Effects of an Anglo-Byzantine force reclaiming England?

Well, from the Byzantine perspective at the time, the British Isles were merged with Scandinavia as "Thule", the remote northern edge of the oecumene, tormented by Arctic winds and a source of angry barbarian warriors. The voyage to England would be seen as virtually a death sentence for any Greeks participating.

However perhaps Alexios I could use the expedition as a way to get rid of armed factions in the Byzantine Empire that are too ambitious for the Emperor's liking. This could be any number of defeated enemies or suspected but not confirmed mutinous factions. For example the Normans left in Asia Minor, ironically, or Cuman auxiliaries, Crusaders, Pechenegs, Seljuk Turks, Greek nobles who had aligned themselves with plotting factions without being the leaders of those plots, bandits, etc.

It starts off as basically a banishment but then a mutual agreement is mediated by the Varangians. In 1084, Alexios faced a conspiracy against him by the senate and officers of the army, but to conceal the plot's importance, merely banished the leaders and confiscated their estates. Maybe some join the departing English. That would also bring into question the loyalty of the Varangian Guard, though.
 
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@Viralworld so you say yourself that these are the same Englishmen that joined the Guard after 1066, which I am well aware of. In fact so many Englishmen joined the Varangian Guard that it became more English than Scandinavian. You still don't explain how this differs from OTL, where they're already used as mercenaries by Alexios and the emperors before him, and how it can possibly be better than OTL when OTL was brutal for the Greeks even without wasting resources on a trip to England.
 
@Viralworld so you say yourself that these are the same Englishmen that joined the Guard after 1066, which I am well aware of. In fact so many Englishmen joined the Varangian Guard that it became more English than Scandinavian. You still don't explain how this differs from OTL, where they're already used as mercenaries by Alexios and the emperors before him, and how it can possibly be better than OTL when OTL was brutal for the Greeks even without wasting resources on a trip to England.

Because this expedition of 350 ships and men were not the same group of men that joined the Varangian Guard. As the Wikipedia article states, some of these men from the expedition to Constantinople did indeed stay and join the Varangian Guard, but the rest went to the Crimea and settled there. OTL, post settlement, these men killed a tax official sent to them and then just took up piracy without the supervision of any sort of unified command or purposes.

Thie PoD is that these men, instead of settling in and fading into obscurity in the neglected northern reaches of the Empire. They instead make a proposition to the empire to help them reclaim their homeland. This adds a large pool of men to be used by the military that otherwise simple lived up north and raided the Black Sea.

Also, I’ve stated plenty of times that recently it has been brutal for the Greeks, yes. But the 1090’s is a time of recovery and restoration. The Komnenian Restoration is a thing but you keep referencing decline because you’re looking at the overall trend. The Greeks were in general declining towards a fall, but that was centuries away still and this was a recovery that would last a few more decades and led to a more resurgent Byzantium, at least for the time being, so I still don’t know what you mean by the Greeks having a rough time of it.
 
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Vuu

Banned
They have few reason to do so at their historical level

If they're much stronger though...
 
They have few reason to do so at their historical level

If they're much stronger though...

I suppose the original PoD being a Manzikert Victory under Romanos Diogenes would be much easier than all of this under Alexios Komnenos and his somewhat difficult surroundings. Diogenes was a capable commander and for some reason I’ve always felt bad for the man (You get elevated to the throne, and confidently lead your military east to gain renown, but you get crushed, humiliated, painfully blinded by your enemies, and left to die in a monastery.) He is probably a better PoD for this scenario, you’re right. The Byzantines will not have to deal with the post-Manzikert fall out, the catastrophic loss of Anatolia, the total collapse of the theme system, etc. and this puts them in a much better position to fund such an expedition.

Probably more interesting as well to have a stronger eastern emperor in case these Angli Orientales do decide to join the Eastern Church and attempt to set up tentative communication lines (hard to do but not impossible if you look at the Crusades.)
 

Vuu

Banned
Hmm, maybe they pull an ebin Justinian again. Or keep what they conquered, though that may cause enough butterflies to delete the normans entirely
 
Could you get French support by offering them the Normans land in Normandy? Maybe something as simple as letting the army pass through and some boats? It could make logistics less of a headache and create an amazing Roman-French-English alliance
 
I don't like to be that guy, but why would the emperor send this army to somewhere so far away? It is so far that he would never get any reward from it even if the enterprise is succesful. There are so many richer and closer lands, the Middle East, Balkans, Africa, Italy, and Spain, all of them very close compared to Britain.

If they're much stronger though...

Then Egypt would speak greek today... IMHO.
 
Because this expedition of 350 ships and men were not the same group of men that joined the Varangian Guard. As the Wikipedia article states, some of these men from the expedition to Constantinople did indeed stay and join the Varangian Guard, but the rest went to the Crimea and settled there. OTL, post settlement, these men killed a tax official sent to them and then just took up piracy without the supervision of any sort of unified command or purposes.

Thie PoD is that these men, instead of settling in and fading into obscurity in the neglected northern reaches of the Empire. They instead make a proposition to the empire to help them reclaim their homeland. This adds a large pool of men to be used by the military that otherwise simple lived up north and raided the Black Sea.

Also, I’ve stated plenty of times that recently it has been brutal for the Greeks, yes. But the 1190’s is a time of recovery and restoration. The Komnenian Restoration is a thing but you keep referencing decline because you’re looking at the overall trend. The Greeks were in general declining towards a fall, but that was centuries away still and this was a recovery that would last a few more decades and led to a more resurgent Byzantium, at least for the time being, so I still don’t know what you mean by the Greeks having a rough time of it.
You don't think the emperor of 1066 or 1067 OTL didn't want to keep those warriors? I doubt he could afford them, so he offered them to settle in the backwater of Crimea, figuring they could do more good than harm.

Of course I'm not thinking about the 1190s, you think the English will keep their culture that long! Come on man that's 130 years after 1066, even if they serve Constantinople for generations, they'll all have become Greeks by that time.

This kind of fantasy return of a king or army after hundreds of years only happens in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. In real life I can't think of a single case where serious claimants fought more than 100 years (Jacobitism). Even then their headquarters (France or Ireland) were VERY near their homeland instead of all the way across Europe, transport was easier and states more centralized (technology), and they had a lot of native support. The native English of the 11th and 12th centuries don't have the freedom or resources of 17th and 18th century British to rebel, there's a reason there weren't peasant rebellions til the 14th century in England.

France helping the English in exchange for Normandy is just asking for an ass whooping, before Philippe II Augustus the French king was more the spiritual head of France, and was weaker than most of his rivals

This idea is ASB.
 
You don't think the emperor of 1066 or 1067 OTL didn't want to keep those warriors? I doubt he could afford them, so he offered them to settle in the backwater of Crimea, figuring they could do more good than harm.

Of course I'm not thinking about the 1190s, you think the English will keep their culture that long! Come on man that's 130 years after 1066, even if they serve Constantinople for generations, they'll all have become Greeks by that time.

This kind of fantasy return of a king or army after hundreds of years only happens in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. In real life I can't think of a single case where serious claimants fought more than 100 years (Jacobitism). Even then their headquarters (France or Ireland) were VERY near their homeland instead of all the way across Europe, transport was easier and states more centralized (technology), and they had a lot of native support. The native English of the 11th and 12th centuries don't have the freedom or resources of 17th and 18th century British to rebel, there's a reason there weren't peasant rebellions til the 14th century in England.

France helping the English in exchange for Normandy is just asking for an ass whooping, before Philippe II Augustus the French king was more the spiritual head of France, and was weaker than most of his rivals

This idea is ASB.

Sorry, definitely a typo on my part o_O

I meant to say the 1090’s, only a couple decades or so after 1066. I definitely wouldn’t think of having some mythical Saxon return after over a century :D. Apologies for that! I’ll go fix the typo now.
 
Sorry, definitely a typo on my part o_O

I meant to say the 1090’s, only a couple decades or so after 1066. I definitely wouldn’t think of having some mythical Saxon return after over a century :D. Apologies for that! I’ll go fix the typo now.
Ugh and there I go not remembering that the 1190s were the disastrous Angeloi, and that 1090s right after the Doukai were the Komnenoi x'Dx'D
My points about local support and French help still stand, more so in the 1090s than the 1190s, even.
 
This is very interesting and something I've never heard of before!

To be completely honest, I'd find the prospect of New England thriving, consolidating its position in Crimea and expanding from there to be more fascinating than the Anglo-Saxons using the Byzantines to retake England.

Imagine... Anglo-Saxon Russia! (That's definitely something I'd never thought I'd say!)
 
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