AHC: Western Roman Survival

With a POD no earlier than 470 AD have the WRE survive the 5th Century and possibly beyond and reconquer.
 
Basically impossible, for the WRE to survive it requires no Vandal conquest of Africa, or no Huns, the second of which is ASB.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Impossible? Not at all. What you need to do is get Orestes out of the way, preventing his betrayal of Julius Nepos in 475. You'll still see Odoacer on the rise, but you know-- with Orestes gone (somehow), Julius Nepos will need a new magister militum. Odoacer might just use his power to get that position. He was willing to recognise Julius Nepos in a theoretical sense when the ERE told him to. A situation where Julius Nepos is a mostly powerless Emperor and Odoacer serves as a shogun-like magister militum is not at all unthinkable. In fact, this situation could then become the norm, with the Western Emperors being mostly figureheads. The office of magister militum would have the real power. With the ERE's full backing, this situation would proably be stable enough to keep someone like Theodoric from taking over. The much-reduced WRE would simply continue to exist, much reduced, as a junior partner to the ERE.
 
Eh, no I would not call this impossible. The reason Odoacer decided to rid Italy of the Emperorship was because all the recent Emperors had been useless puppets, and Odoacer saw no reason to keep them around.
If Odoacer was more keen to keep a puppet Emperor, or if some other Germanic magister militum took over and had no issue with a puppet Emperor, the office of Western Emperor could easily survive in some form.

Although the Western Empire as a political entity did not really cease to exist in 476, so if you want to be cheeky you could just wank the Ostrogothic Kingdom a bit and have Theoderic (either by force or diplomatically) be recognized by the Eastern Emperor as a co-Emperor.
 
What if Emperor Justinian installed a new Western Emperor in Italy after reconquering the west ?
That would likely leave the west even more critically short on troops than OTL unless the Italian war was much shorter and didn't result in the ruination of the Italian economy. Not at all impossible but it would probably require more troops at Belisarius' command.

That and I'm not sure Justinian would be willing to give up control of the west.
 

RousseauX

Donor
The Ostrogoth Kingdom in Italy folds really fast for whatever reason during Belisarius's reconquest and the Justanian plague gets pushed off 50 years or so
 
Also something to take into consideration is that the Western Empire was positioned horribly to defend its holdings. Evidently they tried to fix this IOTL by moving the capital to Ravenna, but it didn't work in the long run. They would either have to expel the Vandals and move over their base to Africa, abandoning the more northern provinces; or they could move to Gaul, establishing something similar to the Carolingian Empire early on.
 
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RousseauX

Donor
Also something to take into consideration is that the Western Empire was that it was positioned horribly to defend its holdings. Evidently they tried to fix this IOTL by moving the capital to Ravenna, but it didn't work in the long run. They would either have to expel the Vandals and move over their base to Africa, abandoning the more northern provinces; or they could move to Gaul, establishing something similar to the Carolingian Empire early on.
Italy has the alps and North Africa the sea, it's not that hard to defend the heartland, but yeah anything outside of that is gone
 
Also something to take into consideration is that the Western Empire was positioned horribly to defend its holdings. Evidently they tried to fix this IOTL by moving the capital to Ravenna, but it didn't work in the long run. They would either have to expel the Vandals and move over their base to Africa, abandoning the more northern provinces; or they could move to Gaul, establishing something similar to the Carolingian Empire early on.
I've heard this argument used alot, but I don't really agree with it. From a geographic standpoint the Western Roman Empire was in a decent position. Britannia and Gaul were probably a lost cause once things started getting serious, but Italy has the alps protecting it to it's north and sea on the other three sides. Iberia also has the Pyrenees to the north protecting it, and the sea on all other sides. In a way the Western Empire had more land to fall back on than the East as lands like Italy, Africa and Iberia had a relatively small border to defend on land and were protected by the frontier regions.

The problem with the Western Empire wasn't it's geography, it was the fact that it barely had an army to defend it's territories and once it lost it's naval dominance over the mediterranean after the loss of Carthage it became alot more difficult to fall back on the sea.
 
I think the idea of Belisarius as Western emperor is very interesting. I might even write a timeline about it. The immediate problem is that Italy was in rough shape at that point...
 
To clarify this means continued survival no stops or hiccups of any sort with at best the throne remaining vacant but it still being the WRE.
 
To clarify this means continued survival no stops or hiccups of any sort with at best the throne remaining vacant but it still being the WRE.
Wouldn't the Kingdom of Odoacer and Ostrogothic Kindom of Italy pretty much qualify then? The state apparatus that was the WRE continued under Odoacer and Theoderic but the position of Emperor became vacant.
 
Wouldn't the Kingdom of Odoacer and Ostrogothic Kindom of Italy pretty much qualify then? The state apparatus that was the WRE continued under Odoacer and Theoderic but the position of Emperor became vacant.
No not really, especially since he assumed the title of Rex. I mean just the WRE in the sense that a layman would understand.
 
No not really, especially since he assumed the title of Rex. I mean just the WRE in the sense that a layman would understand.

Couldn't a surviving Ostrogothic Italy be considered a continued WRE by future historians?

Or does it have to be viewed as a continuation of the WRE by its contemporaries?
 
Couldn't a surviving Ostrogothic Italy be considered a continued WRE by future historians?

Or does it have to be viewed as a continuation of the WRE by its contemporaries?
Maybe but I mean the continuation of the polity that the layman would say ended in 476 and if you want to stretch it the one Nepos ruled but he would have to figure out how to get back into Italy somehow.
 
It could be done—if the ERE provided more support to the WRE.Aid to the WRE was sporatic at best.If they bothered to send a force to expel Odoacer,for example WRE would have survived.

A lot of times,the ERE handpicked the WRE emperors but doesn’t back them up with boots on the ground.
 
Well, I've been working on a TL where emperor Magnus Maximus was planning a massive reform of the army and government (namely more localization among other things), testing it out in Brittania before he was going to establish it across the west. He's killed before he can perfect it, but it makes enough of a difference that the britons under their Comes Britanniarum is able to hold out against the barbarians, holding them in the east.

The overthrow of the western emperor is a bit of a shock to them, but they still consider themselves as part of the empire under the command of the Comes. So they make the Comes "Comes et Rex Britanniarum", And then the next one declared himself Emperor.

My TL is more focused on events at the beginning of the viking age, also the said Comes Britanniarum/rex is king arthur, but thats not necessary.
 
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