Elenwen is an ambassador (/spy, in the true old-fashioned “EVERYBODY knows you’re using your diplomatic pouch for espionage, but opening it will still create an embarrassing international incident” sense of the word) and Tullius is a military officer. Each of them is the highest-ranking person from their respective factions in the province, but he reports to the Emperor and she reports to Alinor. There’s just no overlap in the chains of command. You’re right that we don’t have much to go on, but what we DO have leads me to believe that if one of them is in the position of greater power, it’s Elenwen:
1. The aforementioned cut dialogue when Tullius refuses to hand over the prisoners in Helgen: “Your Emperor will hear of this. By the terms of the White-Gold Concordat, I operate with full Imperial authority! You’re making a terrible mistake!” She’s actively threatening him here, not with censure from her own government but from HIS. Presumably Tullius is smart enough to realize that executing Ulfric then and there is the safest bet for ending the Stormcloak Rebellion, and also that – as you pointed out at the end of your post – handing his prisoners over to the Thalmor would be a propaganda nightmare and only enrage the province further, and he counts on his boss agreeing with him there. Still, I think it says a lot about Elenwen’s political power, and that of the Concordat, that she invokes Imperial authority.
2. Tullius’ dialogue if, as you mentioned, the bug in Diplomatic Immunity is fixed: “I can only imagine the headaches this is going to cause…here, take this. Assuming they even honor it, you should be able to get your prisoner out.” That doesn’t sound like a man who’s confident that his orders will be obeyed. It sounds like a man who’s already developing a headache anticipating the diplomatic fuss that overstepping his political boundaries is going to create.
3. Tullius’ dialogue if he shows up for Diplomatic Immunity: “I swear Elenwen holds these parties just to make the Empire look bad. Almost makes me want to join the Stormcloaks…the only reason I’m here is because my refusal to attend would cause a diplomatic incident…I need another drink…the Thalmor invited me here to remind everyone that they can tell the Empire what to do. I would refuse, but I don’t want to jeopardize the peace between us…” and, finally, “Look around the room and you’ll see what we’re up against. Just between you and me, a lot of what Ulfric says about the Empire is true.” (!!!!! Of course, he also says Elenwen would’ve made a good Legion general, so…I think he’s been hitting the Colovian brandy by that point, and who can really blame him.) At any rate, he doesn’t sound like a man who’s enthusiastic about cooperating with the Thalmor. He sounds like a man who knows perfectly well that he’s been maneuvered onto the losing side of a political power play, can’t see a way out of it, and wishes he were much, much drunker than he currently is.
No one is more surprised than I am to find myself defending Tullius here, because he’s the sort of THE-LAW-IS-THE-LAW-AND-IT-MUST-BE-OBEYED character that I find it difficult to sympathize with, especially when the law is causing such evident human suffering as it is in Skyrim. I guess my point is that however infuriating I find it, that rigid adherence to policy and order is his defining character feature: as a military man, as Ulfric’s sometime-foil, and as the straight-laced, frustrated fish-out-of-water representative of Imperial bureaucracy in a land that is anything but straight-laced and bureaucratic (which forms the basis of his character arc in the questline, such as it is – obviously he gets a lot less development than his opposite number). So I think he loses something, as a character, if we don’t acknowledge that he’s following orders. That’s his character flaw. Tullius and Ulfric are two equally stubborn ends of a pitiless spectrum: the general who permits great suffering in his inflexible dedication to order, and the rebel who sows chaos and death in his unbending pursuit of principle.
(Doesn’t mean you can’t dislike him for it, of course! Contrary to the impression I may have given here, I find Tullius an arrogant literal-minded dolt with an insufferable cultural superiority complex, and I’d like to slap him hard enough that he staggers a few steps off the Lawful square and a few steps further onto the Good square. Then we might as well have Rikke running the Legion, though, and while that would probably be better for everyone involved, it would make for a very different story.)
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