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"?

No Mer-folk of Tamriel are like the Drow.

The Altmer comparison is, in my mind, completely off the mark. The Thalmor might be considered evil depending on where you stand, but branding Altmer evil by extension? Well, they aren't.

I'm not intimately familiar with the Dungeons & Dragons setting but it is my impression that the Drow are a matriarchal society, which has no comparison amongst Elves in Tamriel for that kind of thing to my knowledge.

Labeling the Altmer "evil" is unfair. Heck, even saying all of the Ayleids were unsympathetic slavers is unfair considering all of their history was written by Alessian and Post-Alessian scholars.

There are no evil races, there are evil individuals. And just like in this world, evil people can bend their own will onto others.

Well everyone had a poll on who is the most cruel race and dwemer and ayleid took it by storm with some altmer votes. I know everything is not clear cut but the Ayleids sound pretty nasty and lets not forget umaril.

I mean many posters in the topic called the ayleids the pinheads of tamriel.

Dean I am not talking about their society I know altmer society is nothing like the drow when I mean dark elves i mean in fantasy in general. In fantasy dark elves are just normally evil.

What the altmer do in their culture people would normally consider it evil plus thanks to skyrim what are people supposed to think when they see the thalmor? The ruling body of the aldmeri dominion?

Plus thanks to skyrim and some lore bits whenever I talk to people about altmer they all say they are evil on other TES fansites and real life people I know. Heck even in the ESO section someone thought that the ebonheart are the evil faction and loads of people came into the topic and said if you look at the background to the aldmeri dominion they could be seen as the "bad guys".

Some lore bits and skyrim ruined altmer image hence why I want the next TES game to be set in summerset to change this line of thinking because many people would not spend time to jump into the lore like us.

I kind of like the Thalmor as being unsympathetic dikes, but that's just me. The Altmer (especially ones hailing from Summerset) are (In)famous for their hubris. Beyond that, the first Aldmeri dominion was largely content with staying out of Tamrielic affairs until Tiber came in with the Numidium.

It alway comes back to the Numidium.. why could he not simply use it as a deterrent? He had to trash their city and now we gotta deal with the fall out with pissed off altmer looking for blood and cause they have really long lives they don't normally forget things. I bet some of the altmer from back then are still alive now.

The way Bethesda portrayed the Thalmor in Skyrim literally left no room for interpretation. They made them so easy to hate, too ****ing easy to hate. So now, people who have done little research in Altmeri history, and or have Skyrim as their first TES game all see Altmer as Thalmor. Meanwhile, the Thalmor are an exact anti-thesis to what real Altmeri culture is.