To the Third and Fourth Generation
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It was a cold, wintry, glorious day in Solitude.
Well, perhaps it wasn't all that glorious for those lesser beings stuck outside, or trying to keep warm in their tiny little houses, but for the mighty Dragonborn, it was a most glorious day indeed!
For you see, the amazing Dragonborn, whose real name is IRRELEVANT due to the sheer magnificence of his title and deeds, was hosting a celebratory feast in his home – specifically in Proudspire, his home in Solitude, as opposed to his many other equally excellent homes in every corner of Skyrim, which he earnt through his most superbness.
Yesterday, one of his housecarls – Lydia, the first of his beautiful ladies – had organised a gathering in the Blue Palace to celebrate him and all the things he had done to save Skyrim – nay, the world! – from all kinds of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells.
All his companions were there, from the greatest, like Aela and Mjoll and Serana, to the least, like the all the men.
And it had been…perfectly normal. Very proper, with only a little bit of drunkenness, a small amount of fighting and slightest hint of wantonness.
This simply would not do, and his housecarl knew that. She had been appropriately shamefaced afterwards.
For he was the DRAGONBORN. He was a NORD, the finest Nord ever to grace the planet since Tiber Septim himself!
He loved DRINKING, he loved BATTLE, and he loved WOMEN, and that gathering featured nowhere near enough of all those things!
So he had, as always, taken it upon himself to fix it.
That morning, he had gone out and slain SIXTEEN DRAGONS, using nothing but his BARE HANDS!
That afternoon, he had gone to the Winking Skeever, and downed FORTY-SEVEN PINTS, enough to get pleasingly buzzed!
And this evening, he was now feasting with his TEN WIVES, all of whom were the most beautiful in the land and eager for his attention!
Yes, today was a good day, but it was soon to become even better, and not just for the afterparty, where all his wives would be happy to carry his 'burdens' once more!
His TWENTY-TWO WIVES had been talking at length about how BRAVE and MANLY their Dragonborn husband was – a favourite topic of theirs – when one of them suggested that he deserved a reward for his greatness!
Before he could even get a word in, another of his THIRTY-SEVEN WIVES agreed, saying he should be the High King of Skyrim already!
It was a great idea, and he only needed to look at his darling Elisif for her to blushingly accept, for he was, after all, the great and mighty DRAGONBORN, the most worthy High King there could be, unlike that Torygg, who got shouted to death, like a cuck.
But then, before they could have another celebratory round for his now-impending kingship, another of his SEVENTY-FOUR WIVES said that being High King of Skyrim was too small of a title for the glorious DRAGONBORN. No, she said, her (their) husband should be the EMPEROR OF TAMRIEL! For Titus Mede had died like a dog in "mysterious" circumstances, which meant the throne was now empty – and he was the perfect man to sit on that throne through his DRAGON BLOOD! (And he had killed the Emperor, so really it was his by right of conquest already!)
Yes, it was a truly inspired idea! A Proudspire idea! Yes, he would sire many children with his ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN WIVES, as they surrounded him in his mansion, to rule over the land! He would take over the Empire, conquer the Thalmor, and rule as is his right as the DRAGONBORN from the north, like Tiber Septim before him!
Nothing would stand in his way! As a MANLY NORD who was the DRAGONBORN, glory would be his, forever, thanks to his BATTLE, his DRINKING, and his WOMEN! Nothing could go wrong!
Lydia, Jarl of Whiterun, sighed as she received the messenger's report on the latest battle in what was already known across the continent as the 'War of the Dragonspawn'.
Scores dead, many more injured. That was the crux of it, just as it had been for years now. She thanked the messenger, and internally cursed her ancestors for the stupidity they had wrought.
She wasn't sure who was more to blame – her grandfather, who had the bright idea to spend his unusually long time on Nirn having as many children as his loins could produce, or her grandmother, who utterly failed in her duty as a housecarl to keep her ward in-line, and instead simply enabled him to be driven by whatever urges drove him forward on any given day.
Sure, he saved the world a few times – but at what cost?
This Lydia was not, you may have realised, the Lydia of renown, first wife and beloved housecarl of the Dragonborn. Rather, she was their first grandchild, the eldest child of their eldest son. He, too, was the firstborn, and some time after the Dragonborn's conquest of Skyrim (which was remarkably bloodless, and not at all a sign of what was to come), he was given the Jarldom of Whiterun, as a token of the Dragonborn's love for his mother. It made for a delightful image of a happy family, and it was all quite lovely.
Or at least, Lydia mused, it would have been lovely, had her father not been the first among countless half-siblings.
And she meant that quite literally – her court wizards and historians had spent years trying to figure out just how many descendants the Dragonborn had, and they were still only vaguely estimating. It was particularly difficult to do the maths given that the man had spent the best part of a century reproducing, and the generations were now all warped – there were children of the man who were great uncles and aunts to adults some 70 years older than them.
He had lived in rude health for so long that many had speculated the Dragonborn to be immortal, but then five years ago – like Tiber Septim before him – the man had disappeared from the face of Nirn (which, perhaps, meant he truly was immortal), leaving behind at minimum 250,000 descendants (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren…), and possibly upwards of a million!
And this didn't account for those who claimed heritage from the man without a drop of dragon blood in them, for who could tell the real from the fake?
None of this mattered much when he was present in Tamriel, ruling his empire from the Imperial City. He had spent decades fighting to bring every corner of the continent under his rule, just as often with his 'sword' as by the sword. Males would fall lifeless at his feet, and females would likewise fall for entirely different reasons.
Of course, because the Dragonborn was a Nord, he didn't think too much about the little thing known as 'consequences' – it was too big of a word for him to consider, most likely – and his idiot housecarls (including her dear grandmother) just let him do whatever he wanted, because they were too busy fawning over him!
Oh, you want a dozen more wives today? Of course, Mr Dragonborn. Oh, you want to rule the continent? What a great idea, sir. Oh, you want to place your children in every position of power imaginable, ruling every house, tribe and fiefdom with absolutely no succession plan for your Empire once you die? What a brilliant idea, your worshipfulness, there is no way that could possibly go wrong.
And do you think he wrote down a will, making his final wishes clear to everyone? Of course not! Writing was for filthy Bretons, or something. Some had suggested that the Dragonborn must have left his will in a secret location, perhaps near the word walls of Skyrim or in some tunnel under the Imperial Palace, but from what Lydia knew of him, that sounded like far too much effort and forward planning for him to even consider.
All his descendants had to go by was some second-hand account of an off-hand comment the Dragonborn had once made to his companions, about how his children should fight each other in a tournament to become his heir.
This had apparently been a joke, as a couple of his many wives had gently slapped his arm afterwards in an 'oh, you silly man' sort of way. At least, that's what the witnesses claimed, and it was so innocuous compared to most stories about the LEGENDARY DRAGONBORN that it was probably true.
But time had passed, and what was once a spoken joke had, over the years, turned into whispered fact. Yes, the Dragonborn had said his descendants must fight for the throne, so that was what they were to do.
Within days of his alleged ascension to the gods, scores of children and grandchildren had laid claim to being the next Emperor. When they all realised that there were others making probably equally valid claims, these claimants began trying to take other lesser titles, as proof that they were the most deserving of the Grand Prize.
"I'm a Jarl, so I deserve to be Emperor!"
"Oh yeah? Well I'm a King, so my claim is bigger than yours!"
And so on.
Naturally, each would then raise armies from their fiefdom, calling people (many of whom were fellow descendants of the Dragonborn) to arms for their sake.
The problem was, there were other descendants of the Dragonborn who had no interest in being Emperor of Tamriel, but only because they had grown up expecting to be a king or duke or jarl or chief. The idea that some blow-in would steal their rightful throne from them when they weren't even interested in it and were just using it as part of their quest for the Imperial Throne naturally infuriated them, and they began raising armies from among their relatives and their people just as these wannabes had done – and so these two groups began fighting each other too.
And then once these heirs and claimants and pretenders had decided that war was the only way, that attracted the attention of other groups as well, often rebels against the Empire, or descendants of former lords, or simply people with a bone to pick, like that random vampire clan that had shown up near Solitude. All these groups had their own armies too, of course, which just added to the chaos.
This had been going on for five years.
Lydia, being a good Jarl, had copied her many predecessors in Whiterun by keeping the hold largely neutral. She had a good relationship with the Jarls of Riften and Solitude, descended as they were from Mjoll the Lioness and Elisif the Fair.
But there were many claimants to each of their own thrones, to say nothing of the various other groups trying to undermine them. Needless to say, none of them had any interest in supporting any of the claimants to the Imperial City, as it was clear to them that the Empire was dead, and in its place were literal armies of the Dragonborn's descendants, wandering to-and-fro across Tamriel, fighting each other for a throne none would ever succeed to winning.
As another messenger came dashing into the throne room, Lydia just shook her head. If the greatest of those to ever walk on the face of Nirn was so foolish, so simple, so utterly selfish – what did that say about the rest of them?
When she herself reached Valhalla – if that's where her grandfather had gone – she would be having many words to say to him, and she would not let him go until he understood what an idiot he had been.
Until then, though, she would just have to suffer through another battle report in silence, pondering how many more distant relatives she had just lost due to the impulses of one man and his thousands of enablers.
What a life.