Balkan Byzantine Empire?

Sorry but, how? They were conquered in 1462 by a resurgent Bulgaria, but their civil institutions were kept more intact as a result of being conquered by a people with fewer resources than the Ottomans, and they managed to break away when the reigning Bulgarian monarch died in the 1470s.

I think we covered this in the thread itself - I don't think Byzantium has the military power to do more than hope it isn't conquered right away, you do.
 
I think the Byzantine Empire or at least Byzantine Constantinople could survive by a union with Rome and being a vassal of a rather large Catholic nation, like Castille.
 
I think the Byzantine Empire or at least Byzantine Constantinople could survive by a union with Rome and being a vassal of a rather large Catholic nation, like Castille.

A Union with Rome that the populace does not want?

And being a vassal of a large Catholic nation is only protection to the extent the Catholic nation can/will protect.
 
A Union with Rome that the populace does not want?

And being a vassal of a large Catholic nation is only protection to the extent the Catholic nation can/will protect.

I thought that was the only viable option, seeing that Constantinople in the 1450s has the population the size of only a typical city and surrounded on all sides by hostiles. No way out except being a possession of a large power, preferably Catholic.

Or perhaps, the Emperor could swear allegiance or ally with the Timurids? Though that is maybe overboard.
 
So, what, other than the geographic location of Constantinople, stayed the same exactly, if the citizens, clergy, military, aristocracy, monarch, succession system, religion, and foreign relations were all dismantled and replaced with those of the Ottomans?

The institutions of state, the Ottomans co-opted Byzantine bureaucratic and government structure in order to run their state, Constantinople may have become a Turkish and Armenian city primarilly but outside The City to your average Greek things are likely not too different. The old elites may be gone but the new ones rule the same way as them.
 
I thought that was the only viable option, seeing that Constantinople in the 1450s has the population the size of only a typical city and surrounded on all sides by hostiles. No way out except being a possession of a large power, preferably Catholic.

Or perhaps, the Emperor could swear allegiance or ally with the Timurids? Though that is maybe overboard.

Honestly I would argue the opposite, this will only hasten the death of the empire by making the Empire deeply unpopular among its citizens and among the entire Greek Orthodox clergy, who may well invite Ottoman invasion in order to avoid Catholic rule (its hard to overstate how deeply unpopular the idea of reunion with Rome was).
 
Honestly I would argue the opposite, this will only hasten the death of the empire by making the Empire deeply unpopular among its citizens and among the entire Greek Orthodox clergy, who may well invite Ottoman invasion in order to avoid Catholic rule (its hard to overstate how deeply unpopular the idea of reunion with Rome was).

I would second this. Especially since "reunion' is a euphemism for "submission" - that should give you an idea of how much is being demanded by the "Reunion' path.
 
I think we covered this in the thread itself - I don't think Byzantium has the military power to do more than hope it isn't conquered right away, you do.

Well, yes, I do think that the fact that they were actively invading their neighbors with intent to conquer into the 1440's meant they would take advantage of weakened neighbors, but the point I feel is rather moot with regards to the TL since in it they were conquered within a decade after the siege of 1453 anyways, just not by the Ottomans or any other nation strong enough to totally dissolve the state.

The institutions of state, the Ottomans co-opted Byzantine bureaucratic and government structure in order to run their state, Constantinople may have become a Turkish and Armenian city primarilly but outside The City to your average Greek things are likely not too different. The old elites may be gone but the new ones rule the same way as them.
Again, the institutions of state were not kept intact, they were replaced in their entirety, albeit with a small number of new ones being loosely based upon the old ones. The military, clergy, aristocracy, and the citizenry of Constantinople were rebuilt from the ground up, with no connection or relation to Byzantium, while the beurocracy was based on the Byzantine model, but was not the same. Even the language of buisness changed. And the old elites shared a culture, language and religion with the citizens, while the new ones did not. I have found little aside from the Sultan's adoption of the title of Emperor to suggest that the Ottomans were any sort of continuation of Byzantium. They were their own unique culture and people, and their connections to Byzantium were not appreciably stronger than their shared geography, just like the Latin Empire of Constantinople before them.
 
Well, yes, I do think that the fact that they were actively invading their neighbors with intent to conquer into the 1440's meant they would take advantage of weakened neighbors, but the point I feel is rather moot with regards to the TL since in it they were conquered within a decade after the siege of 1453 anyways, just not by the Ottomans or any other nation strong enough to totally dissolve the state.

What's left to be dissolved?
 
What's left to be dissolved?
The aristocracy (destroyed utterly by the Ottomans IOTL), clergy (purged of men capable of leading and subjected by the Ottomans, but otherwise left in tact), the military (approximately 1,000 regulars by the fall, obviously destroyed), the imperial family (only allowed to return after giving up all claims to the throne, converting, and surrendering all assets that were not controlled by the sultan), and many major Greek population centers (Constantinople being the most prominent, as the people were slaughtered and replaced). Of course, they also stopped the usage of Greek in the government, and introduced the jizya, including the right to conscript and forcibly convert the children of Orthodox, so they not only removed the old state structure, but added new entirely foreign elements as well.

In mine they are conquered without serious fighting, by another Orthodox (using the term loosely) power, using a dynastic claim. Greek remains the language because most of the other Balkan nations did not have as developed or prestigious languages at the time. The military is dissolved except for the palace guard. The royals are allowed to stay so long as they acknowledge the new regime, and if they don't they are driven out, but there are no preemptive confiscations of property. The clergy is attacked to some extent, but not to the same degree as Mehmed II decimated it. Most importantly, citizen deaths are minimal, and Constantinople is still primarily Greek.
 
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