What's the true relationship between a daedric prince and their realms?

This is something that I've always been curious about, The way it's commonly understood, the realms are said to be part of themselves, but the exact method so to speak has not been really clear.

For instance, are they like panentheistic deities in sense that their realms are a literal part or body of the daedric prince, but the princes themselves are also more than the realms?

Did their realms exist before they created it? Did they just conquer realms which already existed? Or did they create it from scratch?

How much power do princes really have over the realms? How much AWARENESS do the princes have over their realms? Dagon doesn't seem to interfere when you go into the deadlands to close shut them, is it that he simply does realise this? Or is it that it literally doesn't matter, as in his intent was never to actually completely invade and conquer nirn but to bring revolution and change (fall of the empire), and hence he thought perhaps closing of the gates was Actually necessary for his goal?

Can a daedric prince have more realms than their base/princely realm? For instance, I've heard that molag bal has thousands of realms. Is it possible that he has a main realm, like coldharbour and that realm is his princely realm, the one that is part of himsel But still choose to invade and conquer other oblivion realms?

It's also said that daedric artifacts have a will of their own, is it possible that some of these artifacts at least aren't actual artifacts so much as literal parts of the prince? Perhaps a daedric prince + their princely realm (main realm) + their artifact forms one unit of a being, something like a prime oversoul of a daedric prince?

I've also always wondered if daedric princes are truly daedra. The term daedra itself is ill defined, but it generally refers to beings originating from oblivion, but there are some daedric princes that predated oblivion, and some that were even once aedra/magna-ge/et'ada. Is it possible that mortals simply classify all bad and evil demonic things into one umbrella term even though there's a massive fundamental difference between a daedric prince and a daedra

Posted Jul 5, 2025, 11:50 AM UTC

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