(As-of-yet-unnamed) Gothic Empire TL

The Armeniac dynasty, from 677 to 768
(Also called the Persian dynasty or the Saborian dynasty)

Rebellion of the Strategoi of 677 to 679
After sixteen years of rule by Constantine IV, the Strategos of the Armeniakon, a man of presumed Persian and Armenian extraction named Saborios, revolted against imperial rule. The army of the Armeniakon theme was the second biggest in the Empire, surpassed only by that of the Anatolikon theme. governed at the time by a Roman named Andronikos. While Saborios was the first of the imperial generals to revolt, the deeply unpopular rule of Constantine IV had made sure that he would not be the only one. At least two other strategoi-revolts occured immediately after Saborios' proclamation, which disrupted his plan of simply marching west from his thematic capital in Amaseia until he reached Constantinople. The first disruption was the revolt of the strategos of the Theme of the Bucellarians, one of the provinces located directly between Saborios' Armeniakon and the imperial capital. However, far more significant than this revolt, was the revolt of the aforementioned Andronikos. The revolt of the Bucellarians was easily crushed by Saborios' army, superior as it was in both size and tactical ability. Against the Anatolics, though, he only had one of those two advantages. Saborios proved a superior military mind than Andronikos. Near the town of Amorion, Saborios ambushed the army of Andronikos, surrounding them in such a fashion that advance would mean encountering elite infantry units, and retreat would mean tangling with cavalry. Seeing that he had been outfoxed and that any attempt to fight, even if his forces could prevail despite the advantages of the enemy in the situation, would inevitably result in heavy losses, Andronikos surrendered, and pledged his support to Saborios' rebellion.
In May of 679 AD, two years after his forces left the Armeniakon and without a single altercation with imperial forces, Saborios entered Constantinople. Constantine IV was nowhere to be seen, having fled the capital at least a week prior. Saborios was proclaimed in the Hippodrome the next day, and the Armeniac dynasty began. Constantine would be found, returned to the capital, and subsequently executed in September of that year.

Saborian Civil War of 687 to 703
Saborios ruled uncontested for eight years; the support of both his successor in the Armeniakon and of the strategos of the Antolikon meant that there were few who dared rebel against him. These years were characterized by a string of battles against the Bulgar khan Asparukh, who despite losing most direct confrontations nonetheless managed to do extensive damage to the Balkan themes. The unopposed status of Saborios' reign ended in 687, just over a year after the death of Andronikos, when Saborios' own nephew, Niketas, along with a conspiracy of court nobles, attempted to assassinate Saborios and seize the capital. Saborios managed to survive, fleeing home to Amaseia to gather his supporters, as Niketas was proclaimed emperor. This began a civil war that would last for sixteen years.
Emperor Niketas I did not rule for long, as the deposed Saborios returned the following summer, in 688, retaking his capital and having both of Niketas' hands cut off as punishment. In 690, Niketas again conspired, this time with his brother Nikephoros, Count of the Excubitors, to seize the throne. This time, they made their move while Saborios was campaigning against yet another Bulgar incursion. Nikephoros used connections within the military and the demes of Constantinople to take control of the city. When Saborios arrived, in 691, Nikephoros was there to meet him with his elite guard of Excubitors. As the battle between the two unfolded, a eunuch bureaucrat paid by Saborios managed to murder Niketas. The battle ended with heavy losses on both sides, as Nikephoros retreated inside the Theodosian walls, and Saborios fled to Arcadiopolis and later to Thessalonica, from where he would rule as emperor-in-exile for eleven years. Finally, in 701 AD, Saborios once again entered Constantinople victorious after eighteen months of siege. Nikephoros I fled to Nicaea with his royal guards, but Saborios never got to follow him, as he died just five months later. His son, Basileios, is proclaimed emperor, and launches the final campaign of the civil war against Nicaea.

An advance force of the imperial army encountered Nikephoros' small but skilled army outside of Nicaea. The former eventually retreats, but it becomes clear to the fugitive Emperor that his small army of elite soldiers will not be a match for the entire imperial military. He flees to Smyrna, where Basileios I arrives in 703, and the siege of Smyrna begins. As the siege drags on and it becomes clear that this is the end of the line for Nikephoros, the Excubitors defect. Their leader of the Excu, despite the desire for blood of many of his subordinates, gives Nikephoros enough time to flee. The royal person, family, and several loyal nobles manage to escape by sea, eventually landing in Cyprus, which was at the time ruled under a strange agreement of condominium between the Arab imamate and the Roman empire. Here, at long last, Nikephoros establishes himself, sending a missive renouncing his emperorship to Constantinople. Nikephoros' descendants would eventually rule as independent basileis on Cyprus.

Reign of Basil, Theodore, and Basil II, 703 to 765
As with most of medieval Roman history, the reign of Basileios I and his two successors was, at least after Nikephoros was finally exiled, primarily characterized by Balkan wars, specifically against the Bulgars and, on occasion, the Slavs. The latter were generally less warlike, only having to be occasionally forced into submission when they stopped paying taxes. During the golden period of the Armeniac dynasty after the civil war, Constantinople managed to re-establish a semblance of Roman authority in the territories settled by the Slavs, including the themes of Hellas, Nicopolis and Peloponnesos. While these three westermost provinces grew increasingly peaceful, the northern frontier of Thrace and Macedonia grew increasingly militarised. War with the Bulgars was perpetual, both sides would constantly raid and counter-raid, and the Bulgars managed to lay siege to Constantinople twice in the 8th century. The first of these sieges began in the spring of 729. Basil I had been leading an army attempting to capture a force of Arab raiders in Cilicia, to little avail. The Bulgars seized on the opportunity to raid deep into Roman territory, beginning in 728, culminating in the siege of Constantinople in 729. In response, Basil wanted to break the Bulgars, not just wait them out behind the great walls of his capital. As he returned from the south-eastern provinces, he crossed the Hellespont and approached the Bulgar forces sieging the capital from the rear. Theodoros, the close friend and "adopted" brother of Basileios' father Saborios, was orchestrating the defense of the city. When the emperor's forces crashed into the Bulgar rear guard, there was a moment of great disarray, as Bulgar khan Kormesiy realised that he was trapped between the Theodosian walls and the imperial forces. He ordered his men to fight their way out and, as Theodore led his defenders out of the city, that is what the Bulgars did. During the chaos of the fighting, Basileios was killed, but his uncle Theodoros rallied the forces and won the battle. Roughly a tenth of the Bulgar forces managed to escape, including the khan Kormesiy. Theodoros was hailed as a hero for defending the city, and, despite his advanced age, was proclaimed emperor less than a week later. One of his first actions as emperor was the appointing his son as co-emperor. This son would take the name Basileios II three years later, in 732, when Theodoros died.

Theodoros had spent his short reign on the throne consolidating power and stabilising the empire, doing what he could to pave the way for his son to have a successful emperorship. When the time came, Basil II's first order of buisness was revenge for 729; he demanded that the Bulgars turn over their khan for punishment. Of course, this was simply a way to justify a war against the turkic nomads. No one ever expected a people to turn over their ruler just because another ruler demanded it. And so Basil got his war; in 736, after a series of successful battles, the Romans sacked Pliskovu, the capital of the Bulgar Khanate, capturing and beheading Kormesiy. The scorched-earth tactics employed by the Romans during their return to Roman territory spurred the start of Bulgar migrations further west, which would eventually culminate with the arrival of the Magyars in the lower Danube region and the establishment of the Bulgarian Kingdom in Pannonia.
After this war, the Bulgars payed tribute to the Romans for some thirty years and, even after the tributary relationship ended, the conflicts between the Bulgars and Romans would not return to the level they had been until a century later.

Religious matters and the Fall of Crete
After the Bulgar-Roman War of 732 to 736, Basileios' empire enjoyed a period of relative peace. Incursions by Arab raiders and rebellions by Slavic peoples occurred, but there were no more total wars like those that had characterised the preceeding decades. The islands of the southern Aegean were experiencing a rise in Arab naval raids, but it did not truly become a major concern until very late in his reign. This allowed Basileios to focus on other matters, and during this period hed became deeply involved with the buisness of the Church, primarily as a student. He authorized attempts to convert the Bulgars and the Slavs that lived in his realm. The former failed completely, and the latter only saw very limited success. Basil also became embroiled in the iconoclasm debate, personally believing that veneration of icons was acceptable. In 758 the Fourth Council of Constantinople was convened, which accepted the veneration of icons as formally legitimate. This decision was accepted by the all five patriarchs of the Pentarchy as well as the legation from the Church of the East, but it caused a minor schism within Oriental Orthodoxy, as the West Syriac and Coptic churches rejected it, holding to their position of iconoclasm, while the Ethiopian and Armenian churches accepted it. This schism was closed eleven years later at the Council of Damascus, where legations of all four autocephalies of Oriental Orthodoxy agreed to reject the Fourth Council of Constantinople and held iconoclasm as necessary and derived from the ban on worship of graven images in the ten commandments.

As Basileios II was focused on matters of theology, the sea-borne raids of Arabs from North Africa grew more intense. The strategos of the Carabisians, the Roman naval forces, a man named Leontios, became in this period extremely adept at combating the Arab fleets, but a force of Muslim marines still managed to land on Crete. Interestingly, the religious leaders in this small force were all followers of the teachings of Mansur al-Hadi, the dissident cleric whose movement had spawned democratic communities in al-Wahat in Egypt and in Nizwa in south-eastern Arabia. After the muslims took the island in 762, they elected a mullah named Salim as their imam, and began diplomacy with the local Christians. The Christian religious leadership of Crete had disagreed with the Fourth Council of Constantinople, as many churches located on the imperial frontiers did. They were in favour of iconoclasm, and when Salim informed them that they would not be harmed by his forces as long as they destroyed their icons, they happily agreed. This was the beginning of the Emirate of Crete, as while Salim was considered Imam by his followers, he had to present outwardly as just Emir, as the orthodoxy of Mecca considered Mansurism and its localised, community-elected imams a heretical movement. Despite the heresy of their beliefs, the Emirate of Crete became a crucial fulcrum of Arab naval policy, as it allowed deeper raids into the Aegean.

End of the Armeniacs
By this time, Basileios had had enough of ruling. He had become tired of his emperorship, and wanted a life of peace. More than that, he had grown so deeply religious that his primary desire was more time dedicated to the divine. In 765, he retired to a monastery, and spent the remainder of his days as a monk. When he did so, his wife Anna of Nineveh, with whom Basileios had frequently had spirited religious debates, assumed the imperial throne. She was the first empress regnant in five hundred years, and only the second ever. However, Anna had one crucial flaw: she was not orthodox. All those spirited debates with her husband had been founded on one principal disagreement: Basileios was a fervent believer in the rightness of the Roman Orthodox Church, while Anna was an Easterner, of Syriac extract, born into nobility in the city of Nineveh, and had never let go of her faith. She followed the Church of the East. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople protested Basil's decision to appoint her as successor, but due to a deep personal relationship between the two men, he relented. With the support of the church, Anna became empress in the year of her husbands abdication. She was a quiet ruler, aware that any major efforts or reforms might provoke the populace against her. She attempted to shift resources towards the naval forces, but the Arab raids flowing from the Emirate of Crete continued to intensify. A climax was reached in 768, when an Arab corsair by the name of Abdullah al-Sur launched a daring and utterly unpredicted raid all the way through the Hellespont and into Constantinople itself. The city was sacked for three days, when Leontios and the Carabisians finally arrived, destroying al-Sur's fleet. Leontios landed his forces in the harbour and, alongside the royal guard, cleaned out the Arab forces in a matter of hours. When the dust settled, protests against Anna began, and Church leaders proclaimed the this raid was punishment for allowing a heretic to become Basileus. Leontios, who held no particular animosity towards the empress, quietly gives her a ship and crew, enabling her eventual return to Nineveh. The protestors celebrate Leontios as a hero, and he is brought into the Hippodrome to be proclaimed emperor by the people. The last ruler with a connection to Emperor Saborios I is deposed, and a new dynasty begins.

Beginning, Middle and End of the Armeniac Dynasty
LtR: Revolt of the Strategoi, depicting the route taken by Saborios' campaign; during the Bulgar War of 728-729; the latter years of Basileios II's reign
Armeniac dynasty.png
(I'll probably proofread this at some other time, right now I've spent the last hours writing and want to do something else. I've been neck-deep in Roman Empire nonsense for the last forty-eight hours.)
 
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How roman are the goths?
Realistically they're probably extremely Romanized now sort of like how China sinicized pretty much every invader who tried to conquer it. This was what essentially happened to the Visigoths and the Franks.

The Roman world here is still united under one power, and the Romans themselves far outnumber the Goths who only number a few million compared to the tens of millions to over a hundred million Romans in the West.
 
How roman are the goths?
What do you mean by "how Roman"? Like, what is a measure of Romanness, here?

They speak neither of the two Roman languages (at the closest they speak a related descendant of Latin), they don't see themselves as Romans, and they don't have the same faith as the Romans (Chalcedonian Christianity). Imagine if the Franks (before Charlemagne and the whole "new roman empire" phase) were a less enthusiastic about adopting Latin, then you'll have a good picture.

I'm not positing that the Goths have completely held on to their ancestral culture and that Italy is basically Sweden (or w/e) in this TL, but they are definetly not Roman. The last king who tried to merge the two identities was Theodemir II. As with what happened in Gaul IOTL, elites and enterprising individuals very quickly realise on which side their bread is buttered, and emphasise the parts of their identity that match with the ruling class - who are decidedly Gothic, and non-Roman.


The Roman world here is still united under one power, and the Romans themselves far outnumber the Goths who only number a few million compared to the tens of millions to over a hundred million Romans in the West.
Not sure what you mean by "united under one power". Anatolia, Thrace and Macedonia are the only parts of the Roman Empire that are solidly Roman by the 8th century, even Hellas is ambigous with all the pagan Slavs et al.
 
What do you mean by "how Roman"? Like, what is a measure of Romanness, here?

They speak neither of the two Roman languages (at the closest they speak a related descendant of Latin), they don't see themselves as Romans, and they don't have the same faith as the Romans (Chalcedonian Christianity). Imagine if the Franks (before Charlemagne and the whole "new roman empire" phase) were a less enthusiastic about adopting Latin, then you'll have a good picture.

I'm not positing that the Goths have completely held on to their ancestral culture and that Italy is basically Sweden (or w/e) in this TL, but they are definetly not Roman. The last king who tried to merge the two identities was Theodemir II. As with what happened in Gaul IOTL, elites and enterprising individuals very quickly realise on which side their bread is buttered, and emphasise the parts of their identity that match with the ruling class - who are decidedly Gothic, and non-Roman.



Not sure what you mean by "united under one power". Anatolia, Thrace and Macedonia are the only parts of the Roman Empire that are solidly Roman by the 8th century, even Hellas is ambigous with all the pagan Slavs et al.
I could have worded the question better, what i was wondering if they were essentially romans with a Gothic dynasty. Or if they were like the Franks, creating a Gothic identity with a Romance tongue.

also what’s the status of the city of Rome?

edit: reading your anwser again. What language do they speak?Gothic?
 
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I could have worded the question better, what i was wondering if they were essentially romans with a Gothic dynasty. Or if they were like the Franks, creating a Gothic identity with a Romance tongue.

also what’s the status of the city of Rome?

edit: reading your anwser again. What language do they speak?Gothic?
That's basically right, yeah.

The City of Rome is even more of a backwater in the post-Imperial period ITTL than IOTL, since not even the Papacy is located there.

I went into the language of the Goths in post #29. The ruling class speaks High Gothic, the dialect spoken by Theodoric the Great, Athalaric I, and the language in which the Creed of Sirmium is written. The vernacular language is a dialect contiuum from Gothic with Vulgar Latin influence to a Gothic-influenced Vulgar Latin, akin to modern Romance languages.
 
That's basically right, yeah.

The City of Rome is even more of a backwater in the post-Imperial period ITTL than IOTL, since not even the Papacy is located there.

I went into the language of the Goths in post #29. The ruling class speaks High Gothic, the dialect spoken by Theodoric the Great, Athalaric I, and the language in which the Creed of Sirmium is written. The vernacular language is a dialect contiuum from Gothic with Vulgar Latin influence to a Gothic-influenced Vulgar Latin, akin to modern Romance languages.
Damn Rome has been done dirty :(
 
More Roman Imperial dynasty stuff because I've got it all worked out in my head but I need to put it into writing, and also I haven't updated this thread in nearly a month. This one might be a bit messier than the previous ones.

The dynasty that followed the Armenaics/Saborians, beginning with the Strategos of the Karabisianoi, Leontios Tiberius (took the latter name after becoming emperor), is
called the Carabisian dynasty. The Carabisians ruled from Tiberius II's ascent in 768 CE to the revolt of the Strategos of Thrace in 858 CE. Despite ruling for less than a century, the Carabisians briefly oversaw something of a military and administrative golden age, particularly as a result of Tiberius' successor, Philippikos, who was proclaimed emperor in 779 CE, when Tiberius retired. Tiberius' rule was primarily characterised by naval warfare, focused on combatting the threat of Arab piracy that had initially brought him to prominence. In 779 CE, before Tiberius' retirment, this campaign came to a conclusion with a treaty, negotiated in the town of Chandax, on the island of Crete. The agreement concluded that, for the following thirty years, the Cretans would cease raids into the Aegean, in in return for a promise that the Romans would not attempt to seize the island, as well as a hefty tribute to be paid annually by the Romans to the small Emirate. Interestingly, the Imamate in Mecca did not have a delegation present at the negotiations; the community on Crete had acted entirely on their own, with the Imam of the Cretan Mansuris acting as the supreme representative of the muslims community. The Sunnis, who had until now reluctantly accepted the presence of the Mansuri communtiy on the island for political reasons, was now enraged, resulting in a near-excommunication of the Cretan muslims, and further fueling anti-Mansuri sentiment in the Imamate.

With the Aegean (relatively) secured, Philippikos could set his sights on other projects. First among these was the establishment of a new administrative unit in the empire, the katepanates ("Captaincies"). These were ethnic autonomies that governed much of the Balkan territories. Their rulers were chosen from local Slavic leadership. In many ways, this was merely a codification of an administrative system that went back to the Heraclians, giving an official title to the systems of tribute and vassalage that existed between the Roman imperial government and the many Slavic peoples that had settled within its territory. The Slavs were granted an immense degree of autonomy, on the condition that they allowed Christian missionaries to work without harassment within their territories, and that they supplied the empire with soldiers when called upon. This resulted in an influx of relatively hardened warriors into the Roman armies, which were badly in need of manpower.

The reassertion of control over the Aegean Sea and the southern Balkans allowed Philippikos to launch campaigns north, where his focus would remain for the rest of his tenure. While the Bulgars were never brought to heel during this period - the frontier between them and the Romans remained largely static throughout Philippikos' reign - significant gains were made elsewhere, into the territories of Dardania, Moesia, and even Dalmatia. Large segments of this newly-conquered land were turned into to more Katepanates, resulting in a relatively decentralised but territorially expansive empire.

Expansion continued under Philippikos' successor Anastasios II, who had been imperial secretary (askretis) and a close friend and ally of the late emperor. Anastasios seized upon two moments of great upheaval in the empires of the near east; firstly, the Fitna, the civil war that tore apart the Muslim community in the first half of the 9th century, created an opportunity for a campaign across the Taurus mountains, and the reconquest of Cilicia and the parts of Upper Mesopotamia. Secondly, on the other side of the Euphrates, the Sassanians had desperately fighting for survival for the last forty years, attempting to recover from the catastrophe that followed the Sino-Sassanian War. At this point, much of Iran had been reconvered, but the authority of the Shah still did not reach anywhere near as far as it had previously, which allowed the Romans to extend authority as far as the Cauasus, once again bringing the Lazicans into vassalage.

While the conquests of the Carabisians were impressive, the empire they built was not built to last. The Katepanates, while an admirable and even elegant solution to several major problems the Empire had faced, were not truly loyal to Constantinople. After the reconquest of the eastern provinces, which concluded around 823, many decades followed characterised by nothing but Bulgar incursions and Slavic rebellions. This came to a head when Anastasios' successor, who had also taken the name Anastasios, was deposed by yet another Strategoi rebellion, this time by a Lycian man named Constantine, the Strategos of Thrace. Constantine was one of the most popular generals in the wester half of the Empire, having spent his adult life in near-constant warfare against Bulgars. He became Strategos in 845. While Anastasios was bargaining with the heretical Christians of the reconquered eastern provinces (which can be seen either as an attempt by an honest ruler to accomodate his subjects, or as damnable heresy in and of itself), Constantine was building alliances with the Church. When the Bulgars and Slavs of the Macedonian Katepanate sieged Thessalonica in 855, Constantine led the campaign that liberated the city and routed the Bulgars. After the siege, church leaders in Thessalonica invited Constantine to a triumph through the city, in the style of a victorious emperor. After this was over, Anastasius lead a punitive campaign against the Macedonian Slavs, forcing many of their leaders to convert to Christianity. This was an attempt to garner military prestige and church support, but at this point the stage was already set. Constantine revolted with the open support of the Patriarch of Constantinople, ending the Carabisian dynasty.

Apex of the Roman Empire immediately prior to Constantine's Rebellion
858 CE
Balkan Katepanates and Lazican kingdom shown in lighter shade

Carabisian dynasty (apex).png

Note: disregard the 815 world map. It's retconned.
 
This is the last Roman stuff in a while, as we've now reached slightly beyond 930 AD, which is my current target milestone. This one's going to be shorter than the rest.

Constantine's dynasty is called the Lycians, as his family hailed from the ancient region of Lycia, in south-western Anatolia. The north-west around OTL Serbia is de-facto lost as soon as Constantine ascends, although the end of tribute doesn't become "official" until the Magyars arrive closer to the end of the century. Other than this loss - which wasn't much of a loss anyway - Constantine's rule starts out very strong; the Bulgars are defeated, their Khan converts to Christianity and becomes King Boris I, and the frontier is pushed north to the Danube, with the region being reorganized as the Theme of Bulgaria. After this, Constantine instigates a rebellion of Nicaeo-Chalcedonian Roman elites in southern Italy against the Goths, who were in this period having a bit of a hard time. This results in direct Roman annexation of smaller territories in the mezzogiorno, and the establishment of Ducates loyal to Constantinople.

And that's where the good stuff ends. Almost as soon as the (re)conquest of southern Italy concluded, the Egyptian Sahmids launched an invasion from Sicily. This began the first Roman-Sahmid War, which ended with Roman Italy being reduced to just the city of Bari, massive territorial concessions in south-eastern Anatolia, and the end of the Peace of Chandax (the treaty between the Emirate of Crete and the Romans). A primary consequence of the Anatolia theater of this war was a decline of Roman authority in the eastern provinces; Lazica would once again be lost, and a cousin of Constantine's successor (and nephew) Theodosius established a base in Amida (OTL Diyarbakir) and took responsibilty for governing the eastern Themes. In the middle of the war, the Magyars invade, and Constantine is killed in battle. Theodosius manages to push them north of the Maritsa river before launching a campaign against the Sahmids occupying Anatolia. The war turns at the Battle of Ephesus (modern day Efes) in 911, but a treaty isn't signed until 921, establishing a new border following the Taurus Mountains and meeting the sea at Seleucia-in-Isauria.

By the end of Theodosius' reign, most of the empire's European provinces have been de-facto lost, as the strain caused by the Magyars allowed the Slavic Katepanates to break away, and the Strategoi of Peloponnesos ceased paying taxes to Constantinople, entering into an agreement with the local Slavic population on Peloponnesos, proclaiming the Ducate of the Peloponnese. Furthermore, Theodosius' cousin Michael continued to rule in Amida, being proclaimed Exarch of Mesopotamia and, when Theodosius once againt went to war against the Magyars in 932, co-Emperor of the Romans. This co-Emperorship lasted less than a year, as Theodosius never returned from the campaign, with Michael benig proclaimed in November. His miaphysite faith, rumors about his ancestry, and the fact that he was seen to have cheated his way to a position of power during the war with the Egyptians meant that Emperor Michael was viewed with suspicion by the aristocracy. In 935, a conspiracy of nobles chose the general Leo of the prominent Argyros family to be the next Emperor, and Michael was deposed. He fled back to Amida where, after two years of conflict with the new emperor, he and his successors would rule a new kingdom, based in the east.

Territory under the Lycian dynasty and Leo I Argyros
Chronological order: Apex after the conquests in Italy; midsts of the first Magyar-Roman and Sahmid wars; immediately after the death of Theodosius; after the Michael-Leo civil war
Lycian dynasty.png
 
So here is, finally, the list. About four hundred and twenty years of Roman emperors. Next up is probably a redo and extension of the big flowchart of western European rulers from page 1.
  • Justinian dynasty
    • Justin I: 518 to 527
    • Justinian: 527 to 560
    • Justin II: 560 to 574
    • Justin III: 574 to 598
    • Theodosius III: 598 to 640
  • Heraclian dynasty
    • Heraclius I: 640 to 642
    • Martina Augusta: 642 to 652
    • Constantine III: 642 to 643
    • Heraclius II: 642 to 661
    • Constantine IV: 661 to 679
  • Saborian dynasty
    • Saborios I: 679 to 701
    • Niketas I: 687 to 688 & 690 to 691
    • Nikephoros: 691 to 703
    • Basil I: 701 to 729
    • Theodore the Old: 729 to 732
    • Basil II: 733 to 765
    • Anna of Nineveh: 765 to 768
  • Carabisian dynasty
    • Tiberius Leontios: 768 to 779
    • Philippikos: 779 to 812
    • Anastasius II: 812 to 835
    • Anastasius III: 835 to 858
  • Lycian dynasty
    • Constantine V: 858 to 902
    • Theodosius IV: 902 to 928
    • Michael I: 928 to 935 (to 951 in exile)
  • Argyros dynasty
    • Leo Argyros: 932 to 941
 
man the byzantines really cant get a break it seems
Have you ever read about Roman history in the centuries after the Arab conquests? It was very much like this. Ít's called the Byzantine Dark Ages for a reason. There are almost literally zero sources from around the end of the last Roman-Sassanid War until Patriarch Nikephoros' writings at the end of the 8th century, something like 150 years later. Theologial and a couple of legal texts are the only exceptions. We also have basically no evidence of construction in this period, aside from defensive works. Things started to stabilize again around the Isaurians, but the empire didn't properly recover and start growing again until the Macedonian Renaissance towards the end of the 9th century.

Of course, the Macedonian period ends with the invasion of the Seljuqs, which was a whole new disaster for the empire, so yeah, in many ways they really couldn't catch a break.
 
Have you ever read about Roman history in the centuries after the Arab conquests? It was very much like this. Ít's called the Byzantine Dark Ages for a reason. There are almost literally zero sources from around the end of the last Roman-Sassanid War until Patriarch Nikephoros' writings at the end of the 8th century, something like 150 years later. Theologial and a couple of legal texts are the only exceptions. We also have basically no evidence of construction in this period, aside from defensive works. Things started to stabilize again around the Isaurians, but the empire didn't properly recover and start growing again until the Macedonian Renaissance towards the end of the 9th century.

Of course, the Macedonian period ends with the invasion of the Seljuqs, which was a whole new disaster for the empire, so yeah, in many ways they really couldn't catch a break.
dude i didnt mean that as a negative statement or anything
 
I am very interested on whats going to Become of the Maygars in this. From what I remembered Pannonia is Turkic this TTL. Will the Magyars assimilate into the Balkan Slavs like the Bulgar's or will they carve some linguistic pocket for themselves?
 
I am very interested on whats going to Become of the Maygars in this. From what I remembered Pannonia is Turkic this TTL. Will the Magyars assimilate into the Balkan Slavs like the Bulgar's or will they carve some linguistic pocket for themselves?
Pannonia is Bulgar, who are still a Turkic people but with significant Slavic elements. They won't be as slavicized IITL as IOTL, since Pannonia is a lot more of a melting pot at this point than the predominately Slavic balkans. The Magyars are going to take the place of OTL's Bulgaria, carving out a kingdom around the Lower Danube. I'm currently debating with myself how large their area is going to end up being - whether they'll just be consigned to OTL Wallachia and become more vlachicized (I guess that's a word? Romanianized?) than slavicized, or if they'll be a big kingdom like Hungary IOTL with a core Magyar population and various minorities around the periphery.
 
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