From Hestra to Reman: On His Rise

As requested by /u/Sakazwal. Now where's my cake?

Okay, heresy time.

Reman never was a god, but he did a great job at convincing us he was.

Cyrod had been without an Emperor for a long time. The Alessian line had ended with Hestra, who vanished at dates unknown in the midst of the Middle Dawn. Hestra, the greatest of the Alessians as well as the Dibellan Primates had birthed no surviving children, and had no heirs to speak of. When she vanished, the Empire soon entered the longest age of darkness it had ever seen.

Moreover, the power of the Emperor through the Divine Image of Perrif had been passed down through the Dragonfires for generations, and its ritual disappeared with the Empress. The standards were high, as only a divine being could take the throne, so confirming the refinement of the Alessian line to its only possible conclusion.

For it was said of Hestra when she stepped into the fires:

HESTRA HETRAS HESTAR

A six syllable spell of the inverted triangle, for she was the Star of Empress Hetra, risen on the winds of her grandmother's mighty reforms and her own elevation of the Empire to new levels. Hestra, by many around her, was seen as no less than a living goddess, in the image of Dibella herself. Her continued reign over the centuries, whether through her presumed dark arts, or by divine blessing, only seemed to confirm her status. When she vanished however, the Empire, which had just been at its greatest peak, was within only a few generations set back centuries to the power they had commanded under Gorieus. In time, they would be even less powerful than they were during the early days of Perrif. Cyrod had been broken.

Reman only comes onto the scene about 15 centuries later, to a Cyrodiil that had languished and an Empire that had almost entirely disappeared. We know he was trained at the minimum, as a Dibellan Prelate, because of his mastery of the Diblashuut. It is quite clear to many historians, that this was in part key to his rise, as most of the previous Alessian Emperors, had been trained to some level at the Temples of Dibella. It is possibly this, and the fact that he was acclaimed as born of Dragons, for his mighty and booming voice, that he began to be seen as the Inheritor of the Alessian line. With the Divine Image of Perrif ritual long forgotten, the Temples (primarily of Akatosh) had to decide on how to determine succession. It was the flames of Aka himself that had decided the Emperors of the past, and even though some Emperors would later fail to uphold their duties, this had passed unchanged from the moment that Alessia has instituted the practice. It was in the midst of this problem that an unknown priest brought forth an old relic that had been part of the Alessian Regalia: the Amulet of Kings. It had been part of the Dragonfire ritual, and while it did not manifest the combined power of all its previous owners (as the Image of Perrif did), it would suffice to bind the new Emperors to the ancient ritual.

Reman was a sensation. His many celebrations and festivities elevated his status, and he began to be accepted, even in the surrounding nations, as a true Emperor of the Cyrodiils. After his victory at Pale Pass against the Akaviri menace, of whom even the Nords had been powerless, his status as a god was forever cemented in the minds of the people. Under Reman, technology and the production of "magical artifacts," techniques that had been lost in most nations, began to be replicated. As a Dibellan Emperor, he was a patron of the arts, and the Reman Empire flourished to heights the Alessians had never seen. Though it remains to be seen whether Reman was truly a god, he is even in this era, seen as a true Emperor of all Tamriel.