For centuries, and even to
the modern day maybe, the legacy of Rome looms large. So many polities and kings have derived their legacy to that empire and its precursor republic. So how could a European country reject that legacy in favor of either some other tradition to base off of (besides nomadic horse archer peoples from the east), or in favor of inventing a new one entirely? I guess doing it off of a new Christian tradition would've been more possible by the time of the Reformation.
A less radical idea I still remember from
@Faeelin's old
Mustafa the Pretender TL that I
used to obsess about:
But, that's still a
Roman Catholic empire, with all that entails, and will still hearken back to Rome at some level.
I'm somewhat amused that the timeline was probably written before Crusader Kings was popular (definitely pre-CK II), and the concept of medieval kingdoms forming ahistorical empires based on conquered lands was popular. I think there were CK I mods that did allow that to happen, though.