Damn playing eso before any of the other elder scrolls games really hammers in the reacuring theme of "everything, created with the best intentions or not, can and will decay until it is unrecognizable and often becomes an antithesis of it's origins for that is the nature of entropy" and it's really fucking me up right now. It can always get better, but it WILL always get worse.
Like meeting queen ayrenn and getting to know her as a character and then playing skyrim and seeing what the aldmeri dominion actually became is genuinely heartbreaking. Especially given how hopeful she was that she was creating something that would better her people as well as tamriel as a whole. You get to see towards the end of the dominion quest in eso what happens to the khajiit, bosmer, and altmer if the dominion fails, and you get to see ayrenn specifically grieving the death of something she put her entire heart and soul into. Then the quest ends on a hopeful note and it's implied that that future won't come to pass, but playing other games you see how little difference it made.
This isn't the only scenario likes this. Playing morrowind hits different after having met the tribunal in eso. Learning about how the mages guild just doesnt even exist anymore in skyrim and all the progress vanus galerion worked so hard to make, and everything he sacrificed, including eventually his life, was for nothing, hits way different after knowing him as a character. There's plenty more too but I've written enough for a Tumblr post.