*blushes* you flatter my ravings. Especially since I forgot the extent of the Vlachs as a buffer state, which does quite nicely counter the poor behaviour of Serbia.
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
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*blushes* you flatter my ravings. Especially since I forgot the extent of the Vlachs as a buffer state, which does quite nicely counter the poor behaviour of Serbia.
Semi-random thought I had this morning on the Red Line: TTL Curtain Jerker is most likely living in this empire, maybe posting on TTL AH.com 
. My grandparents on both sides are Greek. One set came over after WWI (early 1920s) and the other came over after WWII/Greek Civil War (I think both of them on that side were here by 1952 or so). Well, with no Nazi takeover/Greek Civil War, there's no push factors that led to them to come to America, so there's a really good chance that ITTL I'm a proud Roman citizen. I think that's kinda cool.
. My grandparents on both sides are Greek. One set came over after WWI (early 1920s) and the other came over after WWII/Greek Civil War (I think both of them on that side were here by 1952 or so). Well, with no Nazi takeover/Greek Civil War, there's no push factors that led to them to come to America, so there's a really good chance that ITTL I'm a proud Roman citizen. I think that's kinda cool.If the Romans want to strike inside the HRE or Hungary they have an excellent forward supply base: Venetia! Which is something that the Latins don't have when they attack Rhomania
Semi-random thought I had this morning on the Red Line: TTL Curtain Jerker is most likely living in this empire, maybe posting on TTL AH.com
Για την δοξα της Ρωμης και της Γερουσιας της, Ρωμαιε
Rome? The papists den? The empire as Theodore II was saying 4 centuries ago is Greek. And the one and only true Roman empire of course!
Interesting enough i remember my great grandfather ( born in 1910 or 11) saying that he was a roman not greek but then again in those times it was the one and the same
Reading the last chapter I shudder to think what the Romans are going to do to the North Italian Cities. Maybe the Romans will eventually reach Vienna but they will almost certainly reach Milan first. Might the Kingdom of Lombardy serve as a terrifying preview of what awaits the HRE if the Romans get loose.
Babyrage: I think you’re right regarding Demetrios III. Alexeia and Andreas II had a good bit themselves but I’m pretty sure Demetrios beats them already. And he won’t go out with a whimper.
And Andreas I blows everyone out of the water in terms of narrative screen-time.
The TTL view of the First Komnenid dynasty is fairly positive, but mixed. It took the Empire out of a really bad spot, but the Crusades did start at that time. Not Alexios’ fault, but still some guilt by proximity. And things really went south after Manuel I’s death, so they were clearly doing something wrong. In their eyes, there is a sense of ‘all flash, no substance’ about the First Komnenid dynasty, particularly towards the end, too focused on being flashy and not enough on fixing problems. So good on Alexios I and John II, mixed on Manuel I.
ImperatorAlexander: I made some minor edits, but want to keep things similar so the non-patreon aren’t getting a ‘non-canon’ TL. The one major change is the scene where Vlad is arguing with Maria. When she says Andreas is sleeping with his sister Zoe because they keep going to each other at night, Vlad recognizes that’s the two comforting each other because they have ‘battle madness’ (PTSD) nightmares, which he completely understands so he’s quite sympathetic to the two siblings.
Re-reading the TL for the PDFs…I admit I’m feeling nostalgia for the days of Andreas I. It’d be interesting to see what they’d be like if I re-wrote them in the level of detail I do nowadays (Night of the Tocsins is well over double the length of the Black Day, for example).
RogueTraderEnthusiast: They’re very useful. Reader comments have given me lots of ideas or inspired me to go in some direction in this TL.
The ‘buffer state’ concept isn’t bad, but the Romans are having issues in that some perform really well (Vlachia, Sicily), but others don’t (Egypt, Serbia).
Wolttaire: The Empire of the All the North is currently at war with an alliance of Novgorod, Prussia, and Pronsk over territories in the eastern Baltic, so it can’t do anything right now.
Curtain Jerker. That’s really cool. TTL me would probably still be in the states; family emigrated for economic reasons, although there’s a family story that one relative from great-grandparent generation skipped town because he was about to get drafted by the Russian army (late 1800s), became a sailor, and then never returned to his berth from shore leave in NYC.
And with no Nazis, TTL me would still have relatives in Germany.
Aristomenes: Indeed. Venetia isn’t too far from Bavaria, after all. Just have to punch through the Alps…
Emperor Joe: If I remember correctly, when I was at Kos a few years ago I saw 1 Republic of Hellas flag and 4 Byzantine ones (2 eagles, 2 tetragrams). So based on that anecdote, there does still seem to be some nostalgia.
JSC: Milan’s out of the way if one is stabbing at the HRE, whether up the Danube, or basing from Venetia. So it might get bypassed.
Minifidel: Yeah, the Lombards (then Milanese) never really got punished for their role in the Time of Troubles (unlike the Ottomans who at least had their capital sacked).
Question regarding Greek family names: Where do Greek family names come from? English names often seem to be a former occupation (Smith, Taylor, Cook). The out-of-context reason for having a few dozen prominent service families is that I made a list of late Byzantine family names and have been pulling from the list as needed. I want to expand the people who show up in the TL, so I’m having to create names but I don’t want to screw them up. (I suppose I could pull names from Modern Greek history; I’m pretty sure I’ve done one or two like that.)
Two examples of family names I’m thinking: Argyrochoos (family occupation-silversmith), Myti (from famous ancestor known for his big nose). Do those work or am I totally off base here?
Note for Patreon subscribers: I’m working on the PDF for Part 6 but I’ve decided to take this section all the way through to the death of Andreas I, so it’ll be appreciably longer than 100 pages (160?). This may delay its release so I wanted to give you all a heads-up.
And Andreas I blows everyone out of the water in terms of narrative screen-time.
The TTL view of the First Komnenid dynasty is fairly positive, but mixed. It took the Empire out of a really bad spot, but the Crusades did start at that time. Not Alexios’ fault, but still some guilt by proximity. And things really went south after Manuel I’s death, so they were clearly doing something wrong. In their eyes, there is a sense of ‘all flash, no substance’ about the First Komnenid dynasty, particularly towards the end, too focused on being flashy and not enough on fixing problems. So good on Alexios I and John II, mixed on Manuel I.
ImperatorAlexander: I made some minor edits, but want to keep things similar so the non-patreon aren’t getting a ‘non-canon’ TL. The one major change is the scene where Vlad is arguing with Maria. When she says Andreas is sleeping with his sister Zoe because they keep going to each other at night, Vlad recognizes that’s the two comforting each other because they have ‘battle madness’ (PTSD) nightmares, which he completely understands so he’s quite sympathetic to the two siblings.
Re-reading the TL for the PDFs…I admit I’m feeling nostalgia for the days of Andreas I. It’d be interesting to see what they’d be like if I re-wrote them in the level of detail I do nowadays (Night of the Tocsins is well over double the length of the Black Day, for example).
RogueTraderEnthusiast: They’re very useful. Reader comments have given me lots of ideas or inspired me to go in some direction in this TL.
The ‘buffer state’ concept isn’t bad, but the Romans are having issues in that some perform really well (Vlachia, Sicily), but others don’t (Egypt, Serbia).
Wolttaire: The Empire of the All the North is currently at war with an alliance of Novgorod, Prussia, and Pronsk over territories in the eastern Baltic, so it can’t do anything right now.
Curtain Jerker. That’s really cool. TTL me would probably still be in the states; family emigrated for economic reasons, although there’s a family story that one relative from great-grandparent generation skipped town because he was about to get drafted by the Russian army (late 1800s), became a sailor, and then never returned to his berth from shore leave in NYC.
And with no Nazis, TTL me would still have relatives in Germany.
Aristomenes: Indeed. Venetia isn’t too far from Bavaria, after all. Just have to punch through the Alps…
Emperor Joe: If I remember correctly, when I was at Kos a few years ago I saw 1 Republic of Hellas flag and 4 Byzantine ones (2 eagles, 2 tetragrams). So based on that anecdote, there does still seem to be some nostalgia.
JSC: Milan’s out of the way if one is stabbing at the HRE, whether up the Danube, or basing from Venetia. So it might get bypassed.
Minifidel: Yeah, the Lombards (then Milanese) never really got punished for their role in the Time of Troubles (unlike the Ottomans who at least had their capital sacked).
Question regarding Greek family names: Where do Greek family names come from? English names often seem to be a former occupation (Smith, Taylor, Cook). The out-of-context reason for having a few dozen prominent service families is that I made a list of late Byzantine family names and have been pulling from the list as needed. I want to expand the people who show up in the TL, so I’m having to create names but I don’t want to screw them up. (I suppose I could pull names from Modern Greek history; I’m pretty sure I’ve done one or two like that.)
Two examples of family names I’m thinking: Argyrochoos (family occupation-silversmith), Myti (from famous ancestor known for his big nose). Do those work or am I totally off base here?
Note for Patreon subscribers: I’m working on the PDF for Part 6 but I’ve decided to take this section all the way through to the death of Andreas I, so it’ll be appreciably longer than 100 pages (160?). This may delay its release so I wanted to give you all a heads-up.
Most greek surnames come either from nicknames of an ancestor or the first name of an ancestor from.For example my neighbor's last name is ppissis which in cypriot greek means tight fisted or more accurately cheap another example of greek last names are the ones that end in -ou like georgiou,antoniou,ioannou and so forth those last names they just mean (son) of (name),adding on that in many places in greece they replace -ou with -oglou which is turkish for son of,and also greek surnames come from toponynms and those surnames usually end in -itis like constantinoupolitis (constantinopolitan) or -os like athineos (Athenian),and lastly they derive from occupation's and usually end in -is like ergatis(worker),agrotis(farmer)
I hope i shed some light on the matter
P.s sorry for the my grammar but i'm currently nursing a hangover
I hope i shed some light on the matter
P.s sorry for the my grammar but i'm currently nursing a hangover
On that note how do the Laskarids compare with the 2nd Komnenoi? One brought the Empire back from the brink of ruin whilst the other defeated Timur, oversaw great conquests and briefly made the Empire THE superpower. I assume the Drakoi aren’t even in the same league.
Argyrochoos works, although in modern Greek (not necessarily in Byzantine Greek, mind you), you would most likely have the genitive form "Argyrochoou". "Myti" isn't really suitable by itself, since it simply means nose; however, "Mytaras" ("big-nosey") is an actual surname today. That said, the Byzantines formed their surnames a bit differently from modern Greeks: there are some names of Slavic, Persian, etc. origin that would be completely outlandish today as they were barely hellenized in form or sound (all these "tz"), and more importantly, the Byzantines had genuine feminine forms of their surnames (ending in -issa etc), whereas today women make do with the genitive forms of their father's/husband's surnames. A good source for genuine late Byzantine surnames would be the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, if you can find a copy.
Generally having Greek surnames derived from occupations is quite common, although I would skip Argyrochoos or Argyrochoou, it is not common at all. However names starting with Papa- are quite common and mean that an ancestor was a priest, for example "Papandreou" comes from an ancestor who was a priest and whose name was Andreas. And since the church plays a prominent role in the Eastern Roman society, you can have a lot of surnames starting with Papa- .
Lombardy is a bit like Hungary in that one major decisive battle is probably all it takes to knock them out. And they're very centralised too, makes you wonder what will happen once Milan is taken, a solid decapitation?
Not really, by now they have a solid national identity so what you'd get is guerrilla attacks on the countryside until the invaders leave.
That’s really helpful. Thank you. So it looks like Greek surnames come from similar sources as English ones do; that makes things easier. The ou-ending could be a European and western Anatolian convention and oglou-ending a central/east Anatolian one (because of the Turkish influence). That’s a useful way of giving people different surnames, because there’ll probably be a lot of Andreaou and Andreaoglou (did I do that right?) running around because of people naming their children after Andreas I.
Both the Laskarids and 2nd Komnenoi get very high marks because of their many accomplishments. They started off with different levels, but did a tremendous amount with what they had. So similar in status. But having said that, the 2nd Komnenoi are more well-known because of the shenanigans of Andreas Niketas and his brood; they’re somewhat like the Roman Tudors.
I’m going to go with the Modern Greek ‘Argyrochoou’. I’d rather be correct in Modern Greek than wrong in Byzantine Greek. Thanks for the correction on Myti and the resource suggestion. I looked it up; I could download it as PDFs but looks like I’d have to pay a subscription. Most of the names I’ve used so far are from Mark Bartusis’ The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204-1453. At the end he has a section listing Byzantine soldiers mentioned in documents of the period; the family names like Chomatenos come from there.
Argyrochoou is for a specific character who is a silversmith who’s descended from silversmiths, so that surname makes sense to me. But you’re right; it wouldn’t be common. That’s a rare occupation. Thanks for the suggestion regarding papa-names. I didn’t know that. So ‘Papalexandrou’, for example, would be someone descended from a priest named Alexandros? I expect I’m going to screw up the genitive endings.
You’d have the central Italian territories making a break for it, certainly. They’ve all been part of the Lombard Kingdom for thirty years or less. Northern Italy, used to being ruled from Milan, would be more likely to rally to any government-in-exile. I think it’d be like France losing Paris; not necessarily a kill shot by itself, but very devastating.
Northern Italy does, so you’d probably see the upper/middle classes resisting the foreign heretics. As for the peasantry, they may fall into ‘one overlord is much the same as another’. It depends on how much wrecking the Romans/Sicilians would do.
Thank you again to Emperor Joe, Spatharios, and Aristomenes for answering my question. I’m going to apologize in advance to all Greek-speakers for my inevitable screw-ups in this area, and please let me now when I do so I can fix it. I don't mean any offense or disrespect.
Exactly, Papalexandrou is someone whose ancestor was a priest named Alexandros. Besides this another tip for modern Greek surnames is their ending. Depending on the region of origin you have different endings. For example, usually most surnames from Crete end with the ending -akis (Papadakis, Stavroulakis etc.) On the other hand most surnames from Peloponnese end with -opoulos. For example, Alexopoulos and Giannopoulos, meaning "the son of Alexios or the son of Giannis (Ioannes)".
A very known OTL person with the ending -opoulos in his surname is General Alexios Stratigopoulos which liberated Constantinople in 1261 from the Latins.
I also forgot tell you of a very strange quirk in cypriot surnames..that of the prefex hadji it literally comes from the word hajj and and it was given to people that went on hajj but ofcouse been Christians to them hajj meant going to Jerusalem or mount athos,that said it will not a cypriot thing in ttl but a levatine coast feature also it often added with the papa prefex so it's not uncommon to see in cyprus people with both of them i.e. hadjipapandreou
So in other words i am expecting a character from the Levant with the last name being hadjipapandreopoulos because with that surname you don't need an animus machine to live you ancestors life.
P.s it's andreou not andreaou same with andreoglou
So in other words i am expecting a character from the Levant with the last name being hadjipapandreopoulos because with that surname you don't need an animus machine to live you ancestors life.
P.s it's andreou not andreaou same with andreoglou