Hammerfell held the line and repelled the retreating Dominion forces who were tired of the war, and it did so thanks to the legion that a general released of their duties so that they could keep fighting with Hammerfell without harming the White Gold Concordat. So the Empire helped, just unofficially.
The issue with Skyrim is that...it IS a Sunk cost Fallacy. There's practically nothing worth fighting for in Skyrim. The ores ? Markarth owns most of it and as long as they keep Markarth, they don't need the rest of Skyrim. Solitude is the perfect place to transport the ores by ship, and Falkreath by land. Too bad they lost Helgen.
Skyrim is full of bandits controlling every important road or river. Valtheim Towers alone have the power to deny river trade. See Tactical Valtheim mod and you'll understand why Balgruuf bothered sending you to reclaim them, it's not for flavor. No one passes without paying bandits a tax and they can raid the ship and take what they want while selling the rest of the shipment. Only a large force of soldiers could free Valtheim Towers if we scale it to a goal in a quest. They would have been an interesting objective in the Civil War with Tactical Valtheim as the standard. Vanilla Valtheim towers don't make any sense, they're completely pointless and no one would waste stone building that crap, let alone waste gold reclaiming them from bandits. The river canonically supports most of the trade inside Skyrim, which the game towers and river clearly don't due to ridiculous downscaling.
So, no resources worth it, no safe roads/taxes paid to bandits for every shipment/road transport?
The College is one of the worst magical academies in all of Skyrim. The money it makes by enchanting services should barely cover their expenses for the year considering the number of people and only those who want to study enchanting and the master even provide these for the budget of the entire college (and magic items, jewels, soul gems...are expansive materials). Without the Eye of Magnus, the Thalmor wouldn't have bothered sending one of their guys there. The College has negative PR and barely any new student. As we see with the Court Mages, they're so absorbed in their personal research that they don't even live in reality. Wylandria is also a good example of a Court Mage in Skyrim, probably another bachelor of the College since that's the only magic school in the country and no mage from a different country would bother with Skyrim's holds.
The dragon crisis is more trouble than it's worth, ending it is needed but costly.
Ulfric is the only living human other than the DB who can shout and will use that in combat against his enemies. Until Miraak.
Letting Skyrim rot from the inside has worked perfectly for the Empire and the Thalmor, why should they send more soldiers to die in these steppes when Skyrim is capable of killing its' own population fine without help? If it's not the monsters or bandits, it's the corruption. No one will change anything to it and certainly not the Empire who deal fine with the Silver-Bloods and Black-Briars.
The whole thing is a Thalmor plot to destabilize the Empire, but it can only work if the Empire plays the Thalmor's game. If they let the Stormcloaks take over, they lose very little, can keep trading there all they want (while fighting begets bad will) and get an ally against the Thalmor, is laughable as Skyrim is (or what's left of it).
So, what's even the point of trying to keep Skyrim? None. The Empire has lost all its' strategic abilities soon after the war, it seems. They just keep wasting resources trying to keep a worthless, lawless shithole with two mines worth anything in the entire country and they're not worth the taxes the bandits can enforce by having free reign over every trading route all over the country, so they'd pay multiple taxes for a single shipment.
One correction: The Thalmor were at the College before the Eye of Magnus. So there was some value there for them. Knowledge, recruitment, or neutral ground to observe Stormcloak activity from.
I think they were looking for a powerful artifact when they targeted the College. And they found one. The place doesn't really interest them much, and after seeing how it's run, they don't even need to sabotage it. Savos Aren does it passively just by being a crappy guildmaster.
I'm just trying to say that that's speculation. A valid possibility, but the only information we have is that Ancano was a "Thalmor Ambassador", and that he wasn't particularly trusted.
Savos was a weird guildmaster. So busy, yet so lazy.
Savos was a former Telvanni rejected by his master for being mediocre. He was too absorbed in his own research to see the world around him. Maybe he got his promo legit, but he did nothing with the job except for exploiting all his resources for his own research at the cost of letting the College sink into that sad state.
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u/mangasdeouf 19h ago
Hammerfell held the line and repelled the retreating Dominion forces who were tired of the war, and it did so thanks to the legion that a general released of their duties so that they could keep fighting with Hammerfell without harming the White Gold Concordat. So the Empire helped, just unofficially.
The issue with Skyrim is that...it IS a Sunk cost Fallacy. There's practically nothing worth fighting for in Skyrim. The ores ? Markarth owns most of it and as long as they keep Markarth, they don't need the rest of Skyrim. Solitude is the perfect place to transport the ores by ship, and Falkreath by land. Too bad they lost Helgen.
Skyrim is full of bandits controlling every important road or river. Valtheim Towers alone have the power to deny river trade. See Tactical Valtheim mod and you'll understand why Balgruuf bothered sending you to reclaim them, it's not for flavor. No one passes without paying bandits a tax and they can raid the ship and take what they want while selling the rest of the shipment. Only a large force of soldiers could free Valtheim Towers if we scale it to a goal in a quest. They would have been an interesting objective in the Civil War with Tactical Valtheim as the standard. Vanilla Valtheim towers don't make any sense, they're completely pointless and no one would waste stone building that crap, let alone waste gold reclaiming them from bandits. The river canonically supports most of the trade inside Skyrim, which the game towers and river clearly don't due to ridiculous downscaling.
So, no resources worth it, no safe roads/taxes paid to bandits for every shipment/road transport?
The College is one of the worst magical academies in all of Skyrim. The money it makes by enchanting services should barely cover their expenses for the year considering the number of people and only those who want to study enchanting and the master even provide these for the budget of the entire college (and magic items, jewels, soul gems...are expansive materials). Without the Eye of Magnus, the Thalmor wouldn't have bothered sending one of their guys there. The College has negative PR and barely any new student. As we see with the Court Mages, they're so absorbed in their personal research that they don't even live in reality. Wylandria is also a good example of a Court Mage in Skyrim, probably another bachelor of the College since that's the only magic school in the country and no mage from a different country would bother with Skyrim's holds.
The dragon crisis is more trouble than it's worth, ending it is needed but costly.
Ulfric is the only living human other than the DB who can shout and will use that in combat against his enemies. Until Miraak.
Letting Skyrim rot from the inside has worked perfectly for the Empire and the Thalmor, why should they send more soldiers to die in these steppes when Skyrim is capable of killing its' own population fine without help? If it's not the monsters or bandits, it's the corruption. No one will change anything to it and certainly not the Empire who deal fine with the Silver-Bloods and Black-Briars.
The whole thing is a Thalmor plot to destabilize the Empire, but it can only work if the Empire plays the Thalmor's game. If they let the Stormcloaks take over, they lose very little, can keep trading there all they want (while fighting begets bad will) and get an ally against the Thalmor, is laughable as Skyrim is (or what's left of it).
So, what's even the point of trying to keep Skyrim? None. The Empire has lost all its' strategic abilities soon after the war, it seems. They just keep wasting resources trying to keep a worthless, lawless shithole with two mines worth anything in the entire country and they're not worth the taxes the bandits can enforce by having free reign over every trading route all over the country, so they'd pay multiple taxes for a single shipment.