Part XLIX: The Opening of the Davidine Period (1523-1525)
Eparkhos
Banned
Part XLIX: The Opening of the Davidine Period (1523-1525)
Loukas Ratetas had, during his long regency, secured the throne of the Megalokomnenoi for the young aftokrator David. Like Anastaios or Tzimiskes before him, he had overseen a period of domestic quiet and successful campaigns abroad that would allow his ward to assume the office of ruler under the best possible circumstances. The treasury had recovered from its nadir during the reign of Alexios V, while the bandons had recovered much of their strength after the brief civil war during the early regency. Thanks to the acts and perseverance of Ratetas, David would be able to open his reign with a flurry of action, a trend which would define his long and successful reign….
On the night of 13 March 1523, hundreds of candles were lit in the streets of Trapezous. Dozens of small processions formed in all parts of the town, pouring towards the center of the town before merging together into a single parade. Thousands of Trapezuntine marched down the mese, chanting prayers and acclimations as they approached the Hagia Sophia[1]. Icons rose above the marchers, depicting Saint Eugenios, Saint Basileios and the many military saints affiliated with the Komnenoi. At the head of this great procession were the eleutheroi, marching in perfect formation under arms, the chi-rho painted on their shields and regimental flags flying in the wind. At the front of the eleutheroi, atop a glistening white horse, rode David himself, who chose to conceal himself in hooded robes similar to a monk’s. After reaching the Upper Town, the procession made a sharp turn onto the road leading to the Hagia Sophia, which sat rigidly against the darkness of the night sky. The procession circled around the cathedral before finally arriving at its eastern gate. David and his guards dismounted and entered the church, followed by many of the Trapezuntines. In the chamber of the cathedral, David was officially installed as aftokrator in a two-hour long ceremony by Patriarch Dionysios, before they turned and went to the steps of the church. The Crown of Komnenos, which had lain in state since the death of Alexios V a decade before, was produced, now with several pendulata[2] attached as the old Roman crowns had been[3]. As the sun rose over the mountains to the east, the crown was lowered onto David’s head to the cheers of the people, officially marking the beginning of his sole rule.
David’s coronation was an excellent piece of political theater. He had already been crowned thrice--firstly at the behest of Basileios Mgeli in 1514 to mark the beginning of his minority rule, then again by Loukas Ratetas to secure his legitimacy as regent, and then a third time in Nikaia to mark the official beginning of the personal union between the two Greek states back in 1520--so a fourth coronation would have seemed completely unnecessary to most rulers. In David’s eyes, however, it served a vital purpose. Firstly, it was a public announcement that from here on out he would be a true aftokrator, ruling alone, a matter which David felt important to convey given the highly colorful opening period of his regency and the gains which had been made under Ratetas, which he felt could lead one of his sons--who he regarded as half-brothers--to try and usurp him. Secondly, it brought him into the eyes of the public for the first time since his second coronation eight years before. He hoped to present the image of a young, promising and most importantly sane ruler, as his minority had been plagued by fears that he would inherit his father’s madness and jealous rage. Finally, the symbolism of the rising sun played on the already improving fortunes of the Trapezuntine state and his relation to it in the eyes of God. David felt that he ought to remind the people that while Ratetas had presided over many successes, these gains had only been possible because God supported him as the rightful monarch of the Greeks and the Romans. As you can imagine, growing up under the constant threat of deposition--Ratetas had been well-regarded enough after his victories in the west that he might have gotten away with a coup, and it was widely rumored that if he was unwilling to, then Sabbas Tarkhaneiotes, the victor of Kastamone, had the guts to do it--had made David conscious of the volatile nature of court politics, and he felt an urgent need to insure himself from the threats of usurpation.
It has also been suggested that the formal and ornate coronation process was an attempt by David to shore up what he feared could be a publicity problem regarding his appearance. Alexandros II had been a black-haired, brown-eyed man with tanned, bronze skin, hooded eyes and a hooked nose, and Alexios V had borne a strong resemblance to him, with a slightly darker skin tone and curlier hair thanks to Martha’s Levantine extraction. David….was not. He was fair-skinned, bearing more resemblance to a Kartvelian than to a Pont or a Turk. He had straight brown hair and light brown eyes, with high, arching brows and a long, straight nose. Shockingly, this had never raised Alexios’ suspicion, but after his death it was widely speculated that David was the product of adultery on the half of Katsarina. He did not look the part of a Komnenos, and so he feared that he would not be treated as such. The ornate coronation was an attempt to legitimize himself further, as well as present himself to the people in such a manner that his glaring differences from his father weren’t so obvious.
One of David’s chief activities as a youth--well, he was still a youth, being only sixteen years of age, after all--was the study of the annals of Trapezuntine history. One of his chief tutors, Alexios of Sinope, had written O Khronia Trapezousos, an extensive and in-depth history of Trapezous itself since 1088[4] and the Komnenian emperors of the Trapezuntine Empire, and his instructor had successfully imbued him with both a love for history itself and an understanding that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. In 1513, he had written a short text describing the greatest flaws of each aftokrator since Alexios III, who had reigned back in the mid-1300s. The most common problems were succession and heirs, two deeply intertwined problems. Manouel III had been overly kind and generous to his sons, and for this he had been poisoned by Alexios IV[5]. Alexios was in turn murdered--gruesomely beaten to death, in fact--by his eldest son, Ioannes IV, who was deposed by Alexandros I more than a decade later and later died under suspicious circumstances while in exile. Alexandros the Elder’s worst mistake was vacillating between which of his sons he wished to succeed him, which resulted in both of their deaths in the Brother’s War and the ascension of Alexandros II. Alexandros II had managed to dodge the assassin’s knife--at the time of writing, he was actually alive, albeit rotting in a dungeon in Stettin, of all places[6]--but had botched his succession by allowing Martha to screw up Alexios and Romanos, and then passing the throne to neither of them. Nikephoros I had been too trusting for his own good, while Alexios V had been far too paranoid to be a good ruler, as evidenced by his purges and mass executions. His demise had actually come from being too trusting, though, and allowing his literal scheming whore of a wife to remain in the palace, which had led to his ultimate assassination. David concluded that the best way to ensure his own survival and continued rule was to a) find a trustworthy and fertile wife who could help him govern and tend to dynastic matters, b) educate his children and have enough spares that one or two of them losing their minds wasn’t too much of a threat, c) designate a heir and make sure that his siblings weren’t going to cause trouble and, d) keep a healthy level of paranoia, but don’t go full-out Caligula like his father had. These conclusions would shape David’s palace policies and, to an extent, his domestic and diplomatic decisions regarding which foreign marriages to pursue, ultimately having an immense impact on the entirety of his reign.
The first issue that David faced after assuming the throne and taking up the orb of rulership in his own right was marriage. As Alexios V’s reign-of-terror had demonstrated, choosing the right spouse was a matter of crucial importance for any ruler, if only because they would have immense influence on their children and heirs. David was already determined that he would not repeat the foolish errors of his father and grandfather, planning on keeping a constant eye on his wife to make sure she didn’t scheme against him and/or brutalize their heir to the throne as Anastasia and Martha had done, respectively. Ratetas had, thankfully, refused to promise David’s hand to the daughters or sisters of any foreign rulers--although he did not refrain from occasionally mulling over betrothing him to one of his daughters, even going so far as to try and push David and Anna Ratetasina, his youngest daughter, together in hopes that sparks would fly--so he was free to make a pragmatic decision. There were five Orthodox states--it should also be noted that David was a fanatically devoted follower of the Orthodox Church--who had potential matches amongst their royal families. There was of course Kartvelia, but by now there were more than a dozen current marriages between minor members of their respective royal families, so a marriage to a Kartvelian princess would have little strategic benefit other than binding the close states even closer together. Across the Black Sea, Moldova was a vital trading partner thanks to its domination of the Lower Danube, and it could be a very valuable partner against Ottoman revanchism, as well as the only other state on the Black Sea whose fleet could potentially rival the Trapezuntines. There was a slight problem, though, as Moldova was at war with the Golden Horde, and an alliance with them could imperil Trapezuntine holdings in Perateia. The Russian states were too distant to make good allies, and there was already a marriage alliance with Volga Novgorod conducted two generations prior. Finally, there was Morea, who had made an impressive series of gains against the Ottomans during the War of the Second Holy League and who could also form a pincer against future Turkish threats. However, they were quite distant, and communications between them such as would be necessary to fight such a war against the Ottomans would have to pass through Ottoman or Karamanid territory, which would effectively cripple any value they had as potential allies. The Palaiologoi also had a competing claim to the glory of old Rhomaion, and so an agreement with them would be quite distasteful to a ruler who was as mindful of his tenuous legitimacy as David was.
And so, in the end, marriage was proposed with the Moldovans. Bogdan was receptive to an alliance with the Trapezuntines, who he also saw as potentially valuable allies against the Turks, and so after a brief back and forth a betrothal was agreed between David and Ionela of Moldova[7]. Ionela had been born in 1505 and so was several years older than the aftokrator. According to all sources, she was a very quiet and asocial woman who had no real interest in anything other than reading and knitting. As you might imagine, she was a well-known figure in the Trapezuntine court scheme and became infamous for hosting debauched parties[8].
After securing a marriage alliance in his first year, David then turned his attention to the politics of ruling. He agreed with most of the domestic policies which had been enacted by Ratetas and so left them in place, although he did ease the taxes which were placed on the church’s land holdings--not on the church itself, mind you, but on their properties instead--an act which brought him much favor with the Pontic Patriarchate. In early 1524, he embarked from Trapezous for Davidoupoli, touring his territories and subjects in the Nikaian Empire. He was most displeased with how Bishop Lefkos, who had been running things since Ratetas left, had been handling the people and the taxes in this region--essentially using them as a base to advance his personal riches and properties rather than preparing them for the inevitable conflict with the Turks--and so he promoted him upwards to regent for his territories in the newly-created territory of Western Scythia, which consisted solely of Ginestra and the small force of pirate-hunting galleys posted there. With Lefkos out of the way, he assigned one Konstantinos Lakharnas, a veteran of the Nikaian Rising, to reform the administration in the west along the lines of the existing state apparatus in Trapezous proper.
It was very important to David that the bandons be made ready for war as quickly as possible, for he was planning war. He was driven by many reasons, among them a desire to legitimize himself even further and prove that the victories in the west had truly been because of God’s favor and not because of the luck and/or skill of his regent. However, he was far from a prideful fool blinded by hubris, and geopolitical concerns always remained at the back of his mind. Were he to complete his God-given mission to restore the Roman Empire to its pre-Manzikert borders--whether he actually believed this or not is a matter of great debate, with most historians concluding that he was too much of a pragmatist to actually believe it and instead used it as a propaganda tool--he would need to secure strategic depth for his empire. As it was, the Trapezuntines were a coastal empire dependent on sea travel to connect its far-flung territories, which stretched more than a thousand kilometers along the coast of the Black Sea. Its landward territories had little strategic depth and could be rather easily penetrated by hostile forces, especially from along the Neo-Rûmite border. Trapezous needed to push inland to secure its coastal territories and allow it to reclaim more of its rightful territories.
David’s desired target was the Neo-Rûmite Sultanate. They had radically reformed--transitioning from the Karamanid Beylik to the Neo-Rûmite Sultanate around the turn of the 16th Century is just the most visible example--under the long reign of the successful Bayezid II/Kayqubad IV into a centralized and formidable state that dominated Inner Anatolia and could project power out in all directions. David feared the growth of Neo-Rûmite power; they were already strong enough to pose a serious threat to the Trapezuntines before they had reformed, and now their power had greatly expanded and was growing every year as their network of irrigation canals made the valleys and plains of the east bloom. He needed to strike now and with overwhelming force to nip this threat in the bud. Tokat, Chorum and Sebasteia (OTL Sivas) all glittered just a few dozen miles from the border. He was sure that if he struck with the full force of Nikaia and Trapezous that the Neo-Rûmites would be severely weakened, if not crippled. He began preparing for mobilization, hoping to launch his desired invasion in the spring of 1525.
However, events would intervene to preclude David’s planned war. In the summer of 1524, a wave of desperate messengers arrived in Trapezous from Tbilisi, begging for David to ride to the aid of his cousin like his father and grandfather before. The damned Mongols had come, 100,000 of them[9], and the Caucasian Gates had been overrun. Aleks’andretsikhe had fallen, and there were only two more fortresses between the hordes and the valleys. David knew at once that he could not allow the Golden Horde to push into Kartvelia, both for the sake of his ally and himself, and so he marshalled his men for war….
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] That is, the Hagia Sophia of Trapezous. The Hagia Sophia faces westward, so the procession had to circle around it to face the rising sun.
[2] Pendulata are the strands of pearls and gemstones that dangle off the side of most Byzantine crowns, as well as the Hungarian Crown of Saint Steven. David here has had pendulata added to the usually penduless crown to symbolize his connection to the Byzantine rulers of old.
[3] Rather than repeating myself, I’ll just say that I’ve recently started watching Stargate: SG-1 and it’s quite good.
[4] After Manzikert, the Gabrades family had set themselves up as semi-autonomous rulers of Trapezous and the surrounding territories, only being returned to the Empire proper after 1143. A branch of the family had clung on as rulers of Theodoro until Alexandros II’s reconquest of that region in 1475, at which time they were stripped of their holdings and resettled in Khaldeia, where they remained until this story’s present.
[5] OTL We don’t know that Alexios IV died in this manner, but it is widely suspected that his death was at the very least hastened by his scheming sons.
[6] After abdicating, Alexandros II had gone into exile in Tmutarakan for several years. After Alexios murdered Nikephoros and seized power, he wisely fled Trapezuntine lands altogether, going westwards to Esztergom in 1507. Ladislaus V allowed him to take up residence in his court, further fueling rumors of his illegitimacy, and upon the outbreak of the civil war he had taken up arms in service of his possible son and patron. As Ladislaus was driven into Austria and forced to seek Bogislaw’s shelter, Alexandros had taken up residence in Vienna in 1511. After a time, he had grown bored with his life and court and had raised a company of mercenaries. He had been hired by the Duke of Brunswick to help him put down a peasant revolt in 1514, after which he was kept on the payroll as a security force. With the outbreak of the War of the Three Leagues, he successfully organized a defense of the Duchy in 1517 and much of 1518 before he was finally defeated by Bogislaw. Alexandros was then thrown into a dungeon in Stettin, where he would stay for the next six years. As the Bauernkrieg raged on in the 1520s, the newly-installed Konrad was forced to seek help from any available quarter, and so recruited Alexandros--now known as Alexander the Greek--to lead one of his armies, which he did with much success. In 1531, with the end of the war in Saxony, Alexandros was rewarded for his service with the lordship of the County of Bentheim-Tecklenburg, a small county on the border with the Rhinemouths. He would remarry and have one son by his German wife, Nikola von Rheda, before dying in 1534 at the age of 76. His son, Alexis, would reign for several decades to come and play a notable role in the Reformation.
[7] Romanian chronicles of this period have an annoying habit of only listing the sons of rulers, so her name is a guess
[8] This is sarcasm
[9] A cookie to whoever gets this very obscure reference.
Loukas Ratetas had, during his long regency, secured the throne of the Megalokomnenoi for the young aftokrator David. Like Anastaios or Tzimiskes before him, he had overseen a period of domestic quiet and successful campaigns abroad that would allow his ward to assume the office of ruler under the best possible circumstances. The treasury had recovered from its nadir during the reign of Alexios V, while the bandons had recovered much of their strength after the brief civil war during the early regency. Thanks to the acts and perseverance of Ratetas, David would be able to open his reign with a flurry of action, a trend which would define his long and successful reign….
On the night of 13 March 1523, hundreds of candles were lit in the streets of Trapezous. Dozens of small processions formed in all parts of the town, pouring towards the center of the town before merging together into a single parade. Thousands of Trapezuntine marched down the mese, chanting prayers and acclimations as they approached the Hagia Sophia[1]. Icons rose above the marchers, depicting Saint Eugenios, Saint Basileios and the many military saints affiliated with the Komnenoi. At the head of this great procession were the eleutheroi, marching in perfect formation under arms, the chi-rho painted on their shields and regimental flags flying in the wind. At the front of the eleutheroi, atop a glistening white horse, rode David himself, who chose to conceal himself in hooded robes similar to a monk’s. After reaching the Upper Town, the procession made a sharp turn onto the road leading to the Hagia Sophia, which sat rigidly against the darkness of the night sky. The procession circled around the cathedral before finally arriving at its eastern gate. David and his guards dismounted and entered the church, followed by many of the Trapezuntines. In the chamber of the cathedral, David was officially installed as aftokrator in a two-hour long ceremony by Patriarch Dionysios, before they turned and went to the steps of the church. The Crown of Komnenos, which had lain in state since the death of Alexios V a decade before, was produced, now with several pendulata[2] attached as the old Roman crowns had been[3]. As the sun rose over the mountains to the east, the crown was lowered onto David’s head to the cheers of the people, officially marking the beginning of his sole rule.
David’s coronation was an excellent piece of political theater. He had already been crowned thrice--firstly at the behest of Basileios Mgeli in 1514 to mark the beginning of his minority rule, then again by Loukas Ratetas to secure his legitimacy as regent, and then a third time in Nikaia to mark the official beginning of the personal union between the two Greek states back in 1520--so a fourth coronation would have seemed completely unnecessary to most rulers. In David’s eyes, however, it served a vital purpose. Firstly, it was a public announcement that from here on out he would be a true aftokrator, ruling alone, a matter which David felt important to convey given the highly colorful opening period of his regency and the gains which had been made under Ratetas, which he felt could lead one of his sons--who he regarded as half-brothers--to try and usurp him. Secondly, it brought him into the eyes of the public for the first time since his second coronation eight years before. He hoped to present the image of a young, promising and most importantly sane ruler, as his minority had been plagued by fears that he would inherit his father’s madness and jealous rage. Finally, the symbolism of the rising sun played on the already improving fortunes of the Trapezuntine state and his relation to it in the eyes of God. David felt that he ought to remind the people that while Ratetas had presided over many successes, these gains had only been possible because God supported him as the rightful monarch of the Greeks and the Romans. As you can imagine, growing up under the constant threat of deposition--Ratetas had been well-regarded enough after his victories in the west that he might have gotten away with a coup, and it was widely rumored that if he was unwilling to, then Sabbas Tarkhaneiotes, the victor of Kastamone, had the guts to do it--had made David conscious of the volatile nature of court politics, and he felt an urgent need to insure himself from the threats of usurpation.
It has also been suggested that the formal and ornate coronation process was an attempt by David to shore up what he feared could be a publicity problem regarding his appearance. Alexandros II had been a black-haired, brown-eyed man with tanned, bronze skin, hooded eyes and a hooked nose, and Alexios V had borne a strong resemblance to him, with a slightly darker skin tone and curlier hair thanks to Martha’s Levantine extraction. David….was not. He was fair-skinned, bearing more resemblance to a Kartvelian than to a Pont or a Turk. He had straight brown hair and light brown eyes, with high, arching brows and a long, straight nose. Shockingly, this had never raised Alexios’ suspicion, but after his death it was widely speculated that David was the product of adultery on the half of Katsarina. He did not look the part of a Komnenos, and so he feared that he would not be treated as such. The ornate coronation was an attempt to legitimize himself further, as well as present himself to the people in such a manner that his glaring differences from his father weren’t so obvious.
One of David’s chief activities as a youth--well, he was still a youth, being only sixteen years of age, after all--was the study of the annals of Trapezuntine history. One of his chief tutors, Alexios of Sinope, had written O Khronia Trapezousos, an extensive and in-depth history of Trapezous itself since 1088[4] and the Komnenian emperors of the Trapezuntine Empire, and his instructor had successfully imbued him with both a love for history itself and an understanding that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. In 1513, he had written a short text describing the greatest flaws of each aftokrator since Alexios III, who had reigned back in the mid-1300s. The most common problems were succession and heirs, two deeply intertwined problems. Manouel III had been overly kind and generous to his sons, and for this he had been poisoned by Alexios IV[5]. Alexios was in turn murdered--gruesomely beaten to death, in fact--by his eldest son, Ioannes IV, who was deposed by Alexandros I more than a decade later and later died under suspicious circumstances while in exile. Alexandros the Elder’s worst mistake was vacillating between which of his sons he wished to succeed him, which resulted in both of their deaths in the Brother’s War and the ascension of Alexandros II. Alexandros II had managed to dodge the assassin’s knife--at the time of writing, he was actually alive, albeit rotting in a dungeon in Stettin, of all places[6]--but had botched his succession by allowing Martha to screw up Alexios and Romanos, and then passing the throne to neither of them. Nikephoros I had been too trusting for his own good, while Alexios V had been far too paranoid to be a good ruler, as evidenced by his purges and mass executions. His demise had actually come from being too trusting, though, and allowing his literal scheming whore of a wife to remain in the palace, which had led to his ultimate assassination. David concluded that the best way to ensure his own survival and continued rule was to a) find a trustworthy and fertile wife who could help him govern and tend to dynastic matters, b) educate his children and have enough spares that one or two of them losing their minds wasn’t too much of a threat, c) designate a heir and make sure that his siblings weren’t going to cause trouble and, d) keep a healthy level of paranoia, but don’t go full-out Caligula like his father had. These conclusions would shape David’s palace policies and, to an extent, his domestic and diplomatic decisions regarding which foreign marriages to pursue, ultimately having an immense impact on the entirety of his reign.
The first issue that David faced after assuming the throne and taking up the orb of rulership in his own right was marriage. As Alexios V’s reign-of-terror had demonstrated, choosing the right spouse was a matter of crucial importance for any ruler, if only because they would have immense influence on their children and heirs. David was already determined that he would not repeat the foolish errors of his father and grandfather, planning on keeping a constant eye on his wife to make sure she didn’t scheme against him and/or brutalize their heir to the throne as Anastasia and Martha had done, respectively. Ratetas had, thankfully, refused to promise David’s hand to the daughters or sisters of any foreign rulers--although he did not refrain from occasionally mulling over betrothing him to one of his daughters, even going so far as to try and push David and Anna Ratetasina, his youngest daughter, together in hopes that sparks would fly--so he was free to make a pragmatic decision. There were five Orthodox states--it should also be noted that David was a fanatically devoted follower of the Orthodox Church--who had potential matches amongst their royal families. There was of course Kartvelia, but by now there were more than a dozen current marriages between minor members of their respective royal families, so a marriage to a Kartvelian princess would have little strategic benefit other than binding the close states even closer together. Across the Black Sea, Moldova was a vital trading partner thanks to its domination of the Lower Danube, and it could be a very valuable partner against Ottoman revanchism, as well as the only other state on the Black Sea whose fleet could potentially rival the Trapezuntines. There was a slight problem, though, as Moldova was at war with the Golden Horde, and an alliance with them could imperil Trapezuntine holdings in Perateia. The Russian states were too distant to make good allies, and there was already a marriage alliance with Volga Novgorod conducted two generations prior. Finally, there was Morea, who had made an impressive series of gains against the Ottomans during the War of the Second Holy League and who could also form a pincer against future Turkish threats. However, they were quite distant, and communications between them such as would be necessary to fight such a war against the Ottomans would have to pass through Ottoman or Karamanid territory, which would effectively cripple any value they had as potential allies. The Palaiologoi also had a competing claim to the glory of old Rhomaion, and so an agreement with them would be quite distasteful to a ruler who was as mindful of his tenuous legitimacy as David was.
And so, in the end, marriage was proposed with the Moldovans. Bogdan was receptive to an alliance with the Trapezuntines, who he also saw as potentially valuable allies against the Turks, and so after a brief back and forth a betrothal was agreed between David and Ionela of Moldova[7]. Ionela had been born in 1505 and so was several years older than the aftokrator. According to all sources, she was a very quiet and asocial woman who had no real interest in anything other than reading and knitting. As you might imagine, she was a well-known figure in the Trapezuntine court scheme and became infamous for hosting debauched parties[8].
After securing a marriage alliance in his first year, David then turned his attention to the politics of ruling. He agreed with most of the domestic policies which had been enacted by Ratetas and so left them in place, although he did ease the taxes which were placed on the church’s land holdings--not on the church itself, mind you, but on their properties instead--an act which brought him much favor with the Pontic Patriarchate. In early 1524, he embarked from Trapezous for Davidoupoli, touring his territories and subjects in the Nikaian Empire. He was most displeased with how Bishop Lefkos, who had been running things since Ratetas left, had been handling the people and the taxes in this region--essentially using them as a base to advance his personal riches and properties rather than preparing them for the inevitable conflict with the Turks--and so he promoted him upwards to regent for his territories in the newly-created territory of Western Scythia, which consisted solely of Ginestra and the small force of pirate-hunting galleys posted there. With Lefkos out of the way, he assigned one Konstantinos Lakharnas, a veteran of the Nikaian Rising, to reform the administration in the west along the lines of the existing state apparatus in Trapezous proper.
It was very important to David that the bandons be made ready for war as quickly as possible, for he was planning war. He was driven by many reasons, among them a desire to legitimize himself even further and prove that the victories in the west had truly been because of God’s favor and not because of the luck and/or skill of his regent. However, he was far from a prideful fool blinded by hubris, and geopolitical concerns always remained at the back of his mind. Were he to complete his God-given mission to restore the Roman Empire to its pre-Manzikert borders--whether he actually believed this or not is a matter of great debate, with most historians concluding that he was too much of a pragmatist to actually believe it and instead used it as a propaganda tool--he would need to secure strategic depth for his empire. As it was, the Trapezuntines were a coastal empire dependent on sea travel to connect its far-flung territories, which stretched more than a thousand kilometers along the coast of the Black Sea. Its landward territories had little strategic depth and could be rather easily penetrated by hostile forces, especially from along the Neo-Rûmite border. Trapezous needed to push inland to secure its coastal territories and allow it to reclaim more of its rightful territories.
David’s desired target was the Neo-Rûmite Sultanate. They had radically reformed--transitioning from the Karamanid Beylik to the Neo-Rûmite Sultanate around the turn of the 16th Century is just the most visible example--under the long reign of the successful Bayezid II/Kayqubad IV into a centralized and formidable state that dominated Inner Anatolia and could project power out in all directions. David feared the growth of Neo-Rûmite power; they were already strong enough to pose a serious threat to the Trapezuntines before they had reformed, and now their power had greatly expanded and was growing every year as their network of irrigation canals made the valleys and plains of the east bloom. He needed to strike now and with overwhelming force to nip this threat in the bud. Tokat, Chorum and Sebasteia (OTL Sivas) all glittered just a few dozen miles from the border. He was sure that if he struck with the full force of Nikaia and Trapezous that the Neo-Rûmites would be severely weakened, if not crippled. He began preparing for mobilization, hoping to launch his desired invasion in the spring of 1525.
However, events would intervene to preclude David’s planned war. In the summer of 1524, a wave of desperate messengers arrived in Trapezous from Tbilisi, begging for David to ride to the aid of his cousin like his father and grandfather before. The damned Mongols had come, 100,000 of them[9], and the Caucasian Gates had been overrun. Aleks’andretsikhe had fallen, and there were only two more fortresses between the hordes and the valleys. David knew at once that he could not allow the Golden Horde to push into Kartvelia, both for the sake of his ally and himself, and so he marshalled his men for war….
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] That is, the Hagia Sophia of Trapezous. The Hagia Sophia faces westward, so the procession had to circle around it to face the rising sun.
[2] Pendulata are the strands of pearls and gemstones that dangle off the side of most Byzantine crowns, as well as the Hungarian Crown of Saint Steven. David here has had pendulata added to the usually penduless crown to symbolize his connection to the Byzantine rulers of old.
[3] Rather than repeating myself, I’ll just say that I’ve recently started watching Stargate: SG-1 and it’s quite good.
[4] After Manzikert, the Gabrades family had set themselves up as semi-autonomous rulers of Trapezous and the surrounding territories, only being returned to the Empire proper after 1143. A branch of the family had clung on as rulers of Theodoro until Alexandros II’s reconquest of that region in 1475, at which time they were stripped of their holdings and resettled in Khaldeia, where they remained until this story’s present.
[5] OTL We don’t know that Alexios IV died in this manner, but it is widely suspected that his death was at the very least hastened by his scheming sons.
[6] After abdicating, Alexandros II had gone into exile in Tmutarakan for several years. After Alexios murdered Nikephoros and seized power, he wisely fled Trapezuntine lands altogether, going westwards to Esztergom in 1507. Ladislaus V allowed him to take up residence in his court, further fueling rumors of his illegitimacy, and upon the outbreak of the civil war he had taken up arms in service of his possible son and patron. As Ladislaus was driven into Austria and forced to seek Bogislaw’s shelter, Alexandros had taken up residence in Vienna in 1511. After a time, he had grown bored with his life and court and had raised a company of mercenaries. He had been hired by the Duke of Brunswick to help him put down a peasant revolt in 1514, after which he was kept on the payroll as a security force. With the outbreak of the War of the Three Leagues, he successfully organized a defense of the Duchy in 1517 and much of 1518 before he was finally defeated by Bogislaw. Alexandros was then thrown into a dungeon in Stettin, where he would stay for the next six years. As the Bauernkrieg raged on in the 1520s, the newly-installed Konrad was forced to seek help from any available quarter, and so recruited Alexandros--now known as Alexander the Greek--to lead one of his armies, which he did with much success. In 1531, with the end of the war in Saxony, Alexandros was rewarded for his service with the lordship of the County of Bentheim-Tecklenburg, a small county on the border with the Rhinemouths. He would remarry and have one son by his German wife, Nikola von Rheda, before dying in 1534 at the age of 76. His son, Alexis, would reign for several decades to come and play a notable role in the Reformation.
[7] Romanian chronicles of this period have an annoying habit of only listing the sons of rulers, so her name is a guess
[8] This is sarcasm
[9] A cookie to whoever gets this very obscure reference.
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