Tyr Anazasi
Banned
Without the Fourth Crusade as we know it, Byzantium might have a chance to survive against the Ottomans later
I don't know if the Ottomans will even be a thing.They will probably be little more than Turkic bandits that gets wiped out along with the other Turks in Anatolia once the Seljuks Sultanate implodes.Without the Fourth Crusade as we know it, Byzantium might have a chance to survive against the Ottomans later
Fair enough I suppose, but even if the empire doesn't directly rule the Holy Land, a large number of German nobles would probably see it dragged into the European struggles of power, in particular between Germany and France.
If the Kingdom of Jerusalem has been recovered, anything beyond that is probably unlikely, then I think a Fourth Crusade is quite possible but one which actually sticks to its original target of invading Egypt. How successful they are, and how long they manage to retain control if they were - I have doubts about how they would treat the local Coptic Christian minority never mind the Muslims, is a rather large question however.
You did however have events like the Lombard War otl.Well IOTL the Crusader States' largely French nobility didn't get very involved in French affairs. Besides, even if the Crusaders had wanted to get involved in affairs back home, they were too distant to offer anything more than token support. Most of the crusading expeditions never reached the Holy Land, and those that did often had to leave early to stop rivals back home causing mischief. There's no reason to think that these problems wouldn't have applied equally strongly to an army going the other way.