Complaining about a piece of Oblivion-given Morrowind lore, abolishing slavery leads to civil war, yeah, but the details... Options

[Kazaera]

(mods, please move this if this is in the wrong place? I couldn't figure out where this topic would go.)

So I was reading up about what happens in Morrowind post-game, according to Oblivion, and ran across this little tidbit.

Apparently Helseth incites a civil war, which he and his allies win, in order to break the power of the Great Houses and consolidate his own. And how he starts this is by banning slavery.

So far, so good. This sort of makes sense, given how fraught slavery is as a topic.

Except. That the civil war apparently happens between Hlaalu and Dres on the anti-slavery side and Redoran and Indoril on the pro-slavery side. Telvanni is Sir Not Appearing In This War.

First, the minor WTFs: Redoran is the in-game house that seems to make least use of slaves, and Indoril seems to be presented as very close to the Temple, also sort of military/religious and not a major slave-owning power either. Since slavery is also a matter of Dunmer tradition and so on, I could buy Redoran and Indoril *supporting* the major slave-owning Houses who protest against this, but have some trouble seeing them being the only ones... considering that of all the houses they would possibly be affected least from everything we've seen. (Hlaalu's got plantations. Worked by slaves.) I also have a lot of trouble seeing Telvanni stand by and do nothing, considering they're very pro-slavery and use slaves a lot.

But all of that pales next to Dres.

I mean, we don't know much about Dres lorewise. But what we do know is that: they are an agricultural House. They have huge, huge plantations that rely solely on slave labour. They are very anti-Imperial, very much Temple-supporters, apparently traditional allies of House Indoril, and very, *very* opposed to abolishing slavery.



I actually considered having slavery outlawed somehow in my Morrowind fic and ending up going "no, that would never happen because Dres would never stand for it." And now apparently, canonically, they not only have but fought a war to abolish slavery???

Especially because... you know, from Dres's description, this would totally ruin their economy.

Of course, apparently (I haven't played Oblivion myself so I'm going off the UESP wiki) you hear rumours that House Dres has "remodelled its economy from an agricultural one to a mercantile one". To which my reaction is twofold:

1. What, overnight?

2. ...if House Dres is the only primarily agricultural Great House, and it magically swaps its economy for one based on trading, then... where is the food coming from?

I have been continually WTFing over this piece of lore since I stumbled across it. Honestly - has anyone been able to make any sense of it? Because I'd love to, really, but I just hit "House Dres" and go "......what."

[Kazaera]

I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong on this, Kazaera), that Kazaera was necessarily asking for a solution. It sounded to me like she was saying "does this make sense to anyone here, or do people agree with me that it doesn't make sense?" Just because we'd like to see a theory that would plausibly explain away all these contradictions, doesn't mean that such a theory actually exists.

Pretty much. I couldn't see any way to make sense of it, but was wondering if I was overlooking something. I still can't see any way to make sense of it, possibly barring Destri's suggestion that instead of abolishing slavery straight away Dres has begun shifting things (towards an alternate agricultural model, maybe?) so that in some time abolishing slavery will be viable - but even that requires some pretty massive rationalisations in terms of the lore we've been given and still means that the rumours in Oblivion are at least partially inaccurate.

Of course it's partly a question of personal 'hot-buttons'; my degree is in economics and politics, so I don't feel able to rationalise something that makes no economic or political sense.

Ah, that explains it! I've been very awed at your contributions to this thread - my reaction was "uh, that can't possibly be economically possible, can it?" but you've managed to explain clearly and concisely the number of economic and political problems present here. And - I mean, I don't expect fantasy worlds to make total political/economical sense, but I expect them to make enough sense that I'm able to suspend disbelief on the rest. This key point I just stared at and went "...no, not seeing it."