Deleted member 67076
This logic is kinda of a false dilemma. If Byzantium survives than it'll stagnate and fall because of dynastic decadence and changing world conditions, but if it faces outside pressures enough to provoke institutional changes it will collapse as well. It also rests on assuming that since OTL has mostly dynastic states and other monarchies giving way to republics, that such a thing would continue here. Which is faulty, given plenty of republics are republics in name only and would be outright monarchies if it was popular to do so in this day and age (North Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Syria, the DRC).Byzantium clearly couldn't keep up with outside pressures, judging by its fall. If it did enough to survive, it would have to handle the issue of the internally weakening civil wars, which would require putting more power into the hands of the emperor, which would probably slowly morph the institutions og the state into maintaining and supporting the emperor and his lifestyle. Without these constant coups, whatever dynasty is lucky to be in charge at this time would see its descendants on the throne for however long it exists. Looking around the world at the vast majority of dynastic monarchies, especially ones were a potentially bad ruler holds absolute power, I can't see how the Byzantine state can chug on without issue.
What prevents either dynasties from embracing change in response to realizing outside pressures (such as inflation from New World Gold, increasing armament from its neighbors, shifting trade routes, etc)? Or what will stop the court intrigue and have someone pull a Nepalese Royal Massacre and install themselves on the throne?
Now I'm not saying there won't be issue- no state ever has it on easy mode (except the Americans) but the doom and gloom towards Byzantium this forum has recently is a bit of an exaggeration.
There's a certain irony in that Rhomanion acting a lot like Ex Communist mob states.As for the finally collapsed Byzantium being ruled by what are basically mobsters at the turn of the 20th Century, that sounds like an amazing alternate history setting.
I'm very iffy on looking towards the Absolute Monarchies of Western Europe as a vision; unlike Austria or France, Rhomania isn't going to be a patchwork of states that were eaten and thus very have a very odd provincial map (alongside this, its nobility is likely pound for pound weaker given limited to none feudal institutions). Its not so much a monarch having to balance all his provincial nobility while setting up a budding bureaucracy and increasing the standing army. Napoleon's French Empire might be a better comparison imo.Soverihn - I think the French monarchy was a lot more than a tribal hegemony by 1700 or later.That's like saying the Roman Empire descended from a military junta so of course it was unstable. It seems like later European absolute monarchy is a decent vision for what a surviving Byzantine state would look like during the age of exploration. I have little faith that it would be able to keep adapting quickly enough without lagging behind. It would simply not be a part of some of the major ongoing changes in the world.
I agree.I don't think it's enough to look at Byzantium at its height - obviously it had super impressive high points in terms of political organization - but also Byzantium at some of its lows, because invariably it would have those. The bureaucracy could become a hidebound and ineffective organization. Land and wealth could become concentrated in the hands of a few families, as during the Komnenoi. The Empire will struggle from time to time, and sometimes it will probably come out reduced or weakened, even if it often endures intact.
Depends. Until the Palaiologoi period being called a Hellenes was a slur, and people identified primarily as Roman into the 1800s.That said, if some nation-state republic replaces Byzantium, I wonder if they'd hearken back to their Greek roots a la OTL Greece or call themselves something like the Roman Republic.