PART TWELVE: The New Byzantine (1131-1170)

PART TWELVE: The New Byzantine (1141-1170)

Step one to ~~world~~ Eastern Mediterranean domination: get hitched. Tip: Getting married as a member of the imperial household is (as I’ve already told you ad nauseam, but really ought to put in writing so you don’t forget about it) above all else a political decision. But it’s not just about securing alliances– you’re also looking for a partner in governing the empire, and also somebody who’s going to be trusted to raise a future emperor or empress and hence hopefully not totally irresponsible.

Now, I’m not knocking the marriage alliances! They’re important. The Senate, clutching copies of the Alexiad, never shut up about the glory days of the alliance between the Holy Roman and Actual Roman Empires and the “Brother Emperors” Alexios I Komnenos and Henry IV Salian and all that garbage. I’ll just put it out there that Alexios farmed out the duty of boning Princess Agnes to another Komnenos and personally married smart, capable administrators.

I mean, for me all this was academic since the crowned heads of Europe weren’t exactly lining up to matrilineally marry their heirs to some lady. And if a marriage alliance is what the empire needs, don’t say no. It’s not like you’ve got any siblings left. Just– think it through, ok?

In my opinion, the Milvians are the least useful faction in the entire Senate. But there’s benefits to throwing the church a bone every so often. Just remember you aren’t just the emperor of the Orthodox Greeks. There’s the Jews of Constantinople, of course. Some of the Turks who have found their way to the correct side of the Roman/Byzantine border are still Sunni. The Pecheneg ruling classes might all be Orthodox, but a lot of the villagers are still Tengri. Plenty of clever Catholics have found applications for their skills in the Roman Empire. And in these times, dominated by New Byzantines who don’t give a shit, it’s not really our style to make them all convert at swordpoint. Be personally pious, respect the Ecumenical Patriarch, don’t try to summon Satan at the altar of the Hagia Sophia, but mostly— religion is a sleeping dog you should let lie.

Religion also offers an opportunity to broaden your horizons, get out of Constantinople, see what the world outside Rome looks like.

Let your hair down, you know?

The Church also maintains better libraries than anywhere else in the empire. Make use of them.

Mostly, though, it’s just a sideshow to the act of governance. And on that note…

Okay, pay attention here, because this is the single most important thing I’ve done in my entire reign so far.

Now, by this point, the so-called “theme system” had decayed into pretty much just being pretty much equivalent to the bullshit feudal systems Western Europeans like to pretend counts as “a government” in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Like bullshit it is.

I’d like nothing more than to just throw every Doux in the Byzantine Empire into the Black Sea. (I’d especially like that now, at this very moment, in the circumstances I’m writing this. But more about that later.) In the meantime, though, the least I could do was try to restore some sort of order to the theme system. So in 1144, I called for the power of the douxes to be rolled back and some semblance of the old theme system to be restored.

The New Byzantines were overjoyed, of course. Most of the Senate, really. The Old Romans are big on restoring things. And even the Milvians and Komnenians like the church and me, personally, which are both centers of power that aren’t douxes. The nobles, less so.

I eventually forced them to accept the reforms, though. They knew that it was just one step down the road to the ultimate goal of their extinction as a class, though. So they made a note of it, and never forgave me.

So of course they try to overthrow me a few months later. Fucking figures, right? Let’s just appreciate the novelty of them putting up another Komnenos for the throne instead of a Doukas, though.

I won’t bore you with the details. We had a bigger army than any single Doux, getting Douxes to do anything together is like herding cats, so we won. The end.

And I wasn’t going to let some retarded civil war distract me from the business of destroying the Bulgarian Empire. Our armies were busy, but armies aren’t the only weapon in the arsenal of statecraft— you can undermine your enemies by more subtle means like espionage or assassination.

Or snakes.

Sometimes you really just need to stick a sword in somebody to get them to stop hassling you.

And, you know, once you kill a Doux or two they tend to get spooked. When your only motivation is your own self-interest, dying in some bloody ditch after you get stabbed to death by a teenage girl isn’t really an ideal outcome.

So that was that. Ioannes’ little power play blew up in his face, a bunch of douxes died in various horrible ways, and most of the rest were in jail.

Between kicking their asses and restoring the old theme system, it was easy to extract even more concessions from the nobles. The New Byzantines started to call me a “New Byzantine”. I didn’t contradict them.

The Turkish Empire continued to be wracked by civil wars, but mostly it was just about which decadent noble would be on top rather than weighty issues of the relationship between a sovereign monarch and the feudal lords and ladies obligated to them.

The Bulgarians were having a civil war, too— looks like our little snake friend gave the snakes of Duklja some ideas for what to do with the power vacuum left by Ioakim, who I’m pretty sure was the only half-way competent ruler the Bulgarian Empire would ever get their hands on.

Without the business of ruling the empire to keep him occupied, Anatolios’ enormous appetites finally caught up with him. Thanks for not driving the empire into the ground when I was a baby, but good riddance, you abusive little shithead.

With the Bulgarians busy trying to keep the Serbians from installing a Bulgarian they liked better on the throne, I decided 1146 would make a good year to try to add Moesia back to the empire. I wanted to get the ball rolling on reclaiming Bulgaria before all of the claimants to Bulgarian titles we had lying around started to die off, you see.

We didn’t even need to mobilize our whole army to beat them, just our standing army, the Varangians, and a few levies from the provinces surrounding Constantinople. It was kind of pathetic, actually. But that’s what happens when you let your irreplaceable veteran army die trying to seize Ragusa, I guess.

Going to war with the Turkish Empire (at this point, in the hands of the Seljuks) would still have been really stupid. But we still had ways to deal with ’em.

The results of the sudden Seljuk power vacuum were totally shocking and nobody in the Roman Empire ever would have seen them coming.

I decided it’d be nice if we didn’t have any more weird Bulgarian-style ethno-religious-nationalist-whatever uprisings, so I issued an edict of tolerance for non-Greek cultures and non-Orthodox religions. The New Byzantines ratified it before the ink was dyed. Literally, it got all smudges when they all tried to fight one another to read it aloud in the chambers of the Senate and I had to write another copy of it. But the empire– so recently pretty much just a little Greek stub of nothing– was regaining its polyglot character.

I also continued to promote urbanization, since towns = taxes = more money to use to put down the inevitable bullshit doux revolt.

Of course, more dudes with swords are also pretty good for that stuff. Tip: More dudes. More swords.

Ah, Konstantia. Your older sister. Named for my old mentor, of course. I’d rather not dwell on this, even after all this time.

The secret war between Byzantine and ~~Seljuk~~ Saimid agents continued when a Hashshashin got lost in the palace and killed the Doux of Moesia instead of me. Nice try, asshole— killing douxes is just doing me a favor.

After yet another Bulgarian civil war ended in 1150, I decided to really stick it to ’em by claiming their imperial capital.

The Pope, meanwhile, decided to take advantage of yet another stupid Saimid-Seljuk civil war by getting his own little slice of Saimid territory while the getting was good.

I’m not exactly in the Pope’s fan club, but anything that hurts the Saimids or the Seljuks (flip a coin) helps us, so with our armies occupied in Bulgaria I sent the other forces at my disposal after the Sultan.

We occupied the great “imperial” capital of Bulgaria without breaking a sweat.

Total victory came shortly thereafter.

For the first time since the original Bulgarian revolt, the Pecheneg domains on the Black Sea had a land connection to the rest of the empire. More to the point, the Bulgarian Empire had lost its capital in a humiliating defeat. The Tsarina still claimed the mantle of an empress, but it was pretty stupid. Just because you call something “the Bulgarian Empire” doesn’t mean that it’s not three non-contiguous Bulgarias.

Also good news: The Pope managed to tear the Holy Land away from the Saimids. I mean, ideally the Holy Land is ours, but anything that makes a big chunk of the Saimid Empire slough away is nice to hear about.

So in 1155 I thought, well, we’ve reestablished the land connection between Wallachia, Belgorod, and the Pecheneg Khanate and the rest of the empire, so why not set one up between Cherson and the Pechenegs?

Believe it or not, this was one of the harder wars I fought. Don’t underestimate Tengri horse archers. Especially not in large numbers.

And– I’ll admit it– early in the war, we suffered some truly appalling defeats.

A defeat which, frankly, rattled my nerves a bit. I stuck with the army, of course, because when you’re an empress you kind of have to. But wouldn’t it me stupid to get shot by an arrow and throw the whole empire into chaos just for some stupid military posturing?

My true talents were in politics, anyway.

Fortunately, we had enough money to replenish our armies with mercenaries. But it was a close thing. Don’t just write off the Tengri peoples as a bunch of barbarians you can wipe the floor with whenever you want to add some new provinces to the empire.

Defeat in the Crusade for Jerusalem led to the fall of the Saimids and the reestablishment of the Seljuks, which then immediately precipitated a new Saimid revolt. Our agents were having trouble figuring out which Turkish leader they should be trying to assassinate.

The war was over by 1157. It was frequently said that, for the first time in ages, you could now walk from one end of the Roman Empire to the other without once leaving the imperial territory. I question whether you can walk across the Bosphorus to get from Greece to Anatolia, but it’s the thought that counts.

Just like my predecessors did with the Pecheneg provinces, after I organized Crimea into its own theme I found a Cuman noble who converted to Orthodoxy to pass it off onto.

Iouliana Komnene died in 1159, which was a huge bummer. Most of what I know about my Mom I know from her— and, of course, the Alexiad was a pretty great piece of Komnenos propaganda which did a lot of heavy lifting in cementing the regime. I was kind of hoping she’d write a history of my reign, too, although that doesn’t really make sense since she was way older than me, so if she’d outlived me it would have meant something had gone horribly wrong.

The Saimids succeeded in their latest attempt to overthrow the Seljuks, meaning that once again our little circle of assassins and dissatisfied Turkish conspirators had to get new marching orders.

Having already divested the Empire of Bulgaria of its capital, I decided that the Kingdom of Bulgaria’s capital would be next on the chopping block. Confusingly, both capitals were in the same Bulgaria. There was a lot that was confusing about the three Bulgarias. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were zero Bulgarias?

Once again, we turned the baiting tactics the Bulgarians used in their uprising back onto their originators. Although, really, the odds were so lopsided we were pretty much just toying with them. It was good practice, though. We’d managed to lose half an army fighting the Crimeans, and we weren’t keen to repeat the experience.

And that’s how Bulgaria number one got a bit smaller.

The ongoing new Byzantine program to develop the Roman Empire’s urban centers continued apace.

The Catholic Kingdom of Jersusalem fell in 1161, since, hey, it turns out that you can’t just put a bunch of random Italian guys in charge of a territory filled with foreigners and surrounded by hostile powers and expect it to stick. Wow, who would have thought? Anyway, Jerusalem was seized by the Banu Fatimyyuns of Egypt, which meant that the Saimids still didn’t have it, which means who cares.

Back in the Byzantine Empire, though, everything was coming up Iouliana. It’s around this point that you started to hear people call me “Iouliana the Great”.

Even the Ecumenical Patriarch was impressed, the fact that I didn’t really give much of a shit about him and that the great work of my reign was beating up the world’s only other Orthodox empire notwithstanding. I guess that war against the Crimeans counted as a holy war? Even though that was just what we called it to get everyone go go along with seizing a huge swath of territory and then putting it under a hand-picked doukessa.

He even took my side when I told some boring old priest to fuck off when I was just trying to admire the Hagia Sophia. I wish my douxes were more like my church officials sometimes.

In 1163, strange tiding from Germany– apparently an offshoot branch of the Komnenos had gotten themselves made dukes of Franconia, with designs on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire itself. Not super optimistic about their chances, but whatever. Glad to see they’re getting things done over there.

The next year, my agents managed to kill another Saimid sultan.

You can probably guess what happened next. Out go the Saimids, in come the Seljuks. Assassins get things done. At any given point in your reign as emperor, you should probably be plotting to assassinate the Sultan of the Turkish Empire.

In 1165, our truce with Bulgaria expired, so it was time for yet another war against them. This time, I mixed things up and went after Bulgaria Number Two on behalf of one of the patricians of Belgorod.

The Bulgarians were dealt another crushing defeat, of course. It wasn’t even remotely challenging. Not like the war over Ragusa, or Doux Ioannes’ revolt, or the Crimean War. But when the New Byzantines wanted to erect a triumphal arch in Constantinople showing me leading my troops to victory of the Bulgarian hordes, I didn’t exactly say no. And if that arch doesn’t show the ways my knees shook or my sword-hand trembled, well, image is everything. Anyway, I was there. I fought. Frankly, it’s braver to do something when you’re afraid than when you’re brave. Or something like that.

And then Patrician Kortan up and died. This is a problem with feudalism— it’s not enough that Bulgaria is rightfully part of the empire. You need to rely on a bunch of personal relationships and claims and inheritances to get it to all work. I don’t like it one bit.

We had to fight the whole stupid war all over again for some other patrician’s claim.

On the bright side, we knocked off yet another Turkish sultan.

The Seljuk Empire duly exploded once again.

By 1168, we’d finished winning the war for Constantia a second time, further isolating Bulgaria Two from Bulgarias One and Three and cementing our control over the Danube.

We attempt to take advantage of the latest Seljuk civil war by seizing the domains of a rebel lord. But feudalism is bullshit, and the civil war ended before we could force the Iznik to capitulate. The only interesting thing was that the old Seljuk sultan had been overthrown by another Seljuk and not a Saimid.

Not that Sultan Basbuga I Seljuk had very long to enjoy his victory. Hope being sultan for a month was worth ruining our war, asshole.

So– it’s 1169. I’m Iouliana the Great. I’ve reduced Crimea to a tiny rump state, smashed Bulgaria into pieces, resestablished Byzantine dominance over the Black Sea. We still couldn’t beat the Seljuks/Saimids/whatever head to head, but my agents had killed like a million sultans and kept them busy fighting eachother instead of us. But the fucking nobles didn’t respect me.

They were afraid of me.

And probably they’re right to be. Reestablishing the theme system was the biggest blow to their privileges in, well, basically ever. The arc of Roman history up to that point, from Diocletian onwards, was more and more power attaching itself to the office of Dux. And now the lady who finally tuned the tide on them, asserted that a “theme” was something different from a petty feudal kingdom, and had run through a bunch of them with swords on the battlefield was being called Iouliana the Great, was being hailed as pretty much the greatest leader the empire’s had since Justinian. Which is probably hyperbole. But nobody likes false modesty, so I’m at least the greatest empress or emperor we’ve had in quite some time.

So I guess they thought of all of that, and then they looked over at the Turkish Empire, and saw how constant dynastic feuds and civil wars were gradually wearing down the most powerful empire in the Mediterranean world into a total shithole, and thought, “Hey! That could be us!”

And they killed my daughter.

Konstantia wasn’t meant for fighting, but she had a brilliant mind for numbers, and would have made an excellent steward of the fortunes of the empire. Most importantly, she had that same burning Komnenos ambition that’s carried us so far. And then— snuffed out, at the age of 19.

You already know about all of this, of course. This happened last year. But I want to put it in writing, to reiterate it, to remind you, in however many years later when i give you this scroll, the sorts of people who fill out the ranks of the nobility. To remind you who you’re dealing with.

Another lesson for when you’re an emperor: Terrible things will happen to the empire, to the people you care about, to you. But grief is a luxury you can’t afford. Being emperor is a lot like being a shark— if you ever stop moving, you die.

It’s April 17th, 1170. The sun is dipping beneath the horizon; it’s getting difficult to write in the deepening gloom. I know better than to tire myself out writing into the night— we fight the Doux of Adrianopolis’ host tomorrow. So, for now, I shall set my work aside and go to sleep. And, in the morning, I’ll fold this letter up and tuck it into my clothing.

Because, in truth, I’m afraid. Battles have always made me afraid, ever since Crimea.

But one can’t let personal feelings stand in the way of the business of ruling the empire.

But I can draw strength from them. And, when I fight tomorrow, I’ll feel this letter on my breast, and remember what I’m fighting for.

Who I’m fighting for.

You, Alexios, my only child.

And perhaps that will lend me courage.