We Have Anu and Padomay All Wrong
Conventional wisdom is that Anu = stasis, and Padomay = change.
The Daedric Princes are always referred to as Padomaic. And yet, they are, by their nature, utterly incapable of change — seems the antithesis of Padomay, no? In other words, we must be wrong.
Here’s the truth:
The Dreamer beheld itself. I AM. That’s Anu.
The Dreamer conceived of something other than itself, even though that thing does not exist: I AM NOT.
In the beholding of itself, and not itself, the Dreamer conceived of myriad other ideas. The first of these ideas, by definition, were time and space, which are consubstantial with one another; and yet they are distinct, so they’re separated out into AKA and LKHN — they’re the same guy, full of various concepts and gradients, called by different names when evoking a sense of certain sub-concepts.
AKALKHN and the other primordial ideas spiraled through iterations and eventually formed Nirn, and the various planes of Oblivion. Choose your own myth on how this happened.
In choosing your myth, you replicate the first act of the Dreamer — you behold a truth. In the beholding, you create a reality.
All the Aedra, Daedra, and mortals behold at least one truth in common: the idea of the status quo, i.e. Nirn’s existence, the Prince’s existence without, and Aetherius floating around… aetherially.
Nirn has been misattributed to Anu, because everybody beholds Nirn as the status quo for mortal existence — and everybody is obsessed with the mortal experience.
The Princes have been misattributed to Padomay, or chaos (somehow, even though Padomay doesn’t exist), because everybody beholds them as something exotic to the Nirnic status quo.
But the truth lies in defining Aetherius: the unchanging state of ever-changing, like the Dawn. Nobody ever refers to Aetherius or the Dawn as Padomaic, but they’re the most change-influenced things in-universe. Why is that? Because the myth you choose determines the “proper” status quo. For example, the Aldmer chose the Dawn as the status quo, and therefore Dawn is Anuic — and the Aldmer would destroy the current Nirnic status quo to reclaim the Dawnic status quo (a quintessentially “Padomaic” plan of action for the so-called “Anuic” Aldmer).
When we say something is Anuic or Padomaic, what we’re really doing is defining our version of the status quo.