ABSTRACT
The land of Tamriel has been home to the critically acclaimed The Elder Scrolls (TES) series of computer games since the 1990s. Like the settings of many fantasy role-playing computer and video games (RPGs), Tamriel is an original setting independent from any single cultural influence, engaging players with unique places, characters, and stories vaguely reminiscent of our own past. Throughout its career, fantasy has carried a tinge of the medieval, less the recasting of the Middle Ages than the application of medieval culture, technology, and aesthetic qualities to fictional worlds, from stylized weapons and armor to walled castles. Yet the bona fide seal of ‘medievalism’ in TES is not its heroes or its strongholds, but its books. 1
