An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Yet another time honoured tradition OTL. I doubt it though with the acceptance of Gallic nobles and the Emperor being of Irish descent.
If they will, then the traitorous secessionists must be dealt with. Certainly enough loyal Irish and French troops can be found to maintain order. As I keep saying Joan of Arc saved England from France rather than the other way round.
Quite true, although retaining Normandy wouldn’t have been too bad. I like the idea of independence for England. Too long have they been trapped under the thumb of the tyrannical French, their Emperor has been seduced by them and the Irish are a loyal attack dog. Cromwell Dynasty for England! (Wait wrong TL
)I'm just hoping a child of Odysseus marries his/her way onto the Triple Monarchy throne somehow.
You will not see another Latin marriage with the White Palace again for a bit. The last one brought on a war of survival, and showcased how Rome views "legitimate claim", competence is their legitimacy.
As it should be. Romans do not accept poor rulers. (Unless they come from inside that is, but even then they don’t last long).
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
Accept the Angeloi somehow, wouldn't be surprised if they had made a deal for power that epically backfired, "Yes, your family will be (in)famous emperors of Rome for centuries, just sign here."
Angeloi, a literal byword for incompetence. Although to be fair, they came in at a really awful time for the Byzantines. Maybe if they had waited a couple decades, they do do have been known as the most competent Romans ever. Or is that ASB
Yeah but it led to some great writing and the introduction of cool characters so I'm hoping history repeats itself if another similar situation occurs in the future.
Yeah, the only way I can see it happening is if the marriage is seen as Morganatic. Very Roman, deeply arrogant. Likely unacceptable.
Frankly the Sideroi have shown the best way to rise to power in the Roman Empire. Join it and rise. A Wittelsbach dynasty could still rise, which would be amusing - even as a successor to the Sideroi, but they'd have to join the Empire, and earn their position.
I sort of like the idea that just as the Sideroi rose in Egypt, it'd be cool to see the Wittelsbach as a Far East dynasty. A non-purple dynasty descended from a new child of Elizabeth rising the East, perhaps even rising in a conflict with China, or assisting Japan, would be really interesting. One of the best characters in a story (not on this forum, but an AAR for Crusader Kings 1) was a German from the Von Franken dynasty, a very long lived power behind the throne, from the dynasty of the HRE, but serving the Roman Empire.
Wait.. did the Egyptian Komnenoi die out? Wittelsbachs are more likely to flow west. Perhaps a child of Elizabeth sits on the English Throne after a revolt over the French conquest of the Rhine succeeds. Elizabeth probably is bitter enough over the backstab to engineer it.
That bit about Siberia is very interesting as while the entire region has always been cold and barren there just might be potential there for those pushing east, hell we might get to see glass gardens becoming a thing there in the possible future.
Can they mass produce sheets of glass yet? Won't be able to make that cost effective until they do.
@emperor joe: It does, although its market is mostly inside the Roman Empire with malmsey a bigger export to the west because of slightly cheaper shipping costs as its production sights are closer. (OOC: the reason why commandaria wasn’t mentioned is that I hadn’t heard of it until I saw your post and looked it up, while malmsey was repeatedly mentioned in readings I’ve done of the late medieval Aegean.)
@Lascaris: I didn’t think of that analogy but that fits really well. Monemvasia and the Monemvasiots were important players in the Aegean economy in the 1300s IOTL and that’s continued ITTL. But this is the point where Athens/Piraeus is going to start overtaking it as Athens has room to grow while Monemvasia has maxed out at this point.
I’m not sure how big Athens will be ITTL present, but it’ll be in the top 10 of Roman cities, although probably not the top 5. Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Antioch, and Smyrna take up four of those slots. Maybe something like the potential of OTL 2019 Athens but split evenly between Athens and Corinth who operate as a sort of distant twin cities.
@Christian: The full title of the Kings of Khazaria is ‘King of Khazaria and Siberia’. The Russians have been steadily exploring and expanding into Siberia for a long time now, although a lot of Russians that might’ve emigrated there ended up moving to Rhomania instead which slowed the process.
@Hussar: Exactly. Siberia was ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for the Romans long after the Russians started expanding into there. But the growth of the Roman economy since the Flowering and particularly the demands for war materials during the Great Latin War intensified Roman interest in finding new sources of material.
Regarding Oman: So with Oman, I admit I went ‘this happened IOTL, so I’m going to have it happen ITTL’ without paying attention to the details. There was no Portuguese colonization so there is no formal split as @Evilprodigy is describing. There is tension between the maritime-mercantile part of Omani society and the rural part, but then that’s nothing unique to Oman. In the OTL Netherlands, the coastal and inland provinces often had different priorities because of their different positions and economics.
Oman and Ethiopia between them have vassalized most, if not all, of the Swahili coast. Effectively they’ve decided that the Swahili coast is big enough for the two of them, as long as they keep everyone else out, like pesky Latins. Oman wants to keep its African trade routes open as it makes a lot of money by introducing African goods (ivory, slaves, and gold) into the Indian Ocean economy. Its alignment towards the Romans is because the Romans have no interest in muscling in on the Swahili coast, help keep the Latins off the Omani, and especially help keep the Ottomans off the Omani.
As such, expansive holdings in Mesopotamia would be viewed as an expensive distraction at best. Better to let the much more populous Romans try and hold that territory. The only Ottoman lands the Omani would be interested in getting would be Hormuz and Qeshm, which were Omani vassals for a while, and possibly the port of Gamrun (Bandar Abbas IOTL) on the Persian mainland.
@ImperatorAlexander: Enlightened despotism is an ideal I definitely saw ITTL Romans desiring greatly. (The devil in the details is, of course, keeping the ‘enlightened’ part of that going.) A ‘Father knows best’ state, but one that notes that a Father is also supposed to provide for his offspring.
In defense of the Triple Monarchy and the HRE, a lot of feudal elements survived right up to the end of the 18th century. Just look at the pre and post-Revolutionary administration of France. But you’re right; copying administrative and societal structures are a lot harder than just switching out matchlocks for flintlocks, for an example.
The big problem facing the Wittelsbachs is that they control a complex patchwork of territories that are often geographically separate. Bavaria-Austria is separated from Saxony-Brandenburg by a little thing called the Kingdom of Bohemia. Then there’s Schleswig-Holstein which is its own enclave, plus various minor lands speckled across the rest of Germany. This is an entity much harder to keep together than a relatively compact state like any other of the big players.
@Albert Blake: Perhaps a more Northern focus, although it’s probable that if Karl could, he’d move his power base back from Saxony to the Wittelsbach ancestral lands of Bavaria. But the Holy Roman Emperor would be substantially weaker vis-à-vis the German princes, closer to what was the case at this time IOTL. Karl got a lot of support from princes who wanted to cut the Wittelsbachs down to size. So in a ‘Karl wins’ ATL, even if a Wittelsbach Emperor wanted to pull a Theodor, he’d lack the resources to make a credible attempt.
@Cryostorm: Yeah, Blucher saying “if God wanted the House of Wittelsbach to fall, he wouldn’t have created [Elizabeth]” is not just flattery.
The Angeloi are just…I don’t know. On the one hand, they didn’t have the easiest hand, but one the other, they suck. I admit to having a bit of a soft spot for Isaac II Angelos, pre-blinding. Sometimes it feels like he’s really trying, but he’s a mediocre man who is in way over his head (unsurprising considering how he came to the throne), and I can sympathize with that. On the other hand, he was a complete bumbling idiot during the Third Crusade to the point I’m on Barbarossa’s side. The rest of the Angeloi 1195-1204 though get nothing but contempt from me.
@HanEmpire: I have interesting things planned for the Triunes down the road (1670s?). Regarding the English, I see two possible reactions to the French dominance. 1-Team up with the Irish to help counterbalance French weight. 2-Beat on the Irish so that the English can feel better because then they have somebody lower than them on the totem pole, essentially the poor white feeling better about himself because he’s better than the black slave.
@Curtain Jerker: That’s probably not going to happen. A good chunk of the Latin royal families have Roman blood or are Roman-origin families. Anything more to me feels a bit gratuitous.
I don’t plan on a similar situation happening again. I feel I could pull this off once; having it happen a second time strains suspension of disbelief in my opinion. So I’ll just have to come up with a different interesting scenario.
@Duke of Nova Scotia: Yeah, at this point I think there’s going to be an unwritten rule that the Roman Imperial family members, if marrying outside the Empire, only marry royalty from Orthodox countries (Ethiopia is included in this). They’re much less likely to pull a ‘dynastic claim’ out of it, and even if they did they lack the size or geographical position to be a serious threat.
@RogueTraderEnthusiast: Definitely morganatic. It’d be underlined, bolded, italicized, highlighted and in all caps that the offspring of said marriage would have absolutely no claim whatsoever on the Roman throne. The Romans would want that absolutely crystal clear.
@TheWanderingReader: Siberia has significant geographical and climatological barriers for colonization, but I’m planning for it to be more developed ITTL and earlier than OTL. (Hence the Don-Volga canal.) Russian development IOTL was hampered by the lack of capital and a merchant class. TTL Russia is a much different story.
@TheCataphract: No. At this point nothing can really be considered ‘mass-produced’, especially by modern standards. The Roman textile industry is well organized, with some establishments that could be considered factories, but most production is still done by hand. There are no spinning jennies, for example.
@Lascaris: I didn’t think of that analogy but that fits really well. Monemvasia and the Monemvasiots were important players in the Aegean economy in the 1300s IOTL and that’s continued ITTL. But this is the point where Athens/Piraeus is going to start overtaking it as Athens has room to grow while Monemvasia has maxed out at this point.
I’m not sure how big Athens will be ITTL present, but it’ll be in the top 10 of Roman cities, although probably not the top 5. Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Antioch, and Smyrna take up four of those slots. Maybe something like the potential of OTL 2019 Athens but split evenly between Athens and Corinth who operate as a sort of distant twin cities.
@Christian: The full title of the Kings of Khazaria is ‘King of Khazaria and Siberia’. The Russians have been steadily exploring and expanding into Siberia for a long time now, although a lot of Russians that might’ve emigrated there ended up moving to Rhomania instead which slowed the process.
@Hussar: Exactly. Siberia was ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for the Romans long after the Russians started expanding into there. But the growth of the Roman economy since the Flowering and particularly the demands for war materials during the Great Latin War intensified Roman interest in finding new sources of material.
Regarding Oman: So with Oman, I admit I went ‘this happened IOTL, so I’m going to have it happen ITTL’ without paying attention to the details. There was no Portuguese colonization so there is no formal split as @Evilprodigy is describing. There is tension between the maritime-mercantile part of Omani society and the rural part, but then that’s nothing unique to Oman. In the OTL Netherlands, the coastal and inland provinces often had different priorities because of their different positions and economics.
Oman and Ethiopia between them have vassalized most, if not all, of the Swahili coast. Effectively they’ve decided that the Swahili coast is big enough for the two of them, as long as they keep everyone else out, like pesky Latins. Oman wants to keep its African trade routes open as it makes a lot of money by introducing African goods (ivory, slaves, and gold) into the Indian Ocean economy. Its alignment towards the Romans is because the Romans have no interest in muscling in on the Swahili coast, help keep the Latins off the Omani, and especially help keep the Ottomans off the Omani.
As such, expansive holdings in Mesopotamia would be viewed as an expensive distraction at best. Better to let the much more populous Romans try and hold that territory. The only Ottoman lands the Omani would be interested in getting would be Hormuz and Qeshm, which were Omani vassals for a while, and possibly the port of Gamrun (Bandar Abbas IOTL) on the Persian mainland.
@ImperatorAlexander: Enlightened despotism is an ideal I definitely saw ITTL Romans desiring greatly. (The devil in the details is, of course, keeping the ‘enlightened’ part of that going.) A ‘Father knows best’ state, but one that notes that a Father is also supposed to provide for his offspring.
In defense of the Triple Monarchy and the HRE, a lot of feudal elements survived right up to the end of the 18th century. Just look at the pre and post-Revolutionary administration of France. But you’re right; copying administrative and societal structures are a lot harder than just switching out matchlocks for flintlocks, for an example.
The big problem facing the Wittelsbachs is that they control a complex patchwork of territories that are often geographically separate. Bavaria-Austria is separated from Saxony-Brandenburg by a little thing called the Kingdom of Bohemia. Then there’s Schleswig-Holstein which is its own enclave, plus various minor lands speckled across the rest of Germany. This is an entity much harder to keep together than a relatively compact state like any other of the big players.
@Albert Blake: Perhaps a more Northern focus, although it’s probable that if Karl could, he’d move his power base back from Saxony to the Wittelsbach ancestral lands of Bavaria. But the Holy Roman Emperor would be substantially weaker vis-à-vis the German princes, closer to what was the case at this time IOTL. Karl got a lot of support from princes who wanted to cut the Wittelsbachs down to size. So in a ‘Karl wins’ ATL, even if a Wittelsbach Emperor wanted to pull a Theodor, he’d lack the resources to make a credible attempt.
@Cryostorm: Yeah, Blucher saying “if God wanted the House of Wittelsbach to fall, he wouldn’t have created [Elizabeth]” is not just flattery.
The Angeloi are just…I don’t know. On the one hand, they didn’t have the easiest hand, but one the other, they suck. I admit to having a bit of a soft spot for Isaac II Angelos, pre-blinding. Sometimes it feels like he’s really trying, but he’s a mediocre man who is in way over his head (unsurprising considering how he came to the throne), and I can sympathize with that. On the other hand, he was a complete bumbling idiot during the Third Crusade to the point I’m on Barbarossa’s side. The rest of the Angeloi 1195-1204 though get nothing but contempt from me.
@HanEmpire: I have interesting things planned for the Triunes down the road (1670s?). Regarding the English, I see two possible reactions to the French dominance. 1-Team up with the Irish to help counterbalance French weight. 2-Beat on the Irish so that the English can feel better because then they have somebody lower than them on the totem pole, essentially the poor white feeling better about himself because he’s better than the black slave.
@Curtain Jerker: That’s probably not going to happen. A good chunk of the Latin royal families have Roman blood or are Roman-origin families. Anything more to me feels a bit gratuitous.
I don’t plan on a similar situation happening again. I feel I could pull this off once; having it happen a second time strains suspension of disbelief in my opinion. So I’ll just have to come up with a different interesting scenario.
@Duke of Nova Scotia: Yeah, at this point I think there’s going to be an unwritten rule that the Roman Imperial family members, if marrying outside the Empire, only marry royalty from Orthodox countries (Ethiopia is included in this). They’re much less likely to pull a ‘dynastic claim’ out of it, and even if they did they lack the size or geographical position to be a serious threat.
@RogueTraderEnthusiast: Definitely morganatic. It’d be underlined, bolded, italicized, highlighted and in all caps that the offspring of said marriage would have absolutely no claim whatsoever on the Roman throne. The Romans would want that absolutely crystal clear.
@TheWanderingReader: Siberia has significant geographical and climatological barriers for colonization, but I’m planning for it to be more developed ITTL and earlier than OTL. (Hence the Don-Volga canal.) Russian development IOTL was hampered by the lack of capital and a merchant class. TTL Russia is a much different story.
@TheCataphract: No. At this point nothing can really be considered ‘mass-produced’, especially by modern standards. The Roman textile industry is well organized, with some establishments that could be considered factories, but most production is still done by hand. There are no spinning jennies, for example.
Alexandria and the other Egyptian cities look like they have lots of potential for growth too.
If Siberia is developed earlier, has Khazaria already reached the Pacific? (OTL Russia reached the mouth of the Ulya River in 1639) Maybe we can see a more Orthodox America ITTL with a richer Russia and Japan joining in the fray.
Perhaps also the western Gulf Coast (Qatar, al-Dammam) to connect its holdings in OTL UAE to Bahrain?
Do the Triunes still view the Magna Carta as important or is that only given importance across the Channel? Maybe they'll also want a campaign against the Empire of All the North and more resources to be devoted to their overseas colonies.
Hoping to see a real life Andreas V and a Japanese empress too.