@Icedaemon and
@St. Just - to be fair, I hadn't seriously considered the possibility of Nestorian Mongols until now. I figured that they wouldn't see important divergences (meaning that their invasions and administrative establishments will happen in schedule) until they enter in contact with alt-Byzantium and the alt-Crusader State. From there onwards... who knows? In any case, it does seems more likely to me that they will remain Tengriist with a multiconfessional elite before assimilating into local social mores, as they did IOTL. I confess that I find the idea of one Mongol Khan seriously converting to Nestorianism is pretty fascinating, and will bring world-changing divergences.
About the politico-religious relations of the Crusader State, that's another big food for thought, but, in the long run, I believe you've brought a very reasonable assessment
@St. Just. It is probable that matters of political interest start to create rifts between the Papacy and the Crusader entities (even though, I believe this won't happen in the High Middle Ages period, at least not to the point of generating a schism altogether).
Would you care about developing more this specific post of yours? I'm interested in seeing what you have in mind.
If you don’t mind me asking do you have a map that shows what things look like as of 1042? And what’s up with this count of Sidon that was a former Fatimid commander before swearing loyalty to boehemund and becoming a Christian?
There's a map in one of the threadmarks the shows things before the Second Crusade (though, it is more focused in the Levant than in Armenia), but I don't have a more updated map just yet.
About the Count of Sidon, it's just one of these minor anecdotal events that won't be relevant in the long run. You'll see a lot of these in the TL, take them as less significant footnotes in the grand scheme of the ahistorical narrative. But, now that you've brought it, we can think about mentioning these odd episodes in a more specific fashuon.
@RandomWriterGuy - Armenia here is just the territory comprising the Bagratuni kingdom. It doesn't includes Azerbaijan. ITTL, the Byzantines have only annexed the southwestern part of the country, but Georgia will expand to include most of the northern half of it. The rest of the former kingdom will likely remain in control of the neighboring Islamic powers, most notably - since you mentioned it - the Shirvanshahs. See below:
Good points about Arab nationalism, but then, again, it is something very further down the line for us to be delving in detail right now.
@AspieMan - just like
@cmakk1012 said. In the way it happened historically, as we know it, it WON'T happen. Butterflies are flying wild already.
Now, erm... TBH I must admit I'm not sure why we're talking about the Assyrians right now. The so-called "Assyrian Church" doesn't have, as I see it, any sort of identity continuum with the ancient political concept of Assyria. By the 12th C., it is just a geographic denomination. In any case, the region will remain under control of Mosul for the time being, and later, other Islamic entities that suceed it. We won't be seeing any sort of regional ressurgence this early, and the Byzantines won't go advancing deep into it to provoke such an impact. Later centuries, who knows? IOTL we are nowadays discussing the possibility of forming a Kurdish State, something that was unconceivable some centuries ago.
EDIT: Got Ninja'd by
@Noblesse Oblige - Indeed, Byzantium won't grab all of the kingdom of Armenia, just its western parts. In fact, as mentioned above, the main benefactor of the weakening of the Armenian Islamic emirates will be the Kingdom of Georgia, which will likely double in territory. Byzantium will be more content with having a strong frontier to establish their defense-in-depth strategies in northern Syria and in Anatolia, probably with a cordon of less hostile Armenian provincial entities serving as a buffer against the more aggressive Muslim enemies.
