Western Roman empire survives

At a minimum you need to get the Vandals out of North Africa. Disrupting the grain shipments and the associated economic interlinkage was what really caused the death-blow. A deeper question is what do you mean by living on? Do you mean the Western Empire in a similar form to its state in the time of the 5 good Emperors (impossible I would suggest). Do you mean a reasonably strong political unit similar to the Byzantine Empire (i.e. the most prominent state in the West but not the only state in the West)?
 
Like it survives with the same amount of territory at its max or just part of it survives? Like the post Yarmouk eastern empire?

My personal favorite is Majorian succeeding in his reconquest, if you want a large western Roman Empire. He seems to have been a capable military and political leader who saw that the empire needed major reform. If he retook North Africa he could have gained the support necessary to do this.

For a smaller western empire maybe Anthemius or Julius nepos don’t trust the snakes that killed them Iotl and rule long enough to stabilize the remaining territories. They’d need lots of support from the east and would be puppets of the eastern emperors but something is better than nothing.
 
I wonder, if we assume that the Empire keeps at least a large enough area to deserve to be called an empire, what effect would this have on the development of the papacy? In OTL, for a couple of centuries there were no western empire (until the rise of the Carolingian empire and the later HRE), but what if there were a western empire lasting at least till approx. 1300 AD?

The butterflies in general would of course be huge. The POD is several centuries before the rise of Islam, so Islam would be butterflied. North Africa would keep having strong ties to Europe, so the concept of Europe as a cultural area would be far less important. Southern Europe would probably keep having stronger ties with North Africa than Northern Europe.

I am not sure how the collapse of the empire could be avoided, though. Somehow the invading Germanic tribes would need to be assimilated orn kept out. How do we avoid that different groups conquer different parts of the empire?
 

gurgu

Banned
if you mean the WRE survives as italy, it might be possible but only if 1 emperor manages to stabilize the succession laws and corruption is taken down a bit.
If you mean as the whole west Europe.... than just avoid the stop of expansions from Adrian.
The roman crisis began when the wars were stopped, lots of the roman economy was based on the gold and silver taken from conquest, also if the empire manages to conquer everything to Poland it might even make a Chinese style wall like Adrian in Scotland. But again if they stop expansion they also need to almost revert the economy otherwise the collapse arrives anyway( in this scenario maybe in 700 or 800? also there won't be any franks,vandals or Visigoths all romanized)
 
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