"Fare better that the original"?? That rhino poacher in Zambia that was stomped to death by elephants and then eaten by lions..if he had been shot by police and buried in a shallow grave it could be said he "fared better than the original time line". Still, sucks to be him.
Well the original empire died more than 500 years ago, yet it was (in my opinion) one of the most successful empire in history. It endured great challenges, met mighty foes (from Carthage to the various Persian/Turkish empires to the east), constantly evolved and finally left a lasting (positive) mark on the territories it ruled to a degree few other empires equaled. Its end was a tragedy but a glorious one and if I can write a timeline were the empire survives till the end of the story (as I don’t think I’ll reach the point in history where the OTL empire fell), manages to hold at least a third of its original territories and most of all avoid the rise of pretenders from every corner of the world trying to claim/usurp its legacy, then I’ll call this a successful. An empire that fared even better than the OTL one.
IMHO, it is also important to see if Roman culture, Latin, education and trade routes survive better than OTL.
Well in OTL, even the fall of the West wasn’t enough to eradicate Roman culture and identity and here we have the very core of the empire and its surrounding lands survive and thrive under the Nepotians while the link between the East and the Latin world is going to be stronger. I don’t have much to say about the education yet (except that the Academy is going to make a small comeback) but with the destruction of the Vandal kingdom the Mediterranen sea is once again a Roman lake, with its consequences on the economy and communication. Land route are a little bit more dangerous, especially communication between West and East since the start of the Gothic war, but as we already saw in the past, Nepos already tried to improve the situation (especially in Raetia and Noricum).
I personally do like this path very much, and IMHO all we have seen so far ITTL is very realistic.
Thank you! I always have this feeling that what I write is a little bit unrealistic, but to hear this from you is really reassuring.
As a side note, I appreciate very much the non-mainstream POD (I think we are all so in love with Majorian that we forget that there could have been other restores, such as Nepos ITTL).
Well a restoration under Majorian is way more plausibe and also easier to achieve than one under Nepos. The first time I “imagined” this timeline (3 years ago), the POD was at the time of Majorian (immediately after his failed campaign against the Vandals). Unfortunately the timeline didn’t account for the butterfly effect. Then came a timeline about Belisarius (another popular POD) emperor in the West but the premise wasn’t totally correct. Finally last year I came with the idea of a timeline about the last hours (literally) of the Western Roman empire and started developing it reusing some of the ideas from the previous two stories. And that’s the story of how a timeline about Majorian became a timeline about Nepos and Procopius Anthemius’ offspring.
Well so far TTL survived almost 60 years so it fared better already.
I agree with you about not making this a Roman wank for the scope to be a mere wank. I don't think and I think I said already since the start the Empire unlikely will unite all the West... But if would still survive through the ages and still live as a respectable nation, I would be still glad on a personal level.
I was referring to the empire as a whole since the distinction between East and West is not going to be a permanent thing. However to prove the real greatness of an empire and its people you have to provide them true challenges and great enemies and see how they react. This way things are more interesting.
