Couldn't find any threads satisfying my curiosity dating from after Venice was removed from De Jure ERE/Byzantium , so here goes, and I hope I'm not being redundant here.
In essence, if I'm trying to restore the Roman Empire as the Byzantines, is there any viable CB for acquiring Venice beyond just brute force forging a claim?
1) Venice has no borders as currently defined, hence no border dispute CB, let alone forced vassalization CB which would also require same religion or culture.
2) Venice is a Republic, so as far as I know, the only possible claimants would be other patricians, who can't be invited to court and leveraged.
3) The ERE's religious head is the Ecumenical Patriarch, so an Orthodox-type Basileus can't just buy a claim from the Pope. (Maybe the Basileus can convert to Catholic, appoint an anti-pope, win the subsequent anti-pope war, and then acquire the necessary claim from said grateful vassal-pope? Maybe this is yet another argument for why the Roman Empire is best restored by a Catholic? This of course raises other issues, not least of which being that the Catholic Holy Orders don't show up until well after the Jihads start in 900...)
4) Basileoi under Holy Fury's newfangled "Imperial Military Autocracy" can't usurp or create other empire level titles, so there's no way simply to create the Empire of Italia and have Venice be a de-jure constituent.
Am I missing anything?
In essence, if I'm trying to restore the Roman Empire as the Byzantines, is there any viable CB for acquiring Venice beyond just brute force forging a claim?
1) Venice has no borders as currently defined, hence no border dispute CB, let alone forced vassalization CB which would also require same religion or culture.
2) Venice is a Republic, so as far as I know, the only possible claimants would be other patricians, who can't be invited to court and leveraged.
3) The ERE's religious head is the Ecumenical Patriarch, so an Orthodox-type Basileus can't just buy a claim from the Pope. (Maybe the Basileus can convert to Catholic, appoint an anti-pope, win the subsequent anti-pope war, and then acquire the necessary claim from said grateful vassal-pope? Maybe this is yet another argument for why the Roman Empire is best restored by a Catholic? This of course raises other issues, not least of which being that the Catholic Holy Orders don't show up until well after the Jihads start in 900...)
4) Basileoi under Holy Fury's newfangled "Imperial Military Autocracy" can't usurp or create other empire level titles, so there's no way simply to create the Empire of Italia and have Venice be a de-jure constituent.
Am I missing anything?
