Msia

The Nords of Skyrim are a free people, with few exceptions. They enjoy a robust system of roads, trade routes with all their near neighbors, if not overly friendly relations.
Apart from a few marauding gangs, they can come and go as they please, as long as they respect their tenable position in the natural world.

The imperials on the other hand, tend to eliminate this freedom. A prime example is the player, imprisoned and set to be executed for dubious crimes. They work with the Thalmor, a long lived race, for the purpose of extracting wealth and taking it to far off lands. The imperials also do not separate church and state, forbidding the worship of local gods. In contrast to their presence in Cyrodill, in which their culture of dominance and socialization worked to quell the invasion from oblivion, their poorly thought out, (attempted) annexation of Skyrim serves to hamper the plot, and provide only the illusion of choice.

In a game where choice is essential to the draw and mechanic of the gameplay, the imperials represent a standardization of being that should not be accepted by the player or the ancestral inhabitants of Skyrim.