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No Manzikert. Byzantium retaining Asia Minor would leave a lot more Greeks in the modern age (though the butterflies would make such an age completely unrecognizable to us).

Exactly. Actually, the Zoroastrians of Persia are more at risk from Zurvanism than Christianity, due to the Zoroastrian origins of the Zurvanism. In Persia, Zurvanism is viewed more like a heresy than an outright different religion. However, as you say, conquest is a very different matter.

It's messed up mostly because of piracy and raiding. Even those traders who would be willing to look the other way with regards to religious differences have difficulty traversing a region filled with fanatical brigands. The same is true for the sea routes, where the Zurvanists actively attack...

The End of the Renaissance Though the East had been turned into a great battleground for the previous three decades, the Western Empire and Gothic lands had been amazingly prosperous. Booty had flown into the Empire as the war had turned against the Persians and Arabs. The Saxon Kingdom had...

During Peroz's madness (a few posts up), it was mentioned that the Nestorians were, essentially, driven out in the run up to the war. This was actually not due primarily to Zurvanism, but rather to Peroz's personal grudge against Christians (particularly the Nestorians). Most fled to Roman...

The Silk Road is going to be a mess at this juncture. Land routes are more or less blocked by the Zurvanists. However, the Sea routes are still somewhat open, now that Roman/Axumite dominance of the Red Sea has allowed for ships to voyage to India. Zurvanist piracy is still a problem for them...

Map Time :) Note that the Ghassanids are listed separately from the Eastern Empire. This is a matter of convenience, as they are a Roman client state. The precise point at which Ghassanid authority gives way to Roman authority is deliberately vague. Also, the Eastern Empire and Western Empire...

I had taken the view that, with a Persian successor state in the East, the Sassanid Empire would be viewed as a "Middle Kingdom" of sorts. Then again, maybe that's not a good way to do it. I will ponder.

Butterflies. In this timeline, Justinian is even more suspicious of Belisarius. Antonina serves as a political hostage at court. Remember, the POD is actually before the invasion of Italy. However, Antonina escapes due to Theodora's influence. Any other children are not mentioned, due to...

Twilight of The Thirty Years War 601 - 611 AD The Battle of Babylon, by all accounts, should have ended the war completely. Khalid had been slain by the hand of Tiberius himself, and shorn of their leader, the combined Arab-Persian army had been thoroughly routed. But the battle had been...

Absolutely. Just a little slower than at first :).

How about a Steampunk Belisarius? Oh wait... David Drake already wrote that.

People really underestimate the damage 1204 did to the Empire. Even when Bulgaria and Serbia broke away in the 1180s, they were thriving regions with Byzantine-esque traditions and culture. Even the Sultan of Rum styled himself after the Byzantines. Point is, these are regions that are...

To sum it up: Latest "Easy" POD: Before 1204. Latest "Hard, but not entirely wanked" POD: 1340(before the Civil War). Latest "Wanked to the extreme, but maybe sorta plausible" POD: 1402 You'd need to have Timur really smash the Ottomans a lot more, have a warrior emperor show up, maybe have...

Granted. However, I think the location was rather obvious, and if not Constantine... someone else would have thought of it, eventually.

As for Constantine... it's not terribly likely. Diocletian had based himself in Nicomedia, but that didn't stick. Fact is, Byzantium's location was a strategic and economic dream for anyone looking to build a capital city. I just find it curious that no one had really thought of it before...

One thing that kills me... is this cliche that one or two battles means suddenly a region is a conquered, subdued province of some new expanding empire. It's as if every leader in a TL is an Alexander the Great. In reality, most of the time, conquered provinces turned into hotbeds of rebellion...

I was exploring this concept in my TL... and I came up with the idea that, in the absence of Islam, a new, more vibrant version of Zoroastrianism develops in response to Christianity's inroads in the region. However, like Christianity eventually did, it escapes state control and develops on its...

At times, it will act unified (usually against external threats) and during such times, it will often be a "superpower." But it's also divided, and, in the chapters ahead, we'll explore what happens when the old Roman tradition of bloody civil wars between rival emperors strikes up again. Maybe...

I just did that in my TL. Sort of. I really just gave Zoroastrianism a much more prominent role in the region. But.. there's SOME validity to this assumption. The area was a crossroads for many religions, and it seems reasonable to say that SOMETHING would happen as a result of that, assuming...