(As-of-yet-unnamed) Gothic Empire TL

It is worth considering that the Vandals in Africa were much more insignificant than the Visigoths and Suevi in Spain (there were actually more Alans in the Geyserich army than the Germans). So by that time the conquerors will dissolve among the locals.
How large a percentage of the population of modern Bulgaria can trace their lineage to the turkic Bulgars that migrated there and from which their name derives? Does the lack of a link to the people whose name they carry make them not Bulgarians? Now replace "Bulgaria" with "Vandalia" and "the turkic Bulgars" with "the germanic Vandals", and that's your answer.

The state that governed them ITTL was first called the Kingdom of the Vandals, then the Diocese of Vandalia, and then the Emirate of al-Andalus, which ITTL is an arabization of the word Vandal. The population of Vandalia have been called Vandals by everyone, including many of their neighbours, for some four hundred years at this point. Whatever identity their ancestors might've had, that kind of ethnic label eventually starts to stick.
 
Couple of smaller things, now.

Firstly,
The empire of king Heden of Thuringia
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Territory controlled by Heden in 695, after the
defeat of king Chlodomer of Austrasia at Liège.​

The Thuringian king Heden played a pivotal role in the history of Francia, particularly in the transition from Merovingian hegemony through the rise of the Arnulfings. However, the story of how the Thuringians changed history doesn't start with Heden, but rather with his father, Radulf.
Radulf was born into the Duchy of Thuringia, a vassal state of the Merovingian dynasty under the suzerainty Sigebert II of Austrasia. He came of age in the late 630s, and became king in 641, just a few years before the beginning of a tumultuous period in Frankish history. Until his death in 640 CE, Sigebert II had, directly or by proxy, ruled the lands of Austrasia, Neustria and parts of Aquitania. Upon his death a dispute emerged between his brother, Childebert III, king of Burgundy-Orléans and duke of Poitiers and Clermont, and his nephew Corbus II, king of Neustria (Paris) and duke of Périgueux and Limoges. Sigebert had dies without an heir to any of his many titles. Furthermore, Sigebert had been regent for Corbus II, who had ascended to the throne at an age too young to rule in his own right. However, as years had passed, Corbus claimed that he now ruled as full sovereign in Neustria and his duchies, and that a closest legitimate heir could be found for Austrasia elsewhere in the dynasty; Childebert claimed that he held suzerainty over Neustria and that, being the eldest descendant of the previous King of the Franks, he had right to choose the succession of the kingship of Austrasia. The two went to war. Corbus was killed in 644, his two young sons, Chlodomer and Theudebald, being sent into hiding, and Childebert proclaimed himself King of the Franks, reigning until his natural death in 663. His reign was followed by the disastrous internal conflict known as Childebert's War between his sons Clovis II and Dagobert I, as well as the sons of Corbus, Chlodomer and Theudebald, and eventually even involving the mighty Gothic Empire under Witiges II.
However, something else also happened in 644 CE. The chaos unfolding in the land of his sovereign allowed Radulf of Thuringia to rebel, proclaiming himself King of the Thuringians. The Bavarian king Garibald II was the first to suffer from this new kingship, as his lands were quickly invaded by Radulf, who established himself as the new king of Bavaria in 647.

Radulf died in 670, having spent the latter half of his career conducting diplomacy - notably overseeing the marriage of Heden to the widow Queen Regnant of the Langobards, Theodota - and defending his realm from various invaders, particularly Slavs and Avars. Heden, his only son, took the thrones of Bavaria and Thuringia in the year of his father's death. He additionally held widespread influence in Langobardia, even after the regnancy of Theodota ended with her son Garibald's coming of age. The early years of his rule was broadly similar to the latter years of his father's; diplomacy, internal consolidation, and defense of the eastern frontier. This internal consolidation particularly focused on the southern country of Langobardia, where he never officially ruled but which was functionally a part of his state.

The climax of Heden's reign came in 690. The duke of the Saxons had died the previous year, replaced by a war-hungry cousin, desipte the presence of a legitimate, if quite young, son of the previous duke. Heden took the opportunity to expand his reach, and invaded the Duchy of the Saxons, causing the new ruler to flee north and spliting the duchy in two, with the western half falling under his sovereignty, ruled by-proxy by the boy of the previous duke. This was the first conquest of Heden's reign, and the first expansion of the kingdom since Radulf's rebellion. Perhaps drunk on the resounding victory, Heden launched an attack on the Frankish city of Aachen in 692. By 694 one of the two co-kings of Austrasia, Chlodomer, had been slain by Heden in a battle near Liège in which Heden managed to encircle the Frankish forces.

What followed was the Massacre of the Funeral; the murder, orchestrated by the Mayor of the Palace of Metz, Pepin of Herstal, of Chlodomer's brother Theudebald along with all but one of the sons of both of the now-dead kings. The last remaining son, the thirteen year-old Chlothar III, was proclaimed King of Austrasia, but functionally held very little authority outside of what Pepin of Herstal permitted.

This was the apex of Thuringian power: subjugation of more than half of Germania and victory over a Merovingian king. But it was not to last. Pepin rapidly countered the Thuringian forces after having consolidated his power at home, and Heden would died at his hands just two years after the victory at Liège. Thuringia rapidly collapsed as Garibald of Langobardia established full control of his own kingdom and subjugated the Bavarians, while Pepin's war continued eastward into Saxony, shattering both halves and causing a period of governmental disintegration in the region. Thuringia itself was subjugated by the campaigns of Charles Martel, Prince and Duke of the Franks and regent of King Theudoald I, Pepin's successor.

While the kingdom that Radulf and Heden built did not have much of a lasting presence in its own right, the effect that it had on the evolution of western Europe cannot be denied. Heden's invasion was a crucial domino in the process that led to the rise of the Arnulfing dynasty under Pepin of Herstal, which would go on to consolidate power over nearly all of Francia and Germany, finally bringing to and end the old Merovingian dynasty.



Secondly,
Rise and fall of the Yolian dynasty of Mauretania
A Roman-Berber-Gothic dynasty in North Africa
also called the Irnuhanid dynasty, from the first two rulers, both named Irnuhan
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Rulers, left to right:
Dux Mauretania Irnuhan II
744 to 771
oversaw the final seperation from the Gothic Empire
Rex Mauretania Jordanes III
801 to 840
first conflicts between the Muslims and the Mauretanians
Rex Mauretania Massena I 'the Great'
840 to 888
conquests of Barghawata and Spania
Rex Mauretania Johannes I
898 to 921
victory in the succession war following Massena I
The Diocese of Mauretania was first established by Witteric I after the Gothic Civil War. As with the rest of the diocese, the office of Dux Mauretania was non-hereditary, rather being appointed by the emperor. However, this arrangement became almost entirely symbolic after the rapid collapse of Ravennese imperial power following the death of emperor Witiges II in 679 AD. During the period of imperial decline, Mauretania was initially ruled as something resembling an aristocratic republic, with the nobility ruling in concert under a Dux which they elected - informally, of course; the law was still that the diocese was solely at the appointment of the emperor in Ravenna. Around the turn of the 8th, a native Berber nobleman (albeit with much Gothic blood) with a strong backing from the countryside was elected Dux. His name was Irnuhan I, and he spent his reign consolidating his power, mentoring his son to be a worthy successor, and breaking the power of the Gothic and Roman nobility with the constant threat of mobilising his broad base of tribal leaders and merchant-bourgeoisie against the nobility. 744 saw the end of the period of electoral noble-confederacy in Mauretania, and the beginning of true dynastic monarchy, with the election of Irnuhan II as Dux Mauretania.

The Diocese, and later the Kingdom, was based in the ancient coastal city of Yol (from the Romaic Ἰὼλ), founded initially by the Carthaginians and perhaps best known by the Roman names Iol Caesarea and Caesarea-in-Mauretania.

The period from the reign of Irnuhan II to the death of Jordanes III was largely an era of consolidation and trade in the Mauretania. The rich cities of the coast facilitated an expansion of royal authority into the backcountry of the Atlas mountains. The only conflicts in this period were naval skirmishes between the Moors and the Goths, terrestrial skirmishes between the Moors and hostile Berber tribes, and a brief war between the Kingdom and the Empire of the Muslims during the Vandal-Sahmid wars. This changed with the ascent of Massena I, known to history as Massena the Great. Massena was one of the sons of king Jordanes III, and had spent almost his entire adult life defending and expanding the frontiers, and as a result he had become highly proficient in the art of war. He spent the first decade of his reign in the west, subjugating the Masmuda Berbers. In early 851 he seized upon a period of disarray in the Gothic Empire in the aftermath of the mysterious disappearance and presumed death of emperor Ardaric I, and crossed between the Pillars of Hercules, into Spania. The first of Massena's two wars of conquest in the peninsula concluded just four years after the crossing; the Ravennese provincial governors of Hispalis and Spartaria were forced to submit to Massena's reign in 855. By 860, another campaign had shattered the Kingdom of Spania, creating two more subservient duchies, Evora and Emerita, and forcing the Rex Hispania, formerly based in Emerita, to flee to Toledo.

However, it was not to last, as by 860 the Sahmid Sultanate of Alexandria had fully consolidated their hegemony over the remains of the Muslim Imamate, and had shifted policy from subservient pacificism under the Imam to aggressive expansion of the Dar-al-Islam. They invaded Mauretania in 867. Massena, by this point a man advanced in age, would nonetheless keep the muslims at bay for some two decades, even causing them to retreat back across the old border for several years after a string of glorious victories in 879. Of course it all ended when Massena, aged seventy-nine, died of natural causes in his capital of Tingi, where he had been intermittenly based during the wars, as the old capital of Yol fell, was re-captured, and fell again. The conflict with the Egyptians had put unprecedented strain on his kingdom, and he had largely lost the ability to maintain authority among the many subservient states that he had conquered. His reign was followed by a decade of civil war as a number of upstart dukes, chieftains and others tried to seize the kingship, only for it to eventually be won by his eldest grandson, half Berber and half Roman, Johannes I. Both the dukes of Spania and the Masmuda tribes simply neglected to recognise this new sovereign. While much territory was lost, the dynasty prevailed and survived, and the Sahmids would eventually be satisified with their conquests and become distracted by other theatres.
 
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School has picked up for me so free time and excess energy to spend on this project has decreased quite a bit. Here's some WIP snapshots for the next big world map, 930 AD. This stuff is not necessarily (although probably) finished, but do ask if you want elaboration.

First up,
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The Frankish Empire and (some of) her neighbours
More properly the Empire of the Franks, Romans and the Whole of the West. The Frankish emperors have yet do divide the realm into three squabbling parts. After the death of Peppin IV, aka. Peppin "neoaugustus", there was a brief not-really-even-squabble between his three sons, Charles, Grimoald and Sigebert, about who would get what title. The late emperor had clearly expressed his desire for Charles to succeed him, but Grimoald and Sigebert threaten war and the traditional Frankish division-of-the-realm-between-the-sons if they are not placated. Grimoald, the eldest of the three, is given the Kingdom of Burgundy, with which he is satisfied and withdraws his threats. Sigebert, the youngest and least popular son, is made the Prince of Herstal, from where their dynsty had originated with Pepin of Herstal. Charles takes the titles King of Neustria & Austrasia and Emperor of the Germans, Romans and the Whole of the West (Imperator Germanorum Romanorum Hesperium Universumque or something, please help my latin for god sake)

Grimoald's youngest son Lothair, bored with his lot as the youngest of three royal sons, decides to claim the throne of Wessex after the death of King Beorhwulf and the ascension of his son Beorhtric through the not-entirely-salient argument that his marriage to the eldest child and only daughter of the late king gives him that right, see the diagram of the descendants of King Ecgberht of Wessex and their positions below. "Other Means" here mostly means murder. Lothair lands with an army in Sussex in 875.
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Lothair's invasion goes swimmingly, including the defeat of the viking Guthrum in East Anglia in 880.

Two other noteworthy things on the map above: first, the striped area in the south is the part of Aquitania loyal to the Goths, specifically loyal to the Princedom of Tolosa. It's called the Gothic Aquitaine Duchies or simply Gothic Aquitania. As the Frankish Empire claims sovereignty over all of the Principality of Aquitania, these three provinces are disputed territory.
Second, Great Moravia; Now Greater Than Ever. The Magyars didn't go on their rampage round-trip of the entire fucking continent in this timeline, mostly doing something similar to the Bulgars and just staying in the Balkans and fucking over the Romans. This means that Moravia doesn't collapse at their coming, and is allowed to remain steady and even grow into the 900s. The big blue blob in Pannonia is the Bulgarian Kingdom; they fled there after the Magyar invasion but managed to rebuff them with help from the Moravians and the Savan Goths. Moravia holds significant influence there.

Next up, more Goths!
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The Gothic Empire and her subjects
It hasn't contracted much in the last hundred years, but it does have a lot more holes in it than it used to. The Goths had a rather rapid (for them) period of imperial succession in the second quarter of the 9th century until the beginning of the 10th. The mysterious disapperance in 840 AD of Emperor Ardaric (grandson of Ermanric, brother of Totila the Great) began this somewhat chaotic period when his cousin Egica seized the throne. Trouble was, Egica was already not-exactly-young when he ascended, and managed to die just four years later at the age of 65. Egica had had a lot of legitimacy, being the son of the emperor Teias, the second ruler of the Theuditian Dynasty. After he died, however, the brothers Wallia and Sigeric made a play. Wallia was the eldest son of Valamir, who was himself the son of Totila the Great. Valamir had been too young to succeed his father when the latter died, but had later been granted the position of Prince of Tolosa by Teias I, Totila's successor and Valamir's cousin, as a sign of respect. The Princedom had been given significant responsibility in the western provinces, primarily focused on crushing the remnants of the Frankish (Merovingian) nobility there. This gave Valamir a lot of influence, and effective control of the Tolosan province, and nearly the same in several others. So when Sigeric and Wallia made their move, one of the most powerful forces in the Empire moved with them, second only in military strength to the imperial office itself. Sigeric was made emperor in 844, and the strength and influence of the Princedom of Tolosa continued to grow. However, he had the same problem as Emperor Egica: he ascended at the age of 62. He would reing for eight years, dying in 856 AD. Wallia, despite being the older brother, outlived him, and took the throne upon his death, uniting the titles of Prince of Tolosa and Emperor of the Goths into one man. This was of course not to last, either: Wallia got 82 years, five of them on the imperial throne. His dual-title rule did not outlast him, as his two sons hated each other and refused to work together. (see below for a diagram of the successions here). The empire only avoided collapsing into a civil war because of some strong-handed decision-making by the old and dying emperor. The younger and politically weaker brother, Roderic, would be granted total authority over the Princedom and significant responsibility over the four Hispanic provinces, which had recently come under threat from the Mauretanian king Massena. In return for these concessions, the older brother, Athalaric II, would have the Empire. This compromise ensured the survival of the empire, although it effectively shifted control of everything west of Marseille away from Ravenna to Tolosa, a decision that would, in part and with time, tear the empire apart. Roderic died in 866, succeded by his son Eutharic, who ruled until 913. Athalaric II was succeded by the much younger brother of Roderic and Athalaric, Valamir II, who reigned until his forced abdication after the Gothic Civil War of 893 to 901 at the hands of the three grandsons of emperor Egica, and is succeded by Sigeric II.

On an entirely different note, there is the east. The cities of the Illyrian coast had never been fully lost through all the years of Roman rule in the region, and when they were forced to retreat due to Slavic assertions of indpendence and the perpetual conflicts between the Romans and various arrivals from the Pontic Steppe, Ravenna re-established authority over the coast, unifying the marcher-state known as the Duchy of the East and the various autonomous cities of Dalmatia into the Kingdom of the East (Gothic: Ostroreiki), a highly autonomous state in a de-facto tributary relationship with Ravenna. The Savan Kingdom (also known as Sava-Gothia or the Savan Goths) on their border is quite obstinately independent, despite all the official diplomatic talk of their recognition of the emperor in Ravenna as the reiks of all Goths.

Here's the succession from Totila to Athalaric II. Theudis is the claimed ancestor of the dynasty (hence 'Theuditian Dynasty'), but Eutharic is the more practical progenitor, as he is (thus far, anyway - as mentioned at the top, this is WIP) the one common ancestor of all the emperors.
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That's Europe, next is some Asia stuff.
 
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Moving on, China's broke again.

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Dead Tang; Turkic Zombie
The Tang Dynasty's collapse happened (or, in the case of this map, is happening) somewhat differently than IOTL. The divergence begins when the general Zhang Yichao re-established a territorial connection with the Regional Commandery of the Four Garrisons of the Pacified Outer West (aka. the Anxi Confederation) in 845. The rulers of the Anxi Confederation (referred to as the "Anxi commanders" or "Anxi generals") submit to the Tang, as they had always claimed to be simply a continuation of the old Anxi Protectorate, and are made regional commanders under the authority of Zhang. They quickly prove their worth, as they manage to turn away migrating Uyghurs fleeing the collapse of their Khaganate at the hands of the Yenisei Kirghiz. Zhang promises the Uyghur leader Pugu Jun that he will help him seize the Orkhon Valley and re-etsablish Uyghur authority over the northern barbarians if Jun pledges allegiance to the Tang, to which he swiftly agrees. Jun arrives in the valley in 852, and the Uyghur Khanate is established, known to history as the Eastern Uyghur Khanate to distinguish it from both the Uyghur Khaganate than came before, and from the segment of the Uyghurs who went west in stead of south, establishing the Western Uyghur Khanate (see below).
At this point, Zhang Yichao and the Anxi Protectorate walk off stage for about fifty years, until Zhu Wen seizes Chang'an and the imperial family and the collapse of the Tang Empire begins in earnest, as it did in OTL.

The jiedushi (powerful regional commanders who became the warlords of the post-Tang era) Zhu Wen declares himself Emperor Taizu of Liang, formally ending the Tang dynasty and beginning what we IOTL know as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Li Cunxu, the son of Li Keyong, himself a jiedushi and the arch-rival of Zhu Wen, establishes an alliance with Zhuang Huaishen, son and successor of Zhuang Yichao and the last man standing in the Anxi Civil War (more on that later), as well as the Khitan nomads, and destroy Zhu Wen's usurper dynasty in 923. Li Keyong and Li Cunxu both carried the name of the Tang imperial family, Li, but don't let that fool you: they weren't Han. They were Shatuo turks. But Keyong used the name, which his father had been granted by a Tang Emperor for services to the Dynasty, to legitimise himself, proclaiming the restoration of the Tang Dynasty under him; the Zuangzhong Emperor of Tang. Some smarter decisions are made than IOTL, primarily chosing to have Guo Chongtao (that's right; another jiedushi) investigated and tried over the accusations made by the Empress Liu that he is plotting an uprising in Sichuan, rather than just assassinating him. Guo is found innocent. It is subsequently discovered that Liu attempted after the trial to have the Zuangzhong Emperor's eldest son and heir-apparent Li Jili assassinate Guo, and she is made to commit suicide for treason.

Now, as for that Anxi Civil War.
When the Tang Dynasty finally collapsed at the hands of Zhu Wen in 907, a crisis emerged among the commanders of Anxi. They had since the An Lushan Rebellion pretended to still be subjects of the Tang, despite nearly zero power of the Heavenly Sovereign within their borders. Some generals, notably those based in the Altishahr, thought this arrangement's time was long overdue. They wanted a truly independent state with a single ruler, and since they were almost all either turks or some mix of turk and sogdian, they'd prefer if he was a Khan. The crisis was that the pro-Imperial faction no longer could pretend to be the subjects of the Tang, as the Tang had been destroyed. However, Zhuang Huaishen and his supporters (mostly based in the eastern garrisons of the confederation) objected to this, partially since there were more Han among them, but also because their closer proximity to the Middle Kingdom made them prefer a policy oriented towards it, rather than away from it. The war began in 908, less than a year after Zhu Wen's ascension to the throne. It raged until Li Cunxu approached Zhuang Huaishen and told him of his plan to restore the Tang dynasty under his leadership. This gave Zhuang an out from the war: he could once again be the ruler of a Tang protectorate if the Tang were restored. However, the far west was lost. The cities of Kashgar, Khotan and Kucha had formed together under a single Khan. The result was the creation of a new protectorate in the western half of the old one, known now as the Western Protectorate, and the establishment of a new state, the Khanate of Kashgar, in the region of....

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Central Asia!
Most of of the families that ruled this region a century ago still do so today. The dynasties established by the Great Parthian Rebellion go on; the Spandiyadhis, the Ispahbudhanids, the Surenids, the Varazids and the Kawusids. Of these, the Surenis of Sakastan have had the hardest time, from the persistent encroachment of the Shahis of Kabul in the east to the rise of the Kawusids in the west, who carry the will of the Shahanshah in Ctesiphon. This latter still remains ostensibly a tributary-state of the Sasanian Empire, although at this point calling it anything more than a close ally is a stretch. To the north the Ispahbudhanids, once the most influential of the Parthian Houses, are suffering under the threat of the Oghuz Turks, and while the Great Wall of Gorgan will keep them at bay, the stretches of land the Ispahbudhanids control beyond that wall are much more vulnerable.
To the east, the Varazids have enjoyed great prosperity from their control of the richest trade-cities this side of the Pamirs, and have shrugged off at least one invasion from the aforementioned other remnant of the Uyghur Khaganate, the Western Uyghur Khanate. Also depicted is the Khanate of Kashgar, described above, and the four principalities of Khorasan, who grew independent as the power of the three Parthian states that border them waned under outside pressure.
 
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It seems that Western nobles should have already switched from Gothic to Latin as the official language, and the vulgar dialect as the spoken language.
The Gothic church (Occidental Orthodoxy) uses the Gothic language and anti-Romanism (both in the sense of Constantinople and in the sense of the Pope) is a major component of Gothic political ideology. The elite language is Gothic, while the common language is a dialect continuum with vulgar latin on one end and Gothic on the other, with most speaking either a latinised form of gothic or a gothicised form of latin, depending on how you count. Speaking a "purer" form of Gothic (which would be given as the Gothic that the Creed of Sirmium is written in, which is not really a pure Gothic but that's neither here nor there) is seens as a prestige thing in much the same way that speaking a "purer" form of Attic was seens as a prestige thing in the Roman Empire.
Latins/Romans in Italy became Gothic ITTL in much the same way that Latins/Romans in Gaul became Franks/French IOTL.

Think of it how like the Slavs continued using their own language for church and state matters, even after becoming Christian.
 
I really need to start proofreading before I post. Or just not write this stuff just before going to bed...

The three posts above should be somewhat more coherent now.
 
Some thoughts about the Gothic titles I've been using:
So I've had some trouble with the language here. As I explained in a post above replying to WotanArgead, the Goths are broadly avoiding the use of Latin as much as possible, with the prestige language as well as the language of the Occidental Church and the language of administration being the High Gothic language, which as stated is the language of the Goths around the 6th century AD, i.e the language of Theodoric the Great, Athalaric I and of the Creed of Sirmium. Diplomatically, the Goths would have employed interpreters and translators when engaging with what they saw as foreign kings of equal stature (primarily those of the Franks, Romans and later the Arabs). The popular language would've been a dialect contiuum from highly Gothicized Latin to a Vulgar Latin with Gothic loans, emanating out from the Po Valley, where the Ostrogoths had most densely settled when they arrived in Italy and which has been the core of their state ever since, to the more isolated parts of Italy, particularly the higher Alps and Appenines. Southern Italy, which by the end of the 9th century (~860s) had fallen out of Gothic control, as it was seized first by the Romans and then soon thereafter by the Egyptians.
The point of all this is pretty simple: the titles. I've been using "Duke" and "Diocese" and "Emperor" and "King" for Gothic rulers but these are (obviously) all English terms with specific etymological derivations that had yet to happen in the period this TL covers.

The Latin form of the adminstrative divisions of the Gothic Emperor (as established by king Theodemir I in the 580s) - and they have a Latin form because they are specifically based on Roman administrative divisions - was that below the Emperor were the Duces (singular: Dux, translated as Duke) of the Diocese (singular: also Diocese), who oversaw the Vicars of the Provinces. That's the Roman system, just without the Provincial Prefectures as another level above the Diocese. And this is where I start to run into trouble, because if the premise here is that the administrative languages of the Goths was Gothic, and that a part of their political ideology was opposition to Latin (due primarily to religious politics) and to Romaic (i.e Greek) on more political grounds, the Romans being a primary opponent of the Goths, I end up in a position where I have to make up Gothic titles for all these positions. So that's what I've tried to do. It makes sense for me that they may have drawn more inspiration for titulature from the Romans than the Latins, so I've tried using some calques (I think?) of Romaic terms here as well. This is more of an appeal for criticism and comment than an explanation for How This Is, as this is the first time I've tried doing this kind of mild, reality-based conlanging. This is going to be somewhat stream-of-consciousness so apologies if it's a bit unstructured. Anyway.

The primary titles for rulers of the empire, the diocese and the provinces are:
  • Reiks, meaning ruler, who rules the reiki, or dominion, or allwaldans, which translates literally to "all-ruler". Waldans (which is reconstructed from the previous word) could be used for prominent positions of power subservient to the emperor, notably the Prince of Tolosa.
  • Kindins, which appears in the Gothic Bible as a translation of the Greek hegemon and which (according to wikipedia) appears in Greek and Latin sources where it is translated as iudex and dikastḗs, both meaning judge. Wikipedia also says that, according to some scholars, this was apparently an elected office of the Gothic tribes which wielded special monarchial power over a group of united reiks; a "war-leader" of sorts.
  • Ragineis, made up of the ragin (law, opinion, responsibility, decree, judgement, advice) and the -eis suffix, which turns it into an agent noun. This seems to me to result in a meaning somewhere around advisor, counsellor, legislator or judge, but it is also interesting to not that the word fidur-ragin-eis/ja (fidur being "four") is the gothic term for the tetrarchs/tetrarchy. TL;DR, I don't know what this word means, but it seems to mean something along the lines of someone who "does" laws.
I've used the word Duke/Dux for a lot of occasions relating to the Diocese, but this seems to actually just be based on a misunderstanding on my part. I always though that Dux was the title of the ruler of a Roman Diocese. In fact, it was originally a position in the Roman military hierarchy, subsequently the title of the governors of Roman provinces (military and civil), then the leader of expeditionary forces, and after Diocletian it became the highest military leader of a province and of a diocese. Long and short, it was always a military position, usually one which operated alongside a civil authority (the praesides of the provinces or the vicarius of the diocese), to which it was subservient. Despite this, I'm probably going to keep using Duke in some contexts, which would be loaned into Gothic as duks.
As for the emperor, I've got some alternate titles. Reiks would be the main one, of course - also probably the one everyone used colloqiually. Kaisar (obvious meaning) is a possibility, although I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand it makes a lot of sense; practically every geographical region this side of the Brahmaputra has at some point seen a ruler who employed some derivation of Caesar. It makes sense for this empire, which rules much of the same territory that Caesar himself did. On the other hand, there is that aforementioned anti-latinism. Would a state whose founding ideology is "we aren't Roman and we aren't Latin" use that term? And besides, I'm not sure how far I can take that anti-latinism/romanism and still have it be realistic. To the extent of discouraging the use of latin as a language in favour of gothic, sure, but to the extent of deliberately rejecting all notions of Roman imperial authority? Probably not. More likely would be an open and explicitly derision of Latin wrt religious matters, and when interacting with the Franks and the Papacy, and a sort of "we conquered you so how good can you really be" attitude towards the Roman Empire while simultaneously trying to appropriate the trappings of that aforementioned imperial authority.
Another imperial title is Thiudareiks. This should be recongisable, as it is the original gothic form of the name Theodoric. The word literally means 'people-ruler' (more appropriately 'ruler of the people'). I think it works well as a title for the gothic emperors, since Theodoric the Great is seen as the first of their office, albeit not in name. I like the idea of them turning his name into a title, the root word makes sense as a title for the office, and the notion of a ruler called "Theodoric III, 7th Theodoric" just tickles me. I might have to rework the names of the rulers so that only Theodoric the Great is called Theodoric, and all the rest (at least after the establishment of the empire) take it as a regnal name, similar to how all Parthian shahanshahs took the name Arsaces from their first ruler.
Alternate gothic words for the emperor are silbareiks (calque of autokrator) and hauhsreiks/hauhistireiks (high/highest king) and thiudans (apparently means 'king', 'prince', 'lord', or 'leader of the people' but I cannot find a satisfactory etymology; might use this one as the title of the Prince of Tolosa too).
As for the Lombards ruled by the Goths; I've thus far used "march", but the gothic cognate of march was marka, but that still just meant a boundary. I'm probably going to go with thiudans here, and use waldans as the title of the princes? maybe? thiudans has explicit connotations of being the ruler of a specific people (thiuda-), and the only ruler who would use that title is the lord of a specific minority group in the empire, the Lombards. Thiudans Laggabarda? Thiudalaggabarda?

Thanks for reading this ramble as I attempt to learn enough gothic from wiktionary entries and a threadbare dictionary i found online to be able to construct the workings of an imperial state. woo.
 
Whats going on in the Pannonian Basin Are the people living in the region Maygars Slavs or Turks? Maybe something even more exotic?
In 930, on the maps of the Frankish and Gothic empires shown above, there are three states in the Pannonian Basin: the north is controlled by Moravia, the Great Hungarian Plain is controlled by the Bulgars, and the western part around Lake Balaton is controlled by the Eastern March of the Frankish Empire, which is ruled by a Lombard noble house. Transylvania is inhabited by Vlachs who aren't controlled by anyone else because of the mountains.
The population is mostly Bulgars and Slavs and Avars and maybe some assorted Germanics and others.
 
In 930, on the maps of the Frankish and Gothic empires shown above, there are three states in the Pannonian Basin: the north is controlled by Moravia, the Great Hungarian Plain is controlled by the Bulgars, and the western part around Lake Balaton is controlled by the Eastern March of the Frankish Empire, which is ruled by a Lombard noble house. Transylvania is inhabited by Vlachs who aren't controlled by anyone else because of the mountains.
The population is mostly Bulgars and Slavs and Avars and maybe some assorted Germanics and others.
Who's going to win out in the end? Also what's up with Manicheism?
 
Who's going to win out in the end? Also what's up with Manicheism?
Bulgars are (probably) going to become the primary population of the Carpathian Basin, like Hungarians did IOTL.

The Western Uyghur Khanate is Manichean, but the Eastern Uyghur Khanate has adopted Buddhism as the official religion, as they needed the support of China to win back control of the region, and China was (and is) strongly opposed to Manichaeism. The Western Uyghurs are the only people whose majority- and state-religion is Manichaean.
 
Bulgars are (probably) going to become the primary population of the Carpathian Basin, like Hungarians did IOTL.

The Western Uyghur Khanate is Manichean, but the Eastern Uyghur Khanate has adopted Buddhism as the official religion, as they needed the support of China to win back control of the region, and China was (and is) strongly opposed to Manichaeism. The Western Uyghurs are the only people whose majority- and state-religion is Manichaean.
Whats the Language like in the Gothic kingdoms from what I understand it seems analogous to what happened in Gaul with the Franks. Where the Local Vulgar Latin speakers picked up some Frankish loans and the name. Is my interpretation correct.



Also how do Jews fair in Europe?
 
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Whats the Language like in the Gothic kingdoms from what I understand it seems analogous to what happened in Gaul with the Franks. Where the Local Vulgar Latin speakers picked up some Frankish loans and the name. Is my interpretation correct.



Also how do Jews fair in Europe?
1: Yes

2. Not notably better or worse than OTL
 
Some thoughts about the Gothic titles I've been using:
So I've had some trouble with the language here. As I explained in a post above replying to WotanArgead, the Goths are broadly avoiding the use of Latin as much as possible, with the prestige language as well as the language of the Occidental Church and the language of administration being the High Gothic language, which as stated is the language of the Goths around the 6th century AD, i.e the language of Theodoric the Great, Athalaric I and of the Creed of Sirmium. Diplomatically, the Goths would have employed interpreters and translators when engaging with what they saw as foreign kings of equal stature (primarily those of the Franks, Romans and later the Arabs). The popular language would've been a dialect contiuum from highly Gothicized Latin to a Vulgar Latin with Gothic loans, emanating out from the Po Valley, where the Ostrogoths had most densely settled when they arrived in Italy and which has been the core of their state ever since, to the more isolated parts of Italy, particularly the higher Alps and Appenines. Southern Italy, which by the end of the 9th century (~860s) had fallen out of Gothic control, as it was seized first by the Romans and then soon thereafter by the Egyptians.
The point of all this is pretty simple: the titles. I've been using "Duke" and "Diocese" and "Emperor" and "King" for Gothic rulers but these are (obviously) all English terms with specific etymological derivations that had yet to happen in the period this TL covers.

The Latin form of the adminstrative divisions of the Gothic Emperor (as established by king Theodemir I in the 580s) - and they have a Latin form because they are specifically based on Roman administrative divisions - was that below the Emperor were the Duces (singular: Dux, translated as Duke) of the Diocese (singular: also Diocese), who oversaw the Vicars of the Provinces. That's the Roman system, just without the Provincial Prefectures as another level above the Diocese. And this is where I start to run into trouble, because if the premise here is that the administrative languages of the Goths was Gothic, and that a part of their political ideology was opposition to Latin (due primarily to religious politics) and to Romaic (i.e Greek) on more political grounds, the Romans being a primary opponent of the Goths, I end up in a position where I have to make up Gothic titles for all these positions. So that's what I've tried to do. It makes sense for me that they may have drawn more inspiration for titulature from the Romans than the Latins, so I've tried using some calques (I think?) of Romaic terms here as well. This is more of an appeal for criticism and comment than an explanation for How This Is, as this is the first time I've tried doing this kind of mild, reality-based conlanging. This is going to be somewhat stream-of-consciousness so apologies if it's a bit unstructured. Anyway.

The primary titles for rulers of the empire, the diocese and the provinces are:
  • Reiks, meaning ruler, who rules the reiki, or dominion, or allwaldans, which translates literally to "all-ruler". Waldans (which is reconstructed from the previous word) could be used for prominent positions of power subservient to the emperor, notably the Prince of Tolosa.
  • Kindins, which appears in the Gothic Bible as a translation of the Greek hegemon and which (according to wikipedia) appears in Greek and Latin sources where it is translated as iudex and dikastḗs, both meaning judge. Wikipedia also says that, according to some scholars, this was apparently an elected office of the Gothic tribes which wielded special monarchial power over a group of united reiks; a "war-leader" of sorts.
  • Ragineis, made up of the ragin (law, opinion, responsibility, decree, judgement, advice) and the -eis suffix, which turns it into an agent noun. This seems to me to result in a meaning somewhere around advisor, counsellor, legislator or judge, but it is also interesting to not that the word fidur-ragin-eis/ja (fidur being "four") is the gothic term for the tetrarchs/tetrarchy. TL;DR, I don't know what this word means, but it seems to mean something along the lines of someone who "does" laws.
I've used the word Duke/Dux for a lot of occasions relating to the Diocese, but this seems to actually just be based on a misunderstanding on my part. I always though that Dux was the title of the ruler of a Roman Diocese. In fact, it was originally a position in the Roman military hierarchy, subsequently the title of the governors of Roman provinces (military and civil), then the leader of expeditionary forces, and after Diocletian it became the highest military leader of a province and of a diocese. Long and short, it was always a military position, usually one which operated alongside a civil authority (the praesides of the provinces or the vicarius of the diocese), to which it was subservient. Despite this, I'm probably going to keep using Duke in some contexts, which would be loaned into Gothic as duks.
As for the emperor, I've got some alternate titles. Reiks would be the main one, of course - also probably the one everyone used colloqiually. Kaisar (obvious meaning) is a possibility, although I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand it makes a lot of sense; practically every geographical region this side of the Brahmaputra has at some point seen a ruler who employed some derivation of Caesar. It makes sense for this empire, which rules much of the same territory that Caesar himself did. On the other hand, there is that aforementioned anti-latinism. Would a state whose founding ideology is "we aren't Roman and we aren't Latin" use that term? And besides, I'm not sure how far I can take that anti-latinism/romanism and still have it be realistic. To the extent of discouraging the use of latin as a language in favour of gothic, sure, but to the extent of deliberately rejecting all notions of Roman imperial authority? Probably not. More likely would be an open and explicitly derision of Latin wrt religious matters, and when interacting with the Franks and the Papacy, and a sort of "we conquered you so how good can you really be" attitude towards the Roman Empire while simultaneously trying to appropriate the trappings of that aforementioned imperial authority.
Another imperial title is Thiudareiks. This should be recongisable, as it is the original gothic form of the name Theodoric. The word literally means 'people-ruler' (more appropriately 'ruler of the people'). I think it works well as a title for the gothic emperors, since Theodoric the Great is seen as the first of their office, albeit not in name. I like the idea of them turning his name into a title, the root word makes sense as a title for the office, and the notion of a ruler called "Theodoric III, 7th Theodoric" just tickles me. I might have to rework the names of the rulers so that only Theodoric the Great is called Theodoric, and all the rest (at least after the establishment of the empire) take it as a regnal name, similar to how all Parthian shahanshahs took the name Arsaces from their first ruler.
Alternate gothic words for the emperor are silbareiks (calque of autokrator) and hauhsreiks/hauhistireiks (high/highest king) and thiudans (apparently means 'king', 'prince', 'lord', or 'leader of the people' but I cannot find a satisfactory etymology; might use this one as the title of the Prince of Tolosa too).
As for the Lombards ruled by the Goths; I've thus far used "march", but the gothic cognate of march was marka, but that still just meant a boundary. I'm probably going to go with thiudans here, and use waldans as the title of the princes? maybe? thiudans has explicit connotations of being the ruler of a specific people (thiuda-), and the only ruler who would use that title is the lord of a specific minority group in the empire, the Lombards. Thiudans Laggabarda? Thiudalaggabarda?

Thanks for reading this ramble as I attempt to learn enough gothic from wiktionary entries and a threadbare dictionary i found online to be able to construct the workings of an imperial state. woo.
I'm still slowly finding the time to digest this TL so I'm not fully caught up but I very much enjoy this in-depth worldbuilding you're engaging in. One thing I would say is thay there's always room for negotiation around the idea of what a founding ideology really means. One of Rome's foundational ideologies was republicanism. One kf the United States' founding ideologies was neutrality. As the interests and the realities of governance shift around states, these supposedly cornerstone values can be endlessly relitigated.

I don't know much about early Gothic polities but if they previously had little conception of imperial governance and are adopting the Roman model of administration and administrative subdivision, it stands to reason that they might then adopt the Latin terminology around those positions and responsibilities. After all, though it may be a term from the very conquerable Romans, there just wouldn't be another word for that thing yet. If their dislike is such that they can't stomach even that then I reckon they would implement an entirely new structure altogether rather than just change titles in the Roman imperial one.
 
Ok. Anyhow, your effort is inspiring and hopefully this COVID-wracked world give you a break to update soon because I don't have enough of your TL.
You're in luck;

The Justinian Dynasty, from 518 to 640
Note and disclaimer: if you mention or use the word 'byzantine' in this thread, I will find you and hurt you. No "byzantines" in my Roman Empire.
The timeline begins during the first emperorship of what our history calls the Justinian Dynasty, during the reign of the emperor Justin I, who, as IOTL, named his nephew Justinian as co-Emperor in April of 527, and then died in August, with Justinian becoming the new Emperor. Internally, Justinian's reign is much like OTL; Nika Uprising wreaks havoc in Constantinople, resulting in great architectural efforts to restore it (e.g Hagia Sophia), and a restoration of Niceano-Chalcedonism as the unambigously official position of the empire. Also ended the Acacian Schism and restored unity between Constantinople and Rome, again as OTL.
Military matters is where things diverge, and is where much of the stage is set for the rest of the TL. Where the Justinian of our timeline is remembered primarily for his great military conquests (Italy, Africa, Spain), this timeline sees his attempts at renovatio imperii fail disastrously. The Gothic War broke out in 541, when Justinian established an alliance with the Frankish king Chlothar I during the War of the Burgundian Inheritance (541 to 546). Justinian's motivations were, of course, not really focused around assisting the Franks with their claim to the throne of the late king Godomar II, but in stead around the aforementioned desire to restore Roman hegemony in western Europe by reconquering Italy. The year 542, despite being so early in the war, included two decisive events. First was the destruction by a Vandal fleet of a Roman expeditionary force leaving from Dyrrhachium, led by the general Belisarius. The remnants of this force landed in Calabria in February of the same year, where the pursuant Vandals and the small Ostrogothic garrison would wipe them out. The other event of 542 occured on the opposite end of the Empire: the rebellion of the Lazicans against the Roman magister militum per Armeniam, John Tzibus. Tzibus had worked to curb the authority of the Lazican king, a subject of the Roman Emperor, which angered the Lazic nobility, who requested the support of Rome's ancient enemy, the Persian Empire, in their efforts to liberate their Kingdom from the Roman yoke. This was the beginning of the Lazic war, a two-front conflict that ended with the Romans granting major territorial concessions to the Sassanids under Khosrow I; no land east of the Euphrates, including the wealthy city of Edessa (by then named Justinopolis) and the crucial fortress at Dara, would ever be ruled by a Roman emperor again.
The war in the west went significantly better. After a long series of skirmishes in Illyria, the Roman general Narses finally managed, in 551, to trap the Gothic king Athalaric within the walls of the city Sirmium. Negotiations concluded the next year, with Athalaric agreeing to symbolically reaffirm his status as a Roman subject. Aside from the death of Belisarius, one of Justinians strongest supporters, havoc caused by a decade of warfare in the Balkans, and the growth of a deep resentment of Romans by the Gothic nobility, very little materially changed as a result of this war. Athalaric convened the Council of Sirmium seven years later, formally seperating the Occiental Church from Roman Orthodoxy. While the Gothic War was nominally a victory for the Romans, with only the Goths having made concessions, it was not seen as such in Constantinople. Justinian had proclaimed the beinning of a restored Empire; the subordination of the Barbarian Hordes and the restoration a glorious past. This had not happened. Athalaric had proven that the armies of the Germanic tribes could still hold their own against the Empire; that the Roman claims to hegemony over the Germanic kings of the Italian Peninsula, while having been symbolically reasserted, was still naught but talk. These two wars, the disaster in Mesopotamia and the unfulfilled promise of Italy, broke Roman political culture in much the same way it would break Justinian himself: his latter years were characterized by increasing religious authoritarianism, a turn away from public life, and a loosening of the iron grip he had established over the empire following the destruction of the Nika rebels. When his wife Theodora died in 559, he would soon follow, dying less than a year later.

Although Justinian finally knew peace in 560, his Empire would not be so lucky. The failures of his reign would echo through the following centuries, as it continued to shrink territorially. His death was quickly followed by civil war. Justinian never made a choice regarding his succession, but his praepositus sacri cubiculi, Callinicus, did. There were two prospective candidates for the throne, both nephews of Justinian named Justin (Iustinius). Justin, son of Vigilantia, had the support of Callinicus, who claimed that Justinian had on his deathbed declared Justin Vigilantius his heir. He was quickly proclaimed in the hippodrome as Emperor Justin II, while the other prospective heir, also named Justin (son of Germanus), was made augustal prefect of Egypt in an effort to place him as far away from Constantinople as possible. Justin Germanus claimed that he and the other Justin had in fact made an agreement prior to Justinian's death that they would share power as co-Emperors, and the Justin II had broken this promise. Days later, Justin Germanus' guards would stop an attempt on his life by an assassain sent by Justin II. He rallied his supporters in Egypt and had himself proclaimed emperor Justin III, and the Justinian Civil War began. It lasted for fourteen years, ending in 574 when Justin II was murdered by his own bodyguards, the leader of whom had grown disaffected with his reign due to a series of failed campaigns against the rebel Justin III.
Justin III's reign was marked by a change in focus of the Roman state towards internal economic concerns rather than external conquests. The silk worms brought by Eastern* monks in the 560s would in the 570s finally begin to spark an industry of silk production, which caused an economic boom in the Roman empire and allowed it to stabilize and recover from the preceeding civil war. The latter decades of Justin III's reign was, broadly speaking, the last period of prosperity before the calamites that befell the Empire in the 7th century.
*Eastern here means Church of the East, not like Buddhist or something like that.

Having learned from the mistakes of Justinian with regard to the succession, Justin III proclaimed early and often that the young general who would later be known to history as Theodosius III would be his successor. Theodosius' reign, while it began as a continuation of the relative prosperity (at least in the Asian provinces and Egypt; the Balkans were wracked with raids from Slavs and Avars since Justinian's time) of Justin III, was ultimately catastrophic. From the turn of the seventh century, the Romans would become embroiled in a succession of disastrous conflicts. In 601 the deposed Sasanian Shahanshah, Khosrow II, managed to acquire the support of the Roman Empire against the Mihranid usurper Bahram Chobin, a decision that would result in the disastrous Battle of Ctesiphon in 603, where both Roman and Sasanian forces were massacred by a combination of Bahram's army, and the forces of the Shah of Arran (Caucasian Albania) and the King of (Caucasian) Iberia. Then, in 615, the 2nd Roman-Gothic War broke out, in which the Romans nearly defeated the Gothic kings, only to be utterly routed by a usurper to the Gothic throne, Witteric, who proclaimed himself Emperor of the Goths and would, almost twenty years later and as a continuation of the very same war, lay siege to Constantinolpe itself.
Just as the War of the Gothic Empire was finally drawing to a close in 635, an even more cataclysmic war began. In 634, the Muslim Caliph and Imam, Ali, launched a massive invasion of Palestine and Syria. By 636 his forces ruled the Levant; by 641 Egypt as well. A brief but bloody dispute occured when Theodosius III finally died in 640 as the general Heraclius disposed of any potential opposing heirs to the throne and proclaimed himself Emperor. His forces briefly recaptured major sections of Egypt before dying in 642, at the age of 66. His sons Constantine III and Heraclius II, ruling under the auspices of his widow Martina, evacuated all Roman forces and many nobles from the now Arab-ruled provinces and managed to stabilize the border in south-eastern Anatolia.

With the death of Theodosius III and the coup d'etat of Heraclius, the Justinian dynasty ended, having ruled the Romans for 122 years.

Territorial changes during the Justinian dynasty
LtR: Territory during the reign of Justin I, after Justinian I, and at the death of Theodosius III
Justinian dynasty.png

Note: Roman authority in much of the Balkans, in whole or in part, collapsed for centuries due to the incursion and settlement of Slavic peoples.
The Justinian dynasty was the last period of great expeditionary warfare until the wars of Phillip I in the late 8th and early 9th century. In stead, the military history of the next century was primarily characterised by the perpetual quagmire of war in the Balkans between the Bulgars and Romans, and occasionally the Arabs and Romans, and at least one civil war. I haven't really written any lore about the Heraclian dynasty, as it more or less proceeded as OTL in terms of policy, with the major difference being that Heraclius II had a long rule as sole Emperor after the deaths of his brother and co-Emperor Constantine III in 643. He was succeeded by venile idiot Constantine IV (not to be confused with the emperor Constantine IV who reigned in roughly the same period IOTL, this is a different guy also named Constantine), at which point things start to get interesting again, but that'll have to be a different post.
 
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