I am interested to hear from anyone that has played legendary difficulty from level one and managed to make it to the higher levels without dying every five minutes. What kind of strategy and build did you use? Did you have to rely a lot on followers?

I've done it fairly easily on master. Be patent and clever, there isn't much else to say.

simple! wear heavy armor, use a sword and board character that maxes out smithing, maxing sneak would help, and employ cheese tactics.

iv kept a dual wielding light armored ninja around from legendary mode, after a few deaths early on iv managed to hit level 30, but pretty much every kill i manage is sneaking, enemies still one shot me pretty quickly.