Excerpted from a collection of High Rock's most popular folktales, introduced and arranged by Alys Thierry
Some may object to the inclusion of this next tale in this treasury of High Rock's folklore. In contrast to the previous tales, which are the stories of the common folk, this is a literary satire penned by a member of the emergent First Era Breton nobility. Yet Laurelaine Rielle's irreverent tale passed into the common folklore very quickly. Very few Bretons today have read her original text, but the story is widely known throughout High Rock.
Laurelaine Rielle's exact ancestry is hotly debated, and the date and place of her birth is unknown, but she was certainly a scion of the Direnni through her paternal grandmother. Famous for both her beauty and her peerless wit, by 1E 474, Laurelaine had also achieved some measure of infamy as the mistress of her distant cousin, Prince Aiden Direnni. At most, they were fourth cousins a few times removed, but this relationship was easily characterized as incestuous by Alessian missionaries to High Rock.
Laurelaine channeled her anger into blistering prose. It is not known exactly when she wrote her tale, but a Colovian courtier mentions acquiring his own copy of Lady Laurelaine's monkey story in a letter dated 1E 478, the same year in which Rislav Larich of Skingrad defied the Empire, and Ryain Direnni banned the Alessian sect in High Rock.
Between 1E 480 and 482, Prince Aiden Direnni won a number of important battles against the Alessian Order, culminating in the Battle of Glenumbra Moors. A common joke of the time was that it was Prince Aiden who kept the Alessian horde at bay, but Lady Laurelaine who made monkeys of them all.
Auri-El and the Monkey Prophet
In the books of our revered priests, you may read of how our Great King Auri-El set forth the path that his descendants should walk. Some of those old priests did also say that man had no claim in that ancestry, and were subsequently much confounded by the Manmer of our land. In truth, the difference between man and mer is passing small as viewed from on high. The same cannot be said of the beast-folk, but our Ancestors have a care for all creatures that sprung up from their sacrifice.
In the Dawn of the world, when Auri-El and his knights rode through the jungles of the South, a monkey beheld their passing and was so dazzled by their glory that he fell out of his tree. This monkey rushed to tell all the other monkeys of the glorious King he had seen, and preached to them that they should make themselves up like the Golden King and his knights.
The monkeys fashioned themselves helmets from the gourds of melons, daubed golden fish scales to their fur, and their new prophet carried about a crude bow he'd tied together from vines and a stick.
"We still do not look like the Golden King and his knights," the Monkey Prophet said to his followers. "The Golden King had no tail. We must bite off our tails and then we will be just like them."
The monkeys bit off their own tails, and congratulated each other that now they looked just like the Golden King's people.
One day, Auri-El and his knights rode out into the Southern jungle again and came upon these tail-less monkeys in their strange garments . The monkeys fell to the ground in awe and fear when they saw the true King, and began to wail, for they saw now that they looked nothing like the King and his knights.
The strongest knight of Auri-El, Sir Trinimac, was angry at the monkeys' daring. "Sire, let me slay them for this mockery."
But Auri-El stayed Sir Trinimac's hand. "These creatures have done all this for love of me. Monkeys you are no more, I name you Imga, and you will follow after my own people. But do not forget again the face of your true King. If ever you do so, you will be mere monkeys again."
So Auri-El departed, leaving the Imga with his blessing. They learnt from Auri-El's descendants how to speak and dress and pray, but as time wore on, they began to forget the Golden King's face. The Monkey Prophet went about Tamriel boasting of the time he saw the Golden King, and how he had been favoured above all other creatures by Auri-El.
The Monkey Prophet's' boasts did not impress any mer, but the men he met were much amazed by his stories.
"Tell us about the Golden King," they'd ask the Monkey Prophet, and he'd tell the story of how Auri-El appeared to him and gave him his blessing. In time, he would add that Auri-El had then entrusted him with the leadership of all the faithful.
"What did the Golden King look like?" the men asked him, and the Monkey Prophet replied that he shone like the sun.
"Did he look like his statue in the temple?" one man at last asked the Monkey Prophet.
The Monkey Prophet had not seen this statue, so he let the men lead him before the burnished gold statue of Auri-El.
"Did he look like that?" they pressed the Monkey Prophet.
The Monkey Prophet took a close look at the statue. "The ears are too long," he said. "And that face is wrong. The Golden King was never an elf! Call your stone carvers to me. I will show you what the Golden King truly looks like."
The men obeyed him, and feverishly they followed the Monkey Prophet's commands, carving out a giant statue of the Golden King as described to them by the Monkey Prophet.
When at last they were done, they set up their work in the village square. "Behold the true face of the Golden King!" cried the Monkey Prophet.
The men stared at the statue.
"Great King, we behold your true glory!" prayed the Monkey Prophet, and bid them bow to the statue.
Most of the men followed his orders, but a small child spoke up, "Mama, why are they bowing to a stone monkey?"
The Monkey Prophet angrily cried out to the child, "Did you not know that the Golden King was a Monkey like myself?"
When these words had left his lips, the Monkey Prophet doubled over and began to shrink in size. He let out a terrible guttural howl. The clothes fell from his back, a tail sprang from between his buttocks, and he rushed up a tree, and was never seen again among men or mer.
His followers were aghast at what they had seen. Most of them slunk back in shame to their homes. Yet some of them, as we have lately seen, decided that the Golden King must be a monkey after all, and so we should all become monkeys.
Great Auri-El, let your light shone upon us, and defend us from the Monkey horde.
It should go without saying that the butt of this satire is the Prophet Maruhk and the Alessian Reforms that his successors carried out in his name. Removing "the Elven taint" from the people's conception of Akatosh was an obsession of the Alessians, though it would be several more centuries until the Marukhati Selectives hatched their audacious plan to remove the taint at a more metaphysical level.
Laurelaine's taunt that they were remaking the King of the Divines in the image of a monkey has captured the imagination of Bretons ever since. "Akatosh and the Monkey Priest" is a regular song in most drinking establishments in High Rock. And everyone's favourite stanza:
The ears are wrong, and far too long,
They need a better shape
Lord Akatosh, the monkey said,
Must surely be an ape.
is almost always belted out with loud enthusiasm, patrons thumping their mugs along in accompaniment.
Notes:
Of course, Marukh the Prophet actually preached monotheism and a much more distant, abstract Akatosh, not Monkey Akatosh. Marukh is said to have been an Ape, probably an Imga, which is a strange quirk of history, because in the PGE1 the Imga are noted as slavish imitators of the Altmer.
The Great Apes, or Imga, are native beastfolk of Valenwood. They see the High Elves as their lords and masters, and as a portrait of an ideal, civilized society. Great Apes go to desperate measures to emulate the High Elves: they wear capes, practice with the dueling sword, and attempt to speak with perfect enunciation and courtly manners despite their gravelly, baritone voices. Each Imga bears some kind of title, be it Baron, Duke, Earl, or the like, which they use when addressing the members of the Thalmor (needless to say, there are no landowning Great Apes). More extreme Great Apes shave their bodies and powder their skin white to seem more like the High Elves. They often cut themselves in the process, creating the truly pathetic picture of a naked white Ape, skin dotted pink with blood, strutting around the trading posts of Valenwood with mock nobility. The Imga feel that humans are beneath them as lesser beastfolk, and pretend to find their smell exceedingly offensive - a Great Ape holds a perfumed corner of his cape to his nose when Men are around.
Aiden Direnni (working with with his cousins Ryain and Raven) is mentioned as the victor of The Battle of Glenumbra Moors in a few sources. The book Rislav the Righteous is one of the best summaries of what led up to that battle. Laurelaine Rielle is of my own invention, but I picked Rielle for the surname of an early Breton noble since the name is mentioned in the Breton song The Battle of Glenumbria Moors:
So children of this Breton land
Ye best remember well
All those who for High Rock stood
Brian, Ancois, Rielle;
Men of the north,
All who stood forth
Till all oppressors fell.
If we take the Direnni mythos at face value, both the Altmer and Breton sides of the Direnni family must have been appallingly inbred, not to mention the whole immorality of these Direnni-Breton relationships as viewed by outsiders. In actual fact, "The Direnni" contribution to High Rock's blood is probably shorthand for a whole lot of Aldmeri influences from across northern Tamriel. (Though the Direnni were still probably shockingly inbred.)