Rome AARisen - a Byzantine AAR

Hey everyone! First up, I've got the first of the world updates for you all!


Arnaud Capet’s capture at Mount Hymettus had a profound impact on Western Europe, as well as the East. For years, Western Europe had been dominated by a Capetian centered empire and its satellite states, to the point that the Papacy was, officially at least, held captive in Hereford. Arnaud’s enormous 300,000 silver solidii ransomnearly bankrupted a France that had just finished paying for his enormous army to be moved to Konstantinopolis, as well as the Constable’s force in the south. The King’s brother, the Duc d’Orleans, was forced to raise taxes and scutage across the disparate realm, with predictable results.

Drogo’s Capetian Empire began to crumble when Alexios I pinned and trapped the Constable’s army at Carcassonne, which allowed the Duke of Toulouse, along with most of the south, to fall away from Paris. Without the powerful Capetian state propping him up, the Pope in Hereford was conclusively declared an anti-Pope by the Pope of Hamburg. Any and all who revolted against the Capets were promised papal blessing.
With the sudden weakness of the monarchy as well as papal encouragement, grumbling and complaints over taxes quickly turned into outright rebellion, as lords from Leicester to Brittany to Avignon broke free of the Capetian yoke.

The German holdings of Drogo Capet, won so dearly after many years effort, were lost quickly as the Dukes of Saxony as well as Upper and Lower Lorraine broke free from Parisian orbit. Much of the Rhineland territories of the Capetians fell victim to a resurgent Arpad Empire, and southern England, as well as southern and western France, rose as one against the new policies. By Arnaud’s return as a broken man to Paris in 1225, only Essex, Normandy, Bourgogne and the Ile de France could truly be described as loyal to France. The effect of this collapse was to have deep and lasting effects on Europe religiously, as well as politically.

The powerful Duke of Lower Lorraine, declaring his independence early in 1221, promptly allied with his cousin the Duke of Upper Lorraine in supporting the Papacy in Hamburg. As a result, Duke Gottfried was promptly crowned King of Burgundy in Brugges on the 18th of October, 1223. The new King promptly set about rearranging his lands, creating his two sons the Dukes of Flanders and Holland, as well as launching an invasion of Normandy that was rebuffed by only the slimmest of margins. Shrewdly, Gottfried opened the ancient city of Trier to the Hamburg Papacy as a new home, giving His Holiness complete control over the city and environs. While the new papal home is completely independent, it is surrounded by Burgundian territory. Gottfried hasn’t attempted any overt influence on the new Papacy, content on merely holding the title ‘Defender of His Holiness’ due to his repulse of a Capetian invasion of the Low Countries in 1234.

Arnaud’s capture and the collapse of the Capetian Empire also had profound effects further north. In 1226, King Malcolm IV of Scotland launched an invasion south into the motley collection of English nobles attempting to throw off the suddenly loose yoke of recently defeated King Arnaud Capet. Officially, Malcolm invaded on the behalf of Pope Innocent IV in Hamburg to unseat the French backed Pope John XII in Hereford. Durham, York, Leicester, even Hereford all fell easily before the French brought up a cobbled army of Normans, Flemish mercenaries and levies under Jean de Brevere managed to check the Scottish advance at Worcester. On the behalf of the still imprisoned Arnaud, the Constable of France surrendered the anti-Pope, in return for the Scots leaving England south of Nottinghamshire to the French.

Yet Malcolm the Great’s wars of conquest were not yet over. The Scottish king took advantage of feuding and civil war amongst the Welsh, moving in on behalf of the rebellious Prince of Gwynned to seize the Welsh crown for himself in 1228. In 1231, the Irish King of Connaught made the mistake of asking the Scottish monarch for help against his main rival, the lord of Leinster. By 1234, Malcolm IV was now also Malcolm I, King of the Welsh, and Malcolm I, High King of the Irish. Only a loose confederation led by the Welsh prince of Deheurnarth, occupying southern Wales and Munster, is still free of Scottish dominion. On Christmas Day, 1235, a grateful pope Innocent traveled to Edinburgh to crown Malcolm ‘King of Alba,’ though on the continent, he is known unofficially as “Lord of the Gaels.”

Further south, we find the chief beneficiary of the Capetian collapse—the Western Roman Empire. During the 1220s Alexios I Komnenos made significant gains at Capetian expense—while the Emperor did not claim any territory outright, by default almost every southern French noble who broke from Paris immediately sought the friendship of Cordoba. Thus, the Western Empire gained significant friends and allies in the Dukes of Toulouse, Anjou and Provence, completely with lucrative trading agreements and promises of military support. So far, the backing of Cordoba has stayed the hand of the Capets, but only time will tell if this situation holds, for times have changed.

The 1230s were a scary decade for the Western Roman Empire. Emperor Alexios I died early in 1230, and his son Nikephoros III died three years later, leaving the burden of ruling Christian and Moor alike to then ten year old Nikephoros IV. For a brief moment, it looked as if the conglomeration of taifas and cortes would collapse into civil war at the feet of a ten year old boy, but for the actions of one man—Louis Salah.

Salah was born to a Moorish noble who had fled the invading armies of Basil III. Ahmed al-Salah settled in southern France, where he took another local refugee to be his wife. The young child that resulted from the union, named Isa, took a liking to French culture and society, taking the name ‘Louis’ as his own. After the establishment of the Western Empire, Salah immigrated back to the homeland of his father, settling in Cordoba initially as a churigeon in the court of Alexios Komnenos. The Emperor took a liking to the young Moor, and Salah quickly rose through the ranks, until becoming Alexios’ logothetes on oiekaikon in 1213. From there he faithfully served his lord and his lord’s son, becoming Regent on the ascension of Nikephoros IV.

Salah recognized early on that the commercial power of the Empire lay in the south, not the north, and that if properly cultured, the sheer number of people in southern Spain and North Africa would outweigh the military prowess of the Catholic north. Thus Salah converted publicly to Orthodoxy, and encouraged the Orthodox elites of Spain, as well as new Orthodox immigrants from the Old Empire, to ally themselves with their Moorish counterparts. This policy naturally generated resentment and anger in the northern nobility—the Duke of Asturias attempted to foment a civil war in 1236, before Salah’s agents quickly ended the chicanery. While long-term this preference for the south might grant the Empire more power, in the short term it has drawn the ire of both the Christian north, as well as Catholic and much of Orthodox Europe. Salah’s network of agents so far has held the north tenuously to the crown, but Nikephoros will come of age in less than a year, and there is no telling if the young monarch will continue Salah’s policies, or conduct them delicately enough to keep everything in balance…

Enewald - Toledo became a part of the Western Empire in the 1210s or 1220s. Alexios lived about as long as other Emperors had... he was in his mid 40s when he died (45 I believe), and he was on the throne from 1202 till 1230, a reign of 28 years.

Servius Magnus - Indeed. Considering how much he made out of what little he had in Spain, Alexios likely could have been a truly great Emperor had he seen Konstantinopolis. Unfortunately his birth and timing both conspired against him, so he made due with what he had... and turned it into something magnificent. He needs a nickname as well...

AlexanderPrimus - With all the new kingdoms cropping up with the fall of the Capetian Empire, look for all sorts of new spiderwebs to spring up across Europe to take advantage of the turmoil...

Nisco - Thank you for the kind words! This story has pretty much gone the opposite... now it's the Turks who cower in fear against the mighty Romans! But as you'll see, all is not well....

So, next up, we've got the Near East...


The next of our four tours takes us to the Middle East. Apart from Romanion’s immense conquests (themselves an earthshattering feat), the entire Near East has been in a state of flux. Mongols, Romans, and others have tramped their armies across the plains of Persia and Transoxiania, causing mayhem in and chaos in their wake.

Perhaps the greatest event of note outside of Roman expansion has been the Mongol withdraw from the region. The Mongols arrived like a lightning bolt during the 1210s, sweeping away the western parts of the once mighty Seljuk Empire before galloping onto the Russian steppe and a date with destiny at Neapolis. However, since the death of the great Genghis Khan in 1227, the Mongol Empire has already endured one civil war between Jochi and Ogedei, as well as a stagnating campaigns into Song China and across the Hindu Kush into India. While Ogedei, winner of the struggle with his elder brother, seems inclined to expansionism, it comes at the expense of his western frontiers.

As we shall see, in the lands of the Rus the Mongols were content to play vassal statelets off of each other to keep their border secure. However, in the realms of Transoxiania, dissention against Mongol rule rose to such levels that the former military slave Aladdin Muhammad led a rebellion of ghulams in Samarkand, ousting the Mongol governor and taking the city in 1233. A punitive expedition sent to the region was instead taken by Hulagu into Roman Persia, where it met it’s doom at Rayy. Freed from constraint, Muhammad and his followers have built a compact yet formidable little realm, in the Transoxus, driving back garrisons of the depleted Ikhanate, now focused around Bukhara. Khan Hulagu himself is busy at the orders of the Khagan leading an expedition into India—time will tell if the Mongols can detach and move north to face this threat, leaving this “Khwarzemian Empire” a mere blip in history.

Further south, Sultan Sulieman II rules over a rump remnant of the once mighty Seljuk Empire, its lands now reduced to holdings in the far east of Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan. While the Sultan is gifted, almost as much as his great great-grandfather and namesake, it remains to be seen if the rump state can muster the power and respect it would need to regain its former empire. The Romans are slowly securing their position in Persia, and while the Mongols are in retreat, the Khwarezmanians seem little inclined to surrender their hard fought gains to an old, decrepit imperial power. In the Turks are to survive, it will require Sulieman to exercise truly extraordinary diplomacy and superhuman military ability.

Perhaps the most peaceful part of the Middle East lies on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. Badr abd-Zayed, recognized by the Romans as “Emir” of the Arabs, is the leader of a confederation of Arab tribes from Kuwait down to Bahrain. Unlike their Hejazi cousins, the Arabs on the east fully recognize the great power and danger posed by the Roman Empire. Instead of antagonizing their powerful neighbors, the Arabian tribes seek trade relations, and occasionally pirate the growing Persian Gult merchant traffic between Roman Baghdad and India. Mesopotamia and Persia are in enough flux as is to keep the Romans occupied—thus the Arabs get away with these small annoyances with ease.

Enewald – Maybe not Imperial armadas (they’d still need to build a naval base, etc.), but there’ll likely be some action of some kind if the problem persists.

Laur – By this point, I’d given up buffing the Mongol khanates. They clearly weren’t using the troops I ‘gifted’ them properly, so it was all in all a lost cause. Kind of ironic though, that in this timeline its Khawrezm kicking out the Mongols, instead of the reverse.

Servius Magnus – It’d probably depend on who was referring to Alexios. Alexios might be known as ‘the Exile’ to loyalists later on in the Fifth Empire, or ‘the Latin’ or ‘the Spaniard’ to those who use those words disparagingly against him…

Ksim3000 – I think you might be a Scotsman in this timeline, assuming the Scots hold all that land!

asd21593 – I’ve got more on the way!

Carach – More than likely some Norman who was kneeling before the French King—for now…

AlexanderPrimus – I’m going to have some fun with Khwarezm, since they’re there…

Nikolai – More about the Golden Horde will be explained below…

If one wishes for a life of ease and comfort, the lands of the former Rus’ kingdom are not the place to seek retirement. However, if one is an ambitious, avaricious, greedy or simply power-hungry, this is a land of your dreams. For many, the freshly tilt blood of the Russian lands is now a land of opportunity for wealth, power, extortion and greed.

Like the Mid-East, the lands of the Rus were profoundly affected by the sudden onslaught of the Mongols in the 1210s, and even more dramatically the Mongol withdraw in the 1230s. However, unlike the Central Asian plains where Khwarezm holds a regional advantage over the Ilkhantate, the Golden Horde is still by far the most powerful state in the Russias. The Horde was forced back due to Jochi’s defeat in the first of what was to be many Mongol civil wars—at the disastrous battle of the Ural River, Jochi lost two of his three tumen, as well as his own life. Ogedei promptly seized Jochi’s ulus, and handed the lands to their brother Batu, who has since shown himself almost more Roman than Mongol.

Faced with administering a large, unruly territory that stretched from central Russia to the Siberian steppes, Batu took stock of what was strategically most important to the Golden Horde—the Volga trade between Scandinavia and Central Asia. Deeming the Dnepr and other rivers too far away and indefensible for their weakened forces, the Horde was content to pull back the lands under its direct control to the east of the Volga. In place of direct rule, however, Batu executed one of the more brilliant political moves made by a descendant of Genghis—he offered the land up to petty lords, warriors and criminals, with the intent of keeping all of the Rus fractious, divided, and eager for the patronage of the [still] most powerful force in the region, aside from the perennially distracted Romans.

The end result is a vast swath of land, stretching from Poland to the remains of Novgorod to Kiev to the Volga, that is rudderless and leaderless—a fact that many adventurers from the lands of the Rus and beyond have taken note.

Perhaps the wildest and most ambitious of these is “King” Vaclav of “Bohemia.” The self-styled King served for many years as a sellsword in the German civil wars, fighting first for the von Frankens, then the Walhausens, then the Arpads, and finally back to the von Frankens. Vaclav’s frequent change of employers rendered his promises of loyalty to the new Arpad regime dubious at best, and he and his 4,500 strong band were forced out by Emperor Kalman in 1233. Their reputation was infamous even as far as the Rus vassals of the depleting Golden Horde, who refused his services (and, in the case of Polotsk, greeted his ships with their army drawn up in line of battle on the beach). Vaclav eventually landed on the shores of Finland, a land of mixed pagan and Christian peoples incapable of resisting his forces. By 1238, Vaclav’s impromptu realm now stretches over a confusing swath of northernmost Russia and southern Finland, his lands intermixed with vassal Christian and pagan Finnish tribesmen. The wayward warlord has set up his capital just outside the ruins of the former Rus fortress capital of Velikiy Novgorod—he has gone so far as to name the city Nove-Novgorod. Official recognition came when a distant cousin of Batu, during negotiations on trade, referred to Vaclav as the ‘Grand Duke’ of the region.

Southeast and southwest of him lie numerous independent Rus city-states, their status protected (distantly) by promises of support from the Khan of the Golden Horde. However, many of these cities are small, barely recovering from Subotai’s famous raid through the region 20 years before. It remains to be seen if the Horde will truly care if one of the neighboring Princes nibbles at these lands—however, it is likely the Horde would instigate a coalition of Princes to oppose anyone who nibbled too much.

The original three Rus vassals of the Horde—Pskov, Polotsk, and Smolensk—are still going strong. Of the three, Smolensk remains the strongest by far. Indeed, the Prince of Smolensk is still officially styled ‘Grand Prince of All the Rus’ by the Khan in Sarai. While Polotsk has been, and likely will remain, the weak brother of the three, Pskov has begun to gain an array of power around itself, mostly in response to the threat posed by Vaclav and his growing sellsword-Finnish realm to the north.

Pskov’s principal ally is one of several new Principalities created by the Mongols during their withdraw—the Principality of Moscow. Weak, with few people and fewer troops, the Princes of Moscow need Pskov’s support if their realm is to remain safe from the covetous eyes of Smolensk. Pskov knows that, given time, Moscow could become a formidable force in its own right—better to tame them early as an ally than let them grow into a potent rival.

Two other Principalities were created in the north by the retreating Mongols. The Princes of Beloozero inherited vast swaths of forest with little farmland yet a profitable timber and trapping industry. Amongst the Rus they have most quickly moved to fill the trading gap left by the destruction of Velikiy Novgorod. Beloozero, a ghost town in the immediate aftermath of the Mongol invasion, has completely flipped towards being a boomtown. Estimates are that in 1238 some 9,000 people live in, over, under, and outside her dilapidated walls. With trade agreements built on cozying up to the Khan, the Prince has gained funds to start building a stone church, as well as stone walls around his haphazard but rapidly growing capital (which, despite his realm's name, is quite a distance from the previous town of Beloozero).

The Princes of Ryazan have not been so fortunate in their few years of independence. Just as weak as the other new princes, they do not enjoy the distance from the Khan Moscow has, or the wealth flowing into Beloozero. Instead they lie directly next to a small ulus created for the children of Jamuqa, at the insistence of Ogedei Khan himself. The Khanate of Cheremisa serves as the spearpoint of Mongol domination of the region—often launching raids for plunder into disloyal lands at the behest of the Khan in Sarai. Ryazan lies directly next to Cheremisa, and her harried Prince often has to ‘host’ Cheremisian raids too and from their official target.

Further south, old lives alongside new in the ‘post’ Mongol Russia. The Voivodes of Volhynia have since reoccupied the old theme capital of Kiev, and declared themselves Princes of the same. While they were the first target of a Cheremisian raid in 1237, they have persisted in their claim to this ancient, and potent title. Rumors state that Batu is considering mobilizing his tumen to move into the region in a massive show of force, but Kiev is far from the depleted Golden Horde—time will tell if her distance can keep her safe.

Further to the east, Sortmark continues her remarkable and fortunate existence. The Kingdom of the South Danes faced complete and utter destruction in 1216 in the aftermath of Neapolis—her Krigleder had been slain, along with many of her fighting men, and her capital had been burned. Alone amongst the peoples of the Rus steppe, however, the Mongols had been impressed with the Danes. Consequently, Genghis Khan in 1217 made them an offer they simply couldn’t refuse—deliver a quota of fighting men to the service of the Khan on an annual basis as well as annual tribute, and the Mongols would not decimate the realm and wipe it from the face of the earth. Against the complaints of many of his jarls, King Knud VI knelt, becoming Grand Duke Knud.

Since that time, the Danes have loyally, if reluctantly, acted as the Mongol ‘policeman’ in the southern areas of the Rus, even past Jochi’s demise and the rise of Batu. Twenty years have given the Danish army time to regroup, and a new generation of huscarls and horsemen now fill their ranks. So far, the older, wise Knud has remained loyal to the new Khan, but times always change. Sortmark alone has the strength to potentially pose a challenge to the Golden Horde, should she gather sufficient allies around her banner. However, all the Rus states around her have been carefully goaded to hate the Danes… the Mongols also know where the power in the south lies, and have been keen to keep the formidable Danish army in check.

Along the shores of the Black Sea, the Mongols had a totally different challenge on their hands. These regions had, for the past century, been under the banner of the powerful Roman Empire. While urbanized areas such as Cherson were Greek through and through, more outlying areas retained either their own local culture, or in other cases, a mishmash of Greek and native ideas and traditions. Jochi, in drawing up his plans for the area, administered this area as separate from the lands of the Rus. The Khan tore down the Roman theme system in the region altogether, deeming its organization a potential threat to Mongol overlordship. In its place, he promoted three principalities with arbitrary borders—Pereslavyl to the west, Cherson in the middle, and Alania in the East.

Like the Rus, the Mongols designated one of the Princes, in this case Cherson, as ‘Grand Prince and Direct Overseer of the Coast on Behalf of the Great Khan.’ For Jochi, this killed many birds with a single stone—the most powerful of the Princes was bought into the Mongol bureaucracy, buying loyalty and arraying the other princes, and most importantly, the Roman state, against them. With a border next to Sortmark, the Mongols also encouraged a rivalry between Cherson and the Danes, using each to help keep the other in check. The system has worked well for two decades, even during the chaos of Jochi’s fall and Batu’s arrival in Russia.

However, problems exist here as well. Perhaps foolhardy, the Prince of Alania declared himself successor to the defunct title ‘King of the Alans’ in 1237. The new monarch was very careful, however, to send an ambassador to Sarai clarifying that his new kingly status did not mean he was superior to the Khan, nor did it mean he intended to break free of Sarai’s orbit. Batu Khan has yet to make a reply by pen or sword to this, but time will tell how things will develop…