WI: no First Bulgarian Empire

What if the notable badass Krum of Bulgaria had either not managed to unify the bulgarian tribes under his own rule or been defeated at the Battle of Pliska?
In short, what if the pain-in-the-ass to the Byzantine Empire that was the First Bulgarian Empire had been conquered two hundred years before OTL?
Will the byzantines expand into Pannonia?
How uppity will byzantine Bulgaria be? Because if it isn't, then it's a good source of troops; if it is, then it's a drain of them.
What are the effects on the magyars?
(I'll also postulate an optional question: what if Krum had instead lived longer, carrying on with his planned siege of Constantinople?)
 
What if the notable badass Krum of Bulgaria had either not managed to unify the bulgarian tribes under his own rule or been defeated at the Battle of Pliska?
As much as Nicephoros wanted to crush the Bulgarian-dominated confederation trough scotched earth tactics put up to eleven, I think it would have been really hard, as the Bulgarian Khaganate still managed to strive along the Pontic coast since two centuries at this point, and even Constantin V couldn't really crush the Bulgarians even in their worst period of the VIIIth century, due to the resilience of the super-complex-chiefdom of Bulgars.
I would rather see a return to this VIIIth situation, where Bulgaria is still a thing but troubled between pro-Romans and anti-Romans elites.

The main, while not obvious, immediate beneficiaries would have been Carolingians that have no real Danubian rival with Krum's conquest of eastern Avaria crumbling. I don't expect Franks making a move to take direct control of the solitudes, as they called the Pannonian plain, altough I could see the marches advancing up to Tisza, and the clientelisation of Wendes going further along the Middle Danube.
Eventually, as Carolingia would be going down, you might end up with a more structurated slavic presence in Pannonia, akin to what happened in Great Moravia (a Great Croatia?) as a buffzer zone made out of complex-chiefdoms between whatever happens in Carolingia and the Roman Empire. I think @Marko might have some interesting insight, even if I know we may disagree on what happened in Croatia IOTL.

Of course, a weaker Bulgaria could mean a vulnerability to Khazars, if not Magyar raids, overlordship or migration, earlier than IOTL.
 
I remember we disagreed on something but I no longer remember what it was :D


On the subject at hand I don't really see much change from what occurred in OTL. Singidunum or Sirmium would be the absolute maximum extent of ERE expansion in my opinion as there was still plenty of trouble further south in the balkan interior irrelevant of the presence of a unified Bulgar state or not. A divide area might prove even more difficult for ERE to manage.

Carolingians were also at the very edge of their expansion for the period and with there focus soon turning very much inwards any real change would have to rely on local initiatives of established slavic or maybe even avar vassals. If it is the slavs who are the political leadership and basis for a vassal entity in transdanubia I see very little hope of spreading into puszta between Danube and Tisza.

Any further development would heavily depend on how the situation would depend beyond the Carpathians in the pontic steppe.


As for the second question - my gut tells me a Bulgarian dynasty, strong centripetal forces in the new empire, with either a central authority collapse or a slow greacification of the ruling dynasty.
 
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