When people talk about "burning bright but briefly", it usually refers to them dying. It's honestly what I expect out of Odysseus given his thirst for war, his promise to Andreas, and his camaraderie with the warrior lodges. He might even have a death wish already given his comments at Dyulino Pass, although that's not enough proof that he does. Time will tell.
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
True - but this is the age in Europe (and the world in general) where changes and advancements militarily (Proper Field Artillery, Better guns, more advanced tactics necessitating leading from the back, end of mass melee combat in the Medieval way) which caused a massive decrease in the number of leaders killed on the battlefield.
Godspeed Emperod Demetrius, kaffoslover and friend of Scottish-Roman gardeners! You shall not be forgotten (at least not in our hearts)!
The promise of Ody to his dead friend seems ominous, perhaps he will conquer but die young, like Alexander the Great?
The promise of Ody to his dead friend seems ominous, perhaps he will conquer but die young, like Alexander the Great?
It would fit him pretty well. A story where he fulfills his and Andreas III's vision of restoring Romania back to its former glory, but at a very heavy price. Compared to Demetrios the Forgotten's relatively lackluster rule in the eyes of the Romans, his reign could potentially see Jerusalem back in the hands of the Christians, the Pentarchy being restored, Mesopotamia taken back from the Ottomans, and Nusantara being a solid Roman holding. For Romania, that would be essentially a golden age and with Athena potentially next in line, that might stay that way for quite a while.
Perhaps, but I still think he is still vulnerable to dying as long as he remains on the field, which is very likely. He might be the last "soldier emperor" akin to Basil II and Andreas Niketas though, as warfare changes to require less input from their leaders and the military is less important acting as a source of legitimacy.
Honestly, the fact that Odysseus has damn dinosaurs as a motif is so goddamn cool. It's very hard not to imagine him riding on a Tyrannosaurus Rex, holding onto the Blade of Merv while hoisting the flag of the Romans as he rallies the troops. It might even be an actual painting commissioned within a few years, and that's exciting as all hell.
ALL HAIL THE GREAT DINOSAUR EMPEROR!
Where is this Athena becoming the empress coming from? I think you guys are forgetting that Odysseus has a "son", who will inherit after him. I believe that Demetrio's line is being seriously misinterpreted.
He doesn't mean for Ody to give up the throne, imo he means a completely different thing like others pointed out. Athena will be akin to a co emperor like the Romans of the old.
He doesn't mean for Ody to give up the throne, imo he means a completely different thing like others pointed out. Athena will be akin to a co emperor like the Romans of the old.
Because Demetrios III wants Odysseus to abandon the Emperorship now, not later, but literally after he dies. He wants to give the purple to Athena or Jahzara since they're much more capable at statecraft and actually want to do that kind of job compared to Odysseus who just wants to make art and fight.
Technically he could just refuse and just make Athena his most capable minister or even a co-Emperor but being an Emperor is stressful hard work that's going to eat at him like Demetrios III did.
That's something that Demetrios wouldn't do if he was in any healthy shape of form. His decision making at that moment probably isn't good at that moment in time. I've seen people act like that, becoming hysterical or unable to say whay they actually meant when they are at great pain.
Why break the tradition of emperorship, when he already planned for his grandson and granddaughter to be married as soon as they come into age? Why go all that trouble? The notion of Athena becoming empress is plain stupid. Mind you I do like Athena but her becoming the empress isn't gonna happen. She will have powers akin to an emperor especially since Ody trusts her but that's about it. It's not that new for the women of Rome to have power behind the throne.
I personally don't think that Athena becoming Emperor is going to be a possibility during Odysseus's lifetime, even if Demetrios III was serious about that request. Odysseus is still going to be Basileus out of his own personal duty towards himself and Andreas III, imo.
However, I think there's a possibility for her to be Emperor in the case that Odysseus dies early during his campaigns against the Ottomans, although it would be pretty easy for her to just be regent for Ody's son to maintain a stable line of succession (the latter is very likely). Regardless, it's gonna be very hard to shake Athena or Jahzara from the upper echelons of Roman bureaucracy and politics once Demetrios has passed.
What you're saying is becoming a regent empress for her nephew which is nothing new on the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, I don't think things are going to shake up that much for the Romans. It would very anticlimactic if Odysseus just dips from the purple after all of the in-universe and out-of-universe anticipation anyways.
I do wonder how much Athena is going to contribute towards her brother's image as an Emperor comparable to Andreas Niketas or even surpassing him in terms of political and military glory as "The Magnificent". This may be my pessimist side towards Roman society showing, but maybe Roman historians are going to seriously omit her contributions towards Odysseus's government for the sake of elevating him into a "godlike" status out of sexism and fear of women handling actual political power. That could certainly be false though and there might be a contemporary historiography more favorable towards Odysseus and Athena's shared successes during their rule.
Didn't someone said it before? Long before this update I mean. I think the guy said a golden age within a golden age. Ody as the military genius to crush Rome's enemies and finally give a long standing defeat to their eternal enemy on the east. Athena the meanwhile would help shore up Ody's shortcoming in the bureaucracy, and make sure that the reforms that are still needed would be implemented.
Vince
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If I remember correctly, a previous update said that Ody barely spends any time in Constantinople during his reign because he hates the city. So yeah Athena, aside from the military, is probably Empress in all but name during this time period. It's already been said she's graduated with a law degree and had one of the highest grades in her class.
The House of Iron: The Forgotten Emperor
The House of Iron: The Forgotten Emperor
The Sweet Waters of Asia, Bithynia, May 13, 1639:
Athena didn’t help her father as he struggled to shift himself from the wheelchair onto the bench. She knew he didn’t want it; what little pride that was left to him was all the more precious for being so rare. He finally settled down onto the bench.
They were at the top of a small hill near the west end of the Sweet Waters and in a small gazebo that was built as a miniature Japanese castle with a scenic view of where the sun set. Right now it was mid-afternoon so the sun was still eclipsed by the roof from their vantage point. Athena sat down on the right end of the bench as Demetrios set down his knapsack. In it was a book, a canteen, and an unadorned silver goblet.
He reached over and squeezed her hand gently. “Thank you, Athena, for everything. But it’s time for you to go.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, somehow keeping her voice from shaking.
“I’m quite sure. For this, I’d like to be alone.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and leaned over to kiss him on the right temple. As she stood he spoke. “Peace be with you, my daughter. I know this is hard for you. But I wanted you here so that the last words I ever speak to another person is that I love you.”
Her eyes clouded over. “I love you too.” Demetrios smiled sadly, but didn’t speak of course. There could be no more words.
She started walking back down the trail which headed east, behind the gazebo, wiping the tears from her eyes. She thought she heard her father speak, not to her, but his words were carried on the wind. “All the rivers flow into the sea, and yet the sea is never full.” She looked back to see him. His back was to her and he was pouring the contents of the canteen into the silver goblet. He saluted the declining sun, just starting to peek below the roof, and then without any signs of hesitation or weakness, drank the contents of the goblet to its dregs.
* * *
Demetrios III Sideros was found dead in a gazebo in the Sweet Waters of Asia on May 13, 1639. No one had been with him when he died, but his last words, according to his daughter the Lady Athena, had been a quotation from the Book of Ecclesiastes. He had been 53 years old and had reigned for a little over eight and a half years. His reign had not been a long one, but was a highly significant one. Yet when he is remembered, he is known as the Forgotten Emperor, and as the name suggests he is not remembered very often. Why?
The simplest explanation is that he was eclipsed by his son and successor Odysseus, whose exploits captured the imaginations of future generations in a way Demetrios’ never did, and never could. However the simplest explanation, as is often the case, is unsatisfying and doesn’t adequately cover all the facts. Demetrios III doesn’t seem to be merely eclipsed, but almost erased from history.
Another explanation is that Demetrios’ reign is forgotten because people wanted to forget it. It was a bad time to be Roman. It began with an incredibly devastating and destructive war and ended with a major economic crisis, one that would hamper Rhomania’s ability to deal with the next great disaster of the apex of the Little Ice Age, making the latter even more devastating than would’ve been the case. The surge of productivity in the early and middle parts were sucked into the war effort or collapsed in the depression.
Demetrios’ civic career had always stressed a concern for the plight of the common people. His first action that earned him public notice was a publication arguing for differential taxation, not just as an economic but also a moral necessity. That was because differential taxation would benefit the poor by reducing their tax load. His administrative reforms, including the development of differential taxation, emphasized a concern for the common people.
It must be noted that while Demetrios sincerely held these concerns, he was not a people person in person. His relationship with the Constantinople crowd was notoriously poor due to his lack of a personal touch or charisma, and he made little to no effort to cultivate one, even earlier in his reign when his health was better. A much more recent saying-I care about people, so long as I don’t have to actually talk to them-seems quite applicable. He was never popular because of his lack of a social personality and was only close to a few individuals, mainly family and a few immediate staff. A modern biographer described him as “a classic example of an introvert, a personality type that modern society, especially public society, absolutely despises.”
That concern for the commons cuts deep to the heartbreaking final written words of Demetrios, writ just a few hours before his death. “I die a failure.” Because of the depression, the plight of many of the common Roman people was worse at the end of his reign then at the beginning. His administrative reforms would benefit the empire, but in the long-term, and it was impossible to see that in the morass of the late 1630s. Most of our primary source viewpoints of Demetrios’ reign date either to this morass or to the mid-1640s to 60s, when the Empire was shivering under the blows of the Little Ice Age.
Inevitably in that atmosphere, the sense of sorrow, of failure, of great deeds done and great sacrifices made, and have it all seemingly be for nothing, is pervasive. The writings about the Great Latin War don’t focus on the battles or the triumphs, but instead on the lost. No glory here, just grief. Simply put, reading about this time period is depressing, and like most depressing things, the easiest thing to do is to try and sweep it under the rug and pretend it isn’t there. Much better to look at the reign of Odysseus Sideros (provided one doesn’t look too closely).
However that is not an option for historians and those others who are interested in truly understanding the reign of Demetrios III Sideros.
Likely the first word any biographer of Demetrios III Sideros uses to describe their subject is ‘complicated’. There is a lot of source material on the topic available. If one were to add up all of the surviving documents containing handwriting of Andreas I Komnenos on it somewhere, even if it were no more than his signature, the total comes to 338 pages. If one were to do the same for Demetrios Sideros, the total comes to 5,129 pages. A major reason for this is that Demetrios lived in a more bureaucratized age and a century and a half closer to the present, meaning more sources survive. But nevertheless it means that any biographer of Demetrios III Sideros faces a daunting mountain of material. It’s hard to understand an Emperor of the Romans who pens a science fiction story that ends with the imminent threat of the invasion and destruction of the Roman Empire by an older and more powerful foe.
Historians often admit a soft spot for Demetrios III, recognizing him as a kindred spirit, as he was a historian before he was an Emperor, and certainly cared for the former occupation more than the latter. One scholar of the 17th century wrote that he could easily picture a present-day Demetrios as a university lecturer famous for both his brilliance and eccentricity, ‘delivering a sharp and incisive lecture to a hall of students, all while wearing a bathrobe and slippers that were dinosaur-themed’.
That Demetrios III was a historian is a key component in answering the question of why he is the Forgotten Emperor. He wrote several histories on many topics, but his last history was that of his own reign. Most scholars rate that history as his best. And so much of what modern society knows about the 1630s is through the history written by Demetrios III. Published shortly after his death, it almost immediately became the standard account (and it should be noted because of its high quality, not because of the rank of the author). This was not a typical politician’s self-serving memoir but a scholarly tome, well-documented and analytical, the type of work historians take very seriously. Thus the narrative of Demetrios III’s reign was set down by the pen of Demetrios Sideros.
This is absolutely crucial. The Emperor is a constant presence in the history, which is unsurprising. Demetrios does not spare the Emperor from criticism either. But it is always the Emperor on the pages doing things. The archetype of an Emperor figure is there, but Demetrios Sideros is absent. Demetrios provided pen portraits of many of the characters, in Latin cases using captured documents, but there is none of the Emperor. The archetype exists because an Emperor needs to be there, but there is no person. Scholars of the period have noted repeatedly that to get a feel for Demetrios’ feelings, motivations, and thoughts, his history is useless and one must use his journals and correspondence. Demetrios wrote the standard narrative of his reign, and wrote himself, as a person, out of it.
This was certainly deliberate. Demetrios’ body never returns to Constantinople and he is not buried in the Sideros family mausoleum. There’s not even a missing niche for him. In the mausoleum, where one would expect the founder(s) to be placed, are laid to rest the Empress Jahzara, Emperor Odysseus, and the Lady Athena, but not Demetrios. His final resting place is unrecorded, no one knowing where he sleeps.
The most common story regarding his burial is that his family along with attendants sworn to secrecy diverted a river, buried him underneath the dry bed, and then released the river to flow back on its course, hiding the grave so that he would not be bothered by people ever again. Some scholars are skeptical, noting similarities to the burial of Alaric the Goth, but others point out that Demetrios also knew of those similarities and may have arranged to deliberately copy them. Arranging the burial of a Roman Emperor after that of a Gothic warlord who sacked Rome sounds like something he would do.
Regardless of where or how he was buried, it seems quite clear that Demetrios III Sideros had no intention of being remembered as an Emperor.
There is more to the tale of Demetrios wanting to be forgotten, and here is where the tales of sorcery that flit around him start to seem a little credible. The first scholar who tried to write a biography of him died in 1719 while still in the process of gathering source materials. The cause of death: a hammer was accidentally knocked out of a fifth-story window and hit him on the head. A student of his took up the project but died in 1726 after a friend’s pet monkey bit him and the wound turned infectious. Thirty years later another scholar took up the project and his predecessors’ notes. How he died is still unknown. The different accounts cannot be reconciled, although all agree that a clown was present. Some questions are best left unanswered.
It wasn’t until 1818 that the spell seems to have lifted, by a scholar from the Kephalate of Skammandros. According to his journal, his years as Kephale of the area were the happiest years in Demetrios’ life. But despite scholarly inquiry into Demetrios Sideros becoming less fatal, the standard account of his reign was firmly set and still remains firmly set.
He is still remembered in some ways, although the most well-known plays on the fact that he isn’t remembered. The hit television show Schoolhouse Imperial is a high school show where all the student characters are based on historical Emperors and Empresses. The show certainly celebrates its nerdy characters, with the most popular being Theodoros IV. The episode ‘A Hyperpyra for your Silence’, where Theodoros uncovers financial corruption in the principal’s husband’s construction company and uses that to blackmail her into reinstating his favorite teacher, is consistently the most highly rated episode. Demetrios III is one of the nerd group, and while he has few scenes and lines, one of the gags is that no one in the show remembers what he says or does, which allows him to get away with things other characters couldn’t. Still, this could hardly be considered a fitting historical monument considering his significance, but since Demetrios III clearly didn’t want any monuments, it’s doubtful he would mind.
So what is the significance of Demetrios III’s reign? He presided over some major and long-lasting administrative reforms, many of which are still in place today, almost four centuries later. His focus with the debt repayments, prioritizing the small bondholders over the major loans floated through the Imperial Bank and wealthy financiers, has also struck a chord that echoes through Roman society and politics to this day.
There is also the far more ugly side. Demetrios III was concerned with the plight of the common Roman people, and with those like the Genoese to whom he had promised protection. But by modern standards he unquestionably committed crimes against humanity with his reprisals against Syrian Sunni rebels. And while it was a cruel time, these reprisals were cruel even by those standards. Exactly how much of Demetrios’ thought was behind the logistics of the Great Crime are debated, but the organizational detail suggests substantial involvement. He may have balked at poison gas, but he had no qualms with consigning to the elements or to slavery those who were subject to his cruelty.
The reforms to lower taxes on the poorest Romans must be set side by side with the columns of Sunni slaves marched off to bondage. Demetrios III is, as has already been said, complicated.
In foreign affairs he was admittedly much less significant, another factor that contributes to his being forgotten. Most of his workings here have been described as overly optimistic and were short-lived. The Treaty of Belgrade was fraying within a few years of Demetrios’ death. In its effort to pair Vlachia and Hungary into a common alliance structure, it was attempting a dance that could not be kept up for long. Once the immediate desire for peace wore off, the rapprochement with Poland was wrecked by the forced cession of Polish Galicia to Vlachia. In Italy, a combination of cultural, economic, and personal factors would conspire to push back many of the concessions gained in the Treaty of Constantinople.
These developments would only bear tangible fruit after his death but perhaps he was aware of them when he was writing A New and Ancient World. The theme of the work is hubris and the consequences of it, of the Romans pushing farther than they should and getting destroyed by the counter-blow. The late 1630s were the start of a generation that would see northern Europe decidedly surpass the Mediterranean world by the end of it, although the Little Ice Age accelerated (but did not cause) the trend. Demetrios III was at the apex of the Roman Empire’s post-Niketas influence and prestige in Europe and based on journal comments, he knew he was on shaky ground.
Memory of him as an Emperor in modern society is very small, but as an individual, as Demetrios Sideros, not Demetrios III, he is better known. For his scholarly works he is well respected and venerated by the historically-minded (and it has been repeatedly noted in cultural studies that this is a larger proportion of Roman society as opposed to others) with some of his works still being printed and read today. More than one historian has expressed anger that he became Emperor at all. According to his journal, then Eparch Demetrios had plans for several research projects, including a history of the Isaurian dynasty. He’d already compiled sources and listed them; none are extant today. He never got around to it.
Among those interested in paleontology and science fiction he is a much more prominent name, particularly in the latter. He has sometimes been called the grandfather of science fiction, although the reason why he is called the grandfather rather than the father is the same reason why some argue he shouldn’t hold the title in the first place. A New and Ancient World is a decided oddity, with no successors for many years. It’s been argued that it was written in the wrong century, which explains the lag; the world had to catch up to the book. In some aspects, such as the Romans’ comments and concerns about overpopulation, resource shortfalls, and environmental degradation it seems positively modern. (That said, these same issues would hit Rhomania very hard during the Little Ice Age and have extremely enduring consequences.)
After a long stint in obscurity, once science fiction emerged and stuck around, it was rediscovered and became very popular. A New and Ancient World has been remade several times in several different mediums, the most recent in 2011. As of 2020, there are eleven astronomical objects or features named after elements from the work, selected by discoverers who were apparently fans, including the exoplanet Salnasa named after the lunar priestess which has been the subject of much recent scientific study. The show Schoolhouse Imperial acknowledges this. While Demetrios III is a minor character, the series finale reveals that the science fiction series that kept coming up in background conversation throughout the show was written by him under a pseudonym.
That is how modern Roman society remembers Demetrios Sideros. Not as an Emperor, but as a scholar and a writer. In death he became what he had wished to be in life.
Yet it is not Rhomania that most honors Demetrios Sideros. That distinction must go to Persia. His works were already read there before he was even Emperor, his writings making their way into the libraries of both Iskandar the Great and Ibrahim. It is said that everything Demetrios published became a bestseller in Persia. In the years and decades immediately after his death, A New and Ancient World was widely more popular in Persia than in Rhomania. The Persians likely appreciated a tale of Roman hubris receiving a typical ancient Greek punishment more than the Romans did. In Persia he is also renowned as a scholar and a writer, but also remembered in whispers as a sorcerer of great power.
From Persia comes a different tale of the end of Demetrios Sideros. In this tale, he did not really die but was laid to rest in a cave beneath the earth, a magical cave that restored his health and contains all the books that were, all the books that are, and all the books that will be. And though the way is barred to most of the human race, those few who he loved and those few who loved him may come and visit him there.
As endings go, it doesn’t sound so bad. Let’s leave him there.
Just a wonderful piece. A fitting eulogy to one of the five most important and prominent characters in this timeline.
A fitting end for a man who believed himself to never be as great as the old but took up the mantle when Rhomania was in danger. Rest now, Demetrios. You have done enough