Cephorus
Part 2

During the War of the Isle, Cephorus' daughter Mariah met and fell in love with a young Imperial nobleman named Marcellus Valga of the house of Chorrol. Cephorus approved the match not because of his affection for the bridegroom but because it would give his beloved and loyal daughter a seat of power within a stones throw of the Imperial City. In the months leading up to the wedding Cephorus spent much of his time doting on Mariah. They traveled the countryside together, from the Alik'r to the Dragontail Mountains, and everywhere they went they were greeted with goodwill from the people of Hammerfell.

In Frost Fall of 119, Mariah and Marcellus were married amid much rejoicing in Gilane. The two boarded a boat that was to take them up the Brena River and thence to Chorrol, but the ship never arrived at its destination. It is believed that the ship encountered a terrible storm in the south Hunding Bay and was dashed to pieces on the perilous Hnea Rax. Both Mariah and Marcellus perished in the wreck. Cephorus was crushed, though his wife and Gysilla showed no signs of grief at all. Cephorus sailed through the treacherous seas around Hnea Rax day after day in a vain search for his daughter, and it was only the word of Antiochus' failing health that convinced him to abandon the quest.

Cephorus raced to Cyrodiil in time for his brother's death. When he first saw Kintyra, the still living child of his hated brother who was now to be promoted the Dragon Throne in his stead?saw that this ignored daughter of his indulgent brother was full of the gifts of life while his own beloved child had been stolen by the Divines, he flew into such a rage that it took seven of his best guards to restrain him. He was escorted in shame from the deathbed of his brother.

Soon, however, perhaps on the advice of his wife (Gysilla stayed in Hammerfell to manage Gilane. This devoted patroness of the Cult of Mara never saw her daughter again, nor is she said to have shed a tear at her death), Cephorus adopted a new tactic. He presented himself to Kintyra as her loving and devoted uncle, the beloved little brother of her father, who sought to protect her and train her to be as great an empress as the great-great grandmother for whom she was named. Cephorus' family connections, as well as the tragic story of the loss of his own daughter were effective tools in bringing the young girl over to his side.

At the famous meeting of the Elder Council where Potema insisted that her son Uriel should inherit the throne, Cephorus gave a speech to the following effect:



The council flew into such an uproar that the Imperial Guard had to be brought in to calm the combatants down. Katariah spoke out in favor of Kintyra, though she advocated that she, not Cephorus, continue the girls' education. Our Eternal Empress also cautioned the council against a full condemnation of Uriel and Potema, as the Empire could little afford another war. "We would have vanquished the Pyandoneans only to be vanquished by our own brothers and sisters," she famously remarked.

This is exactly what Cephorus had in mind. He began to speak to Kintyra in private, arguing that Uriel was planning to take her throne and that Katariah was a willing accomplice to Potema's designs. As we have seen, soon the young Empress was so scared for her throne that she appeared before the Elder Council and made her case for war against Uriel. Katariah was opposed, but Kintyra was able to raise enough questions regarding the Dunmer's patriotism to secure the full backing of the Elder Council. The session concluded, Kintyra took the unprecedented move of dismissing the Elder Council entirely.

There can be no doubt at this point that Cephorus knew exactly what dangers awaited the young Empress in High Rock and pushed for his insufficient battle strategy anyway. When news came back to the capital that Kintyra's forces had been crushed at the Bjoulsae and that Uriel's army was now on its way, the Imperial City flew into a panic. Cephorus argued that he should be declared emperor immediately. Thanks to the quick thinking of Cassus and Katariah, the Elder Council reformed long enough to deny the man his crown. Kintyra was still alive, Katariah argued. The goal of the war was her rescue. Cephorus still held the loyalty of the legions, and as a kind of compromise he was commissioned to take the army, stop Uriel's advance into Cyrodiil, and then rescue his neice.

Cephorus, along with his two oldest sons Daron and Agnorith, met the army of Uriel just outside the Great Forest near Chorrol. Uriel's troops arrived first, and chose for themselves a rocky height where the forest tapers off into the Colovian Highlands. Cephorus' army was mostly made up of loyal Redguards from Gilane and Imperial troops recruited from Colovia, who had little interested in fighting side by side with Redguards (or each other, for that matter). Cephorus himself, for all his dreams of martial prowess, had never commanded an army himself. He foolishly ordered his troops to charge through a long expanse of trees before crashing into Uriel's position in an attempt at a surprise attack, and the results were catastrophic. The army fell apart in the forest, and emerged only piecemeal from the woods, making each division easy pickings for Uriel's men. Cephorus' own son Daron fell in the fighting, and his body was never recovered. In a panic, Cephorus retreated not back towards the Imperial city but south over the Highlands and to the Brena River, from whence he made his way back to Hammerfell.

In Rihad, Cephorus heard that the Imperial City had fallen without a fight and Uriel had proclaimed himself Emperor. Cephorus' army immediately proclaimed him the true Emperor of Tamriel, and together with his loyalists he traveled back to Gilane to determine what was to be done next. For nearly a year he did nothing but complain of his misfortune to his wife and Gysilla (his two wives, as they were called). It was actually Queen Bianki who took the first step in mobilizing the kingdoms of Hammerfell to their cause.

The Forebear kingdoms surrounding Gilane immediately rallied to Bianki, but the northern kingdoms, particularly Sentinel, were much more cautious when it came to accepting the authority of Cephorus as Emperor and essentially agreeing to civil war. Matters were not helped by Cephorus' widely known plans to conquer the city by force during the reign of Antiochus, and the tales trickling back to Hammerfell of outright cowardice at the battle of Chorrol. Sentinal made no commitment of either men or supplies. In all, about a third of the kingdoms of Hammerfell agreed to support Cephorus as Emperor.

Cephorus, however, refused to take command of his army. He spent most of his time in fits of melancholy, when he would pace the halls of his palace and curse his brother Antiochus, who he blamed, without any cause, for the death of Mariah. Perhaps this attitude helped Cephorus continue to justify the fact that Antiochus' child, his own niece, was still a prisoner of the enemy. Bianki and Gysilla were said to have contemplated taking up the army themselves, or giving command to Agnorith or Marcion, Cephorus' oldest remaining children.

It was in this climate that news arrived from Daggerfall. Pulcheria's child Bowen, Cephorus' nephew and the current king of Daggerfall, had sworn allegiance to Uriel, and now threatened to attack Sentinel if they did not submit to the rule of Daggerfall. (Daggerfall and Sentinel have been at each others throats since their foundation?King Bowen likely found the current war a convenient excuse to renew the old grievances.) If Sentinel joined with Daggerfall under the banner of Uriel III, Cephorus would surely fall. His life officially in danger, Cephorus finally decided on action. He took command of his loyal troops and marched swiftly to Sentinel. Given the presence of Cephorus' vast army, King Battuta of Sentinel had no choice but to side with Cephorus or risk being deposed himself. With Sentinel now joined to Cephorus' cause, nearly all of the remaining Crown kingdoms joined as well, and it was with a sizeable army that Cephorus at last marched into High Rock in late 124.

In the presence of Cephorus' army, the opportunistic King Bowen of Daggerfall wisely switched sides. Bowen joined with Cephorus' forces and they continued to march across High Rock, picking up support as they went. Cephorus' goal was to march directly towards Solitude and crush Potema in a single battle, but this idea was widely panned by his advisors, the young King Bowen in particularly. Would it not be better, Bowen argued, to head for Glenumbria Moors and to free the captive Kintyra II? With the true Empress on the throne the power of Uriel would surely be broken. Cephorus politely objected, complaining that the region had no military value and would leave the army at risk of being pinned down in the tip of High Rock The army, however, would not hear of abandoning their Empress.

Cephorus must have been worried that the army would turn against him as soon as Kintyra's deplorable captivity was discovered. However we must take care not to put too much credence on the opinions of his detractors, who say he somehow ensured her death by the time the army arrived. Without a doubt, no one benefited more from the demise of the Empress than Cephorus; were she to have been found alive the army is certain to have followed Kintyra rather than her uncle. It was surely within Cephorus' character and ability to murder the Empress had she been alive, but it is beneath the dignity of a historian to engage in idle gossip.

By the time the full army arrived at Kintyra's prison in Glenpoint on the 16th Second Seed, 125, in any case, the Empress was undoubtedly dead, and she immediately passed into the realm of legend. Cephorus sent messengers to his extended family all across the empire denouncing Uriel III for the Empress' death, and soon troops from all over High Rock and beyond were rallying to Cephorus' banner. Cephorus made his headquarters at the centrally located Breton town of Shornhelm, where he could watch for any invasion from Potema in Skyrim.

It was here that ambassadors from Magnus and Cassus were at last able to meet with the Emperor and decide on a course of action. Because Magnus had sent Argonian ambassadors on behalf of his kingdom and Cephorus was deathly afraid of all beast peoples, negotiations with Magnus were conducted through Bianki and Gysilla. A plan was formed for a coordinated attack, with the forces of Cassus, Katariah, and the Elder Council combining with Magnus to pour into Skyrim from the east, and Cephorus to attack from the west. The theory was that with Potema defeated the allies would have the leverage they needed to force Uriel to abdicate. The plan was agreed upon by all parties, and the ambassadors raced back to their own lands. Cephorus received token promises of support from The Isles, Valenwood, and Elsweyr, but no troops were ever committed, and these countries were hardly touched by the war.

The plan discounted the cleverness of Uriel. Upon learning of Cephorus' hold on High Rock, Uriel marched his army north towards the Western Reach. When he learned of the movement, Cephorus began to march east to meet Uriel, eager for revenge after the battle of Chorrol. The next intelligence to reach Cephorus confirmed that Uriel's entire force had been spotted sailing out of the mouth of the Bjoulsae and into the Illiac Bay, completely slipping past Cephorus' forces. Uriel made landfall at Daggerfall and retook the poorly defended town. Cephorus again convened a council, and argued that with Uriel out of the city it was wise to go south and retake Cyrodiil and the Imperial City while the way was open. However, much of the army was now made up of Daggerfall natives, and King Bowen refused to follow Cephorus to The City. Bowen's faction again prevailed, and Cephorus turned back towards Daggerfall.

The area around the city of Daggerfall is an open countryside dotted with the odd copse of trees or quaint village inn. The terrain is generally flat, and there is little opportunity for an army to gain any sort of advantage through battlefield position. Still, when Cephorus arrived at last he found Uriel's army waiting for him at the crest of what must have been the only hill in the region, drawn out in a long line just north of the city. Once again, Cephorus was forced to charge into Uriel's forces. This time, however, Cephorus was a trained general with several smaller battles to his credit, and the two forces were evenly matched.

The decisive moment came when Agnorith, Cephorus' son and commander of the left flank of the army, in perhaps a bid for personal glory, moved his troops to the far left of Uriel's line in an attempt to turn their flank. This left a wide opening between Cephorus' left flank and the center of the army, and Uriel's forces poured through the gap. Seeing the battle collapsing, King Bowen and his men turned and fled. The remnant of Cephorus's army retreated to Glenumbria, where they were finally able to board transports back to Sentinel. Once Cephorus had retreated, Uriel installed his cousin Bowen as King of Daggerfall once more.

Had Uriel followed Cephorus into Hammerfell immediately, the war might have ended right then. As we know, Uriel stayed in High Rock. Unlike the earlier failure at Chorrol, the battle of Daggerfall actually strengthened Cephorus' resolve, and he was active in recruiting troops throughout Hammerfell. Several units from Valenwood even answered the call.

I have already dealt with the subsequent capture and death of Uriel in my account of his life, and no more need be said here. At Ichidag Cephorus was at last able to put Uriel on the offensive, on good Redguard ground of his choosing, and his forces carried the day. It is only worth noting that Cephorus' son Agnorith, so pivotal in the loss of the Battle of Daggerfall, was killed during the later parts of the battle, though accounts are confused and no one seems sure exactly how the young man died. Another vainglorious attempt at fame is the most likely explanation. Queen Bianki was particularly affected by the death of this son, and went into a period of deep mourning, even as Cephorus gathered his troops together and marched on the capital.

As had been the case with the arrival of Uriel six years earlier, the Imperial City was taken without a fight, and Cephorus was at last proclaimed Emperor of Tamriel in the full ceremony at the Temple of the One. He was greeted as a savior to the people of The City, and soon recalled the Elder Council and other exiles abroad. He acted cordially to Cassus, Katariah, and the other members of the council, but never sought their opinions nor attended their meetings. While Cassus considered Cephorus as much as a usurper as Uriel had been, Katariah, despite Cephorus' faults, wisely chose accommodation over further civil war, and it was her reasoned opinion that won the day.

Cephorus
Part 3

For the next three years, Cephorus never left the Imperial City, leaving the fighting, such as there was, to underlings. Rather than take up a full campaign against Potema, his troops merely harassed her forces in eastern High Rock and western Skyrim, winning occasional battles but never defeating the Queen's armies. So the war dragged on and on. A man who gains power through war fears nothing more than peace.

Though most Imperial trading ports remained under Cephorus' control, pirates and bandits used the war to raid ships and caravans without mercy, and the Empire's economy suffered as it had not since Uriel II's day. But this did not interest the great Emperor. He had enemies to deal with. To those who had supported the usurper he was cruel without exception, revoking land from some, sending others into exile, and even sending some to die in the arena. As a child in the city at this time, I remember the heroics of one condemned man who, having killed the group of lions, trolls, and land dreughs sent after him in the arena with only a rusty iron sword, was at last angrily dispatched by archers on the order of the Emperor.

King Bowen, the disloyal king of Daggerfall, was exiled with his entire family to a tiny island off the coast of Stros M'kai that was home to dark legends of ancient necromancy, and there he remained until finally recalled by Magnus and allowed to retire to a private estate in Wayrest. Recently, his grandson Gauthier, carrying on the family tradition of duplicity, overthrew the Cephorus-appointed Redguard king of Daggerfall in yet another of the region's characteristic wars.

In the year 130 the Empress Bianki died, having never fully recovered from the shock of her son Agnorith's death at Ichidag. Her funeral was held on the 11th day of Sun's Height, and there was great mourning throughout The City. She and Gysilla had been popular figures in the years after the death of Uriel, as the war had brought the twin Empress' simplistic moralizing back into fashion. When Cephorus married Gysilla on the 1st of Last Seed, there were very few complaints about the hasty nature of the marriage or that Cephorus had married his brother's former wife. Quite possibly the new wave of executions of Uriel's supporters that accompanied the wedding celebrations were sufficient to quell any questions. No matter how many celebrations he held, Cephorus always managed to find a ready supply of traitors to execute.

Perhaps encouraged by his new wife, Cephorus at last decided to march at the head of his army, and promised a swift and final end to the war. His campaigns in the Western Reach are the stuff of legend, and no matter how many waves of rag-tag farmer-soldiers Potema could send at him, his well armored and equipped legionaries somehow managed to emerge victorious. By 131 he had completed the conquest of High Rock. Instead of marching into Skyrim and capturing Potema at Solitude, Cephorus again pulled back his forces and returned to the capital. His actions were criticized by Cassus and much of the Elder Council.

Cephorus argued that Potema was too well equipped to besiege at present, and such an action could last decades. Other reports trickled down that Potema was actually much weaker than Cephorus claimed and that she herself was in fact eager to reach a settlement with her brother, but Cephorus stuck to his ground, and so the war continued. The Imperial fleet blockaded the port of Solitude, and Cephorus' generals continued to win minor engagements against the enemy.

In 134 I had begun my first year of instruction at the Imperial University. When my friends and I heard the news that Cephorus was raising an army to take into Skyrim itself and deliver the final blow against Potema, we eagerly put down our quills and took up the armor of the legion. As we made the long march to Bruma, Cephorus was rarely visible at camp. There was idle gossip among the soldiers that his wife Gysilla had nagged him into taking up the final stage of the war. Only later did we learn that Magnus had in fact earned a remarkable series of victories in the eastern Holds of Skyrim and was closing in on Solitude itself (all at Hellena's urging, of course) and was in danger of stealing the glory of victory away from his brother. To Cephorus, this was intolerable.

I am a Nibenean by birth, at home in the verdant jungles east of the Imperial City, so the climate of Skyrim came as quite a shock. We sometimes experience a gentle fall of snow in the hills and mountains outside Cheydinhal, but in Skyrim snow is something different entirely. It lashes out from the heavens without end, threatening to tear any exposed flesh from the bone. To make matters worse, as a member of the only Nibenean cohort in the mostly Colovian force I found myself constantly mocked by the overzealous Colovian soldiers, who desired nothing but war and plunder. Had I been a part of Magnus' force, which was said to be awash with the colors and songs of the Nibenay Valley, I would have surely felt more at home.

It was a shock, too, to see the state of the cities beyond Bruma. If indeed cities they could be called, for they were more like shacks stuck together on the mountainside, the inhabitants starving and close to death. Sunken eyes stared out at the soldiers from emaciated faces, each of them begging for aid that would never come. While Cephorus had waited in the Imperial City, the ravages of war continued unabated in Potema's domain. How people could survive in such a state was beyond my understanding.

We slept little on the march, and by marching us hard day and night Cephorus managed to reach the marshy plains around Solitude before his brother Magnus and the army of the East. When Magnus arrived, only a few days later, he had no choice but to turn command of the operation over to his brother.

Potema knew well her brother's weakness when it came to offense, so she moved her army out of Solitude and positioned her forces on the crest of a hill just outside the city walls. Before the battle, Potema herself came to the camp in order to speak with Cephorus. Despite her age, she still carried herself with the poise befitting one of her royal stature. She was tall and thin with long hair so black that it was almost blue. Only in her green eyes did she show the weight of what must have been by that time incredible old age.

We do not know what terms she offered Cephorus, the Emperor kept few records, but they were firmly refused. He had decided long ago that all of his siblings were a threat to him save for the malleable Magnus, and there would be no quarter for Potema or Solitude. When the Queen left the tent, she cast a sad look out over the assembled legions, and I saw that her face spoke of a keen intelligence and genuine compassion for the carnage going on around her. The same could never be said of her brother. She pulled a wool hood around her face and started with her guard back to Solitude. None of us would ever see her alive again.

I was put under the command of Cephorus' son Marcion, and our unit marched near the center of the army towards Potema's forces. It was only as we grew closer that we saw what a wretched bunch they were. Uniforms in tatters, rusty armor, wounds and cuts of every kind; on many the skin was practically falling from the bone. Many more still were even younger than I. It was a pathetic display from the once powerful Queen of Solitude, but they fought bravely. For once Cephorus managed to use the enemy's position to his advantage, and he pushed the enemy force back against the walls of Solitude where they were easily crushed with nowhere to run. Even with the weakness of Potema's troops, we lost nearly half of our own force, including Cephorus' youngest son Lathon. Our unit fared well, though Marcion was badly injured during a particularly fierce bout of fighting near the walls. Of Cephorus and Bianki's five children, then, only Marcion now survived.

Even that battle did not end the war. For two long years we camped on the frigid plains outside Solitude while the battlemages and engineers worked with spell and catapult to bring down the city's massive walls. By Evening Star of 136 we at last managed to break our way into the city. Yet it was not over. Potema still held the castle, and it would be no small task to dislodge her. And so we continued on, learning more and more of the horrors of war.

When we joined the legion we were spurned on by the legends of Talos' conquests, images of the Ruby Legion marching across Tamriel, bringing peace and culture to the disparate peoples of the empire. When Cephorus started off towards Solitude, young men came out in droves to embark on a great adventure of our own, to march with our friends to distant realms, the glorious Dragon banner forever ahead of us, slapping in the warm breeze.

Yet never in all our lessons on the glory of Tiber Septim did we learn of the horrid smell of decay and death that follows a battle, or the sight of watching the carrion birds descend to rip the eye from a fallen friend's skull. No one who has not been there can understand what it feels like to walk amid the dying, to hear hundreds of once noble men abandoned on the battlefield crying out for their mothers and wives and children. None but he who has lived it knows what it is to look again and again into the vacant, still eyes of the dead and ponder what measure the gods use to decide whose eyes remain kissed with life and whose shall be forever shut. And yet bodies piled upon bodies, life after human life snuffed out forever, all for the vanity of Cephorus and Potema and the love of power.

The city of Solitude itself was in a most wretched state, people barely surviving in hovels that had once been great manors. Theft and murder were common occurrences. Various monsters had taken up residence in different parts of the city, and there were even rumors of an undead infestation in some of the richer dwellings near the castle. These were dealt with house by house, one by one, and as the year moved towards spring Solitude slowly came back to life. For the soldiers, it was certainly pleasant to be able to sleep in houses again instead of the cold tents we had lugged all the way from Cyrodiil two years earlier. There is nothing quite like a warm fire and a soft bed in a cold city.

Finally, in the summer of 137, our forces broke through the walls of Castle Solitude and cleared the battlements of Potema's die hard supporters. I myself was not part of that unit, but I was present when the body of Potema was brought out of the castle. The woman carried out of that castle on a bier was not the woman I had seen only two years before. The body was a flesh colored skeleton, the gray hair twisted and matted to her face, a look of deep sadness etched on the wrinkled features. In short, the dreaded Wolf Queen must have died as wretchedly as the Empress Kintyra. The state of the body was so upsetting that our cheers were muted, and when Cephorus saw that the site was not inspiring the troops he covered the body with a black shroud. Potema Septim, Queen of Solitude, mother of the usurper Uriel, and sister to the emperors Antiochus, Cephorus, and Magnus, was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the cliffs outside Solitude.

We marched home in a wave of jubilation, and when we reached the City the mood was ecstatic. Cephorus declared the realm of Tiber Septim would never be split again, and promised that he would continue to work to make the empire even greater than it had been in Tiber's day.

Only Cassus, the venerable head of the Elder Council, dared accuse Cephorus of poor management of the war, arguing that it could have been won ten years earlier had Cephorus chosen to take action. While Katariah had difficulty staying silent in the face of such great injustice, Cassus assured her that he should be the one to bear the brunt of the Emperor's wrath, and so Our Lady adopted a conciliatory tone. She argued that the war had been won, and instead of focusing on the struggles of the past we should look ahead to the glories of the future. However, she never openly condoned any of Cephorus' policies. As the war wound down, Cassus and Cephorus moved towards inevitable confrontation.

In early 138, Cephorus announced that he would undertake an expedition to the eastern land of Akavir to complete the conquest that Tiber Septim had begun. In the early days of the Second Era Tamriel herself had been ruled by this strange tribe of snake-men; Cephorus was determined to redeem his ancestors by undertaking the invasion. Katariah and the council agreed to support the measure, but Cassus vehemently opposed the invasion. "When you have marched across all of Nirn, destroyed all our land, burned all our homes, and killed our next generation of sons, who then will march with you on into Aetherius and Oblivion?" he said at the conclusion of his argument, and it is this quote that now stands carved into his monument in Green Emperor Way. (A monument, of course, set up by our own beloved Empress.)

Cassus knew he was signing his death warrant with the speech. Cephorus ordered his execution on the unlikely charges that he had been a supporter of Potema from the beginning. When Cephorus' men arrived at Cassus' estate beyond the Red Ring Road, near the Mausoleum of the Septims, they discovered that he had already taken his own life. Though they had been enemies in Cephorus' early days, Katariah wisely kept her true feelings about the Emperor's evils to herself throughout the war, and so Cephorus, concerned as he was with other matters, did not object when the Council narrowly selected her to succeed Cassus as chancellor. In such a way did Katariah become the first Dunmer ever to hold the post of imperial chancellor.

The defeat of Cassus would be Cephorus' last public victory. Instead of mounting the expedition to Akavir, Cephorus spent more and more time on the palace grounds practicing his horsemanship. When Gysilla died of a fever at the end of 138, he announced that the expedition had been postponed until the following summer. In Rain's Hand of 139, Cephorus' last child Marcion succumbed to wounds he had suffered at the Battle of Solitude and died. In his final public appearance, Cephorus announced that the Akaviri invasion would be delayed yet again.

Cephorus blamed all of his misfortunes on the way his family had abandoned the teachings of Mara and treated with the dreaded beast races. In his last year he would ride around the courtyard, spearing wooden cutouts of Argonian warriors and crying "Give me back my children you thieving lizards!" Street performers took up this image and even the plays made the once great Cephorus into an object of fun. But even for a better man, a lifetime of war and the loss of one's family would be a bitter potion to swallow.

During one of his many riding exercises in Second Seed of 140, the Emperor Cephorus was thrown from his horse on the Imperial Riding Grounds. He lingered an astonishing ten days before finally dying on the 3rd of Mid Year at the age of 63. Not even his brother Magnus made it back to the Imperial Palace before he died, and so he ended his life in the presence of strange doctors and healers. He had reigned, from his acclamation in Rihad, 19 years and 27 days, and from the death of Uriel III twelve years, 9 months, and twenty nine days.

He was genuinely devoted to his wife and children and learned in time to be a serviceable general. Beyond this, he was fearful, stubborn, cruel to his siblings and merciless to his enemies. There was nothing spectacular about his appearance, though his skin maintained an almost orange glow from the years he spent under the hot son of Gilane. Later in life he was almost entirely bald and somewhat large, though nowhere near the epic size of his older brother. When he first retook the capital, he ordered his soldiers to deface a statue of Uriel Mantiarco that stood in the market district, replacing the face of the usurper with Cephorus' own. Having no patience for or understanding of the art of sculpture, he simply had his men hack at the statue until it bore some resemblance to Cephorus. As anyone passing by today knows, the image is rushed, crude, careless, and lacking any trace of artistic talent or integrity. Therefore, it is without a doubt the most accurate portrait any emperor ever gifted to posterity.

Today, there are some still living who would call Cephorus a great hero, even the equal of Tiber Septim himself. If destroying the lives of an entire generation, bankrupting one's country, and nearly blotting Cyrodiilic civilization from existence, all over a petty squabble with his big sister is the stuff from which heroes are made, then those people are right. Cephorus was a hero.