[BTS] [RFC/DoC] The Legacy of Byzance: An Eastern Roman Tale
- Thread starter Gruekiller
- Start date
I'm happy to announce that, in light of the soon-to-be-published conclusion of this story (nearing completion), I've gone back to fix up the thread a little. There is now an index of all chapters (helpfully named and numbered) on the first post of the thread, broken images have been replaced, format standardized (mostly), and a few ease-of-reading changes made. I hope it wouldn't seem too self-important of me to hope that this inspires a few re-reads of this story as it hurdles inevitably toward its finale. 
3.1 - What Remains, Part One
Successor states of the Roman Empire, 2017.
A century and a half after the destruction of Constantinople and the end of its Empire, the world lives in a new, interconnected digital age. Colonies speaking many tongues can be found on the Moon and Mars, and the galaxy beyond seems within reach, even if faster-than-light travel has not yet been achieved. The Roman Empire as such might not have lived to see the world it made, but a half dozen Roman successor states still exist, scattered around the rim of the Mediterranean and beyond. Today, at last, we'll have a look at them.
Successor states of the Roman Empire, 2017.
Epirus
The lands once governed by the great Pyrrhus at the cusp of the Adriatic retained their importance through most of the latter Roman era. Having receded into a relative backwater during the nadir of imperial fortunes between the sixth and ninth centuries, the Komnenid period saw an explosive growth of the Epirote coast with the turn to Italy in the fourteenth century. The rebuilding of Dyrrhachion under their aegis brought a vibrant, urban core to the relatively rural region and allowed it to slowly grow into a crucial financial hub of the Empire. At the time of Constantinople's destruction, the Pentaspides secret police were thick on the ground in the area, a stronghold of pro-Nafpliotid sentiment, but the news of the immolation of the Imperial capital quickly imperiled their position. Spreading thin in an attempt to control the local countryside, long-mistreated Dyrrhachion revolted, the first major imperial city to do so. Though the area was predominantly Greek and had been for hundreds of years, many of the prominent faces of the new Epirote national movement were Albanians, disaffected by the Pentaspid regime's harsh ethnocentric line. Hit-and-run attacks from rooftops and other guerrilla tactics bled the demoralized fascist forces dry and ultimately, by the end of 1864, drove them out of Epirus altogether, never to return.
The aged scion of the Nafpliotid family in the region, Michael, a cousin of the line that ruled the Empire decades before, was crowned early in 1865 by the metropolitan of the city in a solemn ceremony as the first Emperor of Epirus, signaling the province's final breakaway from the Roman Empire and the beginning of its independence, which has been maintained up to the present day. Though the frail Michael I would last only a year on the throne, the international tension and uncertainty that would spill over into his son's nine-year reign would be remembered as Epirus's Decade of Troubles. Young and bold Giorgios I would guide Epirus into the 70's against the hostile forces on all sides.
Though Epirus feuded for a long time with Macedonia in the east and Morea in the south, its most implacable foe in this early stage was the reconstituted Crown of Hungary in the north, which had relished its chance at independence after centuries of union under the Roman crown and later full integration into the Empire. The triumphant Hunyad dynasty was quick to integrate much of Poland, the Czech lands, and most of the South Slavic kingdoms into its fold, before looking south greedily to the disorganized Greek remnant states of the southern Balkans. Ultimately, the squabbling states of Greece were forced to put their differences aside and form a coalition, Epirus standing side-by-side with Macedonia (and with backline support from Morea) to defend against the Hungarian menace on the Danube frontier. This war (the Greco-Hungarian War, 1869 - 1875) was a grueling affair for all involved, Hungarian air raids battering Dyrrachion, Thessaloniki, and Adrianople for days at a time in its early stages. Ultimately, Hungarian armor failed consistently to push past the allied lines, turned back by strong defensive efforts by the Greeks and agreeing to something a few hairs short of a status quo ante bellum. The alliance extracted harsh indemnities from Hungary, which would never quite live down the embarrassment of this defeat, and though they would never be quite as close to one another again, the relationship between Epirus, Macedonia, and Morea (later to become Hellas) was always a little more fraternal than competitive and peace came to the western Greek lands at last.
Giorgios I would not live to see it. A victim of his own desire to be with the troops, Hungarian bombs falling on his command tent in the dying days of the war tragically ended both his life and the Nafpliotis line. Even as peace talks commenced, furious behind-the-scenes controversy ensued in the young nation about who would take up the purple and lead Epirus as its Emperor through the peaceful days to follow. In the end, a brother of the Emperor's childless former consort was chosen for his close ties with the family and his personal charisma to lead Epirus through the uncertain times ahead of it. Thomas I of the house of Choumnos would herald the start of the Choumnid dynasty, which would inaugurate the twentieth century in Epirus and whose descendants would be with Epirus for most of its great trials and achievements.
Thomas I ruled for fifteen years, most of which were spent rebuilding the country, and particularly the northern frontier, from the incredible destruction wrought by the long war with the Hungarians, and forging diplomatic and trade links with the nations of the Mediterranean and Europe. A particularly close friend of Epirus would be the Frankish Empire, which saw in Epirus a friendly port on the Mediterranean and a spot for future investment in trade arriving from the east. His son Michael married a Frankish princess and ascended to the throne on his father's death in 1890 as Michael II of Epirus. His reign would be one of peaceful infrastructure expansion and relative seclusion from the ongoing growth of tensions in Europe in the dying days of the nineteenth century. Another crisis would unfold upon his unexpected death in 1901, leaving only a daughter, Anna behind. The Laskarid rules of succession which the old Empire had adopted were not in effect in Epirus at this time, disallowing women from inheriting the purple. After considerable controversy, Anna's Frankish husband, Henri, took the throne as as Enrikos I, inaugurating a separate dynastic line marrying his native house of Bourgogne with the house of Choumnos to begin the Choumnos-Bourgogne dynasty.
Enrikos I would steer Epirus through the troubled 1920s, keeping cordial with the Franks and their allies in the Great European War (1927 - 1938) but mostly keeping his nation from its trials out of fear of the wrath of the Hungarians to the north, who were arrayed with the Russians, Italians, and Scandinavians against the Franks, English, and Spanish. Because of the ruling Comneno family of unfriendly Italy just across the Straits of Otranto during this war, the capital's old cognomen of "Komnenion" became rather unpopular. Though it was never removed entirely from official documentation because of its explicit use in the charter issued in the fourteenth century by Iason Komnenos, it would usually just be known as "Dyrrhachion" from that point onward. By the end of his reign, the world was entering a somewhat more interconnected state, the first personal computers debuting in 1946, the year before his death, and his funeral was attended by many heads of states which did not exist when he had ascended. By comparison to their predecessors, Enrikos' son Michael III and grandson Giorgios II have presided over relatively less eventful times for the Empire, acting chiefly as ambassadors for Epirus and symbols for the people. Despite criticism in some quarters for being the only remaining non-parliamentary monarchy in Europe, Epirus enjoys relatively good freedom of the press and local political involvement, and is a contributing state to the European Space Organisation and a member of the World Commonwealth, a conference of countries from all continents presiding over international law and matters of peace. It is also a founding member of the Roman League, an organization concerned with the conservation of Roman history and cultural sites.
Epirus thrives on its position on the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas, tourism to see its many ancient castles, traditional Albanian dances in the highlands, and the shores of sunny Corfu lending it more tourists every year than the country's total population. Notwithstanding old awkwardness with Italy and its ruling family, Iason I Komnenos is considered a national hero, and a statue of him stands near the old citadel he built in Dyrrhachion. Pyrrhus also holds a special place in the national consciousness, despite his old animosity with the Latin-speaking Romans of yore, and is the subject of countless dramatizations of his life. French is the most common second language in the country, taught in primary schools because of Epirus' close ties with the Franks, and Albanian and Vlach are spoken in some small amount by their respective minorities.
Spoiler Rulers of Epirus :
Macedonia
To the east of Epirus, the Balkan Mountains and the plains of Moesia and Thrace also roiled with discontent through the 1860s. Military encampments overfilled with squalor and refugees of the devastation on the Bosporus sprouted up on the Euxine and Marmara coasts, regiments of Pentaspides escaping from the Morea and Epirus winding up in the region closer to the destroyed capital, like ants to a wrecked hill, unsure of where else to go. Here the fight for independence was harder fought than in the west with the sheer concentration of loyalist forces, and indeed, the region spent almost three years (1863 - 1866) nominally under a military government quartered in Adrianople, long considered the second city of the Empire. Discontent built under the martial law they imposed, bolstered in part by the forming of new governments to the west and the east, dozens of rebel cells sprouting up in urban areas and countrysides alike. Rightly seizing upon the weakness of the military regime and counting on the probability that his participation in the rebel movement could see him rise to great heights, a local liberal noble of the Palaiologos family, Alexandros, sponsored many of these cells and brought them together under one roof, where, on 9 May 1866, they jointly affirmed and signed a Declaration of Common Purpose of the Peoples of Moesia and Thrace. This document set forth a new purpose for Alexandros and his rebels - the formation of a national government to properly govern the Roman lands of the southeastern Balkans. Through harsh reprisals and street-to-street fighting, by 1871 the rebel forces had prevailed. Presiding over the surrender of the military government following a grueling siege of Adrianople, the leader of the victorious rebels brought the defeated military governors before himself in the palace of the city. Famously, he made only the pronouncement "I am Alexander" before handing them the terms of their surrender. They all signed dutifully. The Pentaspides and their closest collaborators were rounded up and put through a purge which saw hundreds of its number executed for both real and imagined crimes. It was late in 1871 when Alexandros was formally crowned in Thessaloniki (though he would backdate it to the signing of the proclamation in 1866), soon to formally be the royal capital, as Alexandros VI, numbering himself after the conventions of the ancient kings of Macedon. This momentous occasion marked for some the restoration of that ancient line of kings after almost two thousand years. His adoring subjects awarded him with the appellation of "the Great", something which rankled the neighboring Roman states at the audacity of comparing the newly crowned monarch with the more famous Alexander.
With the devastation of the Greco-Hungarian war on top of the concurrent civil war in Macedonia, peace, rebuilding, and the increasing stability of civic life were themes of the remainder of Alexandros' reign. Adrianople in particular required extensive rebuilding, a process that would continue almost until the dawn of the twentieth century. An accomplished reign for Alexandros VI would end in 1898 with his death of cancer and the ascension to the throne of his nephew and adopted son, Pavlos I. It would be Pavlos' task to keep the country his uncle had won in one piece and keep a sense of normalcy in the country through the tumultuous political climate of the 1920s and in particular the lead-up to the Great European War. His own son, Alexandros VII, would be the one tasked with weathering that storm fully. Hungary and Russia placed great pressure from the early years of the war onto Macedonia to permit access to the Mediterranean, since the Bosporus was a firmly defended protectorate of England and the Frankish Empire, as it had been since the destruction of Constantinople years before. As desperation mounted, the demands of the Eastern Coalition soon became more and more forceful, and in the later stage of the war the diplomatic pressure escalated full into violence. Alexandros VII kept hopes in the country high in this period with regular radio broadcasts to the people, even as Russo-Hungarian armies streamed across the Danube, competently marshaling the support of the Western Allies to keep embattled Macedonia alive. Its recovery afterward, aided by Coalition reparations and Western aid, only cemented his place in the history books. It was only when he neared death that his sole failing as a ruler - his snubbing of the parliament in favor of the military brass - would fall upon the worst possible person to see to its resolution.
His son, also named Alexandros, was a vain and petty autocrat who attracted more controversy than admiration during his young life. The prospect of his ascension to the throne as Alexandros VIII brought many sideways glances and raised eyebrows from the country's growing bourgeoisie, who placed more stock in the work of parliament than that of monarchs. In early 1956 when he was due for a coronation, the ceremony was unexpectedly blocked by the parliamentarians, headed by the flamboyant and eloquent Ioannes Phokas Karbonopsinos, a well-liked and vocal member of the council body who hailed from the northern frontier. Upon notice that the coronation would not go forward until a thorough investigation into his personal use of state funds was prosecuted, the volatile king-to-be reacted exactly as the parliamentarians wished him to, outraged at the pretense and warning of executions if this treason against the royal house continued. In firm retaliation, the parliament declared the prince an enemy of the state and arrested him. What ensued was a regrettable but brief civil war (1956 - 1957) during which royalist military forces attempted seizures of armories and cities throughout the country and ran up against more liberal forces sent in by the new "Protector of the Macedonians", Karbonopsinos, who took up the torch of the country's de facto head of state during this period. Eventually, the last loyalist forces were chased over the border into Hungary, where they angrily rattled their sabers at Macedonia for the next several years until the Hungarians grew tired of them at last and shipped them away to Russia under dubious pretenses. Karbonopsinos, meanwhile, worked at whipping parliament into shape as a serious law-making body of the country while looking around for a new, more reasonable sovereign for Macedonia.
Eventually, the parliamentarians settled on a member of a cadet line of the Palaiologoi who had married into the former ruling house of the Morea, Isaakios Palaiologos-Melissenos, who accepted the invitation and came to the country in 1960. He took up the regnal name of Pavlos as a sign of deference to the legacy of the well-liked second monarch of the country, becoming Pavlos II. Karbonopsinos taking a knee before the newly-crowned monarch and being asked to form a government in his name marked for many a moment of healing for the troubled country, and a welcome sign that he was less interested in becoming a semi-monarchical dictator in his own right as many vocal critics had feared. Macedonia came to relax into its new, more open system of government, the first general election seeing Karbonopsinos' Radical party keep its majority in 1963. He would stay in the role until 1972, when that year's general election brought the rival Unity party into power, and retired from politics to live as a writer until his death in 1989. Major political upheaval has mercifully left Macedonia be in the years since, the only major controversy appearing when Pavlos' grandson, unsurprisingly named Alexandros, was ready to succeed him in 1988. His numbering as Alexandros IX caused considerable uproar, as Alexandros VIII was a banished autocrat, and beside that had never officially been crowned. Disquiet calmed down somewhat when the king assured the people that his numbering was a gesture of reconciliation in a country where old wounds surrounding the civil war had still not fully gone away. Accepting his numbering as the ninth of his name was a sign that Macedonia was recovering from the troubles of its twentieth century and was ready to enter the twenty-first with an eye to the future.
Macedonia pulls its weight on the world economic stage with a considerable output of coal and other minerals, as well as playing an important role in Mediterranean trade due to its control of the western side of the Dardanelles. Its sweeping, beautiful landscapes are the pride of the nation, as is its proud history, both during and before the Roman period. Claiming the legacy of ancient Macedon for itself is not a universally well-liked gesture - Greeks from all over the world debate endlessly on message boards and in video comment sections on the issue, to the point where it's become almost a meme for somebody to make bizarre, apocalyptic warnings about the king of the sleepy Balkan nation vacationing on the banks of the Indus. Macedonia is a contributor to the European Space Organization and a member of the World Commonwealth, as well as a founding member of the Roman League. The vast majority of the populace is ethnically Greek and speaks it as their first language. It boasts the second-largest Rroma/Romani population in Europe, after Hungary, and there are a few Slavic communities (chiefly Serbian) in the northwest of the country. Most basic education offers French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian as prospective second languages, but very few Macedonians are functionally bilingual.
Spoiler Rulers of Macedonia :
The Morea / Hellas
Compared to its northern neighbors, the southern portions of the traditional Greek lands came out of the 1860s in relatively good shape. With loyalist military forces mostly devoid from the country in their efforts to congregate in the Thracian plain, local interests in the distant, southern peninsula of the Morea (once known as the Peloponnese) counted on their land's rugged and secluded nature to preserve their new independence. As enemy forces cleared out of Attica and Thessaly, the Moreans naturally filled the void with their own young administration, uniting many of Greece's most ancient and prestigious cities, including Corinth, Athens, Larissa, and Patras under the flag of their resurgent nation. The end of the country's brief line of kings of the Melissenos dynasty in 1898 offered the new Argyros dynasty a chance to cement its place in the region's history by rebranding the new, more expansive nation the Melissenoi had won as "Hellas". Constantine II and Giorgios I, who comprised the family's ruling number in these years, likewise dealt with the fallout of the Great European War, though Hellas was more distant from the conflict than its northern neighbors were by necessity. Hellas' chief test in the early twentieth century was the Syrian War (1919 - 1930) and the concurrent social-republican revolution in western Anatolia (1919 - 1933) which caused significant concern and instability in its Aegean island territories which were close to embattled, revolutionary-controlled waters. Hellenic troops stormed the beaches of islands like Rhodes and Chios, driving surprised social-republican garrisons back into the sea and earning a storm of invective from the revolutionary government in Asia Minor. Nevertheless, Hellas would never be extirpated. Normal relations between the two countries would not be established until 1996.
The changing political reality of the eastern Mediterranean as well as the reformist policies of the Argyros kings would have consequence upon the death of Giorgios I in 1939. A member of a cadet line, one linked with the Palaiologos family of Macedonia to the north, would be called to Athens in light of the extirpation of the senior Argyros line from the country. Constantine III Argyros-Palaiologos would be the last monarch of Hellas. Answering to increased skepticism over the monarchy in the populace (a natural consequence of other monarchies in the region failing at this time) and calling upon his own philosophical leanings from his time at the University of Thessaloniki, Constantine announced that the Hellenic monarchy would be abolished in the following year and the transition to a politia (as most republics of the Roman world would be called) on 1 January 1941. Charismatic and popular Constantine Argyros-Palaiologos, royal no longer, successfully won his bid for the country's first national election later that year, becoming the first Proedros (president) of Hellas. At his unexpected death in 1955, he was among the most popular statespeople of the Roman world for the past hundred years, having peacefully steered Hellas into a dramatic societal change which other countries had achieved only by force. Hellas has since successfully escaped the early, uncertain years of its republic, enjoying a comparatively peaceful political landscape with regular, nonviolent transfers of power in its four-year proedros term system.
Like Epirus, Hellas makes much of its annual revenue off of tourism to ancient cities and ruins like Corinth, Athens, and Sparta, and boasts hundreds of beautiful vistas of the wine-dark Aegean, with beaches that are the envy of much of Europe. It enjoys friendly relations with its two northern neighbors of Epirus and Macedonia, and slightly strained ones with the social-republicans across the Aegean Sea. Hellas is a member of the World Commonwealth and a founding member of the Roman League. Along with Epirus and Macedonia it makes up the original core of that organization, its other members having joined in later decades for one reason or another. Its populace is overwhelmingly ethnically Greek, but there is a substantial North African immigrant population in its major cities - a child of one such Maghrebi family was Moameth Ahmedis, the first Muslim head of state of a former Roman nation (1988 - 1996). There are also small Vlach communities in the north of the country. Learning a second language is mandatory in Hellenic public education from the age of eight until graduation, with most students choosing to take French, Turkish, or Arabic.
Spoiler Rulers of the Morea and Hellas :
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3.2 - What Remains, Part Two
Trebizond / Pontus
The distant, rainy Pontic Mountains of northeastern Anatolia had always been the easternmost boundary of Greek life in the Roman world. It is not surprising that the area surrounding the Euxine trade entrepôt of Trebizond was among the first to formally break away from the failing central government in the 1860s. The Pentaspides had never been strong here, and independence was at first simply a matter of posting regiments loyal to the new government of the region along the Pontic coast. It was an unfortunate truth, however, that not all was to be peaceful for Trebizond's young empire in the years to come. Harsh skirmishes with forces from the west of Anatolia rocked the region of Sinope, and interminable border disputes with the young Armenian nation past the mountains likewise put strain on Trebizond. However, its greatest trial would come from none of these petty powers, but from a mighty empire far to the north.Trebizond / Pontus
Long an almost-integrated march of the Roman Empire, Russia pulled itself by its own weight almost as soon as Constantinople was obliterated. Turning its eyes toward the devastation, the Russian Tsar saw a chance not only to open up Russia to the warm-water ports of the Mediterranean, but perhaps to seize the embattled, burning Bosporus for itself. All that stood in its way were the ports and fortresses of the former Roman Pontic provinces of Georgia and Chersonesos Tauriki. And how hard could it be for mighty Russia to sweep some would-be rebel government out of its way? Ioannes I Doukas, the first Emperor of Trebizond, would be there with his reply. Neglect had made the Roman-lent military gear of the Russians more unreliable by far than that which the Trapezountians pilfered from abandoned garrisons in the Pontic countryside, with Trapezountian air raids in particular taking a heavy toll on oncoming Russian infantry positions. By 1865, a year and a half after the start of the Russian campaign, their advance had mostly ground to a halt. Though the northern Euxine coast and the Crimea had mostly fallen to their attack, the city of Chersonesos itself held out, and the progress of the battle in the Caucasus Mountains was little better. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, England and the Franks stepped in to place international pressure on Russia for a ceasefire, something which was reluctantly broached to the Trapezountians in March 1867. A negotiated treaty awarded Russia with a roughly fifty mile long stretch of the Azov coast but nothing else - a humiliating defeat. Ioannes, who had masterminded Trebizond's war strategy had won international recognition for his country, and respect both at home and abroad. Leveraging its prestigious victory, his government was able to negotiate a peace with the military government in western Anatolia which gave Trebizond the lion's share of its dynasty's native Paphlagonia, and secured the young maritime nation's boundaries on all sides.
Although the reign of Ioannes I would be the most glorious, the remainder of the Doukid dynasty's time in Trebizond would also be relatively prosperous, seeing it establish friendly relations with Persia in the east and opening up a corridor of trade to eastern Eurasia which would allow the city on the Euxine Sea to boom and bustle with travelers from all over the continent. This golden age would come to a quiet end with the extinction of the main line of the dynasty. The royal family of Macedonia (and did they ever get around!) was able to produce a candidate for the throne from among their number, starting the brief Doukas-Komnenos line, which itself gave way in the later twentieth century to a further cadet line who had married into an Italian noble family, the Borgias. Alexandros II, the sole Emperor of this house, was never very popular, a native of Italy who cared little for local language and traditions. After a decade and a half of ineffectual rule, regime change in Italy gave Trebizond the excuse to politely compel Alexandros to abdicate and leave for his native peninsula, an offer which he gladly accepted. Choosing to rebrand itself with the broader, less restricted moniker of Pontus, the provisional government of Thomas Diogenes put forward a constitutional convention late in 1990, making Pontus only the second Roman successor state to dissolve its monarchy and become a republic.
Today, Pontus is a remarkably "eastern" nation by Roman standards, due to its position at the cusp of Asia and its long links to India and China. The majority of the population is ethnically Pontic Greek, but there are also substantial Chinese, central Asian, and Punjabi immigrant communities throughout the country. Trebizond boasts one of the largest Buddhist temples west of the Indus in its old town district, not too far away from its Hagia Sophia church. Pontians have a reputation for being highly nationalistic and proud, making for infamous keyboard warriors on online communities when they feel that their national pride is in question. This also translates into some of the most fearsome and devoted football fans in the world - the annual kick-off between Ioannes Gennaios FC and its longtime rival Golden Fleece FC in Trebizond at the start of the Anatolian Football League's season is one of the country's single most festive occasions, outshining even most of the local Uniate religious festivals. Pontus is a member of the World Commonwealth and the Roman League, as well as a member of the Pan-Asian Trade Association (PATA). Pontic Greek is the country's de jure official language and its most widely spoken, but Russians and Gutians (descendants of the Tauric Goths) also speak their own languages in the north, as well as the many languages of ethnically-diverse Georgia in the east. Diaspora communities speak dozens of languages in significant number, including Evraic (a language based on Pontic Greek and spoken in Jewish communities throughout the Euxine and Caucasus regions), Jin, Wu, and Mandarin Chinese, and Mongolian. Bilingualism is common in the country, with most learning to either speak Pontic Greek along with their native languages, or in the case of the Greek majority, learning Russian or Chinese.
Spoiler Rulers of Trebizond and Pontus :
Rhomania
None of these countries would endure such a tumultuous journey out of the Imperial centuries as would the one that calls itself Rhomania. No sooner had charred rubble stopped washing up on the shores near Nicomedia than the powerful dynatoi (land-owning families) of western Anatolia met there to establish a local military government. Rebuking the entreaties of the embattled Pentaspides across the Dardanelles, a corridor of patrolling naval ships from Attaleia was sent to keep the hated secret police and their regiments from crossing. There would be no help for them from Asia, at least not before they were defeated and rounded up by the Macedonians for their just desserts. The first autarch who took charge in Asia Minor, Constantine Komnenos, considered the state with which he was charged, one sprawling from the Marmara all the way down through Syria to the Sinai, a true successor to the Empire, a pretense which would be kept not only through this government, but the radically different one which would soon follow. Constantine pioneered the "Campaign of National Growth and Recovery" which began late in the 1860s under the auspices of restoring normalcy in the country and recovering the remnants of Constantinople as well as the various breakaway states that were already cropping up, something which displeased most of its neighbors. Through all this, the dynatoi were empowered in their ability to strengthen their estates, dividing factories and fields alike into their own personal demesnes which soon stretched across the country from the Euxine Sea to the Red. Constantine's death permitted the rule of first his elder son Basil and then his younger son Thomas, seeing a brief Komnenid quasi-monarchy which was privately disdained by a growing number of the populace who saw monarchy as a thing of the past. Mounting anger at the empowering of the dynatoi and at the suffering of the populace, who saw little rewards or political freedom in return for their sacrifices, grew through the 1910s during the rule of Constantine's grandson, Isaakios, the flames fanned by illicit pamphlets and publications of social-republican thought which thrived in the cities and spread to dissident peasant communes in the countryside. All for one, one for all. The seed was planted.
On 1 April 1919, while Isaakios Komnenos was attending a small military parade in Nicomedia, the conspiracy which the dissidents had built moved into motion. Operatives staged a fake traffic blockage not far ahead of the soldiers in procession, bottling up their movement and causing considerable chaos and consternation. The moving soldiers were forced to bunch up as uninformed units in the rear butted up against the stopped ones ahead, questioning what was going on. At this point, agitators in the crowd worked them up into striking at the confused and trapped soldiers, gunshots filling the air as the military parade turned into a massacre. Komnenos fled his viewing box to a waiting automobile, urging his chauffeur to hie him away to safety. He didn't get far - taking a sharp turn too broadly, the vehicle crashed, and the autarch was pulled from the wreck still alive by the disaffected citizens. Beaten close to death, he was finally lynched by the growing mob, ending the autarchy of Rhomania once and for all. Establishing a new social republic would not be that easy, however, for regiments of counterrevolutionary troops posted outside of the capital were quick to advance into the city and run up against the newly-erected barricades in the ancient city's many, winding streets in an attempt to avenge their fallen brothers. The new commune in Nicomedia was imperiled. Luckily for them, aid was not far at hand. In the Bithynian countryside, a new whirlwind was taking shape - and his name was Kardichalyva.
The man who would become the charismatic leader of the Rhomanian Revolution was of obscure origins. Evidently a disenfranchised peasant farmer turned revolutionary scholar and then writer, he would eschew his birth name of Theodoros and be known to history only as Kardichalyva - "Heart of Iron". Both his refinement of social-republican theory and his undeniably proletarian background won over many of the would-be revolutionaries and even bought the admiration of many anti-socialists who would, in some number, give up the ghost early for fear of winding up on the wrong side of history. His first great feat of the war would be to relieve besieged Nicomedia, gathering a small peasant army from rural Bithynia and marching to the rescue of the communards trapped inside. Once the breakout was staged, the overwhelmed autarchist forces broke and fled south, pursued by a growing column of revolutionaries, the oncoming social-republicans bolstered by people with their axes to grind smelling blood in the water. Meeting with forces fleeing from similar engagements along the coast near Smyrna, the combined autarchist army made a holding action near Dorylaion, succeeding only in slowing Kardichalyva's advance long enough for more autarchists to make it to the sea. Boarding transports at Attaleia, they made for Antioch with all speed, most never looking back. Nonetheless, counterrevolutionary forces would make the Anatolian countryside burn with discontent for several years yet - and Kardichalyva had a tougher nut to crack in Syria.
Without the same bustling, urbane culture of Asia Minor, Syria (which was not yet its own country at this point) had not seen as explosive a growth of social-republican sympathy in this period, and it was there that the autarchists fled. The country was split in two, the industrial Anatolian north seeking to eradicate the autarchist threat forever and bring the rural Syrian south back into the fold. Though forces sympathetic to each side would become threats on either side of this line, this was where it was drawn. The Syrian War had begun. It would rage through the 1920s and take a million and a half lives, devastating cities like Adana, Aleppo, and Antioch (the so-called "Alpha Triangle", where 85% of casualties in battle took place) and dispiriting both young nations. Fatigued by his war efforts, Kardichalyva at last consented to negotiate with his hated enemies in 1930. After eleven years of bitter conflict, neither side would entirely get what it wanted. Anatolia's revolution would continue, and the rule of the autarchs would continue in Syria. Though a bitter pill for all to swallow, the ravages of war had taken their toll, and few were eager to continue fueling the meat grinder that the northern Syria campaign had become. The newly-branded Social Politia of Rhomania had come away with its project intact, at the very least, and it would spend the coming decade under the aging Kardichalyva steering toward its future. Collectivization, though the dread of the fled autarchs, was relatively popular with the highly-politicized working class of Rhomania at this point, allowing a relatively peaceful project of breaking down private ownership of food stores, factories, and natural resources. Though there would be a few hungry winters, ultimately the program would be more or less successful.
Kardichalyva would not get to see the full extent of his efforts, dying in 1943 and leaving behind a nation in mourning. The deputy chair of the Social Republican Party of Rhomania, Alexios Prouvos, peacefully took up the helm as prothypourgos (prime minister) and continued most of his predecessor's policies. The capital was moved from distant coastal Nicomedia (poised so close to ruined Constantinople in the vain hopes of someday reclaiming it) to a more central location. Philadelphia, once called the Athens of Asia, enjoyed a prime position in the heart of the country, and its name ("brotherly love") resonated with the social republicans. For the first time in decades, cities in Asia Minor were growing again, and despite the ongoing ire of its neighbors, wary of revolutions of their own, Rhomania has remained a more or less stable, socialist experiment since the middle of the twentieth century.
Rhomania is unpopular with most neighboring countries due to the irreconcilable ideological and political differences which exist between them. Particular ire is shared between Rhomania and Syria, whose bitter civil war earlier in the century is still a fresh wound. The only power in the area which is truly friendly to Rhomania is perhaps Trebizond, a moderately progressive republic which feels little to fear from the social republic to its southwest. Despite wariness of the more or less capitalist nations populating its region, Rhomania is connected by trade with the other ex-Roman states, albeit through heavy inspections and tariffs which tend to keep it from competing seriously in the realm of manufacturing. Nevertheless, the raw materiel of the country tends to keep it afloat in the realm of international commerce. Rhomania is a member of the World Commonwealth, but a vocal opponent of the Roman League. The Rhomanians accuse the League of upholding the legacies of tyrannical dictators like Anastasios Komnenos and of playing interference on the world stage for the colonialist crimes of the Erythrean Empire. This position isn't taken seriously by the other Roman states, but has won Rhomania a few friends further abroad in the Indian Ocean region and the Americas who sympathize with certain positions critical of the old Roman Empire. Although the official party line still seeks the eventual liberation of the working class in all the lands of the former Roman Empire, very few common people in Rhomania seriously believe that their nation will ever really become its successor. Most are fine with that, preferring peaceful coexistence, and assuming that the others will see the light in time. The majority of the populace is Greek, but the heartland of the Anatolian Turks is also within Rhomania's borders. Racial harmony is by no means a perfect thing in the country, but both groups within the country by and large see one another as brothers and comrades. A bilingual education in Greek and Turkish is encouraged, and students of Rhomania's many, strong public schools may also learn French and English.
Spoiler Rulers of Rhomania :
Syria
The story would be different in sundered Rhomania's other half. Seeing the brunt of the fighting in the civil war, Syria did not have a bold new revolutionary project to buoy its spirits through the 1930s and 40s as the social republicans did. Once the heart of the Empire in centuries past, Syria and Palestine had become something like rural backwaters when compared with urban Anatolia and ever-important Egypt, and reassuring the populace, both Roman and Arab, that they were up to the task of making a new nation of the provinces would be the autarchs' most difficult task. With the Komnenid autarchs extinguished, the influential Rhangabe family of Damascus would take the fleeing anti-communist forces from the north under their wing, headed by the local military governor, Basil Rhangabe. He would officially become the Autarch of Syria (and of Rhomania in pretense, until his death in 1952) in 1930 at the close of the civil war. Even with increased trade into the region from nearby, Arab-ruled Egypt, the later 1930s were still hard years for Syria, riven with social unrest. Rhangabe's response to street marches was quick and brutal - there would not be a repeat of the peasant communes here. Hangings and firing squads here common from Gaza to Antioch all throughout this period, grisly scenes of retribution as the autarchy cemented its control continuing until Basil's death.
Syria has, in a way, mellowed since then, playing on its republican pretenses to maintain its reputation on the world stage. Just the same, the office of head of state has continued to be a monarchy in all but name, with firm autocratic control seeing little more than a few sham elections over the years. An occasional member of the World Commonwealth, it has been censured by that organization more than once for human rights abuses and a lack of political freedoms. Its continued membership in the Roman League is just one of the many sticking points Rhomania has with that organization. It's also a member of PATO, and an observer of the Organization of Arab States, having seen relative strides in the acceptance of its Arab population. Greek speakers make up a plurality, with Arabs and Syriacs also making up sizable contingents. Syria is a deeply religious nation which takes its custodianship of the holy city of Jerusalem very seriously. The Uniate Church is the official creed of the land, with small minorities of the Eastern churches and Sunni Islam discouraged but tolerated by the government.
Spoiler Rulers of Syria :
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3.3 - What Remains, Part Three
Italy
Italy's unique position among the ex-Roman states is owed in part to its standing at the cusp between the Greek and Latin worlds. Once the famous heartland of the Roman Empire, it declined in importance relative to Constantinople for a long time, even after it was reclaimed by the Empire seemingly for good during the Doukid dynasty. The character of the peninsula changed utterly during this period too - Greeks had always lived in Italy, famously founding Naples and Syracuse, but once Constantinople held sway there for centuries, the Latin nature of central and northern Italy slowly but surely eroded, mixing with Greek words and ways to create a thorough mixture of the two by the nineteenth century. There was a sizable contingent, headed by (of all people) the Bishop of Rome, who thought that with the destruction of the New Rome, the Old should rise to primacy again. This created serious consternation in the Uniate church, which had just lost its religious head the Patriarch of Constantinople, but the age of schisms was long since past, and most simply shrugged and agreed that highly senior Bishop of Rome should take up the helm. Political power would elude Italy, however - unable to find purchase across the Adriatic, it would create its own Kingdom of Rome in the west and forge its own destiny.Italy
Since the end of the Imperial Komnenid line in the late 1400s, a cadet line had been influential in the Italian themes and provinces, so it was only natural that one of their number, Theodoro Comneno, was sought out by the Pope to be crowned King of Rome in 1864. Italy would become fast friends with the powerful crown of Hungary, and strike up a rapport with the Kingdom of the Norse (rebranded as Scandinavia toward the end of the century). Relations were somewhat frostier with the Franks, who envied the rich lands of the Po, and with the Spaniards, whose control over the Mediterranean chafed with Italy's. Building tensions over the next few decades culminated in the Great European War, which began in 1927. Italy's alpine frontier would be one of the most hotly-contested front lines, as would the seas to the west, where Italian aircraft carriers sparred with their Spanish counterparts. The exhausting conflict would leave Italy depleted and demoralized, tapping out of the war a month before its comrades in March 1938. Under harsh indemnities and the imposition of a twenty-year occupation of Corsica and Sardinia, Italy was compelled to banish its reigning monarch, Theodoro II (accused of inflammatory rhetoric against the Franks) and dissolve the monarchy. A popular general, Heraclio Dalassini, became the interim ruler of Italy, promising free and democratic elections - the first in the nation's history since the time of the Roman Republic - to be held in 1940. A suspicious attempt on the autocrat's life in late 1939 forestalled this, however, as he disbanded the assembly and arrested political enemies. Diminished and defeated Italy was in little condition to fight for its freedom. As Dalassini's regime grew in power, the concerned Franks and Spanish renewed the occupation of Corsica and Sardinia for a further twenty years after it should have expired in 1958. Railing endlessly to the international community about the perfidy of the nations occupying Italian soil, Italy remained an isolated, unfriendly place up to his death in 1980.
With the old dictator at last succumbing to old age, the torch of keeping unilateral control of the nation fell to his son Alessandro, who inherited a nation long maligned and mistreated, roiling with discontent. Seeing which way the wind was blowing (and helped along by mysterious threats against his person from all quarters), he at last gave up on his ineffectual governance after ten years, fleeing across the Adriatic to safety in Hungary in 1990 and never coming back. At the same time, Alexandros II of Trebizond was being politely removed from the country in which he had ruled for thirteen years, and returned home. The provisional government was only too happy to let this distant, Italian-born relation of the old ruling dynasty to take up the helm, albeit mostly in the capacity of a figurehead - councilors would do most of the governing of Italy, and have up to the present day. Satisfied, the Frankish Empire and Spain withdrew from Italy's island possessions in 1991, finally reuniting the country under one flag for the first time in over fifty years.
The newly rechristened Kingdom of Rome has since regained some of its standing on the world stage, acceding to the World Commonwealth in 1999. It has been in talks to join the Roman League for almost as long, but long-standing tensions with Epirus continue to make its task difficult. The vast majority of the population consider themselves ethnically "Italian", which is something of an umbrella including everything from essentially Greek people in Calabria and Sicily to Lombard-speaking farmers of the far north. The country's largest and official language is Romano, a Romance language with strong Greek influences and undertones. A few regional dialects of Romance exist, especially in the north, and there are small Albanian communities in the heel as well.
Spoiler Rulers of Italy :
The Exclusion Zone
The Bosporus once bustled, the region once playing host to about five million souls in and around the old Imperial capital. Now it is sleepy and rural, those who did not die when Constantinople was destroyed fleeing, and then kept from returning by the Franco-Anglo-Spanish international forces which were posted in the area late in the 1860s, to say nothing of the radioactive fallout. The hazards of this were poorly understood for the first few years, seeing significant hardships for those who remained in the area. It wasn't until nuclear specialists were brought in from some of Europe's great universities to instruct on the matter of resisting the radiation, and scrubbing the area clean of it a decade or two down the line. The first expedition into the rubble of Constantinople wasn't launched until 1888, twenty-five years after the nuclear detonation. By now it was understood that a weapon of mass destruction was responsible for the carnage, though it would forever remain a mystery just who had set it off - the truth was simply too strange to occur to any concerned. The shape of the city was barely recognizable, the ancient peninsula upon which the center was perched now mostly submerged after caving in. Photographs of the sad, ruined line of the Theodosian Wall would fill newspaper front pages around the world for days. The city's ruins and the straits were soon declared safe for passage, though sternly regulated by international peacekeepers, allowing rerouted trade to at last pass by the wreckage of the city for the first time in a quarter of a century.
Later recovery efforts mostly cleared the old streets of rubble, aside from the shattered columns and skyscrapers simply too big to move. What human remains were found were buried west of the city respectfully in a secular ceremony, and particularly hardy artifacts of centuries past - more often than not badly scorched - cataloged and retrieved. Official surveys to Constantinople are held regularly to make sure that the site is relatively undisturbed, but tourism as such is strictly prohibited, and seen as being in remarkably poor taste. Just north of the city, life goes on. Galata, burned out in the destruction, was resettled in 1900, and has grown into a small city of about 10,000. 40,000 other souls also live in the bounds of the Exclusion Zone, mostly in the cities of Eudoxiopolis and Kartalimin. Galata is home to the Constantinopolitan Museum, a beautifully equipped display of the history of the city and warning of the lessons its destruction has to tell. The Roman League has long squabbled with the Franks, English, and Spanish on the floor of the World Commonwealth about taking over stewardship of the zone, something which the three western powers are slowly assenting to, their stated mission long since complete.
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3.4 - What Remains, Part Four
Erythrean Empire
The Erythrean Empire and its possessions in 2017.
It would be very far away from Constantinople that the most legitimate claimant to its splendor would endure. With the line of succession mostly obliterated, the legal claim to the Imperial crown itself tumbled down to an unlikely spot - at the feet of the Viceroy of the Erythrean Sea. Rome's far-flung empire had touched lands like India, the Malay Archipelago, and East Africa for the first time during the reign of the Laskarid emperors in the seventeenth century. Though that line had long since fallen from of the purple by the time of Constantinople's untimely end, through their links with the region, minor members of that family ensured that they would have regular appointments to governorships around the rim of the tropical sea. The highest of these positions, the viceroyalty - penultimate to the Emperor himself on all shores touched by the Erythrean Ocean - was occupied by David Laskaris in 1863. His father was a scion of that ancient Roman line, his mother local Swahili nobility. It was almost a year after the devastation back in the Empire's heartland before David knew that, by Imperial law, the crown had fallen to him, a period of time in which most of the Empire had already begun to slough away. Unable and unwilling to compel the breakaway states to remain in the fold by force of arms, David IV Laskaris focused his efforts instead on the Erythrean possessions which had been his remit for the past several years, maintaining civil order by way of the strong Roman navy that had fallen mostly into his hands.Erythrean Empire
The Erythrean Empire and its possessions in 2017.
Little changed for the inhabitants of interior Africa or the far-flung colonies in the Indies in immediate response to the collapse of the Empire, everything kept mostly under lock and key by the force of Roman arms. A small task force sailed north in 1872 to seize the most critical asset the Empire still had - the canal between the Mediterranean and Erythrean Seas. Though Egypt complained, and would for decades more, the prestige of successfully maintaining this link back into the mother sea of the Empire would do wonders for its economic well-being and power projection. Growing old by 1889, David IV formally renounced the Empire's territorial claims to portions of Africa north of the Sahara, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe which it did not already hold. Though the state he had governed would continue to consider itself the legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire, this action would ease ruffled feathers about the issue with the other successor states and allow it to deal with them equitably. This accomplished, David officially added the qualifier in Erythrea to the formal style of the Emperor of the Romans, and then abdicated to his nephew, Isaakios V. He would retire to a distant, opulent estate in the Serengeti for the rest of his days, passing away in 1894.
To Isaakios would fall the unenviable task of ensuring that the Empire would weather the coming twentieth century. This meant shaving away excess and giving up on lost causes, neither of which would be popular courses of action. Nevetheless, the new Emperor was an able-minded administrator who understood the sacrifices needed to keep the engines of empire moving. The first place he looked to was the Imperial palace in Hagios Ioannes (St. John), once the viceregal capital of the Erythrean Sea and now the seat of the Roman Empire. It was an opulent place, decked in ivory and gold and filled with art from around the ocean. Isaakios had one wing of the oversized palace stripped and converted into archive space, sold most of the goods inside to foreign courts, and used a portion of the money made to compensate the palace staff laid off as a result. Much of the rest would go to smoothing tensions in India, where the rising Deccan Confederacy, emerging from the ruins of the dying Mughal Empire, rattled its sabers at the tenuously held Roman outposts held inland. Agreeing to withdraw from the inner plateau region by 1905 and from the Coromandel and Karnataka coasts by 1915. This liberated the Empire of a few regions which had never quite integrated, while still leaving it with the rich island of Taprobane and the ever-important port of Theodoropolis to maintain a small presence in the subcontinent. Roman forces likewise withdrew in a considerable measure from the area of the Straits of Malacca, abandoning their Sumatran forts and holding only onto the island of Singapore.
None of this was relished back in the home ports of Erythrea, but the revenue and breathing space freed up by these withdrawals was welcome in a time when the Empire's future was still not certain. Isaakios passed away in 1902 and left it to his daughter, Anna II, to oversee the diminishing of Erythrea's Empire. It seemed, however, that fortune was to favor the Romans again. On the other end of the ocean where Erythrean fleets and garrisons had left Sumatra and much of the Malay Peninsula behind, the new kingdom of Sunda which had risen in the territories they vacated was in dire straits indeed. Threatened by increasingly bold Spanish moves in the Philippines, the Queen of Sunda traveled to Hagios Ioannes and met with Anna. The monarchs hit it off instantly, and after some negotiations, it was agreed that Sunda's territories would accede to the Empire again as a semi-independent kingdom, firmly securing an alliance spanning across the ocean that was, in the end, enough to make Spain grumble and back down. The Queen and the Empress would remain close until Anna's death in 1939, marking the ascension of Giorgios IV to the purple.
By this point, low earth orbit had fairly swarmed with communications satellites of all nationalities, and even a few tentative manned missions had taken place. Perhaps possessed of the same adventurer's spirit as the Laskarids of old, Giorgios was determined to put Erythrea's bountiful resources and rebounding economy to use by winning the Empire more renown on the world stage. Because of its straddling the equator, numerous well-placed space ports were able to crop up along the African coast and play host to the projects that would dominate his reign. Enthusiastically supporting efforts to expand Erythrea's space presence, Giorgios went so far as to become the first reigning sovereign of any nation to venture into space himself, after extensive kosmonautical training (under the worried, watchful eye of dozens of scientists and bodyguards) attending a mission aboard the orbital shuttle VP Ploigos Theodoros in 1946. Emerging breathless but elated from the capsule upon landing, the Emperor enthusiastically remarked before news cameras from around the world that there was "a final frontier waiting for us all past the sky." Sitting up to take notice of the way the country was moving, numerous technology companies around the Empire happily took up a contract from the capital to expand the manned space program with an eye toward eventually putting Romans on the Moon. A few more careful steps in that direction would culminate in 1958 with the Artemis mission, manned by four Erythrean kosmonauts. Around the world, more than two billion souls crowded around TV sets to watch as a video feed from the lunar surface tracked the progress of Apostalos Khetti, a kosmonaut from Eirenopolis, Taprobane, down the ladder from the module to become the first human being to set foot on another world. His words crackled over the connection in Greek to assure the whole world that "This is just the first step of many."
Four more manned lunar missions would be hosted during Giorgios' reign, the proud Emperor receiving a chunk of lunar rock to be kept in the palace and occasionally encouraging kosmonauts in transit with phone calls from Hagios Ioannes. During all this, Erythrea enjoyed peace and prosperity back on planet Earth, its spirits buoyed by the celestial journeys of its chosen sons and daughters. Confident in its Erythrean and Mediterranean fleets and ascendant in space, it was a peaceful Empire which Giorgios left behind when he died of cancer in 1987, mourned by millions. Building drones on the Moon who were at work surveying the groundwork for Erythrea's first moonbase diverted to construct a small monument to the passed Emperor in the Mare Serenitatis, an occasion viewed by hundreds of millions on livestream back home. It was Andreas II who would see the first permanent habitation on Earth's moon occur during his reign, with numerous Martian missions already in the works when he ascended. Today Erythrea boasts two colonies on the Moon, Sophia and Constantine, and a single under-construction colonial town on Mars called Megas Leon. As the largest and most militarily powerful of the Roman successor states, Erythrea enjoys considerable clout not just in Asia but in the Near East and Europe as a major power. As a member of the World Commonwealth and the Roman League, it maintains considerable diplomatic efforts as well as working as a peacekeeper along most of the world's major sea lanes. Its pretense to the Roman Empire is not universally acknowledged, but even aside from the Emperor, most of its people call themselves Romans, with that self-identification being less and less firm the farther one gets from Hagios Ioannes. It is a highly pluralistic country, boasting Hindus, Zoroastrians, Muslims, and Buddhists as well as the predominant Uniate faith, and Greek operates more as a lingua franca, half of the population speaking it as a second language instead of natively. Erythrea's all-inclusive application of Roman-ness seems to be doing it wonders in the changing, twenty-first century world, despite the skepticism of countries like Macedonia and Syria.
Spoiler Rulers of Erythrea :
The Legacy of Byzance
A century and a half after the destruction of Constantinople, the world has changed, but the Romans live on. To one who has looked back on their history, the endless cycles of boom and bust, the trials which would have broken any other nation irrevocably, this does not come as a great surprise. The greatest strength of the Romans has always been to survive by reshaping what the word "Roman" means. As Caracalla made millions of subjugated people Romans in the third century with the stroke of a single pen, and as Roman went from being Latin to Greek in character over the course of ages in which the remnants of the Empire clung to survival, so too has Romanness survived the cataclysms of the past couple of centuries. All the world over, people of countless cultures look to the ancient Ovid, Virgil, and Augustus with reverence, study the campaigns of Justinian and Heraclius, and admire or debate the legacies of Saint John Tourkoktonos and the dreaded Anastasios. With this legacy of centuries untold behind them, untold ages stretch before them as Erythrea and the others look to the stars. There, perhaps, the Roman legacy will grow and change some more. Whatever the case, we certainly know that it will never die.
The End
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Four years, eleven months, four days. Tens of thousands of words (just about 10,000 of which I just published!), countless man hours spent in MS Paint and text editors, one brief game of Civ 4, and a hell of a lot of fun. Can it really be over? 
Nevertheless, I'm happy I finally saw this through, and went out with a "bang" - would you believe I meant to publish those four as a single, colossal coup de grace? The site (mercifully) wouldn't let me post a single, monster submission like that, so it's in digestible chunks for your enjoyment. I don't necessarily expect anybody to read this stupendous amount of verbage, but this was always more about my enjoyment anyway. And enjoy it I have.
I have one last addition to make to this thread, but it's less to do with this story and more to do with my stories in general. Stay tuned.
Nevertheless, I'm happy I finally saw this through, and went out with a "bang" - would you believe I meant to publish those four as a single, colossal coup de grace? The site (mercifully) wouldn't let me post a single, monster submission like that, so it's in digestible chunks for your enjoyment. I don't necessarily expect anybody to read this stupendous amount of verbage, but this was always more about my enjoyment anyway. And enjoy it I have.
I have one last addition to make to this thread, but it's less to do with this story and more to do with my stories in general. Stay tuned.
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X.0 - Afterword
So, the ugliest and most shocking bit must come out first so nobody misses it - after nearly seven years on the nonexistent payroll of this subforum, I'm retiring as a Civ4 S&T writer.
Don't act so shocked, nameless reader! I've already been gone for three years in all but name. Two Byzance updates after long absences, sure, and starting another story that I simply didn't finish, I could claim both of those dubious accomplishments. But the start of the story thread you're reading now is closer to the start of my time on this forum than it is to today - which is nuts! I've changed so much in the time since I started on The Legacy of Byzance. I graduated high school and went through just about four years of college. I grappled with my gender identity. I got a girlfriend, which 2012 Gruekiller surely would have laughed at in disbelief.
Civ4 S&T changed a lot in that time, too. I won't use "the 'D' word" in reference to it, because it's not - right now there are at least three excellent, active stories being written here with their fair share of interested and engaged readers. I genuinely believe that even now, Civ4 S&T is a fantastic place to be on this forum. But looking back through this thread, I see that most of the commentators who used to check in on this story have been gone for a while, and the face of the subforum has been altered pretty dramatically. It's slower now than it was then and it's bizarre for me to look out over the quiet landscape of a place I once knew pretty well.
That's why, when I came back to settle accounts and finish my two hanging stories, I decided another wouldn't take their place. Seeing the ravages of time for myself reminded me that nothing can (or should) last forever, and I got to thinking that maybe I should stop while I still remember my time writing here as something fun and nostalgic, not something which I keep up out of a sense of loyalty or obligation. Sharing my writing with you all has been an honor and a privilege, and I thank you.
All that being said, I intend to stick around as a reader to comment on and support the stories and tales here even if I'm not contributing my work firsthand. Civilization 4 is, and will probably remain, one of my favorite video games of all time, and I'm eager to see what Civ4 S&T's other denizens come up with. Long may they reign.
With all that out of the way, I wanted to back up a little and share a brief retrospective on some of the work I did in this forum to air some old thoughts that have been rattling around inside of my noggin for a while. I hope this isn't too needlessly self-indulgent, because I'm going ahead and doing it anyway.
It's hard to believe this was nearly seven years ago. Cahokia was my second Civilization story, after the short Carthage RFC story I'd halfway finished at about the same time this one was starting. I was still in high school in 2010, and obligation- and fancy-free in the summer, I managed to be pretty industrious. I still keenly remember sitting awake late at night in the basement and playing through this save file on our old computer. I think that powering through the updates on this one in just a few nights was what really got me "hooked" on writing Civ 4 stories - but to be honest, I don't think I was ever quite as productive again. Real life has a habit of throwing a wrench in that.
At any rate, Cahokia will always hold a special place in my heart, both for being an emotional tether back to a simpler time which I sometimes miss, and for being based so closely on a real life location that I've visited and loved. I think of this story every time I'm back in the St. Louis area, of battleships sinking caravels, and tanks rolling up the Korean Peninsula. (And sometimes "We Built This City". God, I hate that song!)
Oh, how I love Carthage. If I hadn't had so many save file issues I would have been updating this regularly for years more. Sisutil's legendary Princes of the Universe was ultimately the inspiration both for Carthage's narrative format and its focus on an immortal ruler as a main character, though immortal characters have been a long-term fascination of mine that predate even my time on these forums. I was also keen to present a mixture of in-game elements with narrative references to the magical and supernatural, a tonal innovation which I miss experimenting with. I won't pretend that this was ever a worthy homage to Princes of the Universe, but Carthage was well loved in its time, something which greatly encouraged me, even if I couldn't pull through on it entirely. Who knows? Maybe the story of Wars of the Gods will continue, someday, somewhere...
Well, well. I've revealed myself. Byzance is only the second story where I've nuked Constantinople.
And we come to my first DOC story here, too. This mod is just absolutely perfect for the history book style I tend to favor, and even outside of working on AARs, I have spent (and continue to spend) tens of hours on end letting its simulated history run its course. Stars and Stripes was a little silly and hard to believe in the alternate history department, but still a riot to write. I'm sure fictional dictator Andrew Jackson looks upon me approvingly from AAR heaven as I continue to DOC in his memory.My adventures in DOC continued in Turks! I have more mixed feelings about this one. It's pretty clearly written from an in-universe perspective, but I think I went a little overboard with making the Turks out to be a rampaging horde of barbarians in this story. It seems kind of racist to my more mature sensibilities now.
At least I can be content now in thinking that I've improved as a person enough since I was in high school to see this more plainly, and my writing has become a little more thoughtful since then.Despite this problem, the creative scope of this story was always something I was proud of, and I look to the Turkish conquistadores as a watermark for how daring I ought to be in writing alternate histories like these.
Before Byzance, there was another Greek story in my repertoire. Sadly, this one never saw its just conclusion. I'll get the obvious thing I wanted to remark upon out of the way here first: this story - title, diary format, end-of-post sign off and all - was a direct callback to the excellent Medieval 2: Total War story I am Skantarios on twcenter. I'm certain I intended it this way, and it baffles me reading back now that I never gave just credit. The Skantarios duology is an excellent piece of AAR work which also inspired Byzance indirectly by fueling my fascination in Byzantine history, and I can't recommend highly enough that you go to read the genuine article for yourself.
Attribution issues aside, I think I Am Alexander went away before its time. As you can see from the screenshot above, I was suffering from some irreversible FOV issues that made Legends of Revolution impossible to play without headaches. Subsequent reinstallations did nothing - the issue wasn't fixed until late 2014 when I finally got my current laptop. Like my Al-Andalus story, this one didn't die of any fault of its own, but because of technical problems, and for that reason its the one whose end I'll always regret the most.
Still, maybe I'll touch this diary format for another story someday. The mind of a sovereign is an interesting place to be.
The Story That Never Was (April 2014)
On an interesting note, there was one more story floating around in my Civilization folder which never saw the light of day. Indeed, I don't think I ever even told you fine folks about it. Smack in the middle of the gap between Subir de um Império in 2013 and Part Two of Byzance in late 2015, I had planned to resume my AAR-crafting with another exiled empire type story which I planned to call Corsairs of the Western Sea. Conceived of as a fanciful cross between Pirates of the Caribbean and the real life Barbary corsairs, this DOC tale was to explore the story of the Moors, expelled by the Reconquista, as they formed a pirate kingdom of their own in the West Indies. It would have followed a narrative format and was supposed to come into fruition that summer, but as I took up first summer classes and then went away to university in the fall, it simply fell by the wayside and was forgotten, never getting past the few conceptual screenshots, one of which you see above. Maybe this story deserves another shot. It wouldn't be entirely breaking with my supposed retirement to get it out of my system before going, would it? Hm.
What's Next?
As I hinted not-so-subtly in some of these paragraphs above, I'm not giving up my AAR writing hobby. Even if my time in Civ4 S&T is rapidly coming to an end, I still have an interested eye on becoming more active in the Europa Universalis IV AAR community. I'm under the same name on Paradox Plaza if you'd care to keep an eye on developments there. I've also been looking at becoming more proficient in Civilization VI, so who knows? Perhaps you'll see me try to work my magic up in Civ6 S&T one of these days. No matter what I do, I'm happy to have shared these memories and more with you all over the last seven years, and look forward to sharing more as I lurk in this space in the future.
Cheers.
Lokki242
Emperor
It's a shame to see you go and an honor to have written on the forum at the same time as you. Stories such as yours were the kind that I loved reading in my early high school years, losing hours at a time without being an "active" reader. They inspired me to finally begin sharing my passion for Civilization and for writing on the forum myself, though it took graduating high school and going to university for me to finally commit to it.
You've done awesome work here over the years, and I think everyone in the community, still here or moved on, thanks you for that.
You've done awesome work here over the years, and I think everyone in the community, still here or moved on, thanks you for that.
That means a lot. Thank you.
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