AH Plausibility: Hunnic Byzantium

or the suggestion that Attila be raised in Roman tradition is like the ancient Hun version of A Khan in Constantinople.
Actually I meant that due to some circumstances Attila was sent to Constantinople by his father as a hostage or something. For example from 12 years old till he is 17 years old.
Before 12 and after 17 y.o. Attila is with the Hunns in his native 'wild' steppes and forests.

So he is truly Hunnic but he knows how the Empire works.
He might use this knowledge against it. He might use more clever diplomatic game, espionage etc.

As you mentioned Attila was great as a general. He was much weaker as a ruler of Empire. And he was desperately weak as a diplomat (winning allies and so on).
If we could improve those weaknesses than ... who knows...
 
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From 12 to 17, huh? If he went to Constantinople as a hostage at a very young age (say 8), Attila would have learned a lot more about the Byzantines. Though Attila is no Genghis Khan, he isn't a fool in which he sorely needed to improve the fighting strength of his army.
 
On this board somewhere, there's "The Coronation of the Hun" and its spinoff "Flee, Flee--They Are Crowning the Hun." Both of them feature Attilla becoming the Western Emperor IIRC.

Is there a way to get him to become Eastern Emperor without Constantinople getting the Baghdad treatment?

There're TLs out here featuring Constantinople falling to the Goths that don't involve too much damage to the city.
 
Not sure, although I wonder if the Eastern Roman Empire could get the Odoacer treatment and have it collapse the same way the Western Empire did in AD 476, leading to the Dark Ages and probably fragmentation of the Eastern Empire.
 
On this board somewhere, there's "The Coronation of the Hun" and its spinoff "Flee, Flee--They Are Crowning the Hun." Both of them feature Attilla becoming the Western Emperor IIRC.

Is there a way to get him to become Eastern Emperor without Constantinople getting the Baghdad treatment?

There're TLs out here featuring Constantinople falling to the Goths that don't involve too much damage to the city.

Why would Atilla not give it the Baghdad treatment, though?

"The Huns" might be an option. Atilla in person seems to more a pagan Timur than early Genghis Khan.
 
Actually I meant that due to some circumstances Attila was sent to Constantinople by his father as a hostage or something. For example from 12 years old till he is 17 years old.
Before 12 and after 17 y.o. Attila is with the Hunns in his native 'wild' steppes and forests.

So he is truly Hunnic but he knows how the Empire works.
He might use this knowledge against it. He might use more clever diplomatic game, espionage etc.

As you mentioned Attila was great as a general. He was much weaker as a ruler of Empire. And he was desperately weak as a diplomat (winning allies and so on).
If we could improve those weaknesses than ... who knows...

Attila wasn't bad as a diplomat, considering. He managed to wring considerably greater sums of gold from the Romans than they really had to give him, simply by virtue of his ability to use diplomacy rather than force when he had to. The threat of his force is what was really the big deal.
 
Are you asking me? :confused:
It was The Ubbergeek's suggestion.
I guess his proposed PoD was - the Huns happened to have a better general than Attila. And this 'most talented' general somehow got rid of Attila.

The Ubbergeek, did I get it right?

Could be a close ally/general like Tokugawa to Nobunaga-Hideyoshi too, or such...
Attila was lacking in future vision, that's a weakness. He was a superb bandit lord more than a king in the later sense maybe....


As for empaling, well... its not like his opposition was much better. Like romans.
 
The idea of Attila being sent to Constantinople as a young hostage, that would be done by Rugila if he was still alive. As for a possible ally of Attila, I can imagine Ardaric filling that role.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardaric

If the Huns themselves can't establish the structure of the state but had a successor tribe to do so, would the Magyars fill the role the Bulgars did in OTL with the First Bulgarian Empire?
 
Attila wasn't bad as a diplomat, considering. He managed to wring considerably greater sums of gold from the Romans than they really had to give him, simply by virtue of his ability to use diplomacy rather than force when he had to. The threat of his force is what was really the big deal.
He was an excellent negotiator... :D for a gang-lord. Extortion, kidnapping and things like that, you know.
But we are speaking about bigger scale - Empire building on the lands of 'Eastern Rome'.
He needs to find collaborators inside the Roman Empire, in the imperial court. What the hell! :) Some Roman commanders with their detachments are supposed to side with him, the cities and whole provinces are supposed to admit his (imperial) power without resistance (after diplomatic under cover game).
He must break Roman alliances and then defeat his enemies one at a time...
Things like that.
 
He was an excellent negotiator... :D for a gang-lord. Extortion, kidnapping and things like that, you know.
But we are speaking about bigger scale - Empire building on the lands of 'Eastern Rome'.
He needs to find collaborators inside the Roman Empire, in the imperial court. What the hell! :) Some Roman commanders with their detachments are supposed to side with him, the cities and whole provinces are supposed to admit his (imperial) power without resistance (after diplomatic under cover game).
He must break Roman alliances and then defeat his enemies one at a time...
Things like that.

Well, it sounds like the idea of Attila being sent by Rugila as a young hostage to Constantinople is definitely one of the best ways for Attila to make connections with future Eastern Roman leaders. By the way, does Leo the Thracian or some other Byzantine Emperor have a sister in which she could marry Attila instead of Honoria? I'm guessing Pulcheria, who married Marcian in OTL could be slotted to marry Attila instead.
 
What if Attila's father Mundzuk was killed during his childhood? If he dies, then could Attila end up in Constantinople as an orphan, rather than as a political hostage? I'm thinking of ways to have Attila also embrace Byzantine Christianity and he could Rhomanize the Huns if he got into contact with them. If he had a different upbringing, then he doesn't need to impale his opponents. Oh, and here is the preview. I just need input on this:


Constantinople was a place of intrigue for many visitors and other Roman senators which made the eastern city their new home. Of course, the city that labeled itself as the ‘Second Rome’ after the First Rome had fallen into decline. It was also the place where the fates of two people, from two equally hostile worlds, would meet and decide the fate of the ancient world, in a dramatic shift into the darkness, as Byzantium will later realize when its successors have a different motive for the Byzantine Empire. It was in 407 AD, three years before Alaric had sacked Rome, when a young boy was sent to Constantinople as a political hostage by a tribal chief named Mundzuk, in return for a temporary truce between the Byzantine Empire and the Huns. The young teenage hostage’s name was Attila, for whom the Attilid dynasty will take root in the Byzantine Empire from 440 AD onwards.

Arcadius was amused when the young Attila was brought to his court in Constantinople. His father, the former Emperor Theodosius I had secured a temporary peace treaty with the Huns, who were notoriously known in the civilized world as the warriors from hell. Because of the staggering costs of financing the war against both the Huns and the Sassanid Empire in Persia, it was prudent for Arcadius to stop the conflict until he would resolve his empire’s wars with their Persian rivals. Young Attila was the sacrificial lamb in which the peace between the Romans in the East and the Huns would be kept. What Arcadius didn’t know, was Attila’s presence in Constantinople would become his undoing, as he was taught the Greek and Latin languages, and learned about Roman institutions and government. What really generated the teenaged Attila’s curiosity was how the Roman Army fought its wars. After all, his father and uncles had experience in battling the very same army he would later train alongside with. As for Arcadius, he was eager to know how he can change the fighting style of the Roman Army in the East in order to gain an upper hand over the Sassanids and his Western Roman rivals. As Arcadius later learned, Attila’s expertise in horse archery was something the Roman Army in the East definitely needed to take into account, as they often faced against barbarian tribes that are capable of steppe warfare. Attila on the other hand, had a lot to learn from the Romans in terms of how they operate so when the time has come, he would seize power within the Huns and show them how to live a different life from what they were used to before. However, when Theodosius II succeeded Arcadius, he decided to arrange for his sister Pulcheria to marry Attila as a possible stepping stone to the eventual Byzantine alliance with the Huns.

Attila’s knowledge of Roman power would eventually serve him well when he reorganized the Hunnic army on the Roman model, with the reformation of the infantry legions that can fight in terrain where cavalry can’t fight.
 
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