yes, i've put way too much thought into this, but sometimes you just gotta kick reality to the curb for a while. some people prefer chardonnay.
just played through skyrim (and the dragonborn dlc) again, unaligned (neither stormcloak nor imperial) khajiit as usual, and was thinking about the political situation and where i would like it to have gone.
if i were a skilled modder i'd be working on something for this. "High King of Skyrim". probably a complicated mess because of the complexities of the factions and the civil war if you've taken a side.
skyrim has 3 substantial factions, stormcloaks, imperials and the also-ran forsworn. silverbloods and blackbriars are looking out for #1, no big mystery there. the main bone of contention between stormcloak and imperial factions (apart from ulfric's personal ambition) is talos worship. it's clear to me that the empire doesn't really mind taos worship, is only making a deal about it because of thalmor pressure, and that is because ulfric is using it to justify his ambitions to the people. being a khajiit, i have no obvious stake in the outcome, except that some of the stormcloaks are blatant bigots, as opposed to the more subtle bigotry of the empire. and the forsworn are simply murderous barbarians who attack anyone for no reason that i can see, though they definitely have a point about how markarth is being run. i haven't spent much time looking at the forsworn, maybe madanach could figure into it somehow. if you get him out of the mines, he owes you. politics, alliances and intrigue.
the thalmor are the real problem. high elf supremacists, seeking to impose their control over all tamriel according to just about everyone you talk to, including the thalmor themselves. they probably want to (re)enslave all the humans, and i can't imagine what they have in mind for the beast races, so that could get personal. early in the game, the thalmor declare open season on you, sending random assassins to kill you, and i'm happy to return the favor, killing thalmor anytime the opportunity to do so and get away with it presents itself. i like to ambush them on the road and free their prisoners, and after the embassy mission i will go up to the embassy, find a high rock overlooking the compound, and snipe the guards, just for fun.
at some point i may come in the front gate or tcl over the fence and murdilate them all. same in markarth, arrogant SOBs. oddly, so far, i've not seen any thalmor at all in thalmor HQ in castle dour, solitude.
but i'd like something more substantial, much more substantial. i'd like to drive them out of skyrim altogether, and i think the way to do that is to shove ulfric and elisif aside and become high king (yeah, right, khajiit high king of skyrim
). hey, we're dragonborn, we killed alduin, eater of worlds. we could even have a claim to be emperor. some of the emperors were indiscriminate about who and what they slept with, so why not claim the imperial bloodline as well?, or use ulfric and/or elisif as a front, though both of them are tainted. declare skyrim independent but allied with the empire (more politics and intrigue), so we can ignore the white-gold concordat without embroiling the empire in our little vendetta, and kill thalmor. every last one of them in skyrim. if the empire wants to help, no problem.
i have no real problem with high elves individually (except their attitude of superiority*), but the thalmor have made their choice and deserve to reap the consequences.
* as any cat owner understands, khajiiti
know that we
are the superior race. but we are so confident of our place in the scheme of things that we have nothing to prove, and others' failure to recognize it is simply further evidence of their inferiority.
i'm retired. what's your excuse?