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Let's assume that no emperor managed to reunite all or most of the Roman Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century, and that the division of the empire into three or more successor states became more permanent. How would that affect...

1: The survival of Roman culture? Would the successor states be more "Roman" than the barbarian states which replaced the Western Roman Empire IOTL?

2: Religion? The Crisis happened decades before Constantine was even born, and if the Roman Empire fractured before Christianity could become its dominant religion, the religious history of Europe would look completely different.

3: Technological and cultural progress? Now, I'm fully aware that the "the Roman Empire was awesome but the barbarians wrecked everything and then the Church forced us to believe the Earth was flat because they hate science"-narrative is pretty far from the truth, but powerful Roman successor states hundreds of years before the Völkerwanderung would undoubtedly create a very different intellectual climate from what we saw in the Early Middle Ages IOTL.

Any thoughts and all discussion welcome, thanks in advance!
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