AHC: wank medieval Armenia

GauchoBadger

GauchoBadger

How do we get the kingdom of Armenia, in the medieval age or even late antiquity, to become a regional power of considerable martial prowess and territorial expanse, independent from the byzantines, the persians, and/or the arabs?
 
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cmakk1012

This is hard. This is very, very, very hard. Ever since Roman times Armenia has been smack dab in the middle between huge and powerful empires that regularly run roughshod over its territories.

Recently I've been playing a Civilization IV mod, Rhye's and Fall: Sword of Islam, that simulates the medieval Middle East. One of the playable nations is Armenia, and let me tell you, over the course of the game Armenia gets invaded so many times it's horrifying. Starting from 861 AD, there are generic Muslim barbarian invaders, Seljuk horse archer invasions in the 1060s, a declaration of war from the Iranian Seljuk empire, a huge Mongol horse archer invasion in the 1230s, probable declarations of war from the Abbasids, Zengids, Ak Koyunlu, and if you take Azerbaijan at any point the Safavids show up in 1501 and immediately take them.

In other words everyone hates Armenia :winkytongue:

On a serious note, one possibility that occurred to me is a personal union between Armenian kingdoms and Georgian ones to create a stronger Caucasus; the historical biggest weakness of the Caucasian Christians was disunity IMO
 

Deleted member 97083

Tigranes the Great is resurrected 1000 years later

KWmA6EO.png
 
water123

water123

Have the Miaphysites win in 476.

That way, there is more of an incentive for Armenians and Egyptians to gain power. Eventually, an Armenian Byzantine Emperor takes the throne. He begins to Armeniatyze the empire, defeats Islam, eventually gets together with Ethiopia, and perhaps eventually the Council of Chalcedon is thrown out by most Christians.

The butterflies, however, change everything.
 

Fabius Maximus

Aqua817 said:
That way, there is more of an incentive for Armenians and Egyptians to gain power. Eventually, an Armenian Byzantine Emperor takes the throne. He begins to Armeniatyze the empire, defeats Islam, eventually gets together with Ethiopia, and perhaps eventually the Council of Chalcedon is thrown out by most Christians.
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This would be pretty unlikely for demographic reasons, TBH -- Armenia simply isn't populous or wealthy enough to exert this kind of cultural or religious pull on the Empire. Most likely this Armenian dynasty would end up thoroughly Hellenised after two or three generations.
 

Pere F.

It cam be done, if the Miaphysites win the Christologicals dispute in the Vth century and you have Armenian Byzantine Emperor instead of Zeno and relative stable dynasty that moves Armenian settlers to the balkans to guard the danube frontier and repopulate the areas devastated by the Huns and Ostrogoths (Maurice wanted to do this a century later) you cam have a large area like the Bulgaria populated by Armenians and close enough to influence the court the process can be accelerated if the Sasanian Empire initiate a consistent persecution to the Christians especially the Miaphysite, for being seen as supporters of the Eastern Roman Empire, this may encourage them to migrate in large numbers changing the demography of the empire.
 

Beausoleil

Pere F. said:
It cam be done, if the Miaphysites win the Christologicals dispute in the Vth century and you have Armenian Byzantine Emperor instead of Zeno and relative stable dynasty that moves Armenian settlers to the balkans to guard the danube frontier and repopulate the areas devastated by the Huns and Ostrogoths (Maurice wanted to do this a century later) you cam have a large area like the Bulgaria populated by Armenians and close enough to influence the court the process can be accelerated if the Sasanian Empire initiate a consistent persecution to the Christians especially the Miaphysite, for being seen as supporters of the Eastern Roman Empire, this may encourage them to migrate in large numbers changing the demography of the empire.
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Wouldn't it just be easier for the Armenians to accept Chalcedon?

There are plenty of ways to strengthen Armenia, which usually involve the continuation of the Crusader kingdoms. There are many ways to do this. Saint Louis lives longer and helps his brother take Egypt and secure Jerusalem, leading to intermarriage with the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia and Western support. Byzantines keep Armenia as a vassal for long enough that it is able to build itself up and eventually spin off. There was an interesting TL idea just suggested recently wherein Stephen of Blois is more stout-hearted and stays on with the Crusade at Antioch, leading to no Byzantine treachery against the Crusaders and the subsequent homage to Constantinople being given by the Frankish princes in the Levant. From here, the Byzantines could liberate Anatolia and the Armenians, keeping the kingdom as a vassal for some centuries until such time as the Armenians eventually are able to become independent and industrialize. Those are just two ideas off the top of my head.
 

Neznaika1975

i afraid it is impossible.
Even when two large empires were weak (i mean beginning of 7th century) - Armenians could not build something
 
Remitonov

Remitonov

Would an Armenia that migrates away from the volatile Caucasus have better luck? Sure, they'll run into the Slavs, but they can be influenced by missionaries.
 
Remitonov

Remitonov

Achaemenid Rome said:
One does not simply migrate away from the Caucasus.
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Well, it's a thought. I mean, they've been invaded a whole lot of times. It wouldn't be that huge a stretch for Armenians to simply leave after becoming occupied. Then again, they never left in great numbers until the Ottomans started slaughtering them, almost two millenia after all that shit.
 

Deleted member 97083

Remitonov said:
Well, it's a thought. I mean, they've been invaded a whole lot of times. It wouldn't be that huge a stretch for Armenians to simply leave after becoming occupied. Then again, they never left in great numbers until the Ottomans started slaughtering them, almost two millenia after all that shit.
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Well, it's pretty rare for sedentary peoples without boats, that aren't tribal, and aren't mercenary groups, to emigrate from a region without being forced or coerced to do so.
 
Carp

Carp

The Byzantines did a lot of large-scale population transfers within the empire to put minorities in useful places, accomplished both by encouragement and by force. Armenian Cilicia got its start in just that fashion. One possible way of creating an "Armenia" in another, more strategically viable location is simply to come up with a reason as to why a Byzantine Emperor would decide to move a whole lot of Armenians there. That might be cheating, though.

One possible way to aggrandize Armenian Cilicia a bit might be a dynastic union between Cilicia and Antioch, such that a prince of one manages to inherit the other and make good his claim. They were, after all, frequently allies. Antioch-Cilicia is not exactly superpower material, but it might qualify as an independent regional power given some reasonably proficient leadership and a flexible interpretation of the phrase "regional power."
 
CH33K1 N4ND0Z

CH33K1 N4ND0Z

Banned
You realize pretty much every Byzantine Emperor was Armenian as hell, but just extremely Hellenized? A few examples: Heraclius, who was probably a Parthian as well, the Macedonians (guys who fucked up Bulgaria), etc. Besides, the majority of Byzantium's manpower were Armenians from Anatolia (Western Armenia region).
 
Tripledot

Tripledot

Perhaps an Armenian general tries to seize the Roman throne and the resulting civil war ends with a de-facto independent Byzantine Armenia?
 
Linbot

Linbot

It's hard all right, but I don't see why it can't be done. All you need is to have a giant power vacuum in the middle east. The best opportunity is probably the last Byzantine-Persian, war which could just occur later. Mohammed's bid for supremacy is eventually beaten back down, but war breaks out between Byzantium and Persia almost immediately afterwards, and they are even more exhausted following it than OTL, and thus both collapse. Armenia fills the vacuum.

I appreciate the fact that this is slightly ASB, but it's my best idea.
 
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