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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.

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