The effects of surviving Byzantinium?

If the POD is the Macadonian dynasty surviving and manzikert being avoided would surely mean the Turks, instead of going into Anatolia, would have a more stable position in Syria which could easily cause the failure of the first crusade and that could cause massive butterfly's in the west.
 
If the POD is the Macadonian dynasty surviving and manzikert being avoided would surely mean the Turks, instead of going into Anatolia, would have a more stable position in Syria which could easily cause the failure of the first crusade and that could cause massive butterfly's in the west.

Would there even be a crusade in these circumstances?

Romanus (or whoever, but it's a fair stab at the emperor's name) won't be asking for western help, and even if the other factors add up to mean a crusade happens, he can tell the pillaging, looting, raping crusaders that they can either get out of the empire or be attacked as invaders.
 
As opposed to being at war on two fronts with Bulgaria as one front?

I'm not going to say annexing Bulgaria was without consequences, but it wasn't the worst decision ever made. Plain and simple, Byzantium is in no position to avoid having to face war as a possibility both West/North and South/East. No position at all.

Absolutely the first option was less bad. The Bulgarians were not Pechenegs in terms of destructiveness, once conquered they kept revolting anyway, and the troops they provided proved unreliable over and over again.

Bulgaria that survived would have to deal with the Pechenegs, Hungarians and Normans themselves, so it wouldn't always be an automatic enemy.

I also suggested it because it's more interesting as a POD than the old "Manzikert" option.
 
Would there even be a crusade in these circumstances?

Romanus (or whoever, but it's a fair stab at the emperor's name) won't be asking for western help, and even if the other factors add up to mean a crusade happens, he can tell the pillaging, looting, raping crusaders that they can either get out of the empire or be attacked as invaders.

It's possible that such a ERE will be the ones who reconquer Jerusalem. Not the West.
 
Absolutely the first option was less bad. The Bulgarians were not Pechenegs in terms of destructiveness, once conquered they kept revolting anyway, and the troops they provided proved unreliable over and over again.

Bulgaria that survived would have to deal with the Pechenegs, Hungarians and Normans themselves, so it wouldn't always be an automatic enemy.

I also suggested it because it's more interesting as a POD than the old "Manzikert" option.

It's interesting, but . . .

If they kept revolting, why did the empire hold on to the area for a century and a half? (Admittedly with the first revolt I can think of barely a generation after the Bulgarslayer)

And the Bulgarian Empire is a formidable-enough opponent that "What if Basil just pretends Bulgaria isn't a problem?" doesn't really work.

Bulgaria as a vassal is just as likely to revolt as Bulgaria as a province, probably more so (Serbia comes to mind as an example, and the Bulgarian Empire is considerably harder to make submit than Serbia alone).

I'm not an expert on the issue (of the Balkans), but if you're going to assert "absolutely less bad", I would love to see this sourced and given details.
 
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