I think it’s the Ottomans. We have no idea what the great crime is but soldiers seeing family members and neighbors dying from being made destitute by counterfeit IBC’s would certainly encourage a lot of brutality.
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Well IBC'S right now worthless..even toilet paper is more valuable the IBC's now...and they don't have any form of sars now let alone sars covid-19😂😂(i know it's a very bad joke..just ignore it..)
Evilprodigy
Donor
I'd put money on it being the Wallachians. We all know from a previous update that they're strapped for cash and also incredibly tied into the Roman economy. It fits perfectly, as a state without easy access to Rhomania's markets wouldn't be able to accomplish widespread counterfeiting.
That, or, it's someone we don't know yet like some large landowners within Rhomania or cabal of revenge-seeking newspaper printers.
That, or, it's someone we don't know yet like some large landowners within Rhomania or cabal of revenge-seeking newspaper printers.
It could quite possibly be the ottomans, but it is equally likely that it is a desperate or the eithioia, but, not wanting to alienate an ally and signify weakness to their enemies, the ottomans are blamed anyway in order to redirect the populaces rage to a nearby hostile enemy, and that the excesses of the great crime are motivated as much as a desperate grab for loot and gold to save the economy besides the religious implications.
If it is Ethiopia I expect major “concessions“ even if the reasons why are only mentioned behind closed doors because of their alliance. Even weakened Rome can probably lay waste to them quickly if things went hot
Interesting that people seem to be assuming the culprit for the counterfeit IBCs is a foreign agent. I immediately thought that it would be high-ranking members of the Imperial Bank. They have the means (they're printing the real ones), the motive (they're stated to have pushed Demetrios III for a rate higher than 3:1 for the fractional reserve), and the opportunity (easy to slip a counterfeit in amongst regular transactions, or more likely, cook the books so that a 3:1 ratio is reported to the Imperial bureaucracy, but a higher ratio is used in practice).
I'd imagine this is the worst possible time for D3 and the Romans to try and fight the Ottomans - it's peacetime and the Imperial Bank is dangerously low on coinage to pay their soldiers, and the Trebizond Yard scandal plus the banking one have hamstrung the logistics of their navy.
I'd imagine this is the worst possible time for D3 and the Romans to try and fight the Ottomans - it's peacetime and the Imperial Bank is dangerously low on coinage to pay their soldiers, and the Trebizond Yard scandal plus the banking one have hamstrung the logistics of their navy.
Ouch! That is a HUGE scandal and combined with the previous two (and the D3 brutal response) may well be the reasons why D3 is not remembered in much positive light. And of course the furhter anxiety this scandal brings, is what is going to sent D3 to his grave... 
It doesn't have to be an immediate war (They don't seem to be in a position to fight them right now, I agree), but I figure that this crisis would be widely remembered by the Roman populace and something they'd pin down as one of their reasons to fight the Ottomans if D3 uses them as a scapegoat in the future.
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I'm also hoping that it's not a foreign actor like the Ottomans, the Triunes, or even Egypt that's behind this because that would be boring in my opinion and I don't think people are that aware of such tactics in the Early Modern Period. A domestic perpetrator to the crisis would be a lot more interesting like the central Bank, although I think it'll be resolved due to D3 shifting the blame, claiming that the people involved were paid off by some other convenient target to save face.
Yeah, it's wild mass guessing but I'm from that cliffhanger I'm imagining this is some highly placed people within the empire, which would necessiate the secrecy of that note delivered to DIII. If they really are people of influence and power he'd want to make damn sure before making examples of them.
My bet on who to blame for the fake IBC's would be on some latin/italian banking family wanting to debase and disrupt the Rhomanian state.
I doubt the Vlachs would do that, no matter how deep of a hole they were in. They know that getting caught would not only mean losing their most important partner and ally, but quite possibly the end of the whole state. Government sponsored counterfitting on this scale would be viewed as a crass betrayal and quite possibly (and daresay justifiably) as an act of war by Rhomania.
Demetrios III Sideros says “Nice, but too quick.”
Wanted to make a point here specifically about fiat currency since you brought it up. Even if this whole thing wasn’t happening, the Romans would have a harder time switching from bullion to fiat currency. That is because the Roman hyperpyron has been a stable coinage since the late 1200s, so 350 years. And before that, its predecessor the gold nomismata was stable with some minor fluctuations in gold content for 700 years. So Roman gold currency has an extremely impressive history of being stable (with certain periods being really bad admittedly, but they’re a fraction of the total history here). So it’d be a harder sell to get people to switch over to a fiat paper currency from that as opposed to another coinage with a history of frequent devaluations.
To use a real-life expression of mine, I’m anti-sorry.
The Latins are having money problems, but those are comparatively simple, namely not enough money to do all the things they want. They’re not having trust in the whole system being completely torpedoed.
Probably not. The Romans certainly are willing to have ‘most favored nation’ trading statuses with allies that come with reduced tariffs, but that’s it.
Don’t get your question about IBCs.
With the fleet, it can’t be helped. Replacements require money, which is no longer available.
Well, they don’t need a(nother) casus belli, since as you noted inland Levant is in Ottoman hands. Also the arrangement between the Romans and Ottomans is a truce, not a peace treaty. Once it expires, the two are automatically in a state of war unless an extension of the truce is made beforehand or it is replaced with a proper peace treaty.
Dealing with this is pretty much going to be what finishes Demetrios III off.
Yeah, it’s very much translation convention in play here. After all, if the narrative scenes were accurate, they wouldn’t be speaking in English.
The Responsible Party: For obvious reasons I’m not going to answer the question here. Although as Imperial Inkstand-Filler pointed out, it is interesting that almost everyone immediately looks to blame ‘foreigners’. I guess that’s just another example of the unfortunate human tendency to blame problems on some foreign Other.
Roman Bullion: It seems Rhomania has a few more source of bullion than I thought, but all the gold/silver mines the Romans have access to at this time would be working at full capacity already. So I don’t see intensification as an option. The Romans wouldn’t be letting a known active gold mine gather dust after all.
I don’t see plundering missions doing much either. If IBCs at a 3:1 ratio to bullion vanish, that’s two-thirds of Roman capital disappearing. The only places that have the loot that could cover that hole are Vijayanagar, China, and Mexico, and invading any of those places is a really bad idea.
Mexican Bullion: That’s happening ITTL, but it got started later than IOTL. Also more Mexican silver is making its way to China instead of Europe ITTL since Mexico isn’t restricted in the number of ships it can send to Pyrgos.
Chapter 5 part 2 of Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids has been posted on Patreon for Megas Kyr patrons. Theodoros II, using his daughters for diplomatic marriages, forms alliances with the Il-Khanate and Nogai Khan. A significant Turkish migration to Nicaean territory occurs and Mongol cavalry arrive in Thrace to take up service in the Nicaean army…
Thank you again for your support.
Okay, now I'm expecting something big and painful that is a punishment remembered for the ages.
For some reason I'm thinking that D3 will have all the major participants of all 3 scandals poured over with molten gold since they like money so much
Well the War of Wrath will be Ody his answer
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@Basileus444 - what I meant was "Are IBCs tracked when they are issued and reimbursed? Perhaps using something like Double-Entry bookkeeping? Is that used generally in Roman banking?"
I trust Rhomaion to get a boost and reform the system so much that banking in Rhomaion gets the OTL Swiss banking/German fiscal system reputation (short of a total revolution) a few generations after this clarion call/wake-up slap.