So Symmachus was a in his teens when Barenziah was born and his mother died and vowed to get them back for the death of his mother by marring barenziah. barenziah moves somewhere to be kept safe and then runs away with straw. eventually there robbing someones house with the thieves guild and gets cought by Symmachus, who is now a general with tiber septim and brought back to cyrodil Barenziah takes the throne of mournhold the marrys Symmachus but meets a fellow by the name of nightingale who is jagar tharn from TES 1 ARENA they find the staff of chaos but barenziah was expecting some horn thing. Jagar tharn takes the empire over be disguising himself as the emperor and kill's Symmachus. Barenziah pretends to be with tharn and reads is diary and learns where the staff of chaos pieces are and that is the start of arena then tharn gets killed by the man in jail and the emperor returns and everything is all happy go lucky.
So basically its starts 500 years before arena up to Arena then the present day with Helseth so really Barenziah got to experience tes 1 arena i get mad props to Bethesda for making such awesome story's GJ PEOPLE
So did i really am i righ on this book because i took me like 30 minutes to read the entire thing