Hello everyone. I wanted to sit down and write some nonsense about Skyrim, then I remembered that a few years ago I already did. So that part was easy. This is just a snippet of something larger I wrote a while back, and I wanted to put it out here before it becomes totally obsolete thanks to new Skyrim lore. A bit of familiarity with the Wolf Queen and the War of the Red Diamond is probably helpful when reading. Anyway, here we go. Let me know what you think.

The Siege of Solitude
An Epitome in Three Books of the History of Alexius Sydonus
Compiled by Joachim Eupraxius, Disciple of Julianos, 4E 35
It is a sad state of affairs that the written word has fallen from favor. While the Septim emperors were said to promote literature and culture, Titus Mede has his hands full keeping our cities from open rebellion. He would be content if many of our great works were lost or abandoned. We at the Julianos Chantry are doing what can be done to prevent this unthinkable loss, and have dedicated our lives to the preservation of our written heritage.

This particular work is excerpted from the much larger history of the Empire written by the prolific 2nd Century historian Alexius Sydonus. Sydonus wrote nearly one hundred volumes of history during his long life, most of which have sadly been lost to us. Born around the year 116 of the last era, he was a firsthand witness to many of the events he described, none more memorable than the devastating War of the Red Diamond. He served as a soldier in the army of the emperor Cephorus I during the later stages of the war. His account of the Siege of Solitude (3E 135-137) is happily preserved, and should serve as a constant reminder to our current rulers of the ultimate hollowness of Imperial grandeur.

Book I
[In his account of the war, Sydonus first sets the scene by describing the brutal political infighting at the Imperial Court. Cephorus seemed content to ignore the threat of Potema until forced to act by his brother Magnus. This epitome picks up as Cephorus has raised his army to march north against Potema, and concludes with the only surviving account of a meeting between Cephorus and Potema that Sydonus tells us took place before the battle.]

…In 134 I had begun my first year of instruction at the Imperial University. When my friends and I heard the news that Cephorus was raising an army to take into Skyrim itself and deliver the final blow against Potema, we eagerly put down our quills and took up the armor of the Legion. Only later did we learn that Magnus [Cephorus’ brother and the future emperor] had in fact earned a remarkable series of victories in the eastern Holds of Skyrim and was closing in on Solitude itself. He was in danger of stealing the glory of victory away from his brother. To Cephorus, this was intolerable. [Sydonus discusses at length the relationship and upbringing of Cephorus and Magnus.]

I am a Nibenean by birth, at home in the verdant jungles east of the Imperial City, so the climate of Skyrim came as quite a shock. We sometimes experience a gentle fall of snow in the hills and mountains outside Cheydinhal, but in Skyrim snow is something different entirely. It lashes out from the heavens without end, threatening to tear any exposed flesh from the bone. To make matters worse, as a member of the only Nibenean cohort in the mostly Colovian force I found myself constantly mocked by the overzealous Colovian soldiers, who desired nothing but war and plunder. Had I been a part of Magnus’ force, which was said to be awash with the colors and songs of the Nibenay Valley, I would have surely felt more at home.

It was a shock, too, to see the state of the cities beyond Bruma. If indeed cities they could be called, for they were more like shacks stuck together on the mountainside, the inhabitants starving and close to death. Sunken eyes stared out at the soldiers from emaciated faces, each of them begging for aid that would never come. While Cephorus had waited in the Imperial City, the ravages of war continued unabated in Potema’s domain. How people could survive in such a state was beyond my understanding.

We slept little on the march, and by marching us hard day and night Cephorus managed to reach the verdant pine forests around Solitude before his brother Magnus and the army of the East. When Magnus arrived, only a few days later, he had no choice but to turn command of the operation over to his brother.

[Here Sydonus describes, in exhaustive detail, the various legions under Cephorus and Magus’ command, their standards, commanders, and battle strengths and weaknesses.]

Before the battle, Potema herself came to the camp in order to speak with Cephorus. Despite her age, she still carried herself with the poise befitting one of her royal stature. She was tall and thin with long hair so black that it was almost blue. Only in her green eyes did she show the weight of what must have been by that time incredible old age.

We do not know what terms she offered Cephorus, the Emperor kept few records, but they were firmly refused. He had decided long ago that all of his siblings were a threat to him save for the malleable Magnus, and there would be no quarter for Potema or Solitude. When the Queen left the tent, she cast a sad look out over the assembled legions, and I saw that her face spoke of a keen intelligence and genuine compassion for the carnage going on around her. The same could never be said of her brother. She pulled a wool hood around her face and started with her guard back to Solitude. None of us would ever see her alive again.

thank you for this love a bit of lore

Here's some more. Why not?

Book II
[As in the previous section, Sydonus devotes much of this next part of his narrative to a muster role of the forces allayed against Potema, including a detailed account of the career of the future Emperor Pelagius and a description of his Argonian forces. In the interest of brevity, much of this is excerpted.]

…I was put under the command of Cephorus’ son Marcion, and our unit marched near the center of the army towards Potema’s forces. It was only as we grew closer that we saw what a wretched bunch they truly were: Uniforms in tatters, rusty armor, wounds and cuts of every kind; on many the skin was practically falling from the bone. Many more still were even younger than I. It was a pathetic display from the once powerful Queen of Solitude, but they fought bravely. For once Cephorus managed to use the enemy’s position to his advantage, and he pushed the enemy force back against the walls of Solitude where they were easily crushed. Even with the weakness of Potema’s troops, we lost nearly half of our own force, including Cephorus’ youngest son Lathon. Our unit fared well, though Marcion was badly injured during a particularly fierce bout of fighting near the walls. Of Cephorus and Bianki’s five children, then, only Marcion now survived.

[…Prince Pelagius, the future Pelagius III, “the Mad.”] was in command of a regiment of Argonian infantry. [This regiment is described in detail.] His men trapped a group of the enemy against a rocky cliff face. Pelagius’ Argonians slaughtered them without mercy as they struggled to escape. Pelagius vomited in terror at the sight the bodies piled up around him, and had to be carried trembling from the field. After his initial humiliation, Pelagius attempted to fortify himself against these horrors, but he never seemed entirely successful. He was known for his leniency to captured prisoners and his absolute refusal to take aggressive action on the battlefield. […]

[Sydonus is responsible for the trend, later almost required of Imperial historians, of trying to explain the mental ailments of the Emperor Pelagius through his involvement in the War of the Red Diamond.]

Even that battle did not end the war. For two long years we camped on the frigid plains outside Solitude, gradually harvesting the once massive pine forests to supply our army. Meanwhile the battlemages and engineers worked with spell and catapult to bring down the city’s massive walls. […] During the day our camps would be the victim of assault from the high walls of the city. Everything that could be spared in Solitude was launched at us with catapults, including the bodies of the starved citizenry. Potema’s mages cast endless illusions; many of our soldiers were simply driven mad. At night raiders from the city would flit amidst our camps, killing as many as they could before being captured and killed themselves.

By Evening Star of 136 we at last managed to break our way into the city. Yet it was not over. Potema still held the castle, and it would be no small task to dislodge her. The war continued.

Book III

[In his account of the final stages of the siege, Sydonus shows an odd sympathy for the Wolf Queen. It has been argued that he attempted to portray all female leaders as exemplars of virtue in order to buttress Katariah’s own claims on the throne. Most regimes would not have tolerated such sympathies, nor his open detestation of the entire conflict. One wonders if this freedom was enjoyed by all writers during the time of Katariah. If so, the fall of our Empire has been grievous indeed. On the similarities between Cephorus and Titus Mede, there is no need for comment.]

When we joined the legion we were spurned on by the legends of Talos’ conquests, images of the Ruby Legion marching across Tamriel, bringing peace and culture to the disparate peoples of the empire. When Cephorus started off towards Solitude, young men came out in droves to embark on a great adventure of our own. We dreamed of marching with our friends to distant realms, the glorious Dragon banner forever ahead of us, slapping the sky in the warm breeze.

Yet never in all our lessons on the glory of Tiber Septim did we learn of the horrid smell of decay and death that follows a battle, or the sight of watching the carrion birds descend to rip the eye from a fallen friend. No one who has not been there can understand what it feels like to walk amid the dying, to hear hundreds of once noble men abandoned on the battlefield crying out for their mothers and wives and children. None but he who has lived it knows what it is to look again and again into the vacant, still eyes of the dead and ponder what measure the gods use to decide whose eyes remain kissed with life and whose shall be forever shut. And yet bodies piled upon bodies, life after human life snuffed out forever, all for the vanity of Cephorus and Potema and the love of power.

The city of Solitude itself was in a most wretched state, people barely surviving in hovels that had once been great manors. Theft and murder were common occurrences. Various monsters had taken up residence in different parts of the city, and there were even rumors of an undead infestation in some of the richer dwellings near the castle. These were dealt with house by house, one by one, and as the year moved towards spring Solitude slowly came back to life. For the soldiers, it was certainly pleasant to be able to sleep in houses again instead of the cold tents we had lugged all the way from Cyrodiil two years earlier. There is nothing quite like a warm fire and a soft bed in a cold city. [Here Sydonus spends several pages describing a guild of prosttutes in the city who took a special liking to the army.]

Finally, in the summer of 137, our forces broke through the walls of Castle Solitude and cleared the battlements of Potema’s most fervent supporters. I myself was not part of that unit, but I was present when the body of Potema was brought out of the castle. The woman carried out of that castle on a bier was not the woman I had seen only two years before. The body was a flesh colored skeleton, the gray hair twisted and matted to her face, a look of deep sadness etched on the wrinkled countenance. In short, the dreaded Wolf Queen must have died as wretchedly as the Empress Kintyra. The state of the body was so upsetting that our cheers were muted. When Cephorus saw, no doubt to his great surprise, that the sight of his elderly sister’s mistreated corpse was not swelling the men with pride in the Empire, he ordered the body covered. Potema Septim, Queen of Solitude, mother of the usurper Uriel, and sister to the emperors Antiochus, Cephorus, and Magnus, was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the cliffs outside Solitude.

[…]

We marched home in a wave of jubilation, and when we reached the City the mood was ecstatic. Cephorus declared the realm of Tiber Septim would never be split again, and promised that he would continue to work to make the empire even greater than it had been in Tiber’s day. But we knew better.

*

Following the war, Sydonus attached himself to the rising star of the Elder Council, Katariah Ra’athim. When, against all odds, the Dunmer became Empress, Sydonus became her Chief Secretary and found himself a player in the highest political circles. He dedicated his pen to glorifying the reign of Katariah, promising his readers a return to wealth and prosperity under the benevolent rule of the Empress. He died in 3E 197, just a few years before assassination forever annihilated his dreams of a new golden age.

Really liked this piece. Feels very authentic, like something an actual Imperial historian would write (although I'm not the most qualified of people to say so, having read only Suetonius at length in terms of period literature), wouldn't at all be out of place in TES lore canon.

Glad you liked it. I was definitely going for a Roman historian vibe. Better use that history degree I got for something, right?