Were Alessia and Reman's descendants Dragonborn?

Had to have been, or the Dragonfires wouldn't have worked. And they didn't seem to be an issue until the Interregnums between dynasties.

I think it's Jurgen acknowledging you and granting some of his knowledge from beyond the grave. After all, you meet him in Sovngarde, indicating that you didn't absorb his soul.

Good point. To be honest, the whole Covenant of Akatosh stuff is screwy for me because of all the stuff we don't know. Just looked up Varen Aquilarios, and it seems like Varen was trying to use the Amulet of Kings to become Dragonborn, indicating that it could, or at least is believed to be able to, alter someone and make them Dragonborn after the fact. But considering only a Dragonborn can wear it and... Yeah. I'm confused.

Well, that plan was also orchestrated by Mannimarco, who had an ulterior motive of causing the Soulshatter, breaking the enchantments on the Amulet of Kings so he could use it to soul-trap and then absorb Molag Bal and become a god. So, it's possible he could have been outright lying about that even being possible with it.

What's ultimately going to matter is just you. If something about a character bugs me personally, there's nothing that lore can do to alleviate it.

I think it's fairly open ended though. It's definitely easier with a Nord.. and with outsiders, with Humans in general. But it shouldn't be game killing.

I'm more confused about how the Amulet of Kings went missing and the Dragon Fires went out without any apparent side-effects.

I think it can be boiled down to the notion that the Daedra simply aren't obsessed with Mundus. It's a distraction from time to time, but it doesn't command the entirety of their focus. Centuries could have gone by before they even noticed the Dragonfires weren't active.


Or, the Dragonfires were but one of many barriers.

It is highly unlikely that the dragonblood is a purely hereditary trait originating in Miraak. If that was the case pretty much everyone in in Skyrim of Nord, Imperial, or Breton descent would be dragonborn. Most Europeans share ancestors less than 1000 years back with the Italians being an outlier with their shared ancestor with the rest of Europe being ~2000 years back. Miraak is 6000 or so years in the past so any hereditary trait from him would have spread pretty much everywhere.

Both of those sound plausible, though I would think that if Dagon is trying to become the Leaper Demon King again, he'd be raring to go at invading Mundus as soon as he could, especially if an aspect of the same god that transformed him is what blocked him out in the first place.

I also think the Dragonfires aren't the only protection. They weren't involved until Reman, and their ritual involves the Amulet of Kings, which indicates that they're merely an added layer to strengthen the Covenant. This seems enforced by the fact Mannimarco wanted to corrupt the Amulet to break the Covenant, and that the shattering of the Amulet helped lead to Mundus' protective seal being permanent.

The apparent immediacy of the Oblivion Crisis has always bugged me. Surely the next heir to the throne wasn't always waiting at the Temple of the One with the Amulet of Kings in hand to perform the ritual and light the Dragonfires the second the Emperor died. There has to be a grace period.

Then again, Mannimarco is also behind the Oblivion Crisis, so maybe he had a ritual prepared that could only activate once the Emperor died. Or maybe he just tipped Dagon off to keep an eye on Mundus for a week or so and be ready.

What knowledge? How can people teach other people from Sovngarde? You don′t learn (or unlock) a word, you absorb a soul. Do we absorb the entirety of a dragon′s soul? Miraak talks about having your soul torn apart, so I′ve always assumed we absorb part of the dragon′s soul.

From a game design perspective, I think it was done that way to make it so that you didn't have to go back there to learn all the shouts, because who would think to do that? So the devs just let you get a free soul to use as you please, rather than tie a word of power to you going back to a dungeon you've already cleared.

If you are absorbing his soul, why do you only absorb the soul after returning the horn and not when you first reach his coffin?

As for absorbing dragon souls, I think we do take the entire thing. I don't recall Miraak talking about souls being torn apart. He does say "Do you ever wonder if it hurts? To have one's soul ripped out like that?" but that's talking about ripping a soul from its body rather than ripping a soul to pieces.

Well, there's also the Basque, who are genetically more distant than any other European population, and whose language is from an entirely different lineage than any extant language in the region (it's been awhile, but I read a paper in 3rd year linguistic anthro that linked it to Sandskrit.. not sure how that research progressed, linguistics weren't my thing).


But Tamriel definately has some serious issues when looking st any sort of heredity model. For one, we know basically nothing about anyone's marriage customs (and I refuse to accept Skyrims Amulet of Mara approach as Canon) which means tracking dispersal becomes problematic. Clan-based marriage models typically exagerage isolation, keeping hereditary traits localised in smaller populations, whereas Egalitarian models tend to rapidly spread traits over relatively few generations. Then you've got influences such as polygamy, disease susceptibility, geographic isolation, ethnocide etc. And that's not even factoring in whether it's X, Y or base linked (or if the people of Tamriel even HAVE chromosomes).


Then there are the unnatural influences that have occured throughout Tamriel's history. Would Chimeri Dragonborn keep that gift after the transformation into Dunmer? How do things like the Soulshatter and Dragon Breaks affect Dragonborn? Could Tiber have errased all known bloodlines to cement his claim to the throne?


Too many unknowns to entirely rule it out, but also too many to prove it.


That said... The only out-of-universe statement we have about it does indicate it is linked to bloodlines.

-Of course that makes sense from the design pov. But I think it creates some unnecessary contradictions. For one, the confusion of calling his soul a Dragon Soul; as much as I can understand that might be just a technical limitation, if they wanted to avoid it they could just bind a word to it. For another, either they want to call atention to it or not. It could be meant just as an irrelevant detail for those who like to explore everything, but why make it a way that can create lore confusion, considering these people are the more likely to pay attention to such details? Why not just make it somewhat hard to find Word of Power and accumulate lore content to it, instead of contradicting themselves?


And why would Jurgen Windcaller not be dragonborn? There was none of the common means to discover that someone was dragonborn, but we know he was the strongest Tongue, could take on the shouts of multiple other tongues as if he was swallowing them, and he certainly met Paarthurnax, who could probably have some interest in befriending an oblivious Dragonborn.


-I guess that question depends on what triggers the soul absorption. Maybe you only earned the right to that part of his soul after you were blessed by the greybeards and whatever deities speak through them. One thing that comes to mind is that they bless you as Ysmir, and the arcturian heresy speaks of Wulfhart influencing other people in spirit form. Jurgen also underlines the importance of the Way of the Voice in sovngarde. Maybe what he left behind was whatever piece of Wulfhart′s soul that he might have contained or something like that. Although, granted, that sentence might be exclusively a poke at Ulfric′s "duel".

-You are right about that line. Still, I wonder what it would mean for the entire soul of something to occupy another body. Are they living through the eyes of whoever ate their soul? That would be weird. Maybe it′s just a mess of soul and not an entirety. Makes me wonder how much or many souls can be contained in one body.

There's lots of unnecessary contradictions. These are the same people who changed Cyrodiil from a jungle with dragons everywhere to Europe and no dragons in sight. There are Reachmen that are Draugr who can shout, despite that meaning the Reachmen practiced the same death rites as Nords and were taught the Thu'um. There's a journal from either the first or second era of a Nord swearing by the Cyrodiilic Pantheon rather than the Nordic.

As for why Jurgen wouldn't be Dragonborn. I guess because Akatosh or Lorkhan didn't make him one? His might as a Tongue is implied to have only come forth after developing the Way of the Voice. It doesn't seem like he was already much more powerful than his contemporaries before that. Also, the fact that despite absorbing that soul, we see him in Sovngarde. We do know that the dead can bestow gifts on the living, though we usually see their ghosts when that happens. It's possible that Jurgen has no need to take a spirit form to give you a gift as thanks for yours.

But that goes counter to what we see in game as well. If trolls or bears kill a dragon and you stumble on its body, you absorb its soul. Miraak has no "right" to the souls of the dragons you slay, but absorbs them anyway. Heck, you absorb Miraak's soul without actually killing him as well, and definitely without his consent. Dragon souls don't seem to concede your might and consent to being absorbed by you. You absorb them because that's what you do and they can't do anything to stop it.

I think it is the entire soul. I can't think of anything that indicates otherwise. As for the max capacity of souls in a body, I think that depends on whether or not the souls are all sentient and autonomous. I think the dragon souls we absorb lose their sense of self and autonomy when we absorb them. Otherwise, dragons and Dragonborn would run the risk of having their bodies overtaken by the souls of their defeated enemies.

What would Lorkhan have to do with dragonborn?

ps -meh, sorry, they′re supposedly the same thing.

pps- so, yeah, I don′t know why bother giving consistency to anything. unfortunately delving into elder scrolls lore seems to make it silly.

I just think Jurgen was somehow granting a power, in "spirit". Similar to the other Greybeards, when they wish to teach and transfer their energy.