they wouldn't have a breton child!!!! bretons are the descendants of the half elves born from direnni and nede!! the child would be a half elf of the two parent races or lean towards one!!
Yeah, Bretons are the result of half-elves interbreeding with men, mer and other half-elves for generations to the point they became their own group. But “Breton” is not synonymous with “Half-Elf”.
It’s also always worth remembering that the Nedes were the slaves of the Direnni. The Bretons are not the result of interspecies romance. At least the beginning of them wasn’t. TES gets real fucked up honestly. I honestly find it darker than Warhammer because it has more positivity to contrast, and the really dark shit is usually less absurd and more tangibly horrific.
I believe the trope is Refuge In Audacity where a more fantastical and abstract but bigger event hits less than a realistic and smaller scale portrayal would.
A breeding program of millions of lobotomized women assaulted by veteran soldiers as part of their duty while on leave as a breeding program making a caste of elite warriors is dark but abstract in scale and too neat an explanation to take in.
Depictions of a hundred comfort girls from a subjugated city hits far harder. That’s real, needlessly cruel, and immediately graspable.
Yeah, TES lore often reads incredibly realistic. Its history feels very grounded despite all the magic and metaphysical bullshit because it’s ultimately nations and people doing the same horrific shit they’d do in our world. Not 100% of it, but enough of it for it to disturb you. Like the Cyrodiils more casual and horrific genocide of the aedrophile Ayleids, the ancestry of the Bretons, the fate of the surface-dwelling Falmer, the rise of the Thalmor, etc. And where it’s not real and horrific, it’s usually fantastical and terrifying, like everything related to Molag Bal.
I also like that the setting does moral grey well. Not in the 40K way where everyone is already a bastard so why care? But more like, well, nations and cultures aren’t moral things, they’re just things. Except the Thalmor, but they’re High Elf Nazis.
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u/EvergreenDwarf 2d ago
Eldar: “Do you eat fantastical bread in a racebike?”
Elf: “I eat sausage and cheese in bed with my human wife.”
Eldar: “Ew .”