Babyrage: I think you’re right regarding Demetrios III. Alexeia and Andreas II had a good bit themselves but I’m pretty sure Demetrios beats them already. And he won’t go out with a whimper.
And Andreas I blows everyone out of the water in terms of narrative screen-time.
The TTL view of the First Komnenid dynasty is fairly positive, but mixed. It took the Empire out of a really bad spot, but the Crusades did start at that time. Not Alexios’ fault, but still some guilt by proximity. And things really went south after Manuel I’s death, so they were clearly doing something wrong. In their eyes, there is a sense of ‘all flash, no substance’ about the First Komnenid dynasty, particularly towards the end, too focused on being flashy and not enough on fixing problems. So good on Alexios I and John II, mixed on Manuel I.
ImperatorAlexander: I made some minor edits, but want to keep things similar so the non-patreon aren’t getting a ‘non-canon’ TL. The one major change is the scene where Vlad is arguing with Maria. When she says Andreas is sleeping with his sister Zoe because they keep going to each other at night, Vlad recognizes that’s the two comforting each other because they have ‘battle madness’ (PTSD) nightmares, which he completely understands so he’s quite sympathetic to the two siblings.
Re-reading the TL for the PDFs…I admit I’m feeling nostalgia for the days of Andreas I. It’d be interesting to see what they’d be like if I re-wrote them in the level of detail I do nowadays (Night of the Tocsins is well over double the length of the Black Day, for example).
RogueTraderEnthusiast: They’re very useful. Reader comments have given me lots of ideas or inspired me to go in some direction in this TL.
The ‘buffer state’ concept isn’t bad, but the Romans are having issues in that some perform really well (Vlachia, Sicily), but others don’t (Egypt, Serbia).
Wolttaire: The Empire of the All the North is currently at war with an alliance of Novgorod, Prussia, and Pronsk over territories in the eastern Baltic, so it can’t do anything right now.
Curtain Jerker. That’s really cool. TTL me would probably still be in the states; family emigrated for economic reasons, although there’s a family story that one relative from great-grandparent generation skipped town because he was about to get drafted by the Russian army (late 1800s), became a sailor, and then never returned to his berth from shore leave in NYC.
And with no Nazis, TTL me would still have relatives in Germany.
Aristomenes: Indeed. Venetia isn’t too far from Bavaria, after all. Just have to punch through the Alps…
Emperor Joe: If I remember correctly, when I was at Kos a few years ago I saw 1 Republic of Hellas flag and 4 Byzantine ones (2 eagles, 2 tetragrams). So based on that anecdote, there does still seem to be some nostalgia.
JSC: Milan’s out of the way if one is stabbing at the HRE, whether up the Danube, or basing from Venetia. So it might get bypassed.
Minifidel: Yeah, the Lombards (then Milanese) never really got punished for their role in the Time of Troubles (unlike the Ottomans who at least had their capital sacked).
Question regarding Greek family names: Where do Greek family names come from? English names often seem to be a former occupation (Smith, Taylor, Cook). The out-of-context reason for having a few dozen prominent service families is that I made a list of late Byzantine family names and have been pulling from the list as needed. I want to expand the people who show up in the TL, so I’m having to create names but I don’t want to screw them up. (I suppose I could pull names from Modern Greek history; I’m pretty sure I’ve done one or two like that.)
Two examples of family names I’m thinking: Argyrochoos (family occupation-silversmith), Myti (from famous ancestor known for his big nose). Do those work or am I totally off base here?
Note for Patreon subscribers: I’m working on the PDF for Part 6 but I’ve decided to take this section all the way through to the death of Andreas I, so it’ll be appreciably longer than 100 pages (160?). This may delay its release so I wanted to give you all a heads-up.