Plus, many of these "ephemeral gains" lasted as long as three centuries, longer than the entire U.S. nation for a modern perspective. All honesty, the fact that the empire managed to last as long as it did, as strong as it did, against so many enemies, with so few allies makes them far more impressive. I honestly doubt that France in the same era would have fared nearly so well in the same situation.
Byzantium had a real problem with forming alliances, probably in part because of their massive national pride at being the Roman Empire. Worse still, they tended to keep their allies at arms length, and were less inclined to offer important international royal marriages before the Palaiologian period. Possibly their best alliance was with Hungary during Manuel's reign, but that fell through with Manuel's son getting killed by Andronikos I and then the 4th Crusade (which actually attacked the Hungarians on a much smaller scale if I remember correctly). That alliance was obviously usefull, since Manuel was able to secure more lands and tighter control, despite the fact that he really wasn't the sharpest (though not the dullest either) tool in the shed. If the Byzantines had, in a world without the 4th crusade, renewed their ties with
Hungary and the Crusader states, they could easily have gone another century without a major calamity, which would easily be enough time to finish regaining Anatolia and get back up to strength. If you kill the Normans in southern italy on schedual, and maybe form an alliance with the new southern Italian power, then the western front is secure, and in the east Georgia can be subsidized and propped up to help secure that frontier too. Not so bad, and certainly enough to keep chugging along til modern times on.
Byzantium had a real problem with forming alliances, probably in part because of their massive national pride at being the Roman Empire. Worse still, they tended to keep their allies at arms length, and were less inclined to offer important international royal marriages before the Palaiologian period. Possibly their best alliance was with Hungary during Manuel's reign, but that fell through with Manuel's son getting killed by Andronikos I and then the 4th Crusade (which actually attacked the Hungarians on a much smaller scale if I remember correctly). That alliance was obviously usefull, since Manuel was able to secure more lands and tighter control, despite the fact that he really wasn't the sharpest (though not the dullest either) tool in the shed. If the Byzantines had, in a world without the 4th crusade, renewed their ties with
Hungary and the Crusader states, they could easily have gone another century without a major calamity, which would easily be enough time to finish regaining Anatolia and get back up to strength. If you kill the Normans in southern italy on schedual, and maybe form an alliance with the new southern Italian power, then the western front is secure, and in the east Georgia can be subsidized and propped up to help secure that frontier too. Not so bad, and certainly enough to keep chugging along til modern times on.