WI Western Emperors Continued?

The only difference, and a difference that may have made all the difference in the long run, between the man known as Odoacer and any number of germanic military strongmen that held power in the lands nominally under the control of the Western Roman Emperor in the fifth century was the fact that when he executed the usurper Orestes and pensioned off his son Romulus he did not elevate another complient Roman to the throne. Instead he sent the Imperial Regalia to Constantinople and offered to rule Italy as the viceroy of the Emperor Zeno (Zeno's nephew and the lawful Emperor, Julius Nepos, was still in Dalmatia where he fled after Orestes' coup).

POD: 476. Odoacer decides to have a closer source of legitimacy and, leaving Orestes alive as a hostage to insure compliance, formally submits to the authority of the boy still nicknamed Romulus Augustulus by just about everyone. In response, Zeno works out a deal between Julius Nepos and the Ostrogothic princeling Theodoric, establishing the latter with the high title of Magister Militum Italiae if he led the rightful emperor back to the court at Ravenna.

Italy and Dalmatia are restored to the nominal rule of Julius Nepos by 485, and when he dies Theodoric has a nephew of the man accaimed as Emperor (and managed, with difficulty, to get his daughter married off to him after a suitable conversion). Theororic's son *Athalaric continued the overall state of affairs; and the Roman Emperors in the west were sometimes ignored, sometimes partnered with, and sometimes quietly replaced... they were always there.

Aside from heading off the disaster that the Wars of Justinian collectively were, preventing the rise of the Pope's temporal power, and facilitating the continued political unity of Italy and the Adriatic; what is the overall effect in the long term?

Discuss.

HTG
 
The only difference, and a difference that may have made all the difference in the long run, between the man known as Odoacer and any number of germanic military strongmen that held power in the lands nominally under the control of the Western Roman Emperor in the fifth century was the fact that when he executed the usurper Orestes and pensioned off his son Romulus he did not elevate another complient Roman to the throne. Instead he sent the Imperial Regalia to Constantinople and offered to rule Italy as the viceroy of the Emperor Zeno (Zeno's nephew and the lawful Emperor, Julius Nepos, was still in Dalmatia where he fled after Orestes' coup).

POD: 476. Odoacer decides to have a closer source of legitimacy and, leaving Orestes alive as a hostage to insure compliance, formally submits to the authority of the boy still nicknamed Romulus Augustulus by just about everyone. In response, Zeno works out a deal between Julius Nepos and the Ostrogothic princeling Theodoric, establishing the latter with the high title of Magister Militum Italiae if he led the rightful emperor back to the court at Ravenna.

Italy and Dalmatia are restored to the nominal rule of Julius Nepos by 485, and when he dies Theodoric has a nephew of the man accaimed as Emperor (and managed, with difficulty, to get his daughter married off to him after a suitable conversion). Theororic's son *Athalaric continued the overall state of affairs; and the Roman Emperors in the west were sometimes ignored, sometimes partnered with, and sometimes quietly replaced... they were always there.

Aside from heading off the disaster that the Wars of Justinian collectively were, preventing the rise of the Pope's temporal power, and facilitating the continued political unity of Italy and the Adriatic; what is the overall effect in the long term?

Discuss.

The idea that the German princes would continue to be able to rule undivided is rather implausible if we look at OTL. The Ostrogoths fell apart prior to Justinian's invasion, allowing him the political opening to invade Italy in support of one faction of the Ostrogothic court. In Spain the Visigoths fell apart and when the Muslims invaded it was with the aid of feuding factions from the shattered Visigothic realm. The Franks to the north survived due to pure luck of geography and religious choice (they didn't convert to Arian-heresy Christianity with the rest of the Germanic peoples) and even they only maintained supremacy by dint of having no other group able to project power into the chaos of Frankish politics.

I understand and appreciate what your trying to do as far as making the west into a Japanese style Shogunate thing, but I think that your best bet for an Emperor in the West is probably the re-integration of the Gothic realms back into the Byzantine Empire.

Say that Belisarius stays in Italy, and isn't recalled after his coup that delivered Italy, whole and un-ravaged, into the hands of the Byzantine Empire. The Visigoths politics is divided, and they faced invasions from the Franks. The Byzantines form an alliance with the Franks, and probably end up taking sides in the succession struggles in Spain. Spain and the Frankish territories are both friendly allies in relatively short order, with the national kings also serving as roman "vice-regents" of their respective territory.

When the Arab Explosion occurs (this was going to happen regardless of whether or not Islam arose. If not Muhammad then perhaps some Genghis Khan kinda character- or maybe the equivalent of the Germanic Vulkwandering, with the Arabs taking over the Middle East, but adapting the local culture (without the unifier of a religion that stresses Arabic, the language fades in the face of older, more established languages). Anyway, Constantinople may in fact be abandoned as the capital, and the Imperial capital is moved to the far safer city of Ravenna. Constantinople stands as the Citadel of the East, and the Patriarch remains, but the Emperor is in Italy. With the resources of Spain and Italy added to the Empire they are able to fend off Arab attacks into North Africa, though Egypt and Syria are lost.

The Emperor tends to stay in Ravenna, which is much more centrally placed to deal with the Empire's larger territories than Constantinople. Without the Emperor in either Rome or Constantinople the Orthodox Church never splits, and instead maintains its unity with frequent Church councils. The Bishop of Rome, though the most important seat in the West, isn't seen as the absolute head of the Church, and a system of frequent Church councils develops in order to keep the Orthodox Church on the same page. The Emperors seeing the Councils as a means of keeping concentrated power out of the hands of any one Patriarch or other Church officer, plays an important role as the arbiter and protector of the Church councils. The influence of the centralized Empire on its allied nation-state, the Frankish territories, results in a unitary state that pledges alliegance to the Roman Emperor, and keeps their own church on a tight leash. The Roman Emperor uses the Church as an important part of the strategy of the Empire, making sure to spread Orthodox Christianity, and its alliegience to the Councils. In this way the Roman Orthodox Church is able to exercise extensive power beyond Imperial borders, keeping allies in the thrones of England, Francia, and Germania, and extending the Empire's sphere of influence even further afield.
 
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