As a blow from a Serb's blade grazed over his shield in a ride-pass, John found himself missing Michael; his Allagator no longer able to ride beside him and fight after the loss of his arm.
Manuel galloped in; punching aside the Serb and his horse with a burst of his lance--tossing it aside, and drawing his mace in the name of his Emperor, just as John called a word of praise out to him--then rallying ten of his closest retinue for a charge.
His commanders were doing well, as were Manuel's own Serbs; the enemy were on the back foot--but Simeon was far from the weakling Stefan V Uros had been.
"These bastards are unending!" Manuel called out, offering a derisive noise, as he led his own wing off to counter the moving enemy archers.
John thought that an understatement.
They rode; John rallying more and more of his retinue to him with calls and chants that brought on fervour right as they smashed into the enemy lines and broke them aside; his infantry moving in to take advantage.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glitter of sun off of metal--barely, and just in time, as he turned to face a blow that would have caved in his head; hacking for breath as the mace of the false-King Simeon smashed downwards into his shoulder.
Both their horses resisted, and showed their displeasure--as Simeon's own retinue forced aside John's; leaving them alone.
"Greek! I have you!"
John hacked again--blood spraying the inside of his helm, which John bluntly undid and ripped from his head; releasing his damp copper locks to the hot air, and shaking them out as he levelled his eyes onto the Serb, readying his horse as he was.
"Mounaki!" came John's spitting response, along with more blood--he wasn't going to die, not now--not now.
Simeon charged, mace raised, and John rose and rode, shield-arm limp at his side--lance couched... aimed low.
The false-King grunted and hissed as it banged, squelched, and shattered inside of him--just below his plating; spreading open his guts--yet still he didn't stop; readying his mace.
He swung again, and John ducked it, letting go of his lance; lashing out with his good arm and, with a forceful tug and satisfying pop breaking, and dislocating, Simeon's forearm in the scramble for the mace.
The Serb was hacking up blood now, same as John--only John was grinning, as he lifted Simeon's own mace... and brought it down.
1360 to 1361
Prince Manuel I, as he was now known, had done well in rallying the resources available to him as the new Prince of Serbia; having taken Skadar early in May, which was to form the border-city to Roman Albania--and thereafter capturing Ljes in the name of the Romans.
Of course, news of Simeon's march south, clearly intending to take Prizren, forced Manuel and his forces to return to his capital, therein finding John already arrived with his forces to aid his brother-in-law, and Prince of Serbia [1].
Preparations were made, and it was decided early that fighting within or near Prizren wasn't an option; they would engage Simeon in the environs around Nerodimlje, and put an end to this.
It wouldn't be that simple though; Simeon wasn't as daft as Uros had been and had forward-riders, and scouts of his own... turning this entire thing into one big game of reorienting, and attempts at an ambush.
But finally, Roman scouts won out in late May; catching the Serbs pausing their march around the hills that formed a ridge leading towards Nerodimlje, and onward to Prizren; Simeon was rallying his long train of forces into a cohesive unit to finalise the march to Manuel's capital.
Thus, the following morning, once the forces of John and Manuel themselves caught up, battle would commence with an arrow volley ambush; 20,000 of Simeon's Serbs against John and Manuel's rough 14,000 total--of which Manuel commanded 2,000 or so.
The Battle of Nerodimlje, as it was known due to its proximity, was a bloody all-day affair; John was wounded in a charge by Simeon himself, even as the Emperor killed the false-King in personal combat. It would be left to Manuel to finish it; rallying the Romans against their enemies and crushing them.
8,000 or so Serbs lay dead on the battlefield to begin with, and another 3,000 or so would die in the following weeks of reprisals and follow-up attacks. The Romans had lost around 4,500 men.
John would spend the next month or so recovering enough in Prizren to depart for his own lands once more; leaving behind various resources, and a detachment, for Manuel to command alongside his own growing forces.
The Emperor would return to Constantinople by July; welcomed in triumph down the Mese, and then in private by his family; although they all knew he would need to depart again for Serbia to finalise things.
He would work with Kantakouzenos to prep several laws, which the Emperor intended to publish once he returned from Serbia again--here it was discussed between the two many things, which would in time become relevant.
After much was put in place the Emperor would depart alongside his retinue for Serbia once more; having disbanded the Allagion to allow its men to return to their homes so they could make use of the last of summer, and the following autumn, to handle their families, lands and akin.
In September John would arrive to fanfare and welcome in Prizren by Manuel, and his wife Theodora, with the news coming to him that Manuel had managed by now to subdue much of Serbia--all that was left were a few hostile holdouts and disloyal vassals.
Over the course of the still-ongoing 'conquest' of Serbia, by now nearing its third year, much of Serbia's aristocracy had been cut down; leaving plenty of room for Manuel to appoint a new mix of native, and Roman, nobility that would be loyal to him, and the regime he was building.
The Magyars had been a problem, however; Louis I had started causing issues as soon as Manuel had taken Rudnik in July, but now? The King of Hungary-Croatia wanted peace--a discussion. His own efforts to unite the two realms he ruled, and their aristocracy, under Catholicism at the expense of their Orthodoxy and Paganism was being met with pushback, and he'd already wasted plenty blood and treasure attempting to crush the Slavs of Bosnia and Serbia--he wanted out, and a lot of money alongside.
Manuel and John debated this, back and forth; deciding on a meeting with Louis to discuss terms and so forth in Belgrade the following year--thereafter sending an armed messenger to pass this along.
Louis' acceptance of this would come a month later, in October, as John and Manuel moved around Serbia pacifying and putting down various surviving hostilities.
The Emperor would spend another birthday, and Christmas, in Serbia; housed happily in Prizren.
He was now 30, nearly as old as his father had been when he had become Senior Emperor.
The ride to Belgrade had been an uneventful one, and Louis proved himself a good host; matching the chivalry and pomp one should have expected of a man of his character and calibre.
The King of Hungary-Croatia was simple in his demands; in exchange for several borderforts he'd been struggling over with the Serbs for years, and a sizeable payout, he would offer a long peace of 15 years and all of Serbia-Bosnia held within the hellish mountainlands that had been such a sink for his time and resources.
John happily opened his treasury; declaring thereafter, once the Treaty of Belgrade was signed, that Manuel was to get all the lands offered--and that Louis would find no firmer treaty partner than the Romans and Serbs.
It was a meander following this; John taking his time to aid Manuel in further cementing his realm, as both knew that actually integrating it all, let alone Bosnia, would be a lifelong endeavour.
By the time John returned to Constantinople, it was May of 1361, and he had spent far too much time 'abroad' in his mind.
It was then, that John Kantakouzenos, decades-long Grand Domestic, and a key ally of the Imperial Household, would officially announce his retirement, and wish to leave for a lesser monastic life to live out his last days. In this, he and John V would unveil a massive list of legal reforms that had been brewing as long ago as the early reign of Andronikos III.
All of this on the centenary of Palaiologi rule.
Reforms that would discontinue the Pronoiar; disbanding their usage as a thing of the Empire--and strip away at the ancient notion of the 'Office of the Emperor' by putting into law what would be the first official writ on succession; effectively installing Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture, in the event an heir had not been directly named, for the first time in the history of the Empire [2].
It is telling that the former, rather than the latter, is what elicited a reaction; with several Pronoiar rallying what was left of their retinues--considering that, over the past 40 or so years, they had been gradually depowered--in an attempt to strongarm the Emperor into rescinding the Golden Bull and restore their status.
Of course, these were all crushed by the Governorates after less than 3 months.
A key aspect of the law, and one which made it palatable to the majority of the already depowered aristocracy, was that they were to retain their estates and the powers they held upon those estates.
One could have looked back to the reign of Basil II and found many similarities in the way the Golden Bull had been designed to curb the aristocracy firmly.
1361, aside from all of this, would end rather quietly--so quietly that the death of Orhan Ghazi, and the rise of his son Murad to the Sultanship of the Ottomans, would pass by effectively unnoticed.
---
[1] Roman Client States, under the 'Serbian Model', could often rely on Roman forces garrisoned there to aid their own armies in times of trouble. This, alongside the fact that Rome was constantly investing in her Clients and more firmly integrating them into the 'Universal Empire', ensured feelings of anger and a drive to revolt were kept to a minimum.
[2] While originally a lesser unspoken rule, the notion of Agnatic Primogeniture firmly took root with the Macedonian Dynasty, which shifted the Romans into a culture that came to rely on centralised, dynastic, leadership. So strong was this that what had been Agnatic eventually evolved into Agnatic-Cognatic to allow for women to continue the Imperial Bloodline; overwriting the distrust and hatred of female Empresses that had been birthed by the heinous actions of Irene of Athens. This new cultural norm would only be further solidified by the Komnenoi, who turned the Empire in their day into a dynastic project.
By 1361 the Palaiologi had ruled the Empire for 100 years, and the notion of dislodging them was far, far, from the minds of anyone within the Empire. Thus the Golden Bull, which established what amounted to Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture in the event of a successor not being directly named by the Emperor, would pass by without much issue; although some might say that is because it was also accompanied by the much more scandalous, at the time, revocation of the Pronoiar.
