WI: Later fall of the Roman Empire?

It didn't really happened the same in most of Romania than in post-imperial Britain : there imperial and local structures were ruined, and Germanic population came in small waves of familial settlers. In, say, Gaul or Spain, we have essentially mercenary/federate groups that lived on both banks of the limes since centuries or, at worst, decades, and that didn't as much settled in familial groups than directly intermixing with Roman or romanized populations in a quick process.
There's also a different pattern with regions as Illyricum that depended a lot on military presence for the organisation of the provinces, and when taken over eren't really the epithome of Roman civilisation and remained largely underpopulated, allowing waves of familial settlers to really kick in in the VIth century onwards, leaving a complex mosaic of cultural communities eventually dominated by Slavs.
I was strictly speaking talking about the territories directly adjacent to the Rhine and not Gaul as a whole, for example the modern Rhineland, Flanders-Brabant, Alsace, Southern Bavaria-Swabia, Switzerland.
 
I'd go for Stilicho

I've been reading and watching documentaries on Belisarius and it's notable that in the East Justin and Justinian promoted their successful general, whilst in the West Honorius got scared and had him killed
 
I was strictly speaking talking about the territories directly adjacent to the Rhine and not Gaul as a whole, for example the modern Rhineland, Flanders-Brabant, Alsace, Southern Bavaria-Swabia, Switzerland.
It's a bit more complex : as limes lost its frontieer role (but still remained a major trade road) it more or less became a cultural marche between Frankish Gaul and Germania, with Romance communities living on for a while (the cultural/linguistic border really settled only in the XIth century), as it happened in Illyricum and Rethia, only with much more Roman and romance legacy due to the much more important late and post-imperial structures that didn't relied on military presence on a relatively underpopulated region (altough Rhineland between Meuse and mouths of the Rhine might have been significantly underpopulated too).
 
It's a bit more complex : as limes lost its frontieer role (but still remained a major trade road) it more or less became a cultural marche between Frankish Gaul and Germania, with Romance communities living on for a while (the cultural/linguistic border really settled only in the XIth century), as it happened in Illyricum and Rethia, only with much more Roman and romance legacy due to the much more important late and post-imperial structures that didn't relied on military presence on a relatively underpopulated region (altough Rhineland between Meuse and mouths of the Rhine might have been significantly underpopulated too).
By underpopulated you mean relative to the carrying capacity of the region or in an absolute sense?
 
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