Lore talk:Morian Zenas

In-universe Retcon

In Notes on Doors of Oblivion, Morian Zenas has this to say about the Morian Zenas depicted in The Doors of Oblivion. "I'm not this Morian. It's a different one. An imposter. A former edition cut by revisions." The phrase "A former edition cut by revisions" interests me, as Wikipedia describes a retcon as "a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work which have been established through the narrative itself are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former." In the case of Morian Zenas, he was previously written to be concurrent with events concurrent with the Third Era, such as the destroyed Battlespire, and Celarus becoming Ritemaster of the Psijic Order. As of ESO, he was then written to be concurrent with the events of the Second Era, wtih the ESO version of The Doors of Oblivion attempting to scrub most of the Third Era references. I added w note, but whats the best way to handle this? Zebendal (talk) 15:04, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Morian claiming to not know who Seif-ij Hidja is makes me think this source cannot be accurate. He accounts the voice in his head (Seif), so that much of The Doors of Oblivion must be true. This, along with Alfidia Lupus' agreeance with these events in the Motifs and Morian's purported memory loss in Sentient Beasts of the Gallery, ultimately culminates in painting a picture that Notes on Doors of Oblivion just isn't reliable, or at the very least, not more reliable than Doors of Oblivion / Motifs.

There's also the various mentions of Zenas in loading screens across ESO, confirming at the very least the time period. Obviously, other opinions will be needed, this is clearly a unique situation, but I think the best option would be to look to the Jungle of Cyrodiil retcon, a similar situation where explanation(s) are provided but none satisfy certain elements. For the Jungle, nothing explains the Morrowind NPC who references the Jungle in dialogue having been to Cyrodiil himself. For Zenas, nothing explains the anachronistic namedrops in The Doors of Oblivion nor the plothole arisen in the fact that the Battlespire is known to be operational. By looking at the Jungle's precedent, the best way forward would be to work with Todd Howard's pyramid of canon - at the top, what we see in-game. Zenas is definitely in Apocrypha, and his Third Era references should be relegated, at most, to a footnote. That's my take.

Editting to add a bit more, hopefully not creating an edit conflict. I also think this solution would mean that the Lore book page for The Doors of Oblivion should be the ESO one, as it's kinda the more accurate one now? I think that would make citations to text only available in the earlier, retconned versions either unusable or UOL... not sure exactly on that one. Mindtrait0r (talk) 00:45, 19 June 2023 (UTC)