I will repeat the alliance with the HRE could easily be kept if and only if Fredrick I and the EMperor of Byzantium got along. In otl the normans were a threat both to the HRE and the Romans, thus with Corad III alliances were made. But once Fredrick I became emperor it boke apart because the two battled for succestion over Italy by trying to outmaneuver one anotherinstead of focusing on their common enemies. it also didnt help that Both emperors considered themselves successors to Rome. So just have them mend their ideological dispute and have Fredrick cooperate with the Byzantine emperor and Conrad's Alliance is sure to last.
So what happens when the Normans are dealt with (doesn't matter by which emperor)? Will the other emperor really accept them controlling that part of Italy? Will the successful one not want to take the rest?
This is something that has to be answered correctly for generations. And the ideological issues are pretty big. Can't have two states both being the One True Roman Empire - maybe two states each as half of the Roman Empire, but not as the One and Only Roman Empire.
Only problem is the ANgeloi. Please for the love of god if you want an HRE-Roman alliance butterfly them away. better yet butterfly away Andronikos Komnenoss. Because it was thanks to Manuel that the alliance was so successful.
I'm assuming that the Angeloi on the throne will inevitably end badly, so no worries. No timeline involving success of the ERE can permit them to be on the throne for long, in my opinion.
Andronikos...depends on who replaces him. Andronikos was crazy but competent (sadly more of the former as time went on). Either replaces him as in how Alexius II grows up or usurps the throne from Alexius II instead, depending.
Snake Featherston said:
WWII would probably be better for that than WWI (as Hitler was a definite fruitloop but claiming Imperial Japan's military dictatorship with that is not entirely truthful).
True. But you get my point - it takes a war involving unimaginable carnage.
Spain IMHO is a pretty comparable analogy: a long-term history of division of a region, a brief unification under a powerful pair of monarchs, the peninsula splits back up again later. The HRE's problems stem from its sheer size, mostly. In a pre-modern situation, long-lived large empires are quite rare, and China is a history of multiple dynastic empires that were often extremely different in practice from each other even before the Yuan showed up. HRE's problems are due to that size and the complications posed by the Papacy, which is unlikely in the extreme to accept a strong Emperor.
How so (on both size and the pope)? Papal wishes for being (in effect, if never spelled out as such) in charge of all Europe as the Grand High Theocrator?
Trying to think of how to address that, since unlike the ERE, which can agree to let the HRE occupy Italy and doesn't really care about Germany or (the kingdom of) Burgundy, the Pope has broader interests.
Or is this just a matter of the fact no self-respecting pope wants to be at the mercy of a secular power, which would happen with one power controlling Italy?
The Papacy helped immeasurably as far as damaging the British monarchy, it was unable to do that to the French monarchy, and arguably did more harm than good in Iberia. With HRE, the Papacy is not quite as distant as it is from say, England or France.
How so on Spain?
Asking since Spain is...not really a success story in the long run. Looking at this in terms of the kings and the kingdom, not just its many wars or its economic problems (though those may relate to the internal politics).