Through Fire and War

Starting off controversially, I see young Ulfric (a child/lad) as being a pacifist. He didn’t go to the Greybeards to ask to study with them. They invited him to High Hrothgar. To me, that means they saw the potential in him to become one of them. Ulfric to 4E201 remained honoured that he had this opportunity.

So then why did he give it up? Ulfric had to care about something enough to either forsake his values or rewrite his personal definition of what pacifism is. He left the Greybeards to join the Legion. Why? Because the Thalmor had invaded Cyrodiil. He saw the Imperials fighting for their homeland and was compelled/moved by this.

Here begins the sunk-cost fallacy for Ulfric, whether you regard it as tragic or comedic (ironic perhaps, but that fits with either light). He left High Hrothgar to use the Voice in a way unfitting of the Greybeard’s tenants. He could never go back now.

He is then captured by the Thalmor. According to the dossier, he is broken by Elenwen (take a moment to consider how disciplined toward silence he must have been after ten years with the Greybeards) and then made to believe that the Imperial City fell because of the information he imparted.

What shame he must have felt. And what could he do about it? He probably ‘knew’ he didn’t deserve to live. The Empire loves to treat dissidents with decapitation, and that was the punishment Ulfric faced if he ‘came clean’.

This is the first strike of the Thalmor twisting him into an asset. But Ulfric had means to defy this…sort of. He could redeem himself by putting his all into helping the Legion reclaim the Imperial City from the Thalmor. If he died doing that, it would be honourable and he could right his mistake. It wouldn’t matter that nobody ever knew his terrible secret.

But, Ulfric survived.

Could he tell the truth then? He was a decorated war hero. Everybody knew that the signing of the White-Gold Concordat was only meant to be temporary. Both the Empire and Dominion were much weaker than they put off. What if, now Ulfric has managed to retake the Imperial City - and his secret still remains like a black mark - he could be useful again?

Sometime around here in the timeline, contact is made with him by the Thalmor (according to that dossier). The nature of this remains tantalizingly beyond our ability to know, but it didn’t have to be anything more complicated than basically the Thalmor equivalent of WE KNOW ✋

Ulfric’s secret is a ticking time bomb.

Now we come to Markarth, and the Markarth Incident. I have issues with The Bear of Markarth, which could honestly be a post of its own. TLDR, it’s written by an Imperial scholar, is the only source of the most damning actions Ulfric is accused of (the locals don’t corroborate any of it, not even Madanach, who himself is alive when all the opposition to Ulfric’s militia was allegedly slaughtered en masse, there are other lore books that read similarly like propaganda such as The Warp in the West), and has very dismissive language surrounding how the Forsworn treated Nords during their rule (“True, some crimes were committed against former Nord landowners”, for example - so not only was it not entirely peaceful, but crimes were committed against former landowners, meaning they’d been stripped first of their assets).

The only thing Ulfric himself says about Markarth is that bit about having to smuggle a letter out of prison to deliver his father’s eulogy. Would I trust his account of Markarth anyway? Nah lol. He would be biased toward himself.

So then does an impartial account exist? How about Jarl Igmund?

What reason would he have to lie? He’s an Imperial jarl. If the Stormcloaks get the Reach, he loses his throne. If you ask him to create a distraction at the Thalmor Embassy, he uses the opportunity to trash Ulfric lol. I’m inclined to believe him, seeing as he has every reason in the world to double down and say nah. Ulfric is a monster. Instead, he tells us this:

When the Empire lost the Reach during the Great War, we became desperate. We promised a group of Nord militia free worship in exchange for their help retaking the Hold.

We promised, in exchange. The ordering is important here. According to Igmund, Ulfric didn’t just show up like The Bear of Markarth says he did. He was asked to help.

So let’s return to Ulfric at this point in time. He’s harbouring a terrible secret. He is a legionnaire now invested in the Empire’s success not only for their right to defend Cyrodiil against invaders but because he has killed and fought in their name. He feels the pressure to prove himself further when, at any time, the Thalmor could let slip that he was responsible for the Imperial City falling.

Having fought to reclaim it is merely a wash. Ulfric only fixed his mistake. He’s done nothing to restore his honour, for it could be perceived he only returned to the front lines out of obligation.

So then a jarl requests aid, in a location where the Legion once held but it has now been taken by another group. The Empire is beginning the process of assessing the lay of the land beyond its borders now the Great War is “over”.

Would it not be honourable then to save them the trouble of reclaiming the Reach? So of course Ulfric goes.

Exactly how Markarth is reclaimed is up the air, as I said earlier. But what is agreed upon is that the Thalmor find out about the Talos worship and they turn this on the Empire. I have a lot of thoughts about this condition of the White-Gold Concordat, which can be summarized as the Dominion did not expect the Empire would hold on Talos worship. They knew that eventually, this issue would arise. And since it was written into the Concordat, this is now their casus belli to continue the Great War. I would only argue, considering the Dominion’s preferred continuation of Skyrim’s civil war, that they just didn’t expect it to happen so soon lol.

The point is, Ulfric was the one who pulled the short straw. If you want to be really sympathetic toward him about it, he was the scapegoat.

Back to his perspective. Ulfric has not only helped to retake the Imperial City now, he has gone out of his way to retake a region that the Empire lost during the Great War. And how is he awarded for that?

He’s arrested by the Empire. He sits in prison for seven years, and the only reason he is released is because Eastmarch needs a jarl. He missed his father’s last years.

He goes home, broken, and is received by the outraged people of Windhelm. This would have been pivotal, and I would argue is the moment he turned his back on the Empire. After everything he did, everything he endured… his people are right. This was what he sacrificed his pacifism for?

So, fuck the Empire, Ulfric declares. Taking Galmar’s dialogue into account as well, I think when Ulfric says fuck the Empire he really means to say fuck the Aldmeri Dominion, because they are nothing but a puppet. The Empire is the mask behind which the Dominion spreads its influence across Tamriel during the interim years.

And Ulfric can’t see past that, as far as the civil war goes. To soften himself toward the Empire is to put himself at risk of being broken again by the Dominion. There is no compromise. To fight the Empire is to fight them.

Which very tragically/comedically/ironically plays entirely into the Dominion’s hands.

Because I personally consider it a narrative tragedy, I think then a lot about what Ulfric being deemed an asset of the Dominion really means. For one, it doesn’t mean he’s a direct agent. Those things are not one in the same. I also think that Ulfric suffers from the following things: he survived the Great War, was the unfortunate one to break the Talos portion of the White-Gold Concordat, and became an important political figure in Skyrim as jarl.

He is therefore a very useful asset, but the Dominion has assets everywhere. The Emperor is an asset. General Tullius is an asset. Elisif is an asset. Even Balgruuf is an asset, since his refusal to take sides in the civil war means neither Empire nor Stormcloaks get the edge.

Ulfric is just…extremely unlucky. I think again of how Elenwen broke him during the Great War, and how the dominos fell from there. Ulfric isn’t moved by Tullius telling him after a Stormcloak victory that this was exactly what the Thalmor wanted. Yeah, a dying man would say that.

This is specifically Lilliandra in the Little Dragon, Little Shadow AU. A few years after birthing Ophelia and she's finally come to terms/more comfortable with her post-pregnancy body, stretch marks and all <3

Miraak off camera: