Sorry I never got a chance to publish more on the religious/ political structure on the British Isles, as I made on my last venture on the forums which is located on page 4 of this thread. I had to take a break as I had surgery to aid me in the recovery of wounds I took last year. I just got back to the forums two days ago and it took me a bit of time to read the entire arc that has arisen in the week or so two since I was able to use the internet last.
I have a few topics that hold near and dear to me with regards to the post-WRE world, and the breaks and reaffirmations of the Christian Churches is one of them. One the be biggest challenges of a historical modder I suppose is to get it as close to historical truth as one can reasonably get to start with and then let it fly in big world shaking CKII style.
I was curious if you were including earlier splits in the churches that let rip right around the 480 start date. As you may be aware, the Arcacian Schism started in 482, just a few short months after the Start of the Mod. This happened of course after a string of events that began after the Chalcedonic Council which condemned Monophysitisim and all of its' heretical teachings. Emperor Zeno and Patriarch Acacius were at the head of it, but they brought the first great rupture in Communion between the East and West and set ground for further ruptures down the road even though this one had far less to do with dogma
prima facie than the later ones that ruptured the Church around 1054 for the final time.
This rupture lasted through two Emperor's Zeno and Emperor Anastasius until 516 when Justin took over the ERE and reunited the faiths. I think this would make an excellent even if there is some way to trigger it, as it played very well into the crafting of the Ostrogothic kingdom, lead to ruptures in the Senate (Visigothic restored), the eventual death of St. Boethius (Anicicius Manilus Serverinus). That being said, is the Ostrogothic Kingdom going to have Senate events, as the Senate flourished along with a spike in Latin culture after the fall of the actual Roman Western Empire.
http://historymedren.about.com/od/medchristianity/p/acacian_schism.htm
Similarly, the Frankish Kingdom was able to administer its lands because of the Romans that lived in it's borders. The ultimate spike in Latin literature before the demise of most things Latin but that of the Church Vulgate was under Frankish and Ostrogothic rule. I know that you are currently representing the culture as Romano-Gallic, etc, but how will the Latin flavor play into these lands as the game progresses? I ask this because a lot of the early advisers were full blooded Romans, the descendants of Emperors even in the case of St. Boethius. The Ostrogothic kingdom used counselor titles, on the Roman model and adopted many of the practices of Rome. Their eventual decline had a lot to do with the decline of technical expertise less than outside pressure (being unable to save Rome from being depopulated for lack of water after the destruction of the Aqueducts comes to mind and of course Justinian).
I know that I am rambling a bit and this has little to do with structure of the Isles, Amorica, and Northern Spain that I talked about before the end of my last posting, so I will back off for now, and go back to working on those topics. Just thought I would bring it up now as to how things in Western Europe were still far from Feudal in nature at this date.
The end of standing armies was close at hand and even had arrived for most of the West, but seeing that as the rise of feudalism is a tad trite, and I hate to see it bandied so casually on the forum posts. The civilized world known since the rise of the Greeks was changing rapidly, but the Codes of Justinian were still to come and were adopted into the West as well, and some of cases of Frankish Gaul made it back to the East in turn. Much of this era is unfortunately lost to modern scholarship or at least opaqued to most people, but the more we dig the more the past comes to light before us. I hope that this mod can bring some of the facets of this period to full illumination.
It was period of migrations and invasions, it is true, but it was also the stage that brought about the revival of the Roman world under Justinian, who ironically enough was born as this Mod starts, in Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander, but unlike Iskander the Conqueror, he is known to most the world as the last Roman.