In skyrim, how do I get my companion to unequip this armor?

So I picked up Mercurio, a mercenary mage, at the inn in Riften. We were on a quest with a lot of loot, so I had him carry some things for me. This just happened to include a full set of steel armor. So he decided to equip it, as companions often do when you hand them armor. But he won't uneuip it; I get error message "You can't take your teammate's starting armor." Obviously, this wasn't his starting armor. His starting armor was the Adept Robe of Destruction.

So now I have an utterly useless mage running around in full Steel armor, shield and everything, and apparently it's somehow become his default armor. I would really like to fix this, as he was quite the useful companion.

How do I solve this?

Solution 1:

Unfortunately in vanilla Skyrim, there's no way to manage a follower's equipment to make them wear/remove gear.

If you are on the PC, there are several solutions:

1. Console Commands: A combination of showinventory and equipitem will make the follower put on whatever you want to wear. Or you can use removeitem to remove the item from them completely.

2. A mod such as this one will fix the issue as well.

Solution 2:

Yeah I know; this happens all the time to me when I take followers along. What you can do to fix this is to tell your follower to part ways, then let him go home. After about 3-4 days, (It should be three, but I just wait an extra one) He/She will be doing their regular routine and the armor you want to unequip will have been removed.

Just go up to them, ask them to tag along again, then check their inventory, all of your stuff will still be there including the armor they were previously wearing.