mages’ guild/winterhold demographics
This is something I decided to do to confirm or reject my own observations and biases. Here are the Morrowind and Cyrodiil Mages’ Guilds, and the College of Winterhold, by gender and by race. (NB the Cyrodiil statistics do not include unnamed university students, as some of these are randomly determined.) There are 32 guild-members in Morrowind and 66 in Cyrodiil; the College has 15 members. This is before any deaths and not counting the player.
My inclinations were thus: I felt that the Mages’ Guilds in Oblivion and Morrowind were majority female, and seemed to have more than their fair share of Bretons (a bias no doubt resulting from me also being a female Breton); I also felt that the College of Winterhold bucked general previous trends somewhat.
In terms of gender, then, the Morrowind Mages’ Guild is overwhelmingly female (63%), a majority that is not continued in the other games - indeed, though I haven’t checked this, I’ve a feeling it’s the only majority-female faction in any of the games. In Cyrodiil, the majority of guild-stewardship is by women (5/7, or 6 after Falcar’s death), but the Council of Mages is majority male (unless we are counting Bothiel, in which case it’s half-and-half); otherwise, though there is a male majority, it is only by 6. The College of Winterhold is however majority male (two-thirds). And of course all three Arch-Mages are male (though at least two have questionable levels of competency).
In terms of race, Bretons take an obvious lead in Morrowind (accounting for a quarter of members), outnumbering even the native Dunmer, and are the most-represented in Winterhold (again, roughly one-quarter). They are the second most common race in Cyrodiil’s guild (1/6), after Altmers (1/5), who as you might expect come close on their heels in the other two games. Nothing unexpected here, they are after all the two races most inclined to magical scholarship and magic in general. It might be interesting to compare this with the demographics of the games in general, but I haven’t got round to that.
Redguards appear only in Oblivion (4 members), where their infrequency is apparently accounted for by the general Hammerfell sentiment towards magic (source: Trayvond, Cheydinhal). Orcs are absent from the Cyrodiil Mages’ Guild (though strongly over-represented in the Fighters’ Guild), and sparse elsewhere (also much more frequent as soldiers in Morrowind, but rare in Skyrim in general, it must be said). While Argonians are entirely absent from Winterhold, and sparse in the other games, it should be noted that in Cyrodiil they go for quality over quantity, with one of the six holding an important position at the University, and, after the desertion of Falcar, three of them are guild-stewards.
Anyway I have in fact made little charts for all of the information, if you’re interested: you can find those under the cut. I think I may have been a little biased in my first impressions towards women and Bretons, but not without reason, especially in Morrowind. But Divines, I don’t know why I went to this length. I have no idea if anyone in the world will be interested in this but it’s here anyway
