Map Thread XX
- Thread starter Balkanized U.S.A
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Commission for a standalone scenario devised by @Mr_Fanboy
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This map is set in a world where the Byzantine Empire does not collapse in 1453. With a point of divergence that sees the Fourth Crusade successfully take Egypt, rather than being diverted all the way to Constantinople, the empire is able to muddle along for a few centuries more until some equivalent of the Great War in the early 20th century. The Byzantines are on the losing side of this war, leading to a deposition of the monarchy. In a manner similar Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary after the World War I of our timeline, this republican successor state loses the vast majority of its non-ethnically Greek (well, ethnically Rhomanian) core. The allohistorical irony here is that the arrangement is widely seen as a massively unfair punishment by the Rhomanians, a national crucifixion akin to the Treaty of Trianon in our timeline, but from the perspective of our timeline, the new borders still easily achieve Megali Idea status.
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This map is set in a world where the Byzantine Empire does not collapse in 1453. With a point of divergence that sees the Fourth Crusade successfully take Egypt, rather than being diverted all the way to Constantinople, the empire is able to muddle along for a few centuries more until some equivalent of the Great War in the early 20th century. The Byzantines are on the losing side of this war, leading to a deposition of the monarchy. In a manner similar Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary after the World War I of our timeline, this republican successor state loses the vast majority of its non-ethnically Greek (well, ethnically Rhomanian) core. The allohistorical irony here is that the arrangement is widely seen as a massively unfair punishment by the Rhomanians, a national crucifixion akin to the Treaty of Trianon in our timeline, but from the perspective of our timeline, the new borders still easily achieve Megali Idea status.
Digital Shaded-Relief Map of the Greater Germanic Reich
I quickly made this map as a means to hone in my QGis skills. This map is set in the same world as Europe During the Repudiation of Versailles (1933-1942), which I have quoted below.
Europe During the Repudiation of Versailles (1933-1942)
"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."
-Ferdinand Foch, 28 June 1919
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, attempted to create an enduring peace in Europe after the massive loss of life and destruction caused by the First World War. While generally popular among the victorious Allies, the Treaty had its detractors. Some, such as Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch, argued that the peace was too lenient on Germany. In Germany, many politicians garnered support by attacking the Treaty as unfair to Germany, including the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler. Despite these detractors, the geopolitical order established by the Treaty of Versailles avoided a serious challenge for nearly 14 years, until 1933, when Adolf Hitler was elected the Chancellor of Germany.
On 23 March 1933, the German Reichstag passed the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act), handing Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. In addition to establishing a totalitarian state, Hitler used these dictatorial powers to begin undoing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles one-by-one. On 13 October 1933, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. On 13 January 1935, the Saarland Territory, by a 90% margin voted to unite with Germany. In March, Hitler announced that Germany would expand its army to six times the limit allowed by Versailles. In June, the British permitted the Germans to increase tonnage limits of the Germany Navy beyond those stipulated by Versailles. On 7 March 1936, Germany remilitarized the Rhineland. On 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the the Anschluss (Annexation) of Austria. Soon after, Hitler began making demands on Czechoslovakia to cede the region of Sudetenland, populated by ethnic Germans. On 29 September 1938, Adolf Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, and Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini, met in Munich to determine the fate of the Sudetenland. Influenced by assurances from Hitler that the Sudetenland was his Germany’s territorial demand, the four-power conference allowed Germany to annex the territory. Upon returning from Munich, Neville Chamberlain confidently announced that he had obtained “peace in our time.” On 15 March 1939, this illusory expectation of peace was shattered when Hitler violated the Munich accord by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia. When Hitler began making threats against Poland, demanding the return of Danzig and the Polish Corridor, the United Kingdom and France issued a declaration guaranteeing Polish Independence. Within months, Europe would find itself at war again.
Before undertaking his invasion of Poland, Hitler dispatched his foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Moscow to conclude a neutrality pact with the Soviets. This pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop included secret provisions to divide Central Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that the pact would have forced the United Kingdom and France to accept his impending invasion of Poland as a fait accompli. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, which prompted the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany two days later. While Poland fought valiantly, the country was quickly overrun by the Germans and (from 17 September 1939 on) the Soviets. In the Fourth Partition of Poland, the Soviet Union annexed half of the country (incorporated into the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs), Germany a quarter, and scraps by Slovakia and Lithuania. The remainder of the country became an occupation zone under German control known as the “General Government” – Poland had been erased from the map.
For the next half-year, there was minimal combat between the Western Allies and Germany (hence this period of the war is often dubbed the “Phony War”). The Soviet Union nevertheless took advantage of the conflict in the West to force border corrections (though at great cost to the Red army) with Finland in the Winter War. To secure shipments of Iron Ore from Sweden, Germany launched Operation Weserübung, the invasion of neutral Denmark and Norway, on 9 April 1940. Denmark fell to German forces within 6 hours. Norway, buoyed by allied assistance, held out longer – until developments elsewhere forced the United Kingdom and France to abandon their deployments to Norway.
Seeking to score a quick and decisive victory in the West in light of Germany’s perilous strategic position, on 10 May 1940 Hitler ordered Fall Gelb (Case Yellow) – a surprise offensive through the Ardennes. This battle would turn out to be the decisive campaign of the Second World War. The main force of Germany’s Panzer forces advanced through the lightly defended Ardennes forest and broke through the French defensive lines are Sedan. From there, the Panzers turned towards the channel coast, in a “sickle cut” maneuver, to cut off the bulk of the French and British army (which were mostly deployed in Belgium) from the rest of France. By 20 May 1940, advance German units had reached the English Channel, and attempts by the French and British to counterattack the German pincer failed. On 23 May 1940, British General Lord Gort ordered the British Expeditionary Force to retreat towards the Channel coast in an attempt to evacuate his army. However, the following day, the German Army captured the port of Dunkirk, which forced the British to try to make an escape via the Belgian port of Ostend. However, the Germans would capture Ostend before the British Expeditionary Force could arrive – sealing of all avenues of retreat. By the end of May, nearly the entire British Expeditionary Force (the bulk of the United Kingdom’s regular forces in Europe), and the bulk of the French Army (including its best units) were in German POW camps. Clearing pockets of resistance forced Germany to delay Fall Rot (Case Red), the invasion of France, a few days but the offensive got under way by 8 June 1940. France resisted the German invader as well as it could, but with the balance of forces decisively in Germany’s favor (aggravated by Italian entry into the War on the side of Germany), France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany on 24 June 1940. As someone deeply concerned with symbolism, Hitler forced the French delegation to sign the Armistice in Compiègne, in the same rail car and location where the armistice that ended the First World War had been signed. Hitler had planned on conducting a private visit to Paris the subsequent day but was forced to return to Berlin to attend to matters of state in response to the Soviet occupation of the Baltics and Bessarabia.
Hitler (who had always wanted to visit Paris due to his hobby of architecture), returned to the French Capital on 27 June 1940 to attend a Wehrmacht Victory Parade (similar to the one held in Warsaw). Towards the end of the parade, German Officer Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg approached Hitler’s reviewing stand. Pulling out a pistol, Schulenburg shot Hitler 5 times before being gunned down by Hitler’s bodyguard (who had been far more concerned about a potential assassination plot by the French Resistance, and severely discounted the potential of an assassination from within the ranks of the German Army). Adolf Hitler, the man who had destroyed the Versailles Treaty and returned Germany to the status of Great Power – was pronounced dead shortly after. In 1939, Hitler had decreed that Hermann Göring, the President of the Reichstag and Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe, was to be his successor. While many foreign observers predicted that the Nazi state would devolve into infighting with various factions jostling for power now that Hitler dead, Göring assumed control rather seamlessly (with various factions, from the army, to the party believing that Göring being in charge of Germany was preferable to the risk that another faction besides themselves would seize control). After overseeing Hitler’s funeral in Linz (soon thereafter renamed “Hitlerstadt”), Göring – as someone who always found the risks of launching and undertaking wars to not be worth the risk (due in large part to not do anything that would impact his ability to live off of the largesse of the state) – soon made his first major move as Führer of Germany.
On 11 July 1940, Hermann Göring made his first speech to the Reichstag. After delivering a powerful eulogy of his predecessor, Göring made a peace overture to the British who he knew were listening. Göring offered very generous terms to the United Kingdom – offering a peace without any sort of financial or territory indemnity, nor military limitations. Referencing his predecessor’s desire to undo the Versailles order, Göring characterized his peace terms as “everything the Treaty of Versailles was not – a fair and equitable peace.”
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, trusting Göring’s word as little as he had trusted Hitler’s word, privately resolved to continue the war against Germany. However, Churchill’s hand was forced by Göring’s peace offer. Many within Churchill’s War Cabinet, such as Lord Halifax had argued for investigating potential peace terms ever since the British Expeditionary Force had been captured in May. Pessimistic reports regarding the United Kingdom’s ability to continue to prosecute the war from General Ironside and Imperial General Staff only served to strengthen the peace-seeking faction. On 14 July 1940, David Lloyd George (a member of the War Cabinet since June, whom Churchill erroneously considered to be a close ally) led a cabinet revolt against the Churchill in an attempt to force him to explore terms with Germany. In response to this lack of confidence, Churchill tendered his resignation, and Lord Halifax replaced him as Prime Minister. Halifax immediately sent a delegation to Germany to discuss terms – and an armistice was concluded shortly thereafter. On 21 October 1940 – a peace between Germany and the United Kingdom was signed. In effect, the British had signed a White Peace with Germany, only being obligated to expel the governments-in-exile hosted in London (most of which would leave for America – with the exception of the Belgians, which returned to join King Leopold III in Belgium to negotiate a settlement with the Germans). The Germans tacitly acquiesced to continued British presence in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which became independent of Denmark (over the objections of Copenhagen) in 1941. Throughout the remainder of the 1940, peace agreements were concluded with France, Belgium, and Denmark – with resulted in some territorial indemnities to Germany (but less than many had feared). In the Netherlands and Norway, Germany concluded peace with puppet regimes they established. The Second World War was over.
1941 would see Europe’s borders get re-ordered once again, with the Third Balkan War between Yugoslavia and a coalition of Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria resulting in the dissolution of the former. While relations between Germany and the Soviet Union worsened in 1941 (with the Soviets accusing the Germans of stationing troops in Finland and not properly compensating the Soviet Union for food and raw material shipments), the two powers remained at peace. The Soviet Union, still reeling from Stalin’s purges, was in no position to fight Germany as it rearmed, so Germany’s transgressions were allowed to stand for the moment. In Germany, many Nazis advocated invading the Soviet Union in 1941, contending that the peace with the United Kingdom presented Germany with an unprecedented opportunity to invade the Soviet Union without worrying about fighting on two fronts. Göring was initially receptive to this idea, but as the date of invasion neared wavered on multiple occasions, delaying Operation Dortmund (the planned invasion of the Soviet Union) a number of times in 1941 for a variety of reasons, before postponing it to 1942. As 15 May 1942 approached (the planned invasion date), Göring again wavered, as intelligence reports of Soviet rearmament unnerved Göring and convinced him to delay Dortmund once again. As the strategic balance between Germany and the Soviet Union continued to shift in the latter’s favor, Dortmund was postponed again, and again, until it was shelved indefinitely. By the end of 1942, Stalin (while still unconvinced about the offensive capabilities of the Soviet Army) was sufficiently satisfied with the defensive capabilities of the Soviet military to resist a German invasion. Accordingly, he demanded Germany withdraw from Finland and pay its deferred loan payments to the Soviet Union immediately. Göring flatly refused, prompting Stalin to cancel all ongoing economic and diplomatic agreements with Germany.
The Cold War had begun.
Eparkhos
Banned
Believe me, I'm just getting started
Part of a series of Socotra alt-histories.
ATL, the Socotrans unified into an outward looking state under the Diskharkha dynasty in the 1050s. Ibrahim the Great conquered Northern Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea and his son Mubarak I successfully invaded southern Yemen. Since then, the Socotrans have been playing a balancing game, barely keeping the Seljuks and Axumites from murdering them with gifts and mercs. The Patriarch of the East moved his residency to the island, and some of the conquered regions have been converted to Thomasitism.
Eparkhos
Banned
0/10, no sovereign Pontic state.Commission for a standalone scenario devised by @Mr_Fanboy
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This map is set in a world where the Byzantine Empire does not collapse in 1453. With a point of divergence that sees the Fourth Crusade successfully take Egypt, rather than being diverted all the way to Constantinople, the empire is able to muddle along for a few centuries more until some equivalent of the Great War in the early 20th century. The Byzantines are on the losing side of this war, leading to a deposition of the monarchy. In a manner similar Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary after the World War I of our timeline, this republican successor state loses the vast majority of its non-ethnically Greek (well, ethnically Rhomanian) core. The allohistorical irony here is that the arrangement is widely seen as a massively unfair punishment by the Rhomanians, a national crucifixion akin to the Treaty of Trianon in our timeline, but from the perspective of our timeline, the new borders still easily achieve Megali Idea status.
Commission for a standalone scenario devised by @Mr_Fanboy
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This map is set in a world where the Byzantine Empire does not collapse in 1453. With a point of divergence that sees the Fourth Crusade successfully take Egypt, rather than being diverted all the way to Constantinople, the empire is able to muddle along for a few centuries more until some equivalent of the Great War in the early 20th century. The Byzantines are on the losing side of this war, leading to a deposition of the monarchy. In a manner similar Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary after the World War I of our timeline, this republican successor state loses the vast majority of its non-ethnically Greek (well, ethnically Rhomanian) core. The allohistorical irony here is that the arrangement is widely seen as a massively unfair punishment by the Rhomanians, a national crucifixion akin to the Treaty of Trianon in our timeline, but from the perspective of our timeline, the new borders still easily achieve Megali Idea status.
How cool.
Who was the monarchy/royal family before falling from power?
What is this Kingdom of God? It sounds like a Crusader State. (And would it really want the majority Muslim area in the form of Syria?)
Which sides was the Great War?
What is up with the Manichaeism in Bulgaria?
Armenia? Gotland? Epirus? Ghuzisrtan?
Who's running the Eastern Roman State?
Nice map, although Schattierungskarte (or Schattenreliefkarte) instead of Schummerungskarte would be much better.
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
This is a low-quality map I threw together in roughly twenty minutes, based on an old fantasy scenario of mine that I've been messing with again to keep the brain juices busy.
The basic idea is that this is an alt-Europe, or a mirror-Europe I guess. That is by design. The region is known as 'Epinia'.
I haven't totally worked out all the details of this region's history as yet. My basic thinking is that, in a reflection of our own Europe, it was once a collection of tribes and Human cultures that all shared a common ancestor. Over time, these peoples were subjugated by a Roman-esque empire which brought with it a new religion, but just like the real-world Roman Empire this empire eventually collapsed under its own weight. Coincidentally, the Elves arrived as the empire was in its death throes.
Where did the Elves come from? Who really knows? The Elves haven't kept a record of it - in fact their new calendar starts basically at the year of their arrival. The Elves basically co-opted the existing religious structures and inserted themselves as the dominant race in the area, setting up colonies in pre-existing kingdoms and states and puppeteering the course of history. Things, of course, eventually took a downward slope. For five hundred years the Elvish domination maintained peace. Think of it like the European Union in a sense, except operated by the Catholic Church. The Elves are the clergy, and every nation has its own Elvish 'pope', but the Elves were sending delegates to a conference regularly to maintain stability. Eventually, of course, after successive generations, the Elves fell victim to nationalism and starting looking inwards at their own nations instead of at the greater good of the area, so the "European Union" devolved into the "Holy Roman Empire". What you see on the map in purple are a collection of petty, feuding states.
The green island, currently with the name Dirwena but I plan on changing that, is home to the "last pagans". Their culture is mostly a mirror of Celtic and some Norse traditions, with a healthy dash of Japanese for flavour. It's divided into clans who are all in theory subject to a King. The leaders of these clans, the Maera or Lords, are often at war with one another. There are two warrior classes, the Brada and the Troda, with the former being focussed on seafaring and the latter being focussed on internal matters. In recent years, the Brada have gained more power than the Troda due to new naval technology, which has facilitated significant military operations against the mainland in the form of Viking-esque raids. The coastal clans which operate powerful navies now have more strength and influence than the inland or mountain clans.
The Dirwenans are also fiercely pagan. Unlike the OTL Norse or Celts these guys have more or less organised their religion, and unlike the OTL Norse of Celts there's no real impetus to convert en masse to either of the major religious schools from the mainland. The "Free North" (again, a name I plan on actually putting thought into eventually) worships the church in the pre-Elf way, but that way was always more tolerant of pagan faiths than the post-Elf way (which of course has the whole "Elf Superiority" racial bend to it).
The Dwarves are basically what you might imagine surviving pre-state Neanderthals to be. The mountains are too much hassle to invade and conquer, the Dwarves know those lands like the backs of their hands, so they remain pretty isolated except for some trade done through trading posts in the foothills. There's been no significant effort to proselytise the Dwarves at all.
The basic idea is that this is an alt-Europe, or a mirror-Europe I guess. That is by design. The region is known as 'Epinia'.
I haven't totally worked out all the details of this region's history as yet. My basic thinking is that, in a reflection of our own Europe, it was once a collection of tribes and Human cultures that all shared a common ancestor. Over time, these peoples were subjugated by a Roman-esque empire which brought with it a new religion, but just like the real-world Roman Empire this empire eventually collapsed under its own weight. Coincidentally, the Elves arrived as the empire was in its death throes.
Where did the Elves come from? Who really knows? The Elves haven't kept a record of it - in fact their new calendar starts basically at the year of their arrival. The Elves basically co-opted the existing religious structures and inserted themselves as the dominant race in the area, setting up colonies in pre-existing kingdoms and states and puppeteering the course of history. Things, of course, eventually took a downward slope. For five hundred years the Elvish domination maintained peace. Think of it like the European Union in a sense, except operated by the Catholic Church. The Elves are the clergy, and every nation has its own Elvish 'pope', but the Elves were sending delegates to a conference regularly to maintain stability. Eventually, of course, after successive generations, the Elves fell victim to nationalism and starting looking inwards at their own nations instead of at the greater good of the area, so the "European Union" devolved into the "Holy Roman Empire". What you see on the map in purple are a collection of petty, feuding states.
The green island, currently with the name Dirwena but I plan on changing that, is home to the "last pagans". Their culture is mostly a mirror of Celtic and some Norse traditions, with a healthy dash of Japanese for flavour. It's divided into clans who are all in theory subject to a King. The leaders of these clans, the Maera or Lords, are often at war with one another. There are two warrior classes, the Brada and the Troda, with the former being focussed on seafaring and the latter being focussed on internal matters. In recent years, the Brada have gained more power than the Troda due to new naval technology, which has facilitated significant military operations against the mainland in the form of Viking-esque raids. The coastal clans which operate powerful navies now have more strength and influence than the inland or mountain clans.
The Dirwenans are also fiercely pagan. Unlike the OTL Norse or Celts these guys have more or less organised their religion, and unlike the OTL Norse of Celts there's no real impetus to convert en masse to either of the major religious schools from the mainland. The "Free North" (again, a name I plan on actually putting thought into eventually) worships the church in the pre-Elf way, but that way was always more tolerant of pagan faiths than the post-Elf way (which of course has the whole "Elf Superiority" racial bend to it).
The Dwarves are basically what you might imagine surviving pre-state Neanderthals to be. The mountains are too much hassle to invade and conquer, the Dwarves know those lands like the backs of their hands, so they remain pretty isolated except for some trade done through trading posts in the foothills. There's been no significant effort to proselytise the Dwarves at all.
Eparkhos
Banned
Just based on my personal knowledge of the area, the Manichaens are actually Bogomils, who were referred to with the blanket term for dualists.
Commission for a standalone scenario devised by @Mr_Fanboy
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This map is set in a world where the Byzantine Empire does not collapse in 1453. With a point of divergence that sees the Fourth Crusade successfully take Egypt, rather than being diverted all the way to Constantinople, the empire is able to muddle along for a few centuries more until some equivalent of the Great War in the early 20th century. The Byzantines are on the losing side of this war, leading to a deposition of the monarchy. In a manner similar Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary after the World War I of our timeline, this republican successor state loses the vast majority of its non-ethnically Greek (well, ethnically Rhomanian) core. The allohistorical irony here is that the arrangement is widely seen as a massively unfair punishment by the Rhomanians, a national crucifixion akin to the Treaty of Trianon in our timeline, but from the perspective of our timeline, the new borders still easily achieve Megali Idea status.
Very nice indeed! Where is Hyperborea? Must say that's a fairly disappointing kingdom of Prester John, unless there's a lot more of it on the other side of the Caspian.
If I may...
- The last Byzantine emperor was not necessarily anyone who was part of a family that we would be particularly familiar with - my impression is that Byzantine dynasties did not tend to last very long in our timeline, and there would be plenty of time after the point of divergence for a relative nobody to rise all the way to the throne and establish a new dynasty. In any case, the new state is explicitly republican.
- The Kingdom of God is, indeed, the modern form of the (surviving) Crusader states in the Levant. To be clear, it is not actually a kingdom in the way that we would understand the term - rather, it is an illiberal, theocratic republic built upon a brand of hardcore Christian fundamentalism. Similar fundamentalist Christian states exist in North Africa, as depicted in the map (the legacy of a reconquista that extended into the Maghreb). The Republic or Egypt is also descended from a Crusader state, and is majority Christian by the time of the War of Hyperborean Succession, but it has a rather more secular government. Anyway, why else would the Kingdom of God annex a majority-Muslim Syria? To Christianize it.
- Sides in the War of Hyperborean Succession? Well, insofar as the map is concerned (I really have no idea what the wider world looks like, and indeed do not know where or what “Hyperborea” is - I just find the name to be cool)... winners include the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Hungarian Commonwealth, the Kingdom of God, Atlantis (this timeline’s version of the United States of America, more or less), and, of course, Cathay - check out Malta. Losers include the Empire of Rhomania (which collapses a result of the conflict), the Grand Khanate of Tartary, and some Iberian state which held Sicily before the war. Both factions probably included other significant players as well, but they are out-of-frame, so to speak.
- Manichaeism here is not to be confused with the similarly named historical religion. Notice that it is categorized as a sect of Christianity as opposed to a separate faith altogether. Rather, this is what the modern Bogomils call their religion. In our timeline, Bogomils were adherents of a very heterodox brand of Christianity, distinguished by Gnostic/dualist ideas, who primarily lived in Bulgaria. They died out in our world, but here, they have survived into the present.
- Götland? Remember, the Goths survived in Crimea until at least the 18th century. Here, they survive in large enough numbers to be granted their own independent state upon the fall of the Empire of Rhomania.
- Ghuzistan? Muslim Turks. “Ghazi” was a term for Muslim raiders in Anatolia, and it is eventually applied to all Anatolian Turks here. Turks still conquered a significant portion of Asia Minor in this timeline, but the Rhomanians made something of a comeback and established tentative control over much of their former eastern holdings. The Turks never fully assimilated, though, and many used the war as an opportunity to rebel against Constantinople’s rule. This led to a brutal crackdown, but they were ultimately able to win independence as well.
- The Armenians made out like bandits in this scenario - as fellow Orthodox Christians, they were largely loyal Rhomanian subjects. Where Constantinople engaged in brutal massacres and population transfers of Turks, Bogomils, and other ethnic and religious minorities during the war (analogous to the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides that the Ottoman Empire committed), the Armenians were treated relatively well right until the bitter end. The winning faction was still keen to punish the Rhomanians, so the Armenians were granted their own state, and with a significantly larger population than in our world, the borders are correspondingly bigger (though there are significant Rhomanian and Turkish minorities).
- The Rhomanian Federation is a republic and nominally a democracy, though in practice it is run by a rather Kemalist strongman. The state is not named so much for the empire of old as it is the titular Rhomanian people, which is what the Greeks refer to themselves as here. Rhomanian nationalism is an important ideological basis for the new state, but they are not really into the religious extremism of their southern neighbors.
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Eparkhos
Banned
THE CALL OF SAINT THOMAS
In the Sixth Century after Christ, the Kalabhras conquered the Tamil states around the core of South India. They were Hindus, and they imposed their religion upon the Keralans, who had been converted to Christianity in the first century by Saint Thomas and his successors. As the true believers languished under infidel rule, the few surviving spent cries for help to the Christians in the West.
One responded.
Ibrahim, the Emir of Suqutra, was a devout Thomasite, and when he heard the pleas of his coreligionists he leapt into action. In 546 he landed in Kerala and gathered an army there, defeating the infidels in several years of campaigning. After destroying the last Kalabhra army in southern Sri Lanka in 553, he declared himself the Emperor of Tamilikan and the Heir of Saint Thomas. The capital was moved to Woraiyur, and while Suqutra remained part of the empire it was administered as an overseas province.
Very nice indeed! Where is Hyperborea? Must say that's a fairly disappointing kingdom of Prester John, unless there's a lot more of it on the other side of the Caspian.
“Lands of the Crown or Prester John” is something of an exonym here (from an in-universe perspective, this map was created for an *English-speaking audience). In this timeline as well as our own, various Mongol and Turkic peoples in Central Asia who converted to Nestorian Christianity are identified with Prester John by Western Christians. Now, while the Kalmyks are Buddhist in our timeline (indeed, their land in Russia is the only majority-Buddhist part of Europe), the Mongol tribe that settled the area in this timeline as Nestorian. Their country comes to be referred to as “the Kingdom of Prester John” or some variation thereof, and the name just sticks.
Their distant cousins to the north, the Tatars, fall somewhere on the Shamanist/Tengrist/Buddhist spectrum. Not really traditional allies of Christians or Muslims, but they get along well enough with the pagan Lithuanians.
I see.
The Kingdom of God seem like it only going to cause itself more trouble in Syria even if they really come down hard and ruthless. (Which given what you said about them, is the case.)
Is the Holy Roman Empire centralized, or anything close to a actual nation?
I actually never heard of Bogomils before now, so I learn something new.
Did the Armenians really wanted to be their own nation? Or as said, the winning faction was looking for ways to punish the Rhomanians, they forced the Armenians to be their own state? Or somewhere in the Middle?
Can I suggest if there is an idea for another contest why not look at creating the maps that Bruce never had the chance to make from this thread. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-history-travel-guides-an-ah-gazeteer.138470/
Just a small simple map with descriptions that I created on my cellphone. I'll be experimenting with my phone quite a bit, to see if I can make good use of it when making maps. Tell me what you guys think!
Credits for the flags: Reddit, ArtStation and Alternate History Fandom
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