The whole quest is structured around the premise that Skyrim takes place circa 4E 175-180 instead of 4E 201:
There's nothing deceiving about her appearance. Bethesda has no problems making characters look age appropriate as they are consistently age appropriate throughout the game. If Saadia were meant to look like she was an adult 30 years ago they would have made her face mesh look similar to Rikke's. Also her cover is as a tavern wench which is a young woman's job. Literally denying what your eyes present to you is a weak counterargument.
It may be a lie but it makes absolutely no sense for her to make such a transparently obvious lie. What purpose does it serve? Your character would have to be an inbred imbecile to believe a lie that stupid and she'd have to be a mouth breathing moron to believe that anyone would believe such an obvious and senseless fabrication. While I suppose one could role play a character that's perceived by the world at large as a complete idiot and fool I doubt that's what Bethesda had in mind when it designed this quest and it clearly didn't intend to present Saadia in that manner. Kematu himself indicates she is extremely adept at manipulating people in his dialogue at the stables and a person with that capacity wouldn't rely on such a juvenile and feeble attempt at deception.
This isn't from Saadia, it's from Kematu. Everyone knows that the Aldmeri Dominion left the province over a quarter of a century ago. An event that large and that old would be common knowledge. Thinking otherwise defies common sense and it's laughable to think that a Redguard of Alik'r wouldn't know this.
Refer to my response above regarding her alleged first lie. As a lie this one is no more idiotic or less plausible unless you push the clock back by over 2 decades.
The quest isn't confusing at all when you put it in its proper context. Everything coalesces quite well if you imagine it takes place shortly after the signing of the White-Gold Concordat. Your attempts to advocate to the contrary simply end up making the dialogues sound ludicrous and well beyond not being well written.
None of that explains why she would make unbelievable lies. They're not simply bad lies, they're lies that are transparently false as soon as they're uttered, even to a stupid person. When I said one would have to suffer from mental incapacity to believe them I meant that literally. It would be like you lying to your boss if he invited you over to his place tonight for dinner by saying you'd love to but you can't because you have tickets to the world premiere for this awesome new movie called "Star Wars" tonight.
The Isle of Balfiera is part of High Rock. It's located in the Iliac Bay. No Mer have controlled it or the Direnni Tower since the First Era when the Bretons supplanted the Altmer from the area. The Aldmeri Dominion completely withdrew from Hammerfell in accordance with the Second Treaty of Stros M'kai between it and Hammerfell.
First of all she's not inconsistent. Her claims are simply untenable on their face. She's also not the only one. Kematu's are arguably more untenable, especially given the obvious age disparity issue for those who aren't going to withdraw into a shell of denial about what the game is presenting to the player. If a player gets deep into the lore then the whole thing becomes nonsense.
It's not a little absurd. It's insanely asurd. As lies, Saadia's statements would not merely be bad, they'd be absolute nonsense. Refer to my analogy about lying to get out of dinner with your boss. What rational person is going to engage in such a pointless exercise that not only fails to further that agenda but is actually counterproductive to it? In other words why would Saadia decide "Hmm, I want to manipulate this person into helping me...I know! I'll make it super-obvious to him that I'm a liar and untrustworthy by telling him a bunch of things that are incredulous on their face. That way he won't trust me or believe a thing I said.... no... wait.... ummmm"?
This is just desperately grasping at straws (actually it's worse because there are no straws to grasp). Putting aside that there is absolutely nothing in the lore to indicate that the Aldmeri Dominion is planning on violating the Second Treaty of Stros M'kai, even if it were that doesn't somehow resurrect a resistance movement that hasn't existed for a quarter of a century. There wouldn't be a resistance movement to repel an invasion. It would be the Hammerfell army. A resistance movement indicates the Aldmeri Dominion is already in Hammerfell controlling territory which isn't the case.
If you're aware of the lore it doesn't lead to a conclusion that she's lying, it leads to a conclusion that what she's saying is inconsistent with the lore, what Kematu is saying is inconsistent with the lore, and that the entire quest is inconsistent with the lore. It's no different then if the two of them were talking as if the Great War is still going on, or that Morrowind is still controlled by the Dunmer and the Ministry of Truth is still floating in the skies above it, or that Argonia is still part of the Empire.
No it's not. The quest is designed to be morally ambiguous. If a player is familiar with the lore then the only choice to reconcile what's being said by Saadia and Kematu is to temporarily suspend knowledge that it's 4E 201 and pretend that it's circa 4E 175-180 and proceed accordingly. If you do that, everything that Saadia says is plausible and everything that Kematu says is plausible. If you don't do that then nothing anyone says is plausible and the quest becomes meaningless.
Name them. The fact of the matter is you have no context to determine the age of most NPC's other than their appearance. If they look young the presumption is they're young. Here's a side by side comparison of Saadia to Kerah, who is the mother of a young child, and Rikke who would be the ideal age for Saadia for the alleged actions she took during the fall of Taneth:
Putting aside the fact that there's no basis to contradict that she's presented to you by the game as younger than that, Taneth fell thirty years ago so that still makes her a young adolescent and still makes Kematu's allegations incredulous.
...none of the wildly speculative things you posited as they all contradict the lore. The lore establishes that Hammerfell doesn't consider itself a part of the Empire. Everything else you fabricated, notwithstanding that it's wholly unsupported by the lore and game content, is completely irrelevant to the fact that the term "resistance in Hammerfell" has a fixed meaning in the lore of the resistance to the Aldmeri Dominion's occupation of the province after the Empire signed the White-Gold Concordat and renounced Hammerfell. If one knows the lore, one has to be deliberately obtuse to engage in the act of self-delusion that Kematu's reference to the resistance is a reference to anything else, and makes absolutely no sense unless the resistance actually still exists, i.e. the Aldmeri Dominion still occupies portions of Hammerfell making the year circa 4E 175-180.
The fall of Taneth occurred three decades ago. Bribing a child isn't going to be instrumental in taking a city.
Interrogating a child isn't going to yield information giving the Aldmeri Dominion a decisive strategic advantage in taking the city.
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Well Dagmar, any ways to rationalize that quest then
You can't. It's a mistake on the developers part which I pointed out several posts ago. Historical information and game content were being developed simultaneously so when the final timeline for events was established with the The Great War: A Concise Account of the Great War Between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion the production of this quest may have already been finished and never revised to reflect the decision to have Hammerfell free of occupation by the Aldmeri Dominion. Large open environment games are vulnerable to this kind of inconsistency, especially when they're rushed to meet a release date.
What are the gate paths of Skyrim?
