Skyrim has always been a bit 'barbaric' civilization.
Can't compare it to Cyrodill..........and say that Skyrim is in "Dark Ages"

...I don't think we needed a thread for this.

Anybody with at least a half-assed understanding of European history would notice the similarities. :confused:

It's not so much "dark ages" as it is "end of times approaching". Everything is in a state of decay. Everything in the game is geared towards giving this sense of doom, lost past glories, institutions and cities and guilds and the very land and bonds of death collapsing.
The player's role is to offset this effect, stop the world from winding towards its close, not just by defeating World-Eater but by acts of restoration. Pay attention to what happens with the College, and in the quests for the DB and Thieves Guild. Not to mention draugr and restless dead.

[censored], incoherent babbling

in other news: Maslow's Hierarchy is absolute [censored]. Shamefully arbitrary, useless, baseless model.

Thanks for the feedback.
I do have a few replies about certain things:

Currency
I think Skyrim is still using the imperial currency because at the time of the game, because it still officially belongs to the Empire. I wonder what happens when a province secedes from the Empire. Skyrim would probably continue using septims as currency, since it was were the Septims first originated.

Skyrim was already barbaric to begin with
The same could be said for most non Roman people and customs. Yet the Romans did bring infrastructure and security to these lands. I think that if the Empire wasn't weakened, the roads of Skyrim would be constantly patrolled by Legion soldiers and the forts would be occupied by them.

The absence of widespread guilds
Morrowind is a very alien country compared to Cyrodiillic standards. The Dunmer are a highly xenophobic people and the land is considered hostile due to the red mountain's influence.
Yet the Empire, during its prime, was able to get their sponsored guilds into various big cities. So when the Empire is able to introduce their customs into an alien country like Morrowind, Skyrim would be a peace of cake, since that is where the 3rd Empire started.

If we assume that the guilds existed during the Septim dynasty, their disappearance is a step back for the people, since every city used to have a guild hall, meaning swift action could be taken. The Companions only have one guild hall, which means bandits can rampage much longer before one of the Companions deals with the problem. This causes more fear and chaos among people.

Pro-Nord Skyrim
It seems the Empire has some influence about who is chosen as Jarl. Since the much more accepting Brunwulf Free-Winter becomes Jarl after the civil war is solved in favor of the Imperials.

I also understand that comparing the real life Dark Ages to Skyrim can be a bit of a stretch, but the game really expresses the same kind of loss that happened during the fall of the Romans. You see that the people do not know what will happen next, but they do know that their once peaceful lives are over.

I would wonder if the scenario illustrated in Skyrim might be more akin to the Crisis of the Third Century in Roman History, as opposed to the collapse of the Western Empire some two centuries later. As some of you may be aware, the Empire of Augustus tetered on the brink of collapse before the time of Diocletian following a series of catastrophic events including barbarian invasion, internal political upheval and economic stagnation. At one point in fact the Empire split into thre parts. The so-called Gallic Empire in Britain and Gaul, the Roman Empire in Italy and Africa and the Palmyrene Empire in the Levant and Egypt. Naturally this state of affairs did not last, as the Emperor Aurelian (amongst others) managed to patch Rome back together in time for the reforms of a later age. Still, it's worth looking at as a possible template for Skyrim's state of affairs.

Of particular note is the fact that the Crisis of the Third Century was a period of near constant warfare and involved a great deal of turnover as regards the person of the Emperor. There was no longer a legitimte dynasty, the Severi had long since passed on only to be replaced with the likes of Maximinus Thrax, Trebonianus Gallus and Numerian. If I'm not mistaken the Cyrodiilic Empire has seen a number of Emperors since the end of the Septim line and even before the war against the Aldmeri Dominion the political landscape was unsettled. Granted there's no indication of debasemant of the coinage, but one has to figure that would be a rather difficult concept to indicate in a video game anyway. Bear in mind, i'm not saying the Aldmeri Dominion is anologue for Roman sepratists in Gaul either, just that the splintering of the Empire into rival states fits the mold of what we see in TES V. If art mirrors life in this case, some powerful military Emperor, superior to his foes will be required to remake the Empire of the Septims by crushing all opposition. Certainly we see no indication of that in yet, but makes one wonder what TES VI could bring.

Moreover, if this is the case the new Empire would bear little resemblance to the old. The new state that Diocletian, Constantine and Theodosius ruled over would have been well nigh foreign to Tiberius or Trajan. It will be very interesting to see what direction Bethesda elects to take things. We're only at the start of this period in Tamrielic history, there's surely a whole lot more to come.

It has been obvious since well before release that Skyrim has regressed into a type of dark ages. Bit I'd agree with the poster above, that, rather than the actual dark ages in Europe it would be better to draw a comparison with the later days of the Roman Empire. The Cyrodillic Empire hasn't collapsed completely yet but is under immense strain and there has been a gradual and uneven regression in quality of life, technology and government.

For instance, I find it interesting that literacy still seems pretty widespread, but on the other hand there are no book shops. There's a lso a lot of 'ruined' boks. Suggesting that literacy is on the way out.

I also like how Whiterun is designed, a wooden town sheltering inside the ruined stone walls, pretty much how I imagine early Anglo Saxon settlements would have looked when built inside abandoned Roman town walls.