[BTS] [RFC/DoC] The Legacy of Byzance: An Eastern Roman Tale

[Gruekiller]

I was hoping Grue was back, checked, and was thoroughly disappointed.

I thought I was back too, and was likewise disappointed.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

I thought I was back too, and was likewise disappointed.

Best comment ever

 

[Bair_the_Normal]

I thought I was back too, and was likewise disappointed.

Awww.

 

[SouthernKing]

I thought I was back too, and was likewise disappointed.

Sigged.

 

[Gruekiller]

Part Two: Fall
(1722 - 1863)

2.1 - Empire in Decline​

Rome's resurgence was long - more than 1,160 years of hardship, years of conquest, conversion, and exploration. A dozen provinces recovered, a hundred nations vanquished, a million souls brought to the Church. The cumulative efforts of a hundred generations of Romans made Rhomania the greatest empire the world had ever known.

It is so shocking, then, that its dramatic fall from power was so very quick.

No grand coalition, or steppe horde invasion, or great plague or earthquake brought the oldest empire on earth low, but its own material and moral decay, stemming from centuries of decadence and power. The hubris of a world-empire can blind it even to the most obvious signs of alarm. Such was the case of Rhomania in the 18th and 19th Centuries, marked by most at the death of Eirene II Laskarina in 1722...

Constantinople in the middle of the 18th Century.

The Late Laskarid Dynasty (1722 - 1799)​

Eirene II, the last child of Anna 'Dynamika' Laskarina, had never been healthy, so her passing in late 1722 was mourned, but not a surprise for most of the Rhomanian ruling circle. Eirene did not leave behind an heir, leaving the Imperial throne to fall to another branch of the Laskarid family. These Laskarids were natives of Constantinople and had long held a place in the Imperial palace as the rulers' royal cousins. They were thus inured to the courtly intrigues and backstabbings typical of Rhomanian politics, a tendency which showed itself in the often shrewd and cruel attitudes of these new Laskarid emperors.

The first of the line was Constantine, 11th of his name, a palace stenographer of noble Laskarid blood, and recognized as the patriarch of his family's line. He was eager to take up the Imperial purple, moving with his family, including his daughter Zoe, into the Imperial quarters at once, and sending his heavily pregnant wife to give birth to a son, David, in the palace's famed Purple Room, on the same day that Eirene's funeral procession passed through the city. The haste of the new ruling family was viewed with distaste, but wealthy Constantine could buy all the favors he wanted of the nobility, and so settled into his reign comfortably.

Constantine resided for 28 years in the palace until his death, rarely leaving, so enraptured was he with the sumptuous Imperial lifestyle. Despite the Senate's attempts to engage the Emperor in its proceedings, Constantine rarely saw the need to sully himself with such temporal matters, passively supporting the wealthiest factions of the Senate chamber and creating scandalous rumors about reformers and other senators who tried to 'shake things up' too much. He would be remembered after his realm, somewhat un-affectionately, as "Constantine the Weasel" for his underhanded fashion.

Perhaps to speak of a positive side, Rhomania's spy networks abroad did thrive in this period, infiltrating high levels of administration in Norway, France, and Spain. Many a pro-Roman coup or persecution of Protestant heretics befell these places over the coming years as the European states, impoverished by a century of war, were powerless to stop Roman influence from passing through their borders.

Constantine died at 58, naming 28-year-old David his heir. 31-year-old Zoe, the Emperor's daughter, did not approve, given that she was the elder child and that prior succession laws during the Kantakouzene years had made absolute primogeniture the law of the Empire, laws which her father had ignored at his death. Tensions grew over the first year of David's reign between the estranged siblings, the fickle and diplomatic Emperor commanding the naval brass and the same echelons of high society whose loyalty his father had won, while the princess Zoe sought the blessing of the clergy and, surprisingly, achieved widespread support amongst the civilian core of the Roman army. Matters only came to a head when the traditional racing factions fell into the battle lines, ensuring that, before long, rioting and outright combat spilled into a number of Roman cities. The Laskarid Civil War began.

A scene from the Laskarid Civil War.
​

For five years, the Empire was riven by civil conflict, until at last Zoe's faction took Constantinople, scattered the remnants of David's partisans, and at last ended the civil war. Accordingly, Zoe took the throne in 1755, exiling her brother to England and pledging it to be her Christian duty to rule the Empire with benevolence. Nonetheless, in latter days she wore the moniker of 'Zoe the Cold-blooded', for the unprecedented purge of Davidite sympathizers in levels of government all across the Empire--conflicts between so-called Zoite and Davidite partisans would continue to flare up for decades. Distant possessions like Mesopotamia and Tunisia likewise experienced harsh crackdowns on independence movements, the terrors only ending when Zoe died in 1774, loved and feared, passing the throne to her son, David. The young lad spent only 8 years on the throne before succumbing to a mysterious illness, leaving Zoe's line at an end. As a compromise between the warring factions, the elder David, still exiled, offered his son Manuel for the Imperial throne, and despite the misgivings of the Zoites, Manuel was accepted by a diet of the Imperial Senate and took up the purple in 1782.

Though at first a promising monarch who gave generously to public works and the themata at the borders, Manuel V is remembered today mostly for the madness which overtook him late in his reign. Historians now think that Manuel succumbed to porphyria, a genetic disease which may have been present in earlier Laskarid emperors and empresses. The Empire's bureaucracy condensed during Manuel's reign in the absence of power from the throne, greatly devaluing the absolute authority which the throne had held over the state for centuries. New civic authorities grew up, especially in autonomous portions of the realm like Hungary and Italy, comprised for the first time mostly of natives rather than Greek imports. The abilities of this new bureaucracy would be tested when Manuel died without issue in 1799, ending the Imperial line of the Laskarids and cast the Empire into a period of uncertainty. This was a period of instability in Rhomania, seeing social unrest throughout Africa and Europe flare under the pressure of new social theories and political movements which spread across the borders from France and the former Germany. The unchanging Imperial state, stubbornly clinging to its ancient monarchy, sought out a new candidate for the purple.

The Nafpliotis Dynasty (1799 - 1844)​

Eventually, a rich noble named Basil Nafpliotis put himself forward because of his links to the Laskarid family--his father, it turned out, was the son of a Laskarina princess and a scion of the Nafpliotis family, making him a distant blood relation of the late dynasty as well as an influential blueblood of his own right. The Senate accepted him after some deliberation--Basil and his three sons would rule the Empire for the next forty-five years.

A bold, shrewd, and energetic leader, Basil instigated a series of new laws cracking down on dissenters against the Imperial government, exiling and imprisoning hundreds of political agitators, especially in the Empire's northwest. The most famous purge saw 100 German social-republicans [1] in Vindobona [2] scooped off of the streets, tried, and either sent into exile in Norwegian Saxony or executed for treason. Such matters were ill-publicized during Basil's lifetime, when he was better known for his daring campaigns against the Persian Empire along the eastern Rhomanian border. Dying in 1821 after 22 years on the throne, Basil I Nafpliotis would be remembered by the nickname of "Lykos", "The Wolf", for his cunning in these campaigns. His eldest son Isaakios followed thereafter.

Somewhat less capable than his father before him, Isaakios nevertheless earned the dubious honor of being better than his two brothers would later prove to be. He encouraged the Senate to renew some of the old Imperial privileges lost during Manuel's reign, decorating the palace in Constantinople and paying off some of the damage in the occupied German lands caused by the purges. His sudden death in 1833 at the hands of an Armenian revolutionary, agitating for that people's independence, shocked the Empire, astonished that the ruler of the Romans could be struck dead in the midst of a Constantinople parade with such suddenness. Widespread fear about godless radicals and independence movements swept the Imperial upper and middle classes, reactionary "political clubs" taking root in many cities. The old Pentaspides organization, operating for centuries since the late Komnenid dynasty as an old boys' club in Constantinople, took up the proverbial shield, organizing rallies in favor of "Roman values" and spreading propaganda through the lower districts of Constantinople and Thessalonica in the form of pamphlets. Violence against minority groups became a grim fact of everyday life in Imperial cities as the Romans reacted to the national liberation struggles of subjugated nations within their empire with a reactionary nationalism of their own. The alarming rise of these violent social movements within the empire accompanied the rise to power of the new emperor, Giorgios III.

Idolized by nationalists as the latest in the Imperial line, Giorgios was a frail man who suffered from a disfiguring physical disability--the dissenting press snidely termed him 'the Hunchback'. The Emperor kept mostly out of the public eye, preferring to let the Nafpliotid partisans in the senate see to his family's interest, and died soon in 1840, dying like his older brother Isaakios without direct issue. The last and youngest of Basil's sons, Constantine, arrived in the city from his home in the quiet Bithynian countryside. A quiet figure, invisible in Imperial politics until this point, Constantine was almost an unknown until his coronation, and continued to pursue that honor even after taking the purple. He soon became derisively known as 'the Pup', sarcastically recalling his bold father 'the Wolf'. He sat on the throne for only four years before the people began rejecting the failing Nafpliotid dynasty, expressed most strongly in 1844 in the form of a massive student protest at the University of Constantinople, calling for a devolution of the Emperor's privileges, autonomy, and local democracy. A stand-off between the Varangoi garrison, zealously protecting the path toward the palace, and the increasingly agitated crowd of students, came to a dreadful conclusion when the Pentaspides sent in their infamous purple-scarfed paramilitary militia, plowing into the flank of the crowd with flogs and guns and scattering the terrified students back toward the university. Dozens of the young protesters perished in the ensuing brawl, cut down by the vengeful militiamen.

Decrying Constantine's inability to quash civil unrest and keep Roman virtue alive, the Pentaspides themselves took to the streets in the coming days, clashing with Constantinopolitan guardsmen and crowding the palatial hill. The Varangoi at last opened fire, scattering the crowd and launching days of street-to-street gunfights through the northern districts of the city. Affiliated Pentaspides groups seized weapon caches all around the Empire at the news, raising the standard of one of the most influential nobles among their number, Ioannes Angelos. The Pentaspides were doing the unthinkable, calling for the violent overthrow of a ruling dynasty in the late days of the 19th Century--the most terrifying thing is just how many answered the call.

Imperial soldiers from Moesia fight on the Macedonian front during the Civil War.
​

The Rhomanian Civil War, as it came to be known, was the first full-scale war fought by the Romans in the modern age, with rifled firearms, automated lines of supply, and machines of war finding their way to the battlefield for the first time. The Imperial military proved itself ill-suited to deal with the modern art of war, trapped in endless schemata of cavalry formations, closed squares, and short-range artillery. The intense contradiction between the strategy of the generals and the actual reality of the modern battlefield drove an inhuman slaughter onward, soldiers dying bravely but fruitlessly in massed charges against enemy fortifications. The Pentaspides adapted more quickly, taking advantage of their popular support in much of Greece and Asia to fall away from organized attack and to strike from cover, shielded by the locals. It was only after five years of massacres and brutal, grinding warfare that Constantine, heartbroken by the ruins of his Empire, surrendered to the oncoming armies of Ioannes Angelos, leaving in his hands a Constantinople tired from years of civic conflict and battered by artillery. Angelos saw to it that the 'traitor' Emperor was exiled. None could resist--the Angelos family and its Pentaspid partisans were now in power in the Empire.

The Angelid Dynasty (1849 - 1857)​

Ioannes VII stood proudly atop an empire of rubble in 1850, Pentaspid military police holding the Empire's cities in a steel grip, publically beating dissenters and any "un-Roman" nationalities they could get their hands on. Ioannes put his ego on display as he set about rebuilding the Imperial capital, draining the treasuries of border cities like Dyrrachion Komnenion and Trebizond to finance massive but useless constructions around the ruins of the Hippodrome. A gilded statue of the Emperor rose many meters over its center, mutely announcing the total power of the new, harsher Imperial line. The theme system was renewed, Imperial governors who swore allegiance to the Pentaspides and its Five Shields (a disturbing set of precepts propounding the Pentaspides' totalitarian ideology) being installed as the military rulers of every district of the Empire. Harsh programs of "Romanization" found their way into the Empire's once proud schooling system, teaching an official account of history beginning with the creation of the world and glorifying the state up to the present day, as well as forcing Rhomanian language and customs upon all of its students, regardless of ethnic or religious origin. Half the world stood captive of Ioannes the Black and his Pentaspid police, prisoner of a decaying Empire.

His death in 1857 would mark the last Imperial funeral procession that Constantinople would ever see.

Twilight Days (1857 - 1863)​

His son, Constantine XIII, wasn't half the man his father was--a young man whose brief palace education had left him poorly equipped to run an Empire of Rhomania's size, Constantine made few edicts, and the ones he did were clumsier and more heavy-handed even than those of Ioannes before him. Even the Pentaspides began to question their Emperor's capability, making sure to install a few "advising policy-makers" in the Imperial palace to guide along the continuing "Romanization" of the Empire. Failing under decades of mismanagement and heavy-handed brutality, the local economies of many Imperial provinces were failing, only driving up the poverty and hardship among the Empire's repressed minorities. The Imperial nomismata went into an inflationary crisis and was put onto a new standard, but its value grew still more and more debased. Warfare in Africa and eastern Asia promised storm clouds on the Empire's horizon, even as independence movements and dissenting factions gathered in hushed conferences in every city, seeking to undo the Pentaspides once and for all.

The Empire, it appeared, was coming unraveled at the seams.

Only one small push was needed to make it all come apart...

Spoiler The Last Emperors and Empresses of Rome :

(1722 - 1750) Constantine XI, Nyfitsas [The Weasel] (House Laskaris)
(1750 - 1755) Civil war between David II Laskaris and Zoe II Laskarina.
(1755 - 1774) Zoe II, Adistakta [The Cold-blooded] (House of Laskaris)
(1774 - 1782) David III (House of Laskaris)
(1782 - 1799) Manuel V, Trelos [The Mad] (House of Laskaris)
(1799 - 1821) Basil I, Lykos [The Wolf] (House of Nafpliotis)
(1821 - 1833) Isaakios IV (House of Nafpliotis)
(1833 - 1840) Giorgios III, Kampouris [The Hunchback] (House of Nafpliotis)
(1840 - 1844) Constantine XII, Koutavis [The Pup] (House of Nafpliotis)
(1844 - 1849) Civil war between Constantine XII and Ioannes VII
(1849 - 1857) Ioannes VII, Mavros [The Black] (House of Angelos)
(1857 - 1863) Constantine XIII (House of Angelos)

---​

[1] - Social-republicanism, a political and economic ideology propounding common property, anti-monarchism, and revolutionary democracy; this timeline's rough equivalent of Marxist-style socialism.

[2] - Vienna, occupied Imperial Germany.

 

[Gruekiller]

2.2 - The Day of Fire

Constantinople - 29 May 1863​

​

Above, the greatest city in the world bustled in its usual early-morning way, the Thracian sun glinting off of ancient domes and towers, and newer, metal and concrete constructions alike. Below, a feat of engineering no less impressive sprawled beneath the ancient streets, tunnels of stone and steel supporting the city's new rail system. Behemoth machines choking out steam into the vents above rattled through, glitzy lighting keeping the way visible as they made the rounds beneath the Imperial capital, shuttling busy politicians and workers across the Horn and back.

One figure among the crowd, all the distracted citizens and vigilant military police, stood out of place, shrinking away in alarm from the trains as they roared past. A sad little creature of shaggy, graying hair, haunted brown eyes flashing in fear at the unfamiliar machines, he huddled, cloaked in a tattered old coat, hands in his pockets. The police watched him with faint amusement, laughing amongst themselves at the unsteady old hobo. If he started causing trouble, they would cart him off. Fatefully, though, neither moved on him, leaving the old man to shamble around the platform for just a little bit too long.

Despite first impressions, this was no vagrant moving before the unwary eyes of the Pentaspides, though he had once found his home in Constantinople, so many years ago... The old man ignored the constables, eyes not on the world around him but on a world decades gone, before Rhomania was split apart by murder and hatred. Mist rose in those bleary eyes which could no longer see as well as they used to, but he still saw so clearly a proud father and two older brothers, a world still full of hope and imagining.

Many a day had passed since he left Constantinople all those years ago, and much had changed in the Empire since then. Always living at the periphery, out of the vengeful grasp of the Pentaspid dictatorship, he saw famine in Egypt, terror and repression in Germany, the suffering of a million souls and the terror within them that could only come from not knowing whether the coming days would bring them relief or ruin. So many horrors had passed under the willing eyes of the new dynasty. Seeing so many firsthand had been maddening.

And perhaps the old man really was mad.

But in this strange and hopeless world, the only thing he could still see clearly was the last task he had left to do; his last hope for redemption.

He would be the one to end the madness.

He thought he was under the acropolis of the old city now. Above, the Imperial palace, the Senate, the headquarters of the secret police. Hatred roiled inside of the old man, shaking as his hands reached into his coat, feeling at the secret he had kept huddled underneath. This secret had been shared by few, shrouded by the chaos of the Civil War. In those dying days in 1848, the Imperial loyalists had split the atom somewhere in the Arabian desert, hoping for a final weapon against the Pentaspides. Now, years after the war had run its course, the loyalists would see their final, futile efforts vindicated at last.

The police grew concerned now, seeing that there was a possible bomb threat underway. They shoved through the crowd, shouting, trying to reach that strange old man. His eyes were closed now as he held the detonator, hand trembling so much that he could barely hold onto it. His vision would fade soon--but he thought, just perhaps, that he could see a brighter future past the darkness.

Constantine XII Nafpliotis pushed the trigger.

Constantine XIII Angelos and his city went up in flames.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Étsi pernáei i̱ dóxa tou kósmou.
(Sic transit gloria mundi.)

-------------------------------------------------------------

Join me again soon for

Part Three: Renewal​

 

[GreekAnalyzer]

Holy it's Gruekiller.
And with a new part coming out.
YEAAAAAHHHHH!

 

[Gruekiller]

I'm determined to bring this story to the great conclusion it deserved. I had so much extra material lying around for Parts 2 and 3. There's Part 2 all done for you; Part 3 will be here, err, eventually.

 

[clanky4]

I'm determined to bring this story to the great conclusion it deserved. I had so much extra material lying around for Parts 2 and 3. There's Part 2 all done for you; Part 3 will be here, err, eventually.

So wait, that would mean that you've been playing the same game of civ for 3 years?

 

[Gruekiller]

Well, not quite that, though I've been toying with that game's story for three years. The actual gameplay I think ended early in 2013. Either way, it's been one hell of a ride and I believe it's time for closure.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

That's a fair assessment.

 

[trexeric]

It's awesome you're finishing this. I remember when it first came out. Kind of.

 

[Gruekiller]

Don't feel too bad, I barely even remember it.

 

[Grifguz]

Holy ****, I love you.

 

[Gruekiller]

good, all will love me or suffer....

 

[Noyyau]

You do realize that you're forcing me to read this from the beginning, right?

 

[Gruekiller]

Don't say that like it's such a bad thing.

 

[Moai_Spammer]

i just realized i only ever lurked this, and lurking is never a good substitute for an old fashioned sub

 

[Gruekiller]

Part Three: Renewal
(1863 - 2017)

3.0 - Ashes​

Constantinople burned in the wake of the atomic attack, the ground caving out beneath the acropolis and flooding much of the old city with boiling water from the Bosporus. The ancient domes of Hagia Sophia were only cinders now, molten fragments of Ioannes the Black's statue scattered for miles around along with the wreckage of so much of the rest of the city. Galata and much of the city core too burned away within the first minutes, and the shockwaves wrecked most buildings for miles around. High waves battered Nicomedia across the straits, where stupefied Romans watched the blossoming, burning clouds rise above the Queen of Cities with mute horror. Such was the sprawl of the capital, however, that the lower-class districts and nouveau-riche suburbs which had sprouted up in the west, far past the old Theodosian Wall that was now rubble, largely avoided outright destruction. Under a ghostly pall of radioactive ash, the survivors filed out of the city under the watchful eye of what was left of the civic services, leaving behind the ruins of the New Rome. It would never again be inhabited.

The central structure of the Empire could not survive the sudden and unexplained annihilation of its civic and cultural capital, the Emperor and all the high-ranking members of the government doubtless among the dead. The Imperial legions, sprawling across a fourth of the world, were left directionless, in some cases clamping down with martial law to prevent total anarchy, and in others, more adventurous commanders greedily carved fiefdoms of their own out of the carcass of the dying Roman Empire. Foreign powers too took advantage, Mesopotamia quietly passing into the arms of Persia; and a coalition of Western powers, chief among them England and Spain, moved in to impose an Exclusion Zone around the ruins of Constantinople under the auspices of protecting the Erythrean-Mediterranean trade from the aftereffects of this bizarre new weapon.

What ensued were decades of anarchy as the new state of affairs settled. One thing was clear: the old Roman Empire was dead forever, and it would be up to a new generation of dreamers and conquerors to build upon the ashes...

 

[TheNoob]

Oh goody, old stories coming back!