you got fucking kings, Torygg, Helseth, living gods of the Tribunal.... under an "Emperor"? who puts some garrisons around but does.... what exactly?
theres an "East Empire Trading Company"? whats that do?
it kinda seems like a holy roman empire, kinda seems like a regular roman empire. they've got knights, dukes, but a Legion...
yes i know the answer is technically "these jackoffs just made it up as they went" and don't care a lick about political theory but this is exactly the kind of excercise that makes fun speculative historiography
The Thalmor, at best, tend to be Florida brained. They violently despise outsiders and are nostalgic for a mythical past that may have never quite happened the way they imagined it, and will kill and destroy whatever they please to try to crawl back to it.
The topic of "Thalmor" is weird because they were basically just a racist country club which was inexplicably elevated by Ayrenn into being Summerset's FBI despite their storylines all being "so yeah looks like those dumbfuck Thalmor agents are conspiring to commit treason again lmao" and their organizational mission openly being at odds with Ayrenn's policies, then a few hundred years later another, different organization was created to be a colonial puppet government in Valenwood, and then finally around the Oblivion Crisis a virulently racist militia started calling themselves the Thalmor for nationalist reasons.
I guess it would like fascists in Europe naming themselves after Sparta, the Praetorian Guard, the Templars, or whatever.
That's how I see it, too.
Way I see it, considering how much underhanded bullshit Ayrenn did to become the Le Epic Chosen One Of Epic Destiny backed by intelligence/blackops manipulation (the protagonist included), she's basically :hillary-apartment: complete with the military adventurism and girlboss fandom. Any post-Ayenn legacy of the Thalmor is just the aftermath of her colonialist policies. :die-motherfucker:
Probably misremembering here but, aren't Thalmor elevated by Ayrenn during ESO because they're loyal to her instead of her brother?
They end up filling the spaces they do because most of the spy masters and shit defected to Veiled Heritance and the Aldmeri military is busy fighting a war so she needed a pool of loyalists to help end an ongoing coup.
don't elves live for ages maybe they are literally the same people hence keeping the name
It appears to be class-based, big name mer wizards seem to live forever, nobles age but live for as long as the plot requires, and commoners just keel over before their 200th birthday
So any overlap would be minimal