So you probably know that the game Skyrim has as one of its major plots a civil war between the Empire and the rebel Stormcloaks. And the player character can only join one side. So just about everyone has at least one "alternate" character who joined the other side.
And having played through both campaigns, I keep going back and forth. One the one hand, Ulfric Stormcloak's cause is just - when the Empire surrendered to the Aldmeri Dominion and outlawed Talos worship, it lost its right to rule. (And on top of that, literally the first thing the Empire does in-game is try to execute you without a trial.) On the other hand, Ulfric himself is no better; with one exception (Markarth), no Stormcloak Jarl is better than their Imperial counterpart - and even in Markarth, "better" is a stretch (the Stormcloak is in league with the local underworld, while the Imperial is oblivious to the fact that he's a complete puppet). And Ulfric is ultimately a thug whose obsession with tradition trumps any respect for the rule of law.
(And no, the fact that Jarl Balgruuf sides with the Empire doesn't really have a bearing on my opinion. The community likes Balgruuf more than I do - the man's reaction to a half-starved ex-con wandering into his palace to bring word of a dragon attack is to send him to crawl through a zombie-infested dungeon.)
It's an annoying dilemma. My current solution is to take the Thomas Theisman approach (see the previous post), and save the Empire while at the same time decapitating it by, ah, "removing" its (here weak, there evil) ruler. Hopefully something better springs up in his place. General Tullius would have my vote, so long as you keep him away from his evil Cylon wife.
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