WI: First Bulgarian Empire takes Constantinople

What happens if the First Bulgarian Empire takes the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, during the reign of Simon the Great?
 
What happens if the First Bulgarian Empire takes the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, during the reign of Simon the Great?

It's Symeon, not Simon.

Anyway, the scenario is exceedingly unlikely, and Symeon himself recognised this. To have even half a chance of seizing Constantinople you need total superiority on land and sea, and even Symeon, impressive a monarch as he was, had neither. Should a determined siege effort be made then you can bet your bottom dollar that Byzantine gold will be flooding towards Symeon's rivals on the steppes and in the western Balkans to stir up trouble back in Bulgaria while the Byzantines sit pretty behind their walls and get supplied by sea.

For this to work I think you'd probably need a much more active Bulgarian naval capacity that could perhaps be gained by a permanent Bulgarian conquest of Greece. It'd help too if the Bulgarian monarch was ostensibly intervening in a Byzantine civil war, as the Fourth Crusaders were.

In short, I don't think a fall of Constantinople is impossible , but it's very very difficult to achieve and probably requires a PoD that alters Bulgarian foreign policy way back before Symeon.
 
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