What if the Britons had successfully defended its self from the saxon germanic invas

The roman culture survived in Britain until the Germanic invasion, even though the land split into many rival kingdoms. So let's say when the roman left the island in the early 400s, a unified state arose and had pushed back the Germanic hordes, how would the culture and state fare for the many centuries until the modern era.

Sorry for spelling mistakes in the title.
 
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The roman culture survived in Britain until the Germanic invasion, even though the land split into many rival kingdoms. So let's say when the roman left the island in the early 400s, a unified state arose and had pushed back the Germanic hordes, how would the culture and state fare for the many centuries until the modern era.

The Britons invited the saxons, angles and jutes as foederati originally to fight Pictish incursions. It was hardly the same as the GHA.

If you stop the souring of the relationship between them then there is a chance that the assimilation may go the other way. (The Germanic immigrants adopting the Briton culture, languages etc rather than the other way around.)
 
In this time line the new Britannic state is an semi-isolationist nation that never invite the Germanic people.
 
This may have actually happened temporarily IOTL. The Saxon invasion was stopped cold for many decades before whatever happened to make the Britons so united wasn't a factor anymore. Basically what you're looking for sounds like a proper Arthurian TL. ;) In any case, I doubt they'd be semi-isolationist. AFAIK they maintained constant trade with the continent.
 
This may have actually happened temporarily IOTL. The Saxon invasion was stopped cold for many decades before whatever happened to make the Britons so united wasn't a factor anymore. Basically what you're looking for sounds like a proper Arthurian TL. ;) In any case, I doubt they'd be semi-isolationist. AFAIK they maintained constant trade with the continent.

Even though the Saxons were stopped at first there was still the Picts from the north the scots from the west still raiding them.
But for this time line lets say a native Briton managed to forge his own nation and created a Romanesque dynasty in Britain.
 
...But for this time line lets say a native Briton managed to forge his own nation and created a Romanesque dynasty in Britain.
As I'm not too familiar with the period my question would be: How possible was this at the time, is there enough skills/industrial base in Britain at the time to continue a Romanesque dynasty, ie. maintain the buildings, create the good needed... or would it all slowly fall apart?
 
If you want to keep a sub-Roman Britain, you'll need to to have Hengist and Horsa drown in a storm, but that's only if you accept legend as truth.

You'll kinda have to make up a history as much isn't known about sub-Roman Britain. You could have them repel the invasions, conquer and assimilate the Germanic states in the south-east of England where they first settled, or have the two form separate states (would be interesting and would add even more diversity in the Isles).
 
As I said in the other thread:

A serious issue in the north was the increasing splitting of the kingdoms of the descendants of Coel Hen.

It's important to keep in mind for about 30-50 years after Mons Badonicus (The Battle of Badon) the Anglo-Saxons were dealt a terrible blow and essentially forced back. It was only with Cerdic's invasion of West Seaxe and the Bernician Angles overthrowing Bryneich that thiings began to go south for real. The North was essentially being invaded from two sides, and that undermined some of the strongest kingdoms there like Ebrauc and Rheged (though Rheged fell mainly because it was split into two, North and South Rheged, after a strong king has died).

By that point the rest was inertia. The south was too divided and Dumnonia, Pengwern, and Powys couldn't hold it all on their own. The Battle of Deorham was also a horrific loss and cut off Dumnonia from Powys and the Welsh kingdoms, allowing West Seaxe to essentially batter it at its leisure.

One of the best ways to prevent the Saxons from rising too much is crippling the Picts and Irish, which was one of the main reasons why in the north they had been brought in. Hen Ogledd suffered a lot of raiding from the Picts. If the north holds it would be easier for the south to, as well, though it's hard to see how you could have a better outcome than Mons Badonicus. Maybe if someone managed to become High King of Britannia during the peace from 496-547 and have him cripple one particular area which can take the pressure off Britain. Good target would be South Seaxe, west Seaxe or East Seaxe; these were really the pivots of expansion for the Anglians in this period.
 
An unified state in post-Roman Britain would have be near impossible, IMO.

Cross-posting from another thread.

By "Romans" I assume you mean Britto-Romans, rather than either only military (that was anyway quite mixed itself, up to local and germanic recruitment). See, you didn't have real provincial identity in Roman Empire, and even the few you may have was even more weakened with the more personal and charismatic imperialship of the Late Empire.

With the decline and fall of this one in WRE, the basic identitarian structure was the pagi, the colonies and critically the tribes (either classified as cities or pagi themselves) whom presence never really disappeared.

This isn't just a British thing, it was the case for almost all WRE provinces : Gaul, Spain, Africa (constant overlapping of tribal and urban/peri-urban identities)...
The big exception being Italy, mostly because it passed directly from Imperial to Romano-Barbarian dominance.

In all these cases, the Barbarians that inherited the imperium and political legitimacy eventually were the unifiers of the dioceses. It's not about Britto-Roman or Roman population being too dumb to unify and to live, but about political and cultural trends of Late Roman era.

You'd probably need a PoD in late Republican Rome to deal with the relativly empty shell that were Provinces when it came to identity. At latest, you'd need something comparable to the Sanctuary of Three Gauls, with its technically unifying yearly assembly. For the influence it had eventually on Gallo-Roman society in Late Antiquity, I'm not too sure it would be ennough to balance the aformentioned effects.

Eventually, if you want to bypass the provincial issue, you have to come back to the usual problem of Late Roman Brittania : isolated, not that deep romanisation (lack of many urban infrastructures, safe in an handful of cities; lack of rural infrastructures, with a low ratio of villae/latifundiae), demographically weakened (maybe 1 million after the epidemics).

It doesn't mean that you couldn't have ended with Saxons being repelled as unified political entities, but you'd need a twist.

We know that they were unifying commands (I'd tend to argue they were more regional and circonstantial than pan-Briton : as Vortigern for the Cantium), at least military-wise : Riothamus/Ambrosius Aurelianus (possibly the same person) is an exemple. So the problem isn't having unifying features, but to make them last against the various and conflicting identities.

It doesn't seem, for instance, that the Old North kingdoms had a much develloped sense of commonity, for all we know.

Now, I think it's possible to have a maintained high-kingship (pretty much as in Ireland, Wales or Scotland) in some regions. Giving the not that much unified Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, it does have a chance to lives on and leading to a wanked *Wales. I don't know enough to definitely name a candidate or a most likely place (while I think that you can forget about North Sea regions); but the bonus point is that you don't even need a Britton or being totally hostile to Germans to have such.

Cerdic of Wessex may be the most obvious exemple of a mix of Britto-Romans and Barbarian elements in the Vth century (you have other ones). It wouldn't surprise me if you could have a Britto-Roman high-king, supported by the Saxons of the Litus managing to lead a more or less unified (in a first time : again, high-kingship didn't looked much as a really united structure) Britto-Roman kingdom.
 
The Kingdoms in the Old North had a serious tendency to fracture more and more as time went on. It's quite likely there was a unified kingdom there or at least some sort of unified entity in the early 400s, maybe under a semi-legendary figure of Coel Hen or an analogous person, of which there is some literary and archaeological evidence. Main issue with Hen Ogledd was always that the kingdoms became successively smaller and weaker due to splitting of dynastic lands (an issue everywhere but especially in the north) while being simultaneously pressed by Anglo-Saxons, Irishmen, and Picts. The Bernician Angles taking over Bryneich was probably the tipping point as now Ebrauc, Elmet, the Peak, and so on all had to fight on multiple fronts, pressed on all sides by Angles.

You obviously can't end the fragmentation because it's not CK2 so we can't just change succession laws. A strong ruler able to reform the north and sort of "reset" the fragmentation process for long enough for the Pictish, irish, and Anglo-Saxon threat to subside somewhat so that this is not an inherently self-destructive one (or a precedent of unification set by him, pushing rulers in the future to try and reconquest Hen Ogledd and reset the process over and over, revitalizing the north, though it could very well become a bit like the Franks where even strong rulers began to struggle to hold over all the constituent kingdoms).

Alternatively, if the Picts or Irish are crippled by some outside threat or PoD the North can have some of the pressure taken off of it. Fragmentation is less likely with less constant warfare destabilizing kingdoms and the Angles do not have to employed as much as mercenaries (though they would likely still be there).

The more difficult problems are still there. Lack of unification, succession problems, enemies everywhere, population truncation, lots of issues hold it back. You would need a strong figure to set some sort of unifying precedent.
 
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