Elder Scrolls Races: Real Life Counterparts

culture is identity this is all too true for the 10 playable fantasy races of the elder scrolls games but where do the real world inspirations come from exactly if you've ever googled this you've noticed a lot of theories but i wanted to take a little bit of a deeper look like what's with these orc robes and what language is this model after in this video we're going to do a full culture analysis of the playable tamrielic races based on things like traditions and stories dress architecture and language which as you'll find out can tell us a lot more about a culture than meets the eye some will need less explanation than others but i'll still try and make those ones interesting while you're watching keep in mind that no elder school's culture completely mirrors one real-life culture so when i reveal a province's real world counterpart it's my opinion of what historical civilization is the most similar for multi-inspired cultures i'll do my best to include minor comparisons even after i declare something else but remember it's just for fun and i encourage you to challenge and comment your opinions below so let's take out those maps of tamriel and get started on our journey if we're talking about a culture most influenced by native americans it would have to be the argonians and more specifically the mesoamerican civilizations of mexico most of you have probably guessed this by their stone pyramids as seen in eso and their feathery dress but it even comes down to their names and language in gel the native argonian language letters are pronounced similarly to native mesoamerican languages if i had to pick between the mayan and ut's tekken languages i'd probably go with nawat which is actually the most popular indigenous language in mexico today with 1.7 million speakers just on the surface it looks more similar but the gel language also uses the sound which nawat is famous for both languages also use similar glottal stops mishika where mayan languages feature their famous ejective stop gel also completely lacks plurality and while mayan and nawaz both have plurality rules nawa is limited depending on whether the subject is animate or inanimate that sounds like an argonian thing to do also gel word order is object subject verb unless the subject is a pronoun like he or she to which it becomes object verb subject both mayan and aztec are vs o but nawat has some fluidity to allow for vos putting the subject at the end like gel can you can't really call this a complete counterpart but for me it's the nail in the coffin when we're talking about the closest language to gel and when we're talking about argonians we really like that adaptability what about the inca language though well the inca quechua language is subject object verb which does have gel's verb third movement but the language is otherwise pretty dissimilar it also has famously complex morphing of words depending on tense almost like japanese and since tense is completely absent in gel we're not gonna talk about that so you might be thinking wow pal this is so cool why would argonians ever use those silly imperial names like murky waters or lister tail and to that i say that is exactly why this gets even better while argonians have cool sounding names in their own language translating it it's silly sounding to english speakers kind of like how some american indians had cool sounding names in their own language but translated it's almost comical to some outlandish but that's what they were called a third grader might laugh at the name crazy horse but knows nothing about the great weight that name held for the lakota people in the 19th century so that's the language i want to bring up a couple more interesting things to support the native american influence first the disappearance of the argonians who built these stone pyramids very similar to the mysterious abandonment of mayan cities when the spanish arrived the mayans had already experienced a golden age with their civilization that was long behind them like how our guardians explain their zen near pyramids it plays a prevalent role in dialogue in isa where it's used to help explain the argonian's return to a similar time impermanence is the key word thrown around black marsh much like the mostly nomadic tribes of pre-colonial america second argonians are ripe with creationists involving nature and they come from trees they are literally people of the land argonians were evolved from reptiles from the living magic of the hiss this is the perfect atmosphere for an american indian inspired fantasy culture lastly central america is generally a tropical rainforest and thus can be very swampy making it almost impossible for modern wars to be waged modern infrastructure is next to impossible this is similar to the countless attempts at imperial invasions of black marsh both militant and cultural making comparisons with the construction of the panama canal or the contra war helps to further paint black march as a very clear comparison and one final thing since i know it'll be brought up what about the slavery well if you thought you knew all about slavery from the african slave trade just take a look at the spanish encomienda system of the 1500s argonians are the allegory for indigenous people and dark elf slavers like those in house dress are technically the newcomers to the land after veloc's expedition from eleanor so if we're talking about a mesoamerican influence i think this still holds up speaking of dark elves i think it's time we hop over to morrowind the dark isles are really a total eurasian synthesis but if i had to choose one historical civilization for them it would probably be the ancient assyrians and their mesopotamian predecessors morrowind was really the first elder scrolls game that gave us something besides the typical fantasy setting sometimes even being called sci-fi fantasy this was in no small part due to michael kirkbride's incredible concept art and the writers and designers at bethesda during this time the developers have cited in the past that morrowind has had huge inspirations from the ancient middle east especially in architecture we see definite mesopotamian influences on structures that are meant to be older like the old velothi or dunmer strongholds and these sumerian dwemer beards depicting those people who lived in this land first like how the ancient mesopotamians came before the ancient assyrians kirkbride himself is a confirmed star wars fan which is used to explain why some things like these rhetoric towers or hulalu houses give that tatooine aesthetic george lucas's tattooing no surprise coming from the middle east as well also giving that african mud house aesthetic and it's really all-encompassing throughout morrowind vivec's cantons always remind me of depictions of babylon's hanging gardens the assyrians and their predecessors were known for the pyramids too syrian districts today are even called cantons and check this out we can see the prefix tell show up in this map of ancient mesopotamian ziggurats as well as er now it's true dagother was named before morowind and it's true er is also a german word but we gotta roll with something here while we're talking about names let's bring in those daedric ruiner names soundly awfully similar to names of syrian kings with word prefixes that have actual translations in assyrian history sargon cave is named after sargon of akkad locations like manamu punamu and cinema are all named after babylonian king ernamu what about the ashlanders well it's no small speculation to say they're heavily influenced by the mongolian step tribes but i think if you really wanted to make the middle eastern argument you could extend this comparison to turkic tribes or other modern day mesopotamian french people as well turkic people also have your culture fantastic dress of course wise women can also give us american indian vibes so good to see you on religion let's be real most depictions of the main hindu god shiva is going to give you mad vivid flashbacks these androgynous half blue depictions are actually the fusion of shiva and his wife pavarti which together is named artanari shivara vivek is a confirmed hermaphrodite who often takes his male form and is unmistakably hindu-inspired you might also compare almalexia to the mother goddess adi parashaki the other form of shiva's wife but writing the middle eastern theme michael kirkbride gives us his biggest inspiration for the tribunal religion works of the ecology concerned with living magic like the thelma spiritual philosophy by aleister crowley thalamus pantheon primarily worships a trio of gods adapted from ancient egyptian religion nuit hadith and ra kor kuit my friends we have our tribunal counterparts some miscellaneous influence i want to bring up before we close morrowind is the heavy japanese influence on indore architecture you can see this really clearly in mournhold from the tribunal dlc and eso can we also make a case for imperialization of the region and extraction of resources from the west in a land of uninhabitable terrain slavery different ethnic tribes and very desirable resources for its time is morrowind's plight similar to the middle east facing the west in our own world before the comment section can erupt on that one it's time to move on skyrim you know what it is the vikings the nords the runes the dragons it's as simple as the nordic people themselves i'd argue this is the most straightforward influence of them all don't forget the names the burial rituals the government the legendary creatures and sauvignon's obvious parallels to valhalla the warriors heaven upon a glorious death in battle and we have the skull who lived that indigenous lifestyle similar to the sami people of finland but i promised i'd make this a little interesting so here's one more thing the dragon alphabet was inspired by ancient cuneiform and runic writing both of which could be easily scratched on any surface but dovazole could be scratched on any surface by dragons the language itself can be traced back to old english word form and naming conventions names like beowulf or odiving they don't make literal sense when translated but convey elements of the character there's a really great write-up on this on the amazing thumb.org which i'll link in the description and the guide was written by parthonx so go check it out next we're going to high rock land of the britons the britons who the britons the britons are bretons it's a real ethnic group coming from france's brittany peninsula having a huge history of their own unique culture and yeah i'll also talk about the reachment here too i would say richmond most resemble the garlic celts where the civilized britons most resemble the frankish kingdoms that came later most people will notice the very frenchy names of bretons like renoir and macquarie where richmond have names like maddenac and scrag much more celtic reflecting more ancient some might say even barbaric roots unlike bretons the reachmen have little to no elven blood i've even seen the force horn compared to the ra both technically famous for being known as a terrorist faction after centuries of fighting for dreams of independence you might also compare them to the celts fighting the anglo-saxons in britain's dark ages the reachmen are really celtic in their ways and even the arena description of bretons talk about druids with the more french fight side of high rock we have mixed blood royalties constantly fighting with each other just like medieval france we have cross regional warring with the desert faction down south just like the french did if you think about it high rock is often the most common place to live out the stereotypical arthurian medieval times being probably one of the most western europe influenced of the provinces also let's not forget how britons came from an era when the hit fantasy rpg of the early 90s had a main ruler named lord british i really don't have much else to say but i really like high rock for this diversity of cultures and its deep ancient roots so we know what's next the orsimer purely based on aesthetics the orcs resemble mongolians without horses but to me they really represent every fringe culture who's had to assimilate in some way to a disagreeable prevailing society like the ostrogoths or bulgars with rome the mongolian stepfolk or manchurians with china scottish clans in britain or even modern-day american indian reservations in the us and canada in almost every fantasy setting after lord of the rings orcs were really made as an allegory for barbarians they're often given a hunger for conquest and battle some of you may know that the romans frequently referred to the gothic french folk as barbarians but also frequently included them in their legions just like the empire in tamriel does with orcs i make the connection with american indians mostly because of the modern reservation system if you commit a crime in one of skyrim's orc strongholds for example the nordic holds do not hold authority for that crime similarly the american reservations are mostly treated like sovereign nations if you commit a crime you're subject to their laws too moving to aesthetics the mongolian comparison works in their armor and tribal culture but recent elder scrolls online editions have begun to draw inspirations from northeastern asia like the tang schwann jackets from manchuria and some names which sound a little chinese to me but don't think too hard on the names as far as we know orcs and tamriel pretty much just match phonemes together that they like in order to get their names a lot of people note that their armor can look really japanese too but all these influence make more sense from an in-world perspective the or summer were once a murray from the somerset isles after all before they were cursed the somerset isles have a lot of eastern influences it makes sense that the orcs like asian fringe folk took these designs and repurposed them for functionality over style the last point on orcs i want to make is about the father of the original orc j.r.r tolkien he created his orcs in urakai to be just buffed out evil goblins dungeons and dragons adopted a version of this that had been changed by the century and the elder scrolls just kind of followed suit on that but on a heartwarming note these original monsters have a literary history of being redeemable too and we see this in modern elder scrolls canon with orcs kind of rejoining society after the events of daggerfall 19th century scottish author george mcdonald said in his fantasy books that goblins were capable of repentance and could grow into good beings too tolkien said in his published letters that orcs morgoth and sargon would be redeemed at the end of time these are the true orcs are you still with me we got half our ground covered and i'm really excited about the next few let's go to the most underrated race the red guards when you hear them you think deserts you think curved swords you think corsairs turbines camels yeah we got that arabian night spine going i'm going with saracens but the yokudans have that japanese warrior culture which we'll talk about in a bit let's start with the saracen part so just looking at a map of daggerfall's world i'm immediately thinking of centuries of mediterranean war like high rock and hammerfell europe and north africa had a long history of conflict between each other whether you think of carthaginians berbers saracens or ottomans to me hammerfeld exhibits qualities of all four and to me hammerfell's aesthetic undoubtedly draws most of its inspiration from the golden age of medieval islam making it a little more saracen in my opinion now the saracens controlled a huge territory and recently i've seen the four bears being compared to the more north african parts of that realm and the crowns being more arabic and yeah i think that's not a bad observation but again there's a little more to the mash here because elder scrolls 2 also gives us yokudan lore and eso expanded on this a ton yokuda is the land across the abacian sea that the red guards came from which sank in the first era already you can think of the two most famous lost continents atlantis and moo but there's even more here redguard fans will surely know about the sword singers yokudans who were so masterful with their blade it was like a magical gift the best of these were called ansei or saints of the sword who could actually manifest a sword from their own souls in japanese the word kinsai translates to sword saint an honorary title for a warrior of legendary skill and swordsmanship both kensei and and say desire mastery of skill not violence but it doesn't stop there like japan yokudan emperor power became more limited and power shifted to lords called yokuda cities were formed around these stone castles and civil wars raged for hundreds of years until one lord called the elden yokuda took control over the continent as a military dictator like the shogun in japan if you want to learn more there's a great video by fudge muppet which goes into more detail about these japanese influences a few yokutan figures have mind-blowing similarities to these japanese figures such as randy torn who succeeded the assassinated eldon yokuda military dictator and enacted a sword hunt taking away swords from everybody except sword singers this compares amazingly with oda nubunaga whose predecessor committed seppuku to avoid assassination nobunaga took swords from anyone who wasn't a samurai and there's famous yokudan anzai friend or hunting being compared with famous japanese kensei miyamoto musashi both undefeated duelists and over hundreds of duels both writing famous books hunting's being called the book of circles musashi's called the book of five rings yeah it's pretty cool another thing to bring to the okuten regard table are their religion and rituals pantheon almost comparable to the dying divines but i get this really cool voodoo vibe from the scene in red guard there's not a lot else i can really back this up with but looking at the pantheons the red guards have names like seth tuwaka on the voodoo side i'm immediately drawn to this papa legba who reminds me of tal papa in the red guard religion but take that with what you will might just be because they have that caribbean aesthetic with all that pirate stuff lastly i really like the introduction of dwemer in red guard and this is continued with eso really giving this idea that there was a civilization in this desert that was hyper advanced really reminds me of what ancient egypt or even babylon might have been to the saracens and berbers well it's time to move to the imperial province and yeah not much to see here moving on okay look pretty obvious roman influence here between the legets and the legionaries and the emperors and world conquests and the vicis and the ciceros we got uncivilized fringe cultures over their borders the imperialization of other lands ruma is latin for winter solstice did i cover everything but of course cyrodiil can be broken down to two main cultures the colovians and the nibbanese the colovians are a little more lombard and easter and medieval with city names like kavach and skingrod and cyrillic and cyrodilic sound ridiculously similar too the nebanese resembled a little more western mediterranean cultures especially with their price growing fun fact 80 of europe's rice comes from italy and spain while we're on the subject of cyrodiil it's been said by morrowind developer douglas goodall that lead designer ken rollston wanted to bring much more real world influences into the elder scrolls oblivion the idea was to use historical examples to make the world more believable i think this is a big part of why the septum empire feels so similar to the roman empire when we play oblivion okay moving on let's go to elsewhere the khajiit have influences all over southern asia there's persian and romani in the tigra language and culture indonesian and even burmese and some architecture i also feel like elsewhere shares a lot of culture and geography with india there's also an argument to be made that most of these things have roots in india at their core for that reason if i had to pick one culture for the khajiit it would probably be the indians but of course it's not that simple so let's look at the details starting with the language fans of the khajiit might know about the tigra project a community dedicated to creating a more complete language from the unique khajiit language sources we get in the elder scrolls games it's pretty amazing they've even created an alphabet inspired by arabic hindi and mongolian scripts with their biggest inspiration being arabic and there's even been smaller khajiit language projects which deviate from the tigra project in complexity each with their own inspirations and theories when it comes to these language counterparts i've been mostly convinced especially after listening when tigra is compared to persian one persian has an arabic script it's very much an indo-european language this is important because unlike arabic which usually uses verb subject object word order languages like persian hindi and tigra all lack grammatical gender and all use subject object verb word order verbs can never come first in these languages which is unique to the indo-european language family the thing is tigra is also commonly seen using subject verb object like in english some would even say more so i'm putting gypsy romani on the table which is very similar to persian and hindi and is also subject verb object romani is a language that grew in europe and the middle east during the medieval period but its people and linguistic roots came from further east places like persia and india romani's closest language cousins are gujarati damari and mawari one of which is spoken in a large area in the middle east the other two coming from rajasthan in india on top of looking at how khajiit and their caravans are treated in other provinces it's no wonder people take to comparing them with gypsy romani calling the khajiit romani doesn't exclude them from being persian or indian inspired either just take a look at these similarities and words and there are so many others as the romani people came west their language became one full of cognates like this for these reasons i feel like tigra is so closely resemblant to romani they're both a giant hodgepodge of different cultural influences just check out these cognates in sarathra's dialogue in red guard is sit in the night poor farmer in my opinion romani also just sounds more like tiger than these other languages i wish you good fortune and beautiful beautiful future so in summary romani having massive persian influence validly allows the khaji this persian influence while still being romani omani also has its roots in india's rajasthan and punjab states further validating elsewhere's indian vibe which ties in nicely to the geography of elsewhere because like india the khajiit homeland is teeming with deserts rainforest and subtropical beaches rajasthan's great desert is even called the thar desert like the kishidi riddle thar god of cosmic order you know who else was a god of cosmic order hindu god varuna things are starting to look very indian here i'm getting really convinced that srathro one of the first khajiit named in an ultratrolls game is named after siddhartha the indian founder of buddhism of course it'd be inaccurate to say khajiit are completely monogamous with one real world culture and if we took it further to the east we'd see even more elsewhere influences as far as indonesia and yeah anybody who's been to elsewhere in eso will absolutely have noticed a distinct architectural style with stilted houses and striking triangular roofs which are unquestionably indonesian motifs you also see a lot of buddhist looking temples in elsewhere similar to angor wat which are also found in indonesia but the malay kingdoms in that area have been historically influenced by buddhism and hinduism from india and the ottoman empire much later linking us right back to where we started all influences can connect us to india but like the romani gypsies the khajiit always come from that part of the world we call elsewhere i could go on about the main the moons the persian cats dragons but i'm gonna have to leave it there with elsewhere before this section gets too long but let me know if you want a full elsewhere video in the future let's close off with our southern elves starting with the bosmer this one's tricky because bosmer were very much created from the standard wood elf archetype from d and d much like the high elves were but i'm gonna go with the iroquois if i had to choose one bosom are definitely a lot more civilized for tree folk but there are some pretty cool similarities here the thing that sold me was the bosmer tribal practice of the morning war also unique to the iroquois confederacy in the real world when a tribe member is slain the enemy tribe will raid and take a member from the other side torture them and then gladly welcome them into their tribe it's weird to us maybe but this was actually done to preserve harmony for a very natural and spiritual culture in tolkien's world elves were almost exclusively based off the ancient celts and that's down to their language cinderin which was inspired by welsh the wood elves of tamriel have taken on their own form and have traditions which are very primitive to modern nature like the wild hunt or cannibalism but this primitivism is very much how early celtic cultures and american indians were depicted what's lacking in technology is instead turned into a celebration of being in touch with the more spiritual and earthly sides of life the green pact for instance is seen as a conscious rejection of imperial ways and keeping a legal connection with the forest the native american influences are clear here some of this may sound really similar to how we've described argonians but in tamriel wood elves and argonians do share similar characteristics you kind of can't help it both are very much people of the land so to summarize it's trickier than other cultures but fallingwood is more than likely just a match of ancient celtic american indian and tolkien wood elf cultures with tolkien's elves being somewhat influenced by the other two so finally let's go to eleanor the somerset isles i'm going with imperial china asterisk asterisk asterisk the somerset isles were named after the somerset region of england as ted peterson himself put it somewhere said i'm fairly sure we were basing that on on the english rather than the you know that's a located one of course the high elves were very much a general use fantasy race long before the elder scrolls came around and as writers came and went at bethesda this superiority complex of the race developed in a unique way but to the high elves credit it's arguably for a good reason find anything on the altmer and you'll discover a past more involved with technological advancements magical innovation and the gods probably more than any other race on tamriel but how do we really compare them with a culture on earth tolkien based his elves off the celts and stuff sure but i think the high l fantasy culture even tolkien's has departed quite a bit from that on eleanor the architecture itself feels a little european fantasy to me but i think it's got healthy doses of far eastern motifs and a lot of tolkien so the ultimate in the lore are a society that has really formed some basis of tamriel's modern cultures you could say the greeks have done something similar sure and have been conquerors and elitists but i think it really ends there and these things can apply to imperial china just as well after all china had its own technological and political revelations that influence the area just like greece did ultimate society also has a high focus on honorable actions improving yourself and doing your part for your nation and your kin like china and east asia high elves also honor their ancestors and make the law very personal criminals like mother of rats and eso are completely ostracized from society in the somerset isles for even seemingly small crimes yeah they do have a god called zarcy's but to me this high elven powerful yet isolationist empire reminds me all too much of imperial china on religion there isn't much east asian influence i could find but uniform one on reddit has linked the altmer religion to gnosticism in early christianity both embrace a world as a prison mentality created by a hostile trickster god like lorkhan similarities continue with ariel ascending to aetherius in front of his followers and narcissism's emphasis on the spirit being superior to the material something the heils are very well known for and this has translated to the very obvious thalmor comparison of that one regime that happened in the 1930s and 40s germany and unfortunately east asia is no stranger to supremacy genocide either but like germany or china don't let the thalmor generalize your view of the high elves who've given possibly the most contributions to tamriel's modern civilization so i think that's a lot to take in for now we've had a big journey do you agree with this list leave a comment below and let me know what you think how do you compare tamriel's races to the real world help the algorithm with a like and subscribe for more leftover lore stay curious and i'll see you next time [Music] there is much to learn wow i really like this one

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Keywords: elder, scrolls, lore, real, life, world, counterparts, equivalents, skyrim, oblivion, redguard, argonian, breton, reachmen, imperial, empire, nord, dunmer, dark, high, wood, elf, shrek, orc, altmer, bosmer, khajiit, skyrim in real life, aztec, languages, conlang, tamriel, races, real world counterparts, real life counterparts, real world equivalents, interesting, leftover lore, leftoverpat, good lore, mesopotamian, michael kirkbride, bethesda, comparison, tradition, architecture, aesthetic, real life inspiration, inspiration

Id: mAYObr7bkjs

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020