Dragons, Magna Ge, Ancestor Spirits

Dawns tinfoil hat

I think that the various classes of Aedra and other world-creating ada are more immortal and more related to one another than they appear.

Quick parallels can be drawn between the three groups mentioned in the title of this post. Each has The Big Dog (Alduin, Magnus, and Auri-el respectively) and a bunch of other smaller ones (dragons, Magna Ge, and lesser Ancestor Spirits who were once revered by lower class Aldmer). Each helped create the world or are closely related to somebody who did, but somehow are immortal anyway: Magna Ge escaped, Ancestor Spirits degraded down to Ehlnofey but under the guidance of Auri-el hopped back up to the heavens, and dragons just showed up and declared themselves chunks of Akatosh. Really, just about everybody else seemed to have a plan B as well. Shor's been active, Tsun has been curating a horde of badasses to fight alongside them when the time comes, the Aedra halfway survive thanks to mythopoeia and can act through champions from time to time. Even mortals get to do the whole reincarnation thing or continue to exist in an afterlife if they choose not to.

To take this a step further, dragons and Ancestor Spirits seem to fill similar roles, but with significant differences across cultures, exactly as it is with Alduin and Auri-el themselves. In the Aldmeri worldview, Auri-el killed Lorkhan with the help of similar beings (Ancestor Spirits) and proceeded to ascend to heaven. To the elves, Time is a bro and helps to reverse Lorkhan's trickery. Contrast that with the Nordic view, namely, that Alduin killed Shor and proceeded to lord it over Men with the help of beings similar to himself (dragons). To Men, Time is a dick.

Note that each of these two aspects of Time takes the same general side of the war (unlike Akatosh, but he's weird), and all their underbosses were cut from essentially the same cloth they were. Dragons and ascended Ehlnofey. As fits the pattern with mythopoeia in general, their subsequent behavior matches the behavior expected by both peoples.

Note also that both of these races of ada were worshiped, and then swapped out for a pantheon: the Aldmer stopped worshiping minor Ancestor Spirits and consolidated their devotion around the greatest handful of them, while the Nords overthrew the Dragon Cult and came to worship Nordicized Imperial gods. It makes sense that the Nords' change was more dramatic, since the Tongues and Alessia and other important (wo/)Men around that time period were regaining ground for Men after their defeat during the Dawn era, and not worshiping the dicks who killed your main god would be an important step in that process.

The tinfoil I mentioned earlier is about to come in handy:

What if dragons and Ancestor Spirits are two sides of the same coin, just as Alduin and Auri-el are? Mythopoeic aspects or something similar. You have these entire armies of mid-tier, Anuic, misanthropic ada serving directly under a Time god and following the same cultural/mythopoeic patterns as their leader. I don't think it's a coincidence.