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The Alessian Order

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Pilaf The Defiler's picture
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We've learned a lot of new information about the infamous Alessians since ESO was released, and the UESP article has expanded nicely, but there are still some puzzling holes in our knowledge of them. Even I'm stumped, and there's not a lot of hard date to go off, but I'm making this thread to speculate on the gaps in our knowledge.

In lore, the Alessian Order and First Empire are distinct, with the latter being a Nordic empire based in Skyrim and containing parts of Morrowind and High Rock. However, what's less clear is the relationship between the First Cyrodiilic Empire and the Alessian Order. King Dynar's memoirs (as well as established lore like the Pocket Guides) suggests the Order started off as a minority priesthood popular among the lower Nibenese classes and it eventually spread and took over the Empire. What isn't clear in other texts is whether or not the Alessian Order and the Empire became indistinguishable or if they were still considered two entities. The famous Battle of Glenumbria Moors mentions the Alessians being led by abbots and priests. Other sources like Rislav the Righteous mention Emperors like Gorieus and their Legions. We're left with incomplete and conflicting information about the setup of this Empire.

Another interesting inconsistency would be just when the Alessian Order was destroyed. We're given several dates that are really far apart from one another. More than one source fingers the aforementioned defeat at Glenumbra as the crushing blow of the Order, from which it never recovered. However, the War of Righteousness was nearly two thousand years later, and the Dragon Break ended several decades before that. One new book from ESO even mentions that Bendu Olo's fleet sailed on Thras under the blessings of the Emperor, implying there was still an Empire in Cyrodiil at this stage in the First Era.

The third head-scratcher would be the lore on Empress Hestra, who added High Rock to the Empire in 1E 1029 after helping the Knights of Saint Pelin crush the vampire lord Verkarth and his Gray Host. It's mentioned that after joining the Empire the Bretons quickly adopted the Divines, which is weird for two reasons - Hestra would have been from the First Empire, which I assume was still under control of the Alessians, and the Bretons would already have been following the Direnni version of the Divines, which was pretty similar but had a more Elven tint. (I'm assuming slight differences like Jephre instead of Kynareth, or Z'en in place of Zenithar.) To further complicate matters, it's said the Bretons left around a thousand years later due to the excesses of the Alessian Priesthood, who we were told were crushed centuries before Hestra arrived!

Overall ESO does more good than harm when it comes to completing our knowledge of the First Era, but the nature and history of Alessia's Empire itself still has these and probably other big gaps. We only know the names of four or five of the Monarchs in this Dynasty, and judging on the length of time it existed there would have been at least fifty if we use the Septim and Reman dynasties as models. We're left with not only the absence of the very names of most of the rulers of Cyrodiil in the longest lasting dynasty that ever was, but the particulars of just how powerful the Priesthood remained after losing at Glenumbra, and whether or not the Empire remained under their control. Any insights or input you guys might have either from playing ESO or reading the books would be helpful. As far as the Covenant content goes I've only completed Glenumbra as far as actual gameplay, so there might be relevant dialogue or quests in the High Rock zones that mention more Alessian lore, since there was some in Glenumbra. If you've got anything that helps address my problems let me know.

Xarnac The Conqueror's picture
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Some bits.

Pilaf The Defiler wrote:
What isn't clear in other texts is whether or not the Alessian Order and the Empire became indistinguishable or if they were still considered two entities.

To resist the Emperor is to resist the gods. I'd say that passage gives us a little hint, but not a full answer.

Pilaf The Defiler wrote:
It's mentioned that after joining the Empire the Bretons quickly adopted the Divines, which is weird for two reasons - Hestra would have been from the First Empire, which I assume was still under control of the Alessians, and the Bretons would already have been following the Direnni version of the Divines, which was pretty similar but had a more Elven tint.

I believe after the Rislav incident, Clan Direnni under Ryain outlawed the Alessian reforms in High Rock. That could explain the lapse in Divine worship.

 

Pilaf The Defiler's picture
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Hmmm, you're right. It almost reads like the priests control the Emperor like a puppet, especially in King Dynar's memoirs, which maintain the Alessians took the Imperial City in a coup.

Not sure if this holds true with Hestra. She's written as a strong-willed woman who conquers a lot of land and builds roads. (She has an entire line of standing stones named after her in Cyrodiil, an honor she shares with two other monarchs, Reman and Sidri-Ashak). What puzzles me is that the Alessians should be venerating the One, not the Eight, but the new lore books suggest under Hestra's rule the worship of the Divines grew in High Rock. Either the Alessian religion had evolved to become more tolerant and mutable by this point or their grasp on the Empire had weakened considerably. We're told that the Colovian Estates overshadowed them, but that's after the Dragon Break, so we've got a thousand years between Hestra and the War of Righteousness, with several more Emperors. (One named Shor-El).

Infragris's picture
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A resurgence of the Eight Divines in Cyrodiil and beyond could have been the cause of the Dragon Break: a desperate attempt of the Selectives to bend these spirits to their will.

As for the emperors, let's put them on a line: we have Alessia (1E 243-266), Belharza (266-?), Ami-El (in place around 360) and Gorieus (461-?). There appear to be hundred-year intervals between every emperor, enough place for a minor ruler every here and then, though we have an alternative explanation: the blood of Morihaus. These emperors are half-gods, so we can't really make a strong judgment on their lifespans.

After Gorieus, there's no mention of an emperor until Hestra around 948. That's some five hundred years, probably a lot of emperors unacounted for. One thing we have repeatedly been told is that the Marukhati had a thing for destroying archives and libraries: not surprising, then, that records of these emperors have been lost. Most likely, any rulers from this period were puppets to the Alessian Order, and as such not very notable. Again, an alternate explanation: Gorieus might have been a powerful mage or a necromancer, who artificially lenghtened his life. Not impossible, especially not in the Imperial context.

The PGE3 mentions an empress named Herdra, who improved relations with Colovia. It is assumed this is an alternate spelling of Hestra, but it could also be the name of another ruler preceding Hestra.

The Dragon Break occurs during Hestra's reign. How does a succession work within linear time? And how do you record it? It is perfectly possible that Hestra was the only emperor during the Break, or that entire dynasties were erased by the Jills. Notably, the only mention of Shor-El is in the context of the Break.

Pilaf The Defiler's picture
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Infragris wrote:
A resurgence of the Eight Divines in Cyrodiil and beyond could have been the cause of the Dragon Break: a desperate attempt of the Selectives to bend these spirits to their will.

I've considered this. The defeat at Glenumbra was said to be "the beginning of the end" for the Order, even though it endured for over a thousand years after that defeat.

Quote:
As for the emperors, let's put them on a line: we have Alessia (1E 243-266), Belharza (266-?), Ami-El (in place around 360) and Gorieus (461-?). There appear to be hundred-year intervals between every emperor, enough place for a minor ruler every here and then, though we have an alternative explanation: the blood of Morihaus. These emperors are half-gods, so we can't really make a strong judgment on their lifespans.

Morihaus himself was something slightly less than Divine, so I'd assume Belharza would only have a marginally increased lifespan, and each subsequent generation has diminishing returns. It's implied in Book of the Dragonborn that not all of the Alessian monarchs were related, kind of like the Septim bloodline which was broken multiple times.

Quote:
After Gorieus, there's no mention of an emperor until Hestra around 948. That's some five hundred years, probably a lot of emperors unacounted for. One thing we have repeatedly been told is that the Marukhati had a thing for destroying archives and libraries: not surprising, then, that records of these emperors have been lost. Most likely, any rulers from this period were puppets to the Alessian Order, and as such not very notable. Again, an alternate explanation: Gorieus might have been a powerful mage or a necromancer, who artificially lenghtened his life. Not impossible, especially not in the Imperial context.

It's possible, but given his extremist Alessian views, and Alessian texts like "the Illusion of Death" coupled with their hatred of any type of Elven magic, and necromancy seems like it wouldn't be well-received, even for an Emperor who is above most normal suspicion or laws. I think it's more likely we simply don't have several dozen names because those monarchs haven't factored into any stories we're privy to as of yet.

Quote:
The PGE3 mentions an empress named Herdra, who improved relations with Colovia. It is assumed this is an alternate spelling of Hestra, but it could also be the name of another ruler preceding Hestra.

I could go either way on that, but it sounds like a person with similar achievements to Hestra, who was a very charismatic and successful ruler and who is known to have improved roads and added territory to the Empire.

Quote:
The Dragon Break occurs during Hestra's reign. How does a succession work within linear time? And how do you record it? It is perfectly possible that Hestra was the only emperor during the Break, or that entire dynasties were erased by the Jills. Notably, the only mention of Shor-El is in the context of the Break.

I actually find it highly unlikely this event occurred during Hestra's lifespan. She conquered the Reach in around the eleventh century of the First Era, and the Dragon Break occurred in the thirteenth. Unless Hestra was between two and three centuries old when this event occurred, there were probably other monarchs between her and this event. The book people interpret (wrongly, in my opinion) to imply this mentions her and another Emperor named Shor-El, but it mentions them in the context of the Oversoul of Emperors in the Amulet. Hestra herself, in my view, was not physically present, but her soul was interviewed after the event and she spoke on what she saw, which was an empire across the stars. Shor-El told a different story, that of the Aurbis as an Egg.

Infragris's picture
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As I said, we can't really judge the effect of Divine ancestry on lifespans: the only other example that comes to mind is Umaril, who was pretty exceptional on all fronts. It just seems likely that you live longer if your father is a kind of winged man-bull. I think.

The ony mention of Herda to date comes from here:

Even with the eventual dissolution of the Alessian Reform of Marukh, battles continued to be waged along the Cyrodiil and Valenwood border lands. When the Empress Herda improved relations with the Colovian West, the attacks only intensified, though it was not until 1E 2714 – after unrelenting warfare and a devastating plague from the island of Thras – that Valenwood fell to the Cyrodilic Empire.

Judging from the first line, it appears that Herda ruled after the fall of the Marukhati - and after the Dragon Break. The only date mentioned - 1E 2714 - is 1700 years after Hestra's reign. There is also no mention of road networks or succesful conquest in this context. Judging from this, I would say that Herda's pact with the Colovians happened in the aftermath of the War of Righteousness, and has nothing to do with Hestra's earlier Colovian connections. Which stil doesn't quite make sense, since the texts seems to imply that the the War of Righteousness preceded the Thrassian Plague. Anyway, there's a strong case for Empress Herda's reign in the post-Dragon Break period.

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I can understand how a certain reading of that paragraph from PGE 3 might make it seem like Herda was Empress in 2714. There's one glaring problem here, though. This was during Reman Cyrodiil's reign as Emperor.

There's a couple of convoluted ways you could work around this, true. You could have a two-Emperor system like certain periods of Roman history, wherein one single person does not control the entire land, but no mention is ever made of this. We're told decisively that Reman united East and West and ruled Cyrodiil with a firm hand. Another handwave is that "Herda" is a nickname for Reman, but this is odd and there's no source to back it up.

The more likely explanation is that you've misinterpreted the meaning of the words in the paragraph. To me, when I read it, I read the ease of tensions between Colovia and the Empire as one event, and the annexation of Valenwood as a completely separate event that happens quite some time after the first event.  The wording of "Thought it was not until 2714" leads me to believe that whatever happened in 2714 happened a significant time forward from what happened under Herda, whether this was Hestra or someone else.  The second big clue is "The Cyrodilic Empire." To my knowledge that's Reman's Empire. In lore the Alessian one is never called that. It's the Alessian Empire, the Alessian Order or simply the Empire but never the Cyrodilic Empire to my knowledge. (If you know of an instance I'm not aware of feel free to cite it.)

Therefore I'm unconvinced that this Herda ruled as late as 2714. The contradicting data we have about this time period doesn't add up with that conclusion at all, at least the way I interpret it. My conclusion is that Herda and Hestra may have been two distinct entities but they both came well before Reman.

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I didn't say Herda ruled around 2714, nor does the text say that. I'm sorry if that's what my post seems to imply. Re-read the quote: first you have a paragraph on the dissolution of the Alessian Reform, then there's mention of Empress Herda's improved relations with the west (though it is implied these were ineffectual), and then it says warfare continued until 1E 2714. All I'm saying is that Herda seems to have reigned somewhere between the fall of the Alessian Order and 2714. She's obviously not a Remanite, so she has to be one of the late Alessian Emperors - but she's on the wrong side of the Dragon Break to be Hestra.

I've been saying she was an Alessian all along, haven't said a word about Reman.

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No, you didn't, but you said the only date associated with her was 2714. I thought you meant you believed she was ruling during that time period. Hmm. Okay, misunderstanding cleared up then.

Well, she could have been post-Dragon Break for that matter. The book Schick wrote about Thras for ESO mentions Bendu Olo's fleet sailed under the graces of the Emperor, which means that East and West must have been working together at this point. This was a few decades before the War of Righteousness. There would have been time for maybe a couple of monarchs, if they were short-lived, but three is a stretch as the War utterly collapsed the Empire within ten years' time. Nibenay just couldn't cope with the popularity and power of Colovia, it seems. They fared worse during the first Interregnum as well.

I wonder if there were any pretender Emperors between the fall of the Order and the rise of Reman, as there were in the Second Era? You could have had someone sitting on the throne calling himself Emperor without actually controlling a ton of land, theoretically. This doesn't match Herda's description at all, though, as Herda was said to actively be improving relations, so the other idea of her being one of a handful of monarchs between the Break and the complete dissolution of the Empire makes sense if you wanna place her that late in time. I still think the passage is possibly meant to indicate decades or even centuries between the two named events, personally. We could all benefit from more new sources or some clarity, but barring further ESO patches or lore from ES 6  a few years down the line our information is limited.

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The whole post-Break period is a blur, really. Does ESO have anything to say about the War of Righteousness? That's another event we barely know anything about.

Pilaf The Defiler's picture
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I couldn't tell you right off the top of my head. I've absorbed a ton of content from ESO, through playing and uploading books here, but I'm processing it more slowly than the lore of, say, Skyrim, because there's just so damned much of it. It's gonna take a few subsequent re-reads of some of the better sources to say for sure. I can't recall anything specifically about the War of Righteousness right off the top of my head, and UESP hasn't updated their information on that either. I know there's a few new things about the Alessians, about Maruhk and about the Dragon Break itself, but that's all I can reliably recall.