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Like the OP says, is it possible for the Byzantines to be made into a tributary state by Timur? Say, after Timur shatters the Turks at Ankara, he decides to further humiliate them by subjecting them to heathen lords (the Emperors in Constantinople, or maybe Trebizond), and goes off to contemplate frying some bigger fish, namely China and India. There would be some resistance, of course, but on the whole could the Turks have really resisted? Manuel II Palaeologus was the emperor at the time in Constantinople, and Manuel III Komnenos ruled in Tebizond. Both had been in power for ten years and OTL would go on to rule for 10 to 20 more years, which means that their empires would be relatively stable. The biggest problem I could think of would be civil war between the Turks and Byzantines, who would have a hard time even getting troops to those areas, but what's Byzantine history without civil war?
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