Recent content by Lady Visenya

He was an active campaigner and did actually seem to be doing a decent job of emperor-ing. If one looks at Kaldellis pointing out which stuff Choniates and many other contemporaries leave out of his known activities during his time as emperor. He spent 1195-1203 almost constantly working and...

Alexios III Komnenos gets much needed time to stabilize the regime, ideally. But I'm an Alexios III Komnenos friend, so...

To play devil's advocate (and I want to be extremely clear that his position is not my own), but this is hardly any different from skepticism and speculation regarding the timing of compilation of the Gospels, viewing some as more canon, throwing others out. Or even someone speculating regarding...

Julian's narrow slice of paganism (in a sea of paganism and the much larger slice of Christianity) was so intellectual and obtuse in a way that wasn't really going to be popular. Its most popular ideas were just "do Christianity without Christ" on the social level, but for actual practice it'd...

Instead of having a guy like Hadrian (pederast, terrible guy, bad taste in facial hair, wannabe hellene without actually having the admirable traits of Hellenic culture), have more guys like Titus "had a Jewish girlfriend". Or an emperor more able to openly force that thing through rather than...

not repeatedly pissing them off and just leaving them alone might work, lmao

Yeah I kinda have to agree with you here. It's also the opinion I've held for a while. Phocas' war was one that had the Romans on the backfoot, but it wasn't a true disaster, like, *actual* disaster until Heraclius launched a revolt and fucked up the Roman response and then blundering away for...

This. Unironically it'd be far healthier for the empire, and not to mention culturally and aesthetically more coherent and aesthetic mapwise. The weird tendency for people to think the Hadrianic borders are these things which must be retaken is weird to me.

Wasn't one of the reasons the Arabs got a foothold in Tunisia and Tripolitania thanks to a Roman governor flat out requesting aid from the Arabs? As in, basically opened the door to them, and that's what prompted the westward invasion? I can see it as having been a possibility, but the...

I imagine that in this case the scenario is somehow managing to get a few major Berber victories which make it just... undesirable to keep trying to take Africa. With Libya being the westernmost limit of Arab expansion. If the Berbers and Romans get lucky a few times, it might just mean they'd...

But... they faced significant issues vs the Macedonians. And that was the Roman armies at the peak of their experience and skill after the second punic war. Like, they reached a level of sheer experience and momentum that wouldn't be matched for centuries. And even at the Roman peak their...

Antony beats the living shit out of Octavian. He was explicitly described by men closer to the events as having massive shoulders, being built like an ox, explicitly compared to Heracles. In fact, when Brutus and Cassius plotted the assassination of Julius Caesar, an integral part of their plan...

By the campaigns of Basil II two hundred years later there had been radical shifts in the Bulgar state. They had a liturgy of their own, they had a culture which had established itself far *far* further out than it was in the day of Nikephoros I, and had Nikephoros I not died, and say... he and...

I don't think so. Basil's conquest dealt with a Bulgaria which had time to establish itself and establish a Bulgarian identity and culture across a wide area, compared with the comparatively structurally fragile state of Krum.

The richest and most sophisticated state in Western Europe in the year 1000 was in fact the Caliphate of Córdoba, to be honest. If things played out a bit differently one could well see Hispania remaining majority Muslim.