Writing Original Conquerors

History is filled with conquerors, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, and Darius the Great are just a few examples. However when you are writing a timeline that may have butterflies engulfing the entire Earth fairly quickly and before these conquerors get a chance to do their jobs.
How do you write a conqueror? Where should they come from?
Specifically in a timeline with Rome destroyed but with few butterflies till after Alexander the Great.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Whenever somebody forms a comitatus, there is the possibility of transformation into a conqueror.
 
So you believe when a kingdom has the ability to not only defend it's borders but have a mobile army for other duties it is possible for any group to get to a position of power.
 
History is filled with conquerors, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, and Darius the Great are just a few examples. However when you are writing a timeline that may have butterflies engulfing the entire Earth fairly quickly and before these conquerors get a chance to do their jobs.
How do you write a conqueror? Where should they come from?
Specifically in a timeline with Rome destroyed but with few butterflies till after Alexander the Great.

Play Rome Total War, and base a guy off your favorite general. :D

Being serious though, I guess I have a few basic suggestions. For instance, base your characters off of real people that you find interesting. For instance - while he wouldn't be a conqueror - I've always loved the idea of basing a Roman Emperor or some sort of powerful King off LBJ. Also, make him the product of his environment and genetics - be he Carthaginian, Celtic, Greek, or whatever, he's going to behave and think differently then were he something else, and his ancestry should come up, both through traits and being compared to ancestors, especially with this in the ancient world. And always give the man some sort of redeeming quality. He might order the execution of thousands, but fiercely love his wife. He might plunder and burn innocent towns, but be a patron of the arts and sciences. Just don't make your conqueror go completely whole hog for the bad guy thing, because that's not entirely realistic.

EDIT: I should probably add an opinion on "where" they should come from. For a rather unbiased way to pick out where empires might come from - in the ancient world especially - look for large-ish "barbarian" cultures similar to a nearby "civilized" one, that have some sort of unique advantage over the initially more powerful culture. Like the Macedonians to the Greeks; the Persians to the Medes; the Mongols to the Chinese. Even the Romans can be counted as a Hellenized spinoff of the Etruscans. It just seems to be sort of a theme for a fair amount of empires in the pre-modern period. Other than that, obviously, just pick cultures that you want to focus on to have conquerors.

EDIT 2: Plus migrations. Some of the more iconic leaders and conquerors in history led huge migration efforts or came soon after.
 
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Play Rome Total War, and base a guy off your favorite general. :D

Being serious though, I guess I have a few basic suggestions. For instance, base your characters off of real people that you find interesting. For instance - while he wouldn't be a conqueror - I've always loved the idea of basing a Roman Emperor or some sort of powerful King off LBJ. Also, make him the product of his environment and genetics - be he Carthaginian, Celtic, Greek, or whatever, he's going to behave and think differently then were he something else, and his ancestry should come up, both through traits and being compared to ancestors, especially with this in the ancient world. And always give the man some sort of redeeming quality. He might order the execution of thousands, but fiercely love his wife. He might plunder and burn innocent towns, but be a patron of the arts and sciences. Just don't make your conqueror go completely whole hog for the bad guy thing, because that's not entirely realistic.

I'm not sure how Timur manages to squeak by as anything but going completely whole hog, but his ilk are the exception.
 
I'm not sure how Timur manages to squeak by as anything but going completely whole hog, but his ilk are the exception.

There are exceptions to every rule. Still, for most conquerors, despite being selfish by nature, there is usually something to them and their legacy that can be seen as decent enough. I was thinking of Alexander the Great when I had typed that - an absolutely brutal and egomaniacal man, but I can admire his curiosity for the world that he was conquering/planned to conquer. You could see a man like Cyrus as evil for being responsible for quite a bit of violence throughout the Near East, but he obviously had redeeming qualities. These men are human beings, and should be treated as such in TLs, with virtues and flaws, IMO. Plus, as a reader... pure evil is boring, and just seems rather phony.
 
There are exceptions to every rule. Still, for most conquerors, despite being selfish by nature, there is usually something to them and their legacy that can be seen as decent enough. I was thinking of Alexander the Great when I had typed that - an absolutely brutal and egomaniacal man, but I can admire his curiosity for the world that he was conquering/planned to conquer. You could see a man like Cyrus as evil for being responsible for quite a bit of violence throughout the Near East, but he obviously had redeeming qualities. These men are human beings, and should be treated as such in TLs, with virtues and flaws, IMO. Plus, as a reader... pure evil is boring, and just seems rather phony.

Comparing Cyrus to Alexander is just insulting to the Iranian.

I do agree that conquerors should be treated as human beings though. Human beings make decisions (some good, some bad) for a variety of reasons, some good, some bad. Even those doing it for their own glory and ambition usually will paint it as justified in some terms other than "I'm great, therefore everyone should bow to me".

And as such, their actions will reflect that - although with Timur, who claimed jihad as a reason, I'm not sure.

Still, Timur is a bad model unless you want a force of destruction to sweep out of wherever. If you want a protagonist so to speak, they need to be someone whose motives follow a train of thought the reader can grasp, whether or not they support it.
 
I'm not sure how Timur manages to squeak by as anything but going completely whole hog, but his ilk are the exception.

Timur absolutely loved the arts actually and was responsible for a flowering of architecture in Samarkand because he would relocate artisans from the conquered lands into the city. Course Timur is my "favorite" conqueror out of them all so I may be biased (and he was still a terrible evil horrible person).
 
Comparing Cyrus to Alexander is just insulting to the Iranian.

Eh, they were the first two I thought of. Still, Cyrus didn't exactly do everything he did because he was just that nice... he had motives that were oftentimes similar to Alexander. He was just less brutal, and probably smarter, going about them.
 
Eh, they were the first two I thought of. Still, Cyrus didn't exactly do everything he did because he was just that nice... he had motives that were oftentimes similar to Alexander. He was just less brutal, and probably smarter, going about them.

The difference I see is that5 Cyruses goal was to create an empire while Alexanders goal was to have conquered the world and be remembered for it. Honestly Alexander was more like Genghis Khan than he was like Cyrus.
 
The difference I see is that5 Cyruses goal was to create an empire while Alexanders goal was to have conquered the world and be remembered for it. Honestly Alexander was more like Genghis Khan than he was like Cyrus.

A guy who describes himself as "Cyrus, king of the world, great king, powerful king, king of Babylon, king of the country of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the earth" sounds exactly like Alexander. I'm no particular fan of Alexander, but neither Cyrus. Both were conquerors, and brought war to a huge swath of area. The differences is that one forged an empire that lasted a few hundred years, and the other just lasted a few years.
 
A guy who describes himself as "Cyrus, king of the world, great king, powerful king, king of Babylon, king of the country of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the earth" sounds exactly like Alexander. I'm no particular fan of Alexander, but neither Cyrus. Both were conquerors, and brought war to a huge swath of area. The differences is that one forged an empire that lasted a few hundred years, and the other just lasted a few years.

No the difference is that Cyrus was an empire builder and Alexander was a barbarian. The simple fact is that Alexanders empire would almost definately fail no matter the circumstances while Cyrus was absolutely intent on building a state capable of sustaining itself.
 
No the difference is that Cyrus was an empire builder and Alexander was a barbarian. The simple fact is that Alexanders empire would almost definately fail no matter the circumstances while Cyrus was absolutely intent on building a state capable of sustaining itself.

Except that Cyrus's empire underwent its own civil war, after Cambyses. I'm not saying that Alexander's empire was destined to fall, but I see no reason that it couldn't have lasted longer, though probably not too long. I certainly don't think Alexander wanted to conquer the entire world and have things collapse right after his death. (Forgive me, but there aren't plenty of contemporary sources for Alexander.)
 

scholar

Banned
No the difference is that Cyrus was an empire builder and Alexander was a barbarian. The simple fact is that Alexanders empire would almost definately fail no matter the circumstances while Cyrus was absolutely intent on building a state capable of sustaining itself.
If Alexander had someone who could replace him and was a talented general there was no reason why it would fall immediately after him. As for an Empire almost definitely falling, it is important to remember that all empires are destined to fall. Even if they last till the modern era they will not last until the universe tears itself apart or fades into oblivion. In fact, civilization is only a several thousand years old, I wouldn't expect any resemblance of the modern world to exist in another several thousand years. I know that you meant that Cyrus was intent on building an Empire, but so did every other great Empire builder, and they all fell just the same. How they went and why are different, but it is an inescapable fact. Further, Alexander did want his legacy and empire to last he died too young and just lacked the administrative talents in order to pull it off. If he lived longer and developed a bureaucracy it would not have been impossible. Remember that his legacy led directly to the foundation of the Hellenists in India, Selucids, Antigonians, and Ptolemics. Yes, I spelled all four of those wrong. No, none of them were minor and quickly fell. They lasted centuries, many lasting to be conquered by Rome apart from the Greeks in India.
 
Alexander always seemed to me to act like he was a Homeric hero. You know that "only eternal fame is immortality" stuff. It would have been interesting to see what he would have been like if he had "grown up".
 
IIRC from my Persian Empire class Cambyses was almost certainly less nutty than he was thought and the civil war after his death was hardly comparable to the collapse of Alexander's empire, being a sucession struggle that was won comparatively quickly by Darius I after Cambyses died without issue, the cock-and-bull about Gaumata the Magus notwithstanding. It does say something, I suppose, that the Achaemenid Empire was able to survive this dynastic change more or less intact.
 
IIRC from my Persian Empire class Cambyses was almost certainly less nutty than he was thought and the civil war after his death was hardly comparable to the collapse of Alexander's empire, being a sucession struggle that was won comparatively quickly by Darius I after Cambyses died without issue, the cock-and-bull about Gaumata the Magus notwithstanding. It does say something, I suppose, that the Achaemenid Empire was able to survive this dynastic change more or less intact.

It could be, you know, related to the fact that Cyrus had about twenty years to solidify his conquests and empire, and Alexander was in power only eight years before he died.
 
The difference I see is that5 Cyruses goal was to create an empire while Alexanders goal was to have conquered the world and be remembered for it. Honestly Alexander was more like Genghis Khan than he was like Cyrus.

I was going to argue with you, but you know what? I see your point. GK and Alex were both hideously brutal, absolutely merciless men who laid waste to--relatively, in Alex's case--vast stretches of the world. And both did it, partially, to unify their "base" people. Genghis especially, which is the reason I truly admire him, bloodsoaked motherfucker that he was. I mean, the guy pretty much single-handedly created a nation out of hundreds of tribes that has squabbled for centuries. I mean, holy shit. Obama has nothing on this guy.
 
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I was going to argue with you, but you know what? I see your point. GK and Alex were both hideously brutal, absolutely merciless men who laid waste to--relatively, in Alex's case--vast stretches of the world. And both did it, partially, to unify their "base" people. Genghis especially, which is the reason I truly admire him, bloodsoaked motherfucker that he was. I mean, the guy pretty much single-handedly created a nation out of hundreds of tribes that has squabbled for centuries. I mean, holy shit. Obama has nothing on this guy.


Kate Beaton had a pretty interesting take: http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=25
 
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