Me and my brother and some friends were talking about the various mer races and one of my friends said that at first he rolled dunmer since he loved playing dark elves in fantasy games cause you know all the evil things they normally do.
Since I loved playing dark elves I said actually its not all clear cut depending on how you look at it. Since when I first played TES I thought exactly like my friends until my brother said that actually he felt that the altmer are actually the dark elves of TES.
I asked my bro to explain his reasoning and he said look at the Ayleids enslavement and various other nasty deeds he went as far as to call them that they went into the pinhead territory. He also said the fact that the dunmer wanted to distance themselves from their Ayleid/aldmer background while the altmer wanted to follow their example.
Even today in skyrim dunmer are turning a lot more "nice" while altmer are more you know "evil".
I thought about it more and I started to agree with him I also admit that it is one of the reasons that made me convert to altmer as my favourite race. Now we are still rather newbs when it comes to lore what do you lot think? Now I know everyone in tamriel is an ass but just think about it which mer race do you lot think are the "dark elves"?