I want it back, and fully expanded on, with grapples, kicks, and other hand-to-hand techniques.

Ill informed on TES lore? meh, I'll give you that. My experience with this subject isn't based in games. Taking a realistic approach was probably a bad one.

But still, I don't care about lore (a point I've made consistently), I'd rather see a semi-realistic h2h system anyday over what the lore provides - and it doesn't look like the lore will be having any real influence over this subject in-game any time soon.