The Surrender of Alinor

Disclaimer : The following is the translation, slightly corrected and adaptated, of an apocrypha I wrote in french some time ago and heavily inspired by the famous Numidiad. Maybe some people around here will appreciate the original version in proper french verses. Many thanks to /u/BrynjarIsenbana and /u/Zinitrad2 for the review of my translation.

THE SURRENDER OF ALINOR

Edited and commented by Merandill of Skywatch, 4E 127.

Foreword :

This book is an attempt at editing an altmeri poem, from an unknown author, telling through verses the Surrender of the Summerset Isles facing the Numidium controlled by Tiber Septim.

By his sole theme, and despite his anonymousness, it should seem easy to establish 3E1 as an absolute terminus post quem for the writing of this poem. However, we face a double problem. The first one relates to codicology : despite a creation time that should not exceed 500 years, I can not do anything but be intrigued with some other philologists by the very little number of conserved manuscripts. I had troubles finding more than ten during my studies journey across Alinor and Auridia. Sure, the Oblivion Crisis has not been tender with the very content of our libraries (and like everyone, I still mourn the fall of Cristal-like-Law).

But beyond that point, among libraries less affected by the daedric scourge - as Lilandrill, Firsthold - the surviving manuscripts were all in a pitiful state. Bitten margins, lost or mutilated folia, faded ink, soiled pages... All these deteriorations did not make my philological work easy, so I ended complaining about it to the several Incunabulists I met. Elanindë, from Firsthold, had to share my astonishment about the state of the manuscripts' transmission. An epic-inspired poem, written in the purest altmeri tradition and fleshed out by an anti-imperial lampoon, should have been kept in a proper manner during only a few generations of Altmers. So, to justify the current disastrous state of the text, we may tempted to place the time of redaction in an older time. But I already hear you laugh, dear reader : how could not-yet-happened events be written down into verses?

Keeping this in mind, we must now consider the second problem of the text : its content. We said it already, the poem was conceived as an anti-imperial lampoon shaming the use of the Numidium by the first Septim. However, several verses seem problematic because of their esoteric allusions or apparently anachronistic elements. It is known that the Siege of Alinor only lasted a single hour. A single hour of heroic resistance (as I think about it, maybe the Thalmor did not wish this kind of event to be brought to ears too often. But who truly knows about their ways?), but the author allude to a much, much longer fight. One must also question the intervention of the Maormers from Pyandonnea : if not interpolated, this passage constitutes a serious anomaly and a historically inaccurate event. This whole curious mix between historical and fictional bits may have the purpose to symbolize, through veiled expression, an everlasting fight against the Empire of Men, despite the defeats. I am personally seduced by this hypothesis, but it would push the datation of the text back to the first times the Dominion attempted his restoration.

And so, I am back again with my ruined manuscripts. The codicological autopsy makes them too old for the thematic, but the literary analysis makes the piece too recent for the parchments it's written on. Even months testing the latest Inversed Alteration techniques did not bring any explanation to what remains an enigma to me. It's like this text is messing with the laws of time and should not be there. Anyway, it remains an very interesting piece of poetry, animated with a really epic inspiration (as far as we can say from the remaining passages, at least), and I believe it should deserve a good place in our literary anthologies.

I have to mourn, in this time of defeat,

Upon the coasts of our isles, wounded.

As the Eagle from his heavenly throne,

We weep upon Alinor, thrice blessed [by the gods].