You can really tell it was and still is being written by bigoted WASPs. Aside from the obvious monarchism and the Empire being portrayed unilaterally as “The Good Guys” (at least until Skyrim), I’ve noticed for a long time that the backstory is riddled with genocides and ethnic cleansings.

Almost always human on elf (the inhuman other), and almost always treated like a good thing. Usually it’s the noble and physically superior Nords who just so happen to be blonde haired, blue eyed vikings. And when it’s not them, it’s the psychotic child killing robot man Pelinal Whitestrake or Tiber Septim using a time bending superweapon to annihilate thousands of Altmer for the crime of checks notes successfully defending themselves from his Imperialist bullshit. I think it’s insulting that the victims of what can only be described as oppression are now painted as the Nazi-esque villains because the alternative would be making them way too sympathetic. That’s not even getting into how they treat the Orcs and the Beast races.

We talk about how guys like Tolkien and CS Lewis wrote a lot of racist undertones, and then Bethesda says “Fuck that” and just makes the ethnonationalism a plot point in all their games.