Hi! This is my first post on this site, so this may not be the best in the world, but I hope you like what I have so far : )
What if the fates of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires were swapped?
I doubt I'm the first person to ask this question. OTL, the Western Roman Empire disintegrated under the weight of constant civil wars, incompetent bureaucracy, and migratory peoples. The East managed, somehow, to survive until 1453, albeit losing key provinces in the 600s, most of Anatolia in the 1000s, then getting taken over by Venetians for a good few decades. In this timeline, the opposite occurs; the Eastern half disintegrates in the late 400s, and the West survives well into the medieval period.
How does this happen?
I don't think the idea is particularly realistic. I'm not in Byzantine studies, so I can't say for certain why, of the places that the Roman state could have survived, it was the eastern provinces, but a decent guess is that they are more economically relevant - Egypt was the granary of the empire, although this obviously is not relevant post 642 AD. But, for the sake of the idea, let's say that the migrations directed at the West go East instead - the Goths and others overrun the eastern half of the empire, establishing successor kingdoms in their wake. I hope to explore various regions of Europe and what happens, starting with:
Britannia: the Dual Kingdom, and avoidance of anarchy
In 411 AD, Emperor Honorius, preoccupied with fending off the Visigoths in the south and usurper forces in the north, wrote letters to the cities of Britain instructing them to fend for themselves. The Diocese of Britannia was left without Roman protection, and from this point onwards ceased to be a Roman province. An expulsion of Roman magistrates swiftly followed, and power and authority in the former diocese splintered.
Historical records for the next eighty years or so are scant, with much of the information coming from Gildas' De Eventu Translationis Auctoritatis in Britanniae (On the Result of the Transfer of Authority in Britain, Briđennais De'l Evente de'l Transferment d'Auteuritet in Briđennia), published in the early sixth century. He describes the consolidation of power in the Romanized south by Ambrosius Aurelianus (Briđenais Emreus Aurelien) into a state he describes with the word res politia, which is indicative of the contemporary taboo around kingship as a source of power - he, and others at the time, saw Ambrosius Aurelianus as deriving power from Roman magistry; he was not a king, rather vicarius of a diocese of Romans. He has, however, no similar issue in describing "barbarian" king Meirchion Gul (Mercionus Gillus in the historiography), who ruled territory north of the midlands. Gul had himself been proclaimed High King of the Britons, and appears to have gained the fealty of nearly all tribes all the way north to the Antonine Wall. The two kings - one of Romans, the other of Britons - despite their differences, did not come to blows. Both amassed similar sized forces, and realising the threat from outside actors, formed an agreement of mutual defence. This was codified by the marriage of Aurelianus to Gul's daughter, known to us today as Clementia Aurelianus (Briđennais Clemence Aurelien).
In 496 AD, Meirchion passed with no male heirs, and Clementia arranged the conjoining of the two crowns. Thus the Dual Kingdom of Britannia (Regnum Dualis Britanniae, Briđennais Regne Duel de Briđennia) was constituted, consisting of all territories in the province of Britannia up to the Antonine Wall. With the main chunk of Anglish and Saxon forces concentrated on the Eastern Empire, migration into Britain was more of a trickle than a wave. The areas today consisting of East Anglia and southeast Scotland were demarcated as regions specifically for the Germanic migrators, with a majority population - these become the provinces of Literis Saxonica and Antoninia Saxonica respectively.
By this time, with the collapse of the Roman east and the ascendancy of the Ērānšahr in the eastern provinces ensuring the pre-eminence of the western half as the legal continuation of Roman authority, many were unsure of the political position of the Empire. Imperial resources, both military and economic, were stronger than they had been in the previous century, which had overseen an almost total collapse of Roman power in the region. Thus, many at the time were considering the real possibility of a Roman reconquest of Britain. Emperor Aetius, however, did not see the region as being of paramount importance, especially. The Treaty of Camulodunum (modern day Cevleudon) established formal diplomatic relations between the two nations, and Britannia was recognised as Roman, but not under the temporal authority of the Emperor - rather, the spiritual
authority of all of them as Christians under the authority of the Supreme Patriach was emphasised, mediated by the Roman Emperor as the spiritual emperor of all Christendom.
What if the fates of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires were swapped?
I doubt I'm the first person to ask this question. OTL, the Western Roman Empire disintegrated under the weight of constant civil wars, incompetent bureaucracy, and migratory peoples. The East managed, somehow, to survive until 1453, albeit losing key provinces in the 600s, most of Anatolia in the 1000s, then getting taken over by Venetians for a good few decades. In this timeline, the opposite occurs; the Eastern half disintegrates in the late 400s, and the West survives well into the medieval period.
How does this happen?
I don't think the idea is particularly realistic. I'm not in Byzantine studies, so I can't say for certain why, of the places that the Roman state could have survived, it was the eastern provinces, but a decent guess is that they are more economically relevant - Egypt was the granary of the empire, although this obviously is not relevant post 642 AD. But, for the sake of the idea, let's say that the migrations directed at the West go East instead - the Goths and others overrun the eastern half of the empire, establishing successor kingdoms in their wake. I hope to explore various regions of Europe and what happens, starting with:
Britannia: the Dual Kingdom, and avoidance of anarchy
In 411 AD, Emperor Honorius, preoccupied with fending off the Visigoths in the south and usurper forces in the north, wrote letters to the cities of Britain instructing them to fend for themselves. The Diocese of Britannia was left without Roman protection, and from this point onwards ceased to be a Roman province. An expulsion of Roman magistrates swiftly followed, and power and authority in the former diocese splintered.
Historical records for the next eighty years or so are scant, with much of the information coming from Gildas' De Eventu Translationis Auctoritatis in Britanniae (On the Result of the Transfer of Authority in Britain, Briđennais De'l Evente de'l Transferment d'Auteuritet in Briđennia), published in the early sixth century. He describes the consolidation of power in the Romanized south by Ambrosius Aurelianus (Briđenais Emreus Aurelien) into a state he describes with the word res politia, which is indicative of the contemporary taboo around kingship as a source of power - he, and others at the time, saw Ambrosius Aurelianus as deriving power from Roman magistry; he was not a king, rather vicarius of a diocese of Romans. He has, however, no similar issue in describing "barbarian" king Meirchion Gul (Mercionus Gillus in the historiography), who ruled territory north of the midlands. Gul had himself been proclaimed High King of the Britons, and appears to have gained the fealty of nearly all tribes all the way north to the Antonine Wall. The two kings - one of Romans, the other of Britons - despite their differences, did not come to blows. Both amassed similar sized forces, and realising the threat from outside actors, formed an agreement of mutual defence. This was codified by the marriage of Aurelianus to Gul's daughter, known to us today as Clementia Aurelianus (Briđennais Clemence Aurelien).
In 496 AD, Meirchion passed with no male heirs, and Clementia arranged the conjoining of the two crowns. Thus the Dual Kingdom of Britannia (Regnum Dualis Britanniae, Briđennais Regne Duel de Briđennia) was constituted, consisting of all territories in the province of Britannia up to the Antonine Wall. With the main chunk of Anglish and Saxon forces concentrated on the Eastern Empire, migration into Britain was more of a trickle than a wave. The areas today consisting of East Anglia and southeast Scotland were demarcated as regions specifically for the Germanic migrators, with a majority population - these become the provinces of Literis Saxonica and Antoninia Saxonica respectively.
By this time, with the collapse of the Roman east and the ascendancy of the Ērānšahr in the eastern provinces ensuring the pre-eminence of the western half as the legal continuation of Roman authority, many were unsure of the political position of the Empire. Imperial resources, both military and economic, were stronger than they had been in the previous century, which had overseen an almost total collapse of Roman power in the region. Thus, many at the time were considering the real possibility of a Roman reconquest of Britain. Emperor Aetius, however, did not see the region as being of paramount importance, especially. The Treaty of Camulodunum (modern day Cevleudon) established formal diplomatic relations between the two nations, and Britannia was recognised as Roman, but not under the temporal authority of the Emperor - rather, the spiritual
A note on languages
The map on the right shows the linguistic makeup of the islands circa 550 AD. The Britannic language, at that time little more than a regional dialect of Vulgar Latin, is spoken in the urbanised south. The native Brythonic, OTL the ancestor of Welsh, Cornish and Breton, is spoken in the northern, more rural parts of the kingdom, as well as the Pictish petty kingdoms north of the Antonine Wall (it is unknown what language Pictish was, but it's extremely likely it was a Brythonic language from the little extant corpora we do have). Anglo-Saxon is spoken in the two designated provinces, and the Goidelic language, ancestor of modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic, is spoken in Ireland and northwest Scotland. I have used Britannic throughout this article, written as Briđennais. The form I am using is the modern language, as as previously stated, it and the other Romance languages do not split into mutually unintelligible varieties for another hundred years or so. A sample of the language is:
Mêllor es une viđe breve et severe de livertai que une viđe hir et comode de sclavisme.
Better a short and harsh life of freedom than a long and comfortable life of slavery.
And a note on Altalatina: OTL, the Latin spoken around the birth of Christ was preserved in jurisprudence and academia for more than a thousand years, as a common language after Latin split into the modern Romance languages in the former territories of the Roman Empire. The lack of splintering of said state leads to the development of a common court language, known as High Latin or natively, Altalatina. The Romance languages do form, even within the Empire, because at this point in history, such a large territory was not so closely connected as to ensure that people's language grew closer together, as happened in the centralisation of states in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, before which there was no real "standard" English, French or otherwise. But there is a need for a common language, and the survival of the Empire means that there is no particular pride given to the earlier form of Latin, or at least not enough to justify its preservation. Latin contains three genders, an extensive case system with five different declension patterns, and a complex system of verbal conjugation. The Romance languages collapsed the case system entirely, along with other common phonological changes. This leads to Altalatina being, in essence, an average of the Romance languages - it resembles Latin, with a more conservative phonology, but lacking cases and a neuter gender, along with the development of articles. The same sentence as above is:
Melior est una vita breva et severa de libertate que una vita longa et commoda de sclavismo.
Better a short and harsh life of freedom than a long and comfortable life of slavery.
Let me know what part of the lore you guys would be most interested in me talking about next!
Let me know what part of the lore you guys would be most interested in me talking about next!