Deleted member 67076
That greater Francia is going to be very interesting to see in action. Probably very bad for the next round of nomads pouring in.
The Rise of the White Huns
- Thread starter Practical Lobster
- Start date
Will the Frankish capital be moved to Rome or to a more central location? Great Timelime, hope to see the future of this world.
I don't know. Cities such as Paris and Aachen are at the center of their true powerbase, despite now controlling with various degrees of decentralization both Hispania and Italia.
Moving the capital to Rome seems foolish, even though Emperor Aloysius will certainly want to draw continuity between the various Roman Empires and his own state. What do you guys think?
Greater Francia will be an unquestionably dominant power on the Continent. The real question is how long before centrifugal tendencies tear it apart, and how much more might it gobble up in the meantime?
Moving the capital to Rome seems foolish, even though Emperor Aloysius will certainly want to draw continuity between the various Roman Empires and his own state. What do you guys think?
Greater Francia will be an unquestionably dominant power on the Continent. The real question is how long before centrifugal tendencies tear it apart, and how much more might it gobble up in the meantime?
Maybe the Emperor should take an Imperial residence in Rome? Either by taking a villa or reconstructing an old Roman palace on the Palatine Hill. It'd be a easy way to compromise between moving the capital and staying in Paris or Aachen. Then whatever residence he takes up in Rome could become the royal residence of whatever government controls Italia after the end of Greater Francia.
Maybe they gobble up the Wendish Kingdom when it tears itself apart. Then at least part of the territory would be part of a Greater Saxon Kingdom when Greater Francia's territory is divided.
I agree with HonestAbe´s propositions of an imperial villa in Rome and a possible conquest of the Wends. A creative turn of events would be some conquest on the British Isles, but I don`t know how plausible that is.
Well, historically, Rome wasn't the capital of the Empire for long periods of time, with it being places like Ravenna. So the capital being somewhere else shouldn't be too much of an issue.
I think common sense will dictate keeping the capital in Paris or Aachen, but making visits to Rome to ensure continuity. Like perhaps have Rome be where the Emperor is declared/crowned/annointed etc, like what happened between Paris and Reims OTL.
I think common sense will dictate keeping the capital in Paris or Aachen, but making visits to Rome to ensure continuity. Like perhaps have Rome be where the Emperor is declared/crowned/annointed etc, like what happened between Paris and Reims OTL.
Put me in the "not long" category. (Though symbolically, Frankish rule may run for quite some time, even as actual control on the fringes settles on local princes.)
With the de facto independent princes eventually declaring independence? And the more powerful of these princes consolidating control over larger areas?
Maybe, maybe not. As the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans demonstrates IOTL, there's something to be said for belonging to an empire even if you barely belong to it in many cases.
That's what the HRE did for a long time.
Rest assured, it frequently got very complicated.
Such complication will make for very interesting posts though. Holy Roman Empire is probably a good analogy for the sort of centralized, complex government systems that will rule western Europe.
I wouldn't rule out campaigns against the Wends, Jutes, Danes, and other pagans at the periphery of the empire. Even if they're not necessarily centrally organized. Nor would I rule out these campaigns taking on a "Votive" mantle.
The Franks are overdue for a major update. As are the Norse.
Edit - meant decentralized, complex systems.
I wouldn't rule out campaigns against the Wends, Jutes, Danes, and other pagans at the periphery of the empire. Even if they're not necessarily centrally organized. Nor would I rule out these campaigns taking on a "Votive" mantle.
The Franks are overdue for a major update. As are the Norse.
Edit - meant decentralized, complex systems.
Last edited:
Oh, yes, the fact that there's a good chance that most Frankish Emperors' reigns are going to start with what is essentially a military campaign disguised as a coronation ceremony will doubtless cause many things to happen.
Frankish Europa
Frankish Empire
By the end of the short reign of Lothair, King of the Franks, in 849, a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming that the Frankish state was coming to an end. On the periphery, the tendency towards decentralization was being exacerbated by Viking and Wendish raids. Local Dukes and Marchers were turning Europe into an armed camp, not necessarily in pursuit of their own autonomy but out of fear of the "wrath of the northmen" from which there was no deliverance but extensive fortification. The state was forced to concede increasing privileges to these border-lords, both out of a desire to maintain the integrity of the frontier and also because these border-lords were well-equipped and often had the power to rival the central government.
However, Lothair was savvy. Even as he invested extraordinary power in the border Duchies, he was quick to play the Palatines and lesser grandees against them - knowing that the former had a vested interest in the strength of the monarchy and the latter had little power to oppose him. New codes of law were drafted to govern the relations of vassals and kings. Dukes were forced to provide tribute or armed retainers to local Legates and Palatine lords, ostensibly for the purposes of defending their own borders. In practice, this meant a class of aristocrats who were tied more to royal officials than to their notional overlords.
Measures such as this would ensure that when Lothair's younger brother Aloysius came to the throne in 850, the new King (and soon to be Emperor) would have the power to raise a strong central army and engage in a protracted campaign across Italy.
As Emperor, Aloysius was able to avoid, or perhaps ignore, some of the issues which plagued Lothair's reign. Constant campaigning in Italy allowed him to forge close bonds with nobles called up to serve, and his absence from the court meant the border lords could enjoy relative autonomy in practice. After his final victory over the pretender Emperor Julian Alunnis, he rode north to Rome, where he oversaw a series of renovations and most importantly began the construction of a fortified imperial residence several miles from the city, which was ostensibly to be his new palace. In practice, it was usually the residence of the Imperial Legate[1] and Imperial visits to Rome were rare indeed.
Paris and Aachen were the more traditional seats of the Emperor - closer to the dangerous northwestern border marches and the traditional Frankish heartlands. Apart from a brief stay in Medilano[2], Aloysius clearly saw the conquest of Italy as an opportunistic gesture, no matter how much he couched it in the Votive rhetoric of defending Christendom.[3] Opportunism in general defined his reign. As the Wendish Confederation began to crumble, he was quick to exploit the wedges and begin encroaching, ordering the construction of new fortresses within disputed borderlands often regarded as Wendish territory, and after the murder of several missionaries in 861, he escalated to full-out war.
The Frankish army which marched against the Wends was small by the standards of the titanic force which had invaded Italy - but it was battle hardened, comprised of many of the veterans of that campaign, and by contrast the Wends were quite isolated. The Moravian elite had been Christian for a generation, and in order to save themselves, they acknowledged in the most tentative terms the Imperial sovereignty of Aloysius, while opportunistically raiding northwards and capturing many Wendish fort-towns.
The ease with which the Franks destroyed much of Wendish civilization should not come as too great of a surprise. Many of the greater tribes, such as the Veleti, had never truly assimilated into the broader "Wendish" identity. They were quick to bend the knee to the Franks and accept baptism, and so be spared. Other tribes, such as the Heveli, refused to surrender and were simply destroyed. The Franks had ample logistical support from their newfound subjects to prosecute protracted sieges of the hill-fort settlements which marked the area.
Another key to long-term Frankish victory was the annihilation of the traditional priesthood. As the keepers of cultural traditions and memories, the priesthood also had a strong political role in the Confederation. By massacring priests as "witches" and destroying pagan shrines, the Franks broke the spirit of the Wends entirely. The Obodrites and many of the trading ports along the black sea, curiously, survived and remained semi-independent for some time as tributaries, but they represented an exception, rather than a rule. In general, the devastation done to the region was significant. Entire tribes were wiped out, and the land given over to Frankish settlers. Patterns of settlement change distinctly after the mid ninth century - archeological finds in many places begin to reflect a Germanic sensibility without any sign of transition of assimilation.[4]
If the Frankish borders were stained with blood, their general approach to governance could be summed up as benign neglect. Soldiers from as far away as Spain were sometimes called to fulfill feudal obligations and fight in wars in Italy and Germany, but this was relatively uncommon. Hispania was still splintered into a patchwork of petty duchies. Compared to Francia, both Hispania and Aquitaine were scarcely martial. Norse raids were rare, although as word spread that the regions were easy pickings, increasingly viking raiders would travel the extra distance, using bases in Ireland and Orkney as stopping-off points.
In general, the Western Mediterranean coast was peaceful, prosperous, and well-governed. (Excluding Italy) Local magistrates here had more authority than they did among more Germanic peoples to the north - and the local nobility were more inclined to keep decadent but (relatively) indefensible villas than well-built stone castles. Trends of fortification which had been emerging during the migration era continued, but these fortifications were nowhere near as significant and retainers in this region were frequently undermanned.
Aloysius, and the Imperial administration as a whole, tended to focus on the problems before them and ignore all others. As the number and quality of troops raised from their southern, more Romanized provinces became less and less, they simply began requesting taxes or ignoring the region all together. Besides, Italy was the new frontier in any case, and it was exceptionally improbable that another great horse lord would force his way through into the soft underbelly of the Empire once more. Retainers in the south were also not totally incapable - there are records of unsuspecting raiders finding themselves overmatched by the grandees of Hispania or southern Francia.
This was also a time of artistic flourishing. Frankish nobles had for the past hundred years or so been exposed to a wide variety of Roman art and architecture.[5] They had been impressed, and this led to a sort of revival of Isidorian styles - the thick walls and angular symmetry of Romanesque Frankish architecture in some places gave way to the more airy and domed Isidorian style. Poetry, done in the everyday Romance languages, became a pass-time of literate sections of the elite. Particularly in the wealthy courts of Hispania, literary expression flourished. Numerous poems survive from the era, covering a wide range of topics, but primarily the focus is on courtly drama and idyllic rural scenes of country life. Aristocratic authors such as Hadriano of Odiel, writer of the famous poem Song of the Lily won local fame through their writings, although they would do little to improve the general reputation of the Hispanians as a decadent and unmartial people.
[1] A new position, created by Aloysius, the Imperial Legate was supposedly a viceroy of sorts. However, in time the various Italian duchies carved out by the Emperor would slowly drift away, and the Imperial Legate had few official powers with which to rein them in.
[2] Milan
[3] This opportunism would not endear the Frankish Empire to the Papacy. Where the Isidorians and their successors had cultivated a close and practical relationship with the Pope (who by this point was effectively the sole patriarch of the Church with any prestige) the Franks had an antagonistic relationship. The Pope would in time manage to establish himself as a secular power as well as a spiritual one, but that's a story for another day.
[4] This is not to say many did not assimilate. Over the course of some five years of campaigning, many Slavic tribes were forcibly incorporated into the Frankish fold.
[5] Sometimes because they plundered it. Such is life in the "dark ages".
Africa
Late ninth-century North Africa and Libya was a fiercely competitive place. Those clans which moved quickest to secure the trans-Saharan trade routes enjoyed spectacular wealth and influence relative to those who were excluded from this system of custom tariffs and transportation. Where certain tribes such as the Masamida and Iznagen profited immensely, many others, particularly those on the outside of the close-knit Berber social circles were forced to turn to caravan raiding. As the Masamida and Iznagen turned their not insubstantial resources to stopping these raids, the raiders in turn sought shelter with poorer clans, offering a cut of the wealth in exchange for protection.
The greatest escalation of this trend is perhaps the warlord Izilmasen striking at Hippo itself in 864. Leading a group of some sixty men over the walls in the cover of darkness, he and his comrades in arms slaughtered the guards and opened the gates for a larger force of brigands waiting nearby. At the appointed signal Izilmasen's men rushed through the gate and soon the city was ablaze. A massive trading hub, Hippo swiftly recovered, but the incident left a mark. The Iznagen patriarch, Itir, who had signed an agreement with the Mauri of Hippo obliging him to protect the city, was humiliated.
Itir called up his allies and began a two year long manhunt for Izilmasen, finally cornering him and his motley band in the desert after successfully driving them from their safe shelter among a branch of the Tumzabt. However, despite Izilmasen's grisly execution and the vicious torture and mutilation of his men, the raid had proved that the great patriarchs of the Imazighen could not always defend their subjects - and also the relative defenselessness of the coastal Mauri, whose civilization was in terminal decline.
The once-great monastic communities of Africa began to collapse as well. For some time they had preserved themselves based on trends of detachment and retreat from the secular world. While most Mauri had fled abroad to Sicily and other Mediterranean islands, many also turned inwards and sought these religious communities, which traditionally were respected by the heathens. However, increasing violence on the frontiers rendered travel between monasteries increasingly unsafe. Furthermore, as the prominent Amazigh tribes began to increase caravan protections, raiders began to look for easier targets - wealthy, defenseless monasteries were a prime example. Groups such as the Tinanian sect would be almost entirely wiped out. [1] Christianity lost most of its remaining footholds, being relegated to a few coastal cities.
In response to these growing challenges to their dominance, the patriarchs of the Iznagen, Masamida, and the leaders of several other prominent clans including the Isawiyen all sought to create out of whole cloth their own kingly pretensions. However, they did their best to avoid attaching to their own rulership the Romanized traditions of the Mauri. They refused to adopt Roman terms such as Rex or Doux, choosing instead the indigenous term Agllid (plural Igldan) and giving it additional legitimacy by attaching to their kings epithets relating to local deities such as "Chosen of Idir" or "Slave toMaqurtam." In a singular rare occasion, the Agllid of an eastern branch of the Hawwara, Ilayetmas, took the title "Chosen of Christ" - however this decision does not seem to reflect a large-scale conversion of his people, merely a personal decision, perhaps due to his proximity to the mighty Heshanid state.
These new kings became hegemons in their own right. The Mauri cities of the coast found their autonomy once again curtailed, and those who had supported brigands and raiders in the past were by 880 either turning over those they had once sheltered and prostrating themselves before their new monarchs, or fleeing into increasing marginal lands. For the Berbers of North Africa, centralization was a slow process but it saw rewards. Increased law and order meant that trade would continue to increase, which would have a strong positive impact on the growth of the Sahelian states.
[1] A Gnostic sect I've touched on before. Consider them as rather like the Cathars but in their north African incarnation there is more of an emphasis on monastic, communal living. Many of their ideas however, survived, and were transported safely to southern Italy by fleeing Mauri, where they would inspire a whole new generation of heretical preachers.
By the end of the short reign of Lothair, King of the Franks, in 849, a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming that the Frankish state was coming to an end. On the periphery, the tendency towards decentralization was being exacerbated by Viking and Wendish raids. Local Dukes and Marchers were turning Europe into an armed camp, not necessarily in pursuit of their own autonomy but out of fear of the "wrath of the northmen" from which there was no deliverance but extensive fortification. The state was forced to concede increasing privileges to these border-lords, both out of a desire to maintain the integrity of the frontier and also because these border-lords were well-equipped and often had the power to rival the central government.
However, Lothair was savvy. Even as he invested extraordinary power in the border Duchies, he was quick to play the Palatines and lesser grandees against them - knowing that the former had a vested interest in the strength of the monarchy and the latter had little power to oppose him. New codes of law were drafted to govern the relations of vassals and kings. Dukes were forced to provide tribute or armed retainers to local Legates and Palatine lords, ostensibly for the purposes of defending their own borders. In practice, this meant a class of aristocrats who were tied more to royal officials than to their notional overlords.
Measures such as this would ensure that when Lothair's younger brother Aloysius came to the throne in 850, the new King (and soon to be Emperor) would have the power to raise a strong central army and engage in a protracted campaign across Italy.
As Emperor, Aloysius was able to avoid, or perhaps ignore, some of the issues which plagued Lothair's reign. Constant campaigning in Italy allowed him to forge close bonds with nobles called up to serve, and his absence from the court meant the border lords could enjoy relative autonomy in practice. After his final victory over the pretender Emperor Julian Alunnis, he rode north to Rome, where he oversaw a series of renovations and most importantly began the construction of a fortified imperial residence several miles from the city, which was ostensibly to be his new palace. In practice, it was usually the residence of the Imperial Legate[1] and Imperial visits to Rome were rare indeed.
Paris and Aachen were the more traditional seats of the Emperor - closer to the dangerous northwestern border marches and the traditional Frankish heartlands. Apart from a brief stay in Medilano[2], Aloysius clearly saw the conquest of Italy as an opportunistic gesture, no matter how much he couched it in the Votive rhetoric of defending Christendom.[3] Opportunism in general defined his reign. As the Wendish Confederation began to crumble, he was quick to exploit the wedges and begin encroaching, ordering the construction of new fortresses within disputed borderlands often regarded as Wendish territory, and after the murder of several missionaries in 861, he escalated to full-out war.
The Frankish army which marched against the Wends was small by the standards of the titanic force which had invaded Italy - but it was battle hardened, comprised of many of the veterans of that campaign, and by contrast the Wends were quite isolated. The Moravian elite had been Christian for a generation, and in order to save themselves, they acknowledged in the most tentative terms the Imperial sovereignty of Aloysius, while opportunistically raiding northwards and capturing many Wendish fort-towns.
The ease with which the Franks destroyed much of Wendish civilization should not come as too great of a surprise. Many of the greater tribes, such as the Veleti, had never truly assimilated into the broader "Wendish" identity. They were quick to bend the knee to the Franks and accept baptism, and so be spared. Other tribes, such as the Heveli, refused to surrender and were simply destroyed. The Franks had ample logistical support from their newfound subjects to prosecute protracted sieges of the hill-fort settlements which marked the area.
Another key to long-term Frankish victory was the annihilation of the traditional priesthood. As the keepers of cultural traditions and memories, the priesthood also had a strong political role in the Confederation. By massacring priests as "witches" and destroying pagan shrines, the Franks broke the spirit of the Wends entirely. The Obodrites and many of the trading ports along the black sea, curiously, survived and remained semi-independent for some time as tributaries, but they represented an exception, rather than a rule. In general, the devastation done to the region was significant. Entire tribes were wiped out, and the land given over to Frankish settlers. Patterns of settlement change distinctly after the mid ninth century - archeological finds in many places begin to reflect a Germanic sensibility without any sign of transition of assimilation.[4]
If the Frankish borders were stained with blood, their general approach to governance could be summed up as benign neglect. Soldiers from as far away as Spain were sometimes called to fulfill feudal obligations and fight in wars in Italy and Germany, but this was relatively uncommon. Hispania was still splintered into a patchwork of petty duchies. Compared to Francia, both Hispania and Aquitaine were scarcely martial. Norse raids were rare, although as word spread that the regions were easy pickings, increasingly viking raiders would travel the extra distance, using bases in Ireland and Orkney as stopping-off points.
In general, the Western Mediterranean coast was peaceful, prosperous, and well-governed. (Excluding Italy) Local magistrates here had more authority than they did among more Germanic peoples to the north - and the local nobility were more inclined to keep decadent but (relatively) indefensible villas than well-built stone castles. Trends of fortification which had been emerging during the migration era continued, but these fortifications were nowhere near as significant and retainers in this region were frequently undermanned.
Aloysius, and the Imperial administration as a whole, tended to focus on the problems before them and ignore all others. As the number and quality of troops raised from their southern, more Romanized provinces became less and less, they simply began requesting taxes or ignoring the region all together. Besides, Italy was the new frontier in any case, and it was exceptionally improbable that another great horse lord would force his way through into the soft underbelly of the Empire once more. Retainers in the south were also not totally incapable - there are records of unsuspecting raiders finding themselves overmatched by the grandees of Hispania or southern Francia.
This was also a time of artistic flourishing. Frankish nobles had for the past hundred years or so been exposed to a wide variety of Roman art and architecture.[5] They had been impressed, and this led to a sort of revival of Isidorian styles - the thick walls and angular symmetry of Romanesque Frankish architecture in some places gave way to the more airy and domed Isidorian style. Poetry, done in the everyday Romance languages, became a pass-time of literate sections of the elite. Particularly in the wealthy courts of Hispania, literary expression flourished. Numerous poems survive from the era, covering a wide range of topics, but primarily the focus is on courtly drama and idyllic rural scenes of country life. Aristocratic authors such as Hadriano of Odiel, writer of the famous poem Song of the Lily won local fame through their writings, although they would do little to improve the general reputation of the Hispanians as a decadent and unmartial people.
[1] A new position, created by Aloysius, the Imperial Legate was supposedly a viceroy of sorts. However, in time the various Italian duchies carved out by the Emperor would slowly drift away, and the Imperial Legate had few official powers with which to rein them in.
[2] Milan
[3] This opportunism would not endear the Frankish Empire to the Papacy. Where the Isidorians and their successors had cultivated a close and practical relationship with the Pope (who by this point was effectively the sole patriarch of the Church with any prestige) the Franks had an antagonistic relationship. The Pope would in time manage to establish himself as a secular power as well as a spiritual one, but that's a story for another day.
[4] This is not to say many did not assimilate. Over the course of some five years of campaigning, many Slavic tribes were forcibly incorporated into the Frankish fold.
[5] Sometimes because they plundered it. Such is life in the "dark ages".
Africa
Late ninth-century North Africa and Libya was a fiercely competitive place. Those clans which moved quickest to secure the trans-Saharan trade routes enjoyed spectacular wealth and influence relative to those who were excluded from this system of custom tariffs and transportation. Where certain tribes such as the Masamida and Iznagen profited immensely, many others, particularly those on the outside of the close-knit Berber social circles were forced to turn to caravan raiding. As the Masamida and Iznagen turned their not insubstantial resources to stopping these raids, the raiders in turn sought shelter with poorer clans, offering a cut of the wealth in exchange for protection.
The greatest escalation of this trend is perhaps the warlord Izilmasen striking at Hippo itself in 864. Leading a group of some sixty men over the walls in the cover of darkness, he and his comrades in arms slaughtered the guards and opened the gates for a larger force of brigands waiting nearby. At the appointed signal Izilmasen's men rushed through the gate and soon the city was ablaze. A massive trading hub, Hippo swiftly recovered, but the incident left a mark. The Iznagen patriarch, Itir, who had signed an agreement with the Mauri of Hippo obliging him to protect the city, was humiliated.
Itir called up his allies and began a two year long manhunt for Izilmasen, finally cornering him and his motley band in the desert after successfully driving them from their safe shelter among a branch of the Tumzabt. However, despite Izilmasen's grisly execution and the vicious torture and mutilation of his men, the raid had proved that the great patriarchs of the Imazighen could not always defend their subjects - and also the relative defenselessness of the coastal Mauri, whose civilization was in terminal decline.
The once-great monastic communities of Africa began to collapse as well. For some time they had preserved themselves based on trends of detachment and retreat from the secular world. While most Mauri had fled abroad to Sicily and other Mediterranean islands, many also turned inwards and sought these religious communities, which traditionally were respected by the heathens. However, increasing violence on the frontiers rendered travel between monasteries increasingly unsafe. Furthermore, as the prominent Amazigh tribes began to increase caravan protections, raiders began to look for easier targets - wealthy, defenseless monasteries were a prime example. Groups such as the Tinanian sect would be almost entirely wiped out. [1] Christianity lost most of its remaining footholds, being relegated to a few coastal cities.
In response to these growing challenges to their dominance, the patriarchs of the Iznagen, Masamida, and the leaders of several other prominent clans including the Isawiyen all sought to create out of whole cloth their own kingly pretensions. However, they did their best to avoid attaching to their own rulership the Romanized traditions of the Mauri. They refused to adopt Roman terms such as Rex or Doux, choosing instead the indigenous term Agllid (plural Igldan) and giving it additional legitimacy by attaching to their kings epithets relating to local deities such as "Chosen of Idir" or "Slave toMaqurtam." In a singular rare occasion, the Agllid of an eastern branch of the Hawwara, Ilayetmas, took the title "Chosen of Christ" - however this decision does not seem to reflect a large-scale conversion of his people, merely a personal decision, perhaps due to his proximity to the mighty Heshanid state.
These new kings became hegemons in their own right. The Mauri cities of the coast found their autonomy once again curtailed, and those who had supported brigands and raiders in the past were by 880 either turning over those they had once sheltered and prostrating themselves before their new monarchs, or fleeing into increasing marginal lands. For the Berbers of North Africa, centralization was a slow process but it saw rewards. Increased law and order meant that trade would continue to increase, which would have a strong positive impact on the growth of the Sahelian states.
[1] A Gnostic sect I've touched on before. Consider them as rather like the Cathars but in their north African incarnation there is more of an emphasis on monastic, communal living. Many of their ideas however, survived, and were transported safely to southern Italy by fleeing Mauri, where they would inspire a whole new generation of heretical preachers.
Thanks for another great update!
How many Berber kingdoms might there be? And where is each of them roughly located? Could we have a map, perhaps?
How many Berber kingdoms might there be? And where is each of them roughly located? Could we have a map, perhaps?
A single, albeit very fractured, state possessing southern Spain and Sicily is really going to alter Europe. While they're no North Africa, the agricultural surplus produced by them and the greater ease of trade, thanks to the existence of a single massive empire, is really going to mess with feudalism something fierce.
True. I mean, to some degree the sort of proto-feudalism that evolved out of Roman estates was inevitable, but we're looking at what will likely be a much more urban Western Europe with more local and international trade. In the long run, at least.
(Assuming the unified government lasts)
(Assuming the unified government lasts)
The biggest test for the expanded frankish empire is whether it can survive a bad king, like it had been for the isodorians and severians. I would not be at all surprised if this frankish empire ended up splitting like the carolingians of otl.
Great Update, always check this for updates. I really enjoy the developments of western and northern Europe. It is going to have major effects without the muslim invasion of Spain or the like.
One question, when is Britian going to start featuring in the story
Keep up the great work!
Not sure. If people are very interested in the Isles, I could do a post, but I've mostly been trying not to bite off more than I can chew.
That is the biggest test of most empires in history. I'm not sure the Carolingians are a good analogue - I don't see it being split among sons, necessarily. It's all good that all the monarchical titles have been concentrated in one person and passed down to the eldest son. Accordingly there's no single figure for those dissatisfied to rally around against the current dynasty.