

Slaying monarch's or people of political importance however is not against their tenants, so long as the black sacrament goes through and money exchanges hands they'll kill and Maven has plenty of money to fund just a campaign against the lesser kings and stage a coup against whoever the Jarl's chose at the moot as well those who don't acknowledge her claim or support her.

Not at the time of Skyrim.


The High Queen of Skyrim has a lot to offer to anyone she likes.


Seems more like its just a cult of personality. Iirc the two survivors, the Redguard and the Vampire, both were part of the "screw the Nightmother, Astrid is my matron" camp until you went and saved their butts / 'killed' the Emperor. Neither of them do that silly "Hail Sithis / I love you, nightmother" BS.

Unless Black-Briar did an about-face and considered them a threat once she had expended their usefulness. This seems entirely plausible to me. Evil, distrustful, manipulative folks tend to presume others are as evil, distrustful, and manipulative as themselves.

Things might work fine and dandy in the beginning, but despots tend to be paranoid (with a good reason). I could see the dark brotherhood being aware of this possibility, and their allegiance being somewhat tentative, that's all I'm saying.

I'd like to see an underground sort of stealth-war between the Black-briars, and Silverbloods. Corrupt, manipulative Mafia Don fight go!

On another note, on my thief characters, I make a point to always rob Black-briar Manor, and do the "Promises the Keep" quest in a way that doesn't end in her favor. Just a little reminder that no one is safe. I like to think that the Grey-Fox style guild is smiling at me, expecially when I toss a coin to beggar afterwords.

The problem I have with the Dark Brotherhood in the outside-the-context-of-the-story sense is that their motivations are... well, nearly non-existent, other than that they love killing people. Yeah, sure, the Night Mother has her reasons, but there's no reason anyone should listen to her. "For the evulz" is the only motivation they really have for anything, and a good chunk of their Oblivion plotline is that the player character kills half of the Brotherhood by mistake simply because the player character who joins the Brotherhood will literally kill anyone simply because there is a scripted event to go along with it (the rewards for doing so are usually pretty feeble compared to the more "heroic" form of making money by murdering whatever is in a random cave), and only finds out he/she was set against his/her own faction later. The whole crew is so unsympathetic that nobody really cares about any of them but maybe Lucien Lachance.

For all intents and purposes at that point in the plot, you might as well have been sent out by Sheogorath to murder anyone whose name started with the letter "D". No rhyme or reason for who you killed was asked for or given.

I don't see how you can say who the Dark Brotherhood will or will not support, ultimately, as they're just too insane to predict in any way. Even if they did, any remotely sane person who rises to power because of them would do well to immediately betray them, as they are obviously the least trustworthy band of raving lunatics in existence. For that matter, why should the Dark Brotherhood let anyone get to that point? Might as well make it seem like she's about to become the High Queen, then off her before she can actually take power. Hell, if they're so likely to be successful, and willing to take ANY mission no matter the reasoning, why doesn't everyone with a dream of the throne just order enough murdering to get their way to the top while simultaniously ordering the death of everyone below them, as well? Why wouldn't some widow or orphan or servant who rather liked their dead employer request Maven dead by the same Brotherhood? Why wouldn't the whole thing descend into a giant bloody pile of corpses as everyone backstabs everyone, which is pretty much exactly how the Dark Brotherhood likes it, anyway?

It's also why I'd rather see the Dark Brotherhood as a whole removed from the future storyline of the games - their plots might have some amusing vignettes, but the overarching storyline of their guilds are just too alien to relate to. I appreciate the fact that some people want an "evil" choice of guilds, but that doesn't mean they have to be "EEEEEEEEEEVIL!" It's just too cartoonish to even begin to let me suspend my disbelief. A better-written faction of assassins would make the game much more enjoyable.

I miss the Morag Tong... murder's murder, but they at least had style and purpose.

@ Wraith

The Dark Brotherhood has it's charges for who you want murdered, I'd imagine the more higher they are in society or how important they are the more money they are worth. Maven Black-Briar has the money to dispose of people who as much as look at her the wrong way which I imagine is alot of people as it is already so she must surely have the funding now with the taxes that she can incur on the people of the Rift to fund an uprising. Likewise she could just literate for them if they dont do as she pleases she could have them jailed or threaten to expose other sanctuaries in Skyrim or elsewhere in Tamriel.

Two things:

1) The love of murder is enough of a motivation to get people over the taboo of murder. It's a pretty damn strong motivation for some people.
2) You never hear about a serial killer getting tired of murder. It becomes their number one priority. Again, love of murder is a very strong motivation for psychopaths.

Now, I agree that it's (hopefully) not a sympathetic motivation for anyone here, but as much as it fails to make a compelling narrative on its own, it does make sense. If a voice in the head of a certain murderer lead him to discover and gather together other murderers, so they could all pool their resources together towards killing yet more people, I imagine something like the DB would arise.