My theory: The original Tsaesci were Men, but the serpents ate them and became them.
I feel like most people allow absolutely zero room for nuance when discussing the Tsaesci.
“They have legs on Alduin’s Wall, therefore they’re 100% human, and everything else is just propaganda. Oh, and their scales are actually armor.”
It’s the same boring hand-waving over and over again. I think there’s a far more interesting explanation that actually attempts to reconcile the existing lore rather than dismiss half of it.
My theory is that the Men of Akavir, as described in The Annotated Anuad, were the original Tsaesci. The serpents literally consumed them, biologically assimilated their characteristics, and inherited their name and identity.
Hear me out.
The Annotated Anuad vs. Mysterious Akavir
Both texts are associated with Michael Kirkbride, yet they seem to present contradictory accounts of the Tsaesci.
The Annotated Anuad explicitly identifies the Tsaesci of Akavir as Men descended from the Wandering Ehlnofey.
Meanwhile, Mysterious Akavir describes the Tsaesci as vampiric serpent-folk who consumed the Men of Akavir but still “kind of look like them.”
On the surface, these accounts seem incompatible. One identifies the Tsaesci as Men, while the other identifies them as the serpents who ate those Men.
But what if both accounts are telling us the truth?
What if the original Tsaesci really were Men, and the serpents became the Tsaesci by consuming them?
I’m suggesting that the serpents didn’t simply conquer the Men of Akavir. They assimilated them, acquiring their biological characteristics, their names, and eventually their civilization.
In other words, the Tsaesci we know today are not necessarily the original Tsaesci. They’re the beings that consumed the original Tsaesci and became them.
The Tsaesci Creation Myth practically begs for this interpretation
Consider Michael Kirkbride’s Tsaesci Creation Myth, particularly this passage:
“The final name was Tsaescence and we ate it to become it and there are no more variations.”
The entire creation myth revolves around consumption, names, and becoming something through the act of eating.
Now consider the word Tsaescence itself.
The suffix -escence refers to the state or process of becoming something.
Could Tsaescence literally represent the process of becoming Tsaesci?
My interpretation is that the serpents began as relatively primitive beings and gradually consumed their way up the food chain, acquiring the characteristics of increasingly complex lifeforms.
Eventually, they encountered the Men of Akavir.
They consumed them, assimilated their humanity, and took their name.
The Men of Akavir were the final form the serpents sought to become. They ate the Tsaesci to become the Tsaesci.
This also gives us an interesting way to interpret another detail from Mysterious Akavir.
After successfully consuming the Men of Akavir, the serpents attempted to consume the dragons.
But unlike the Men, the dragons apparently could not be consumed in the same way. The Tsaesci instead enslaved the Red Dragons, while the Black Dragons fled to Po Tun.
Why?
Perhaps dragons, being semi-divine beings, were fundamentally incompatible with this biological or metaphysical assimilation process.
The serpents could consume Men and become more human, but they couldn’t consume dragons and become dragons.
That’s speculative, obviously, but it fits the sequence described in the book.
The Tsaesci are probably a spectrum of human and serpentine characteristics
Mysterious Akavir doesn’t say the serpents became physically identical to the Men they consumed.
It says they “kind of look like them.”
I think that distinction is important.
What if the Tsaesci are essentially serpent-human hybrids, exhibiting varying degrees of assimilation?
Some might retain largely serpentine bodies. Others might possess humanoid torsos, limbs, and faces. Still others might appear almost entirely human.
This could explain why their descriptions vary so dramatically between sources.
People regularly dismiss 2920, The Last Year of the First Era because it’s historical fiction, despite its unmistakably serpentine depictions of the Akaviri Potentates.
But what about History of the Fighters Guild?
That book explicitly describes the Tsaesci as immortal snake-men and even suggests that their anatomy prevented them from wearing certain types of armor.
Are we supposed to dismiss that as propaganda too?
The humanoid depictions don’t invalidate the serpentine ones, and the serpentine depictions don’t invalidate the humanoid ones.
What if both are accurate representations of a species capable of assuming different degrees of human and serpentine form?
And then there’s Chevalier Renald
This is probably my favorite piece of supporting evidence.
Remanada describes how the snake-captain Vershu became Renald.
Not simply that he changed his name, but that he became Renald.
Then, in ESO, we actually meet Chevalier Renald.
He appears to be an ordinary human, yet he speaks mysteriously about shedding his old skin and eventually shedding another.
We have a character explicitly associated with a snake-captain becoming someone else, appearing human, and referencing the shedding of skins.
Kirkbride has also discussed the Tsaesci as beings that feed on language, giving the entire concept of consuming names and identities additional significance.
If an individual Tsaesci can undergo such a transformation, is it really that unreasonable to suggest that the entire Tsaesci civilization underwent a similar process?
What happened to Vershu on an individual level may have happened to the original Tsaesci on a civilizational level.
The serpents consumed the Men, assumed their characteristics, and eventually became the people whose name they inherited.
Renald may simply represent another iteration of that same process.
Why must we insist on one interpretation at the expense of everything else?
I have no problem accepting that human Akaviri existed. In fact, my theory depends on it.
What I don’t understand is why some people take the existence of human-looking Akaviri, humanoid armor, or the figures on Alduin’s Wall as definitive proof that the serpentine Tsaesci never existed.
Alduin’s Wall depicts humanoid Akaviri warriors. It doesn’t establish the biological characteristics of every Tsaesci, or even establish that every Akaviri depicted was a Tsaesci.
The same applies to Akaviri descendants in Tamriel. The existence of human Akaviri ancestry doesn’t automatically rule out a distinct serpentine population, especially when the lore explicitly discusses both the Men of Akavir and the serpents who consumed them.
And dismissing every description of serpentine anatomy as metaphor, propaganda, or artistic license seems especially unnecessary when the setting already contains considerably stranger forms of life.
I’m not claiming my theory is definitively correct.
I’m suggesting that the contradictions might be intentional, and that the solution could be found in the Tsaesci’s own mythology.
The Annotated Anuad tells us the original Tsaesci were Men.
Mysterious Akavir tells us the serpents ate those Men and came to resemble them.
The Tsaesci Creation Myth describes consuming names and becoming what was consumed.
Remanada gives us a snake-captain who becomes someone else, while ESO presents that character as apparently human.
And 2920 and History of the Fighters Guild preserve unmistakably serpentine descriptions.
My theory doesn’t require us to discard any of these accounts.
The original Tsaesci were Men.
The serpents consumed them.
And through that consumption, the serpents became Tsaesci.
I’d much rather explore that possibility than continue reducing one of the strangest civilizations in Elder Scrolls lore to ordinary humans wearing Japanese-inspired armor.
Can we allow a little more nuance in our theories about the Tsaesci?