Would romance languages exist if Rome never fell?

Latin in an alternate Roman Empire would probably be similar. Written Latin in the church or imperial court would be largely unchanged, even under barbarian dynasties. Priests and magistrates posted across the empire would learn to speak the local dialect and read imperial proclamations according to the local dialect. As long as most imperial subjects were illiterate peasants, this distinction didn't matter. But at some point, Latin becomes no longer sufficient and a new written vernacular standard is required. Maybe the new written standard is painstakingly created by analyzing all Romance dialects, like how OTL High German was created by Martin Luther writing a Bible legible to laymen across the entire HRE. Maybe it emerges from the dialect of the imperial capital city, like OTL Chinese (but modern standard Chinese is NOT the same as the Beijing dialect, and a native Beijinger would be laughed at for speaking the native dialect elsewhere).

If we don't butterfly away the Catholic Church I don't think that the Universal Language will change a lot.

The right parallel here is not Chinese, is Arabic. All people will pray in Church Latin and, if the Latin dialects start to diverge a lot as OTL, most of them will simply try to converge back to its roots, as a variation would be seem as "barbaric" and/or "unchristian".
 
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