She probably was legitimately attractive by Roman cultural norms and almost certainly leveraged that when dealing with Rome. The smear campaign was more playing that aspect up while downplaying the fact she was a genuine once-in-a-generation genius than making up things about how sexy she was.
Don't forget that the Wii U had one of the most incompetent console marketing campaigns of all time. Just two years ago I met someone who still didn't know it was a console and not an accessory.
At least the Dunmer are upfront about it. The Stormcloaks hide behind their opposition to the White-Gold Concordat and the Thalmor while being while being wildly racist. In Morrowind, the locals just tell you to your face that they hate you for being an outlander.
As the largest country on earth it should have an astonishing variety of nature, similar to the US.
Russia is at a much higher latitude, which limits things. It's mostly taiga and tundra, with the Great Steppe in the south. No deserts like the American Midwest or rain forests like the Pacific Northwest.
It was either in one of the books or an easily missed line in Halo 1, but the Halos actually don't spin fast enough for the amount of surface gravity they have, implying artificial gravity is involved.
Checkov's Law and Murphy's Gun seem to mean the same thing.