Finale time!
1054-1062 AD:
John spent years finalising his plans for his reconquest and building the bond between his children. While he would live to see the marriage of Stephen to Maria Komnenos and the birth of his first grandchild, Romanos Diogenes, the son of Basil II would not live to take part in his final legacy. In 1061 AD, having reigned for 29 eventful years, he caught a fever and became delirious two days after his fifty-sixth birthday. A week later, babbling about the reconquest and his father, mother and cousins, John II died. The body was barely cold when people were already calling him '
Megas Basileus'. Immediately, there was an uprising in Armenia, which was swiftly crushed by John's son and successor, Basil III. Basil proved surprisingly merciful to his fellow Christians, but not so much to the Turkmen who took the opportunity to raid. He quickly entered a new truce with Tughril, while sending agents to find and deal with the most dangerous potential new Sultan. At last, the reconquest could get underway.
The first target of the brothers was the Fatimid Caliphate, ruled, at least in theory, by the Caliph al-Mustansir. Basil and Alexander led the army while Leo, Stephen and Dowager Empress Eudokia handled state affairs. The Romans first clashed with a combined Fatimid/Aleppan army at Azaz in 1062 AD. Numbers were not on the Roman side, but mutual distrust between the Shiite Fatamids and Sunni Aleppans hampered cooperation and any strong chance of victory. The Fatimid commanders who weren't killed fled the battlefield, leaving their troops to their fate. Aleppo became integrated into the empire as a theme under a Christian strategos, while Basil spared the captured Fatimid troops, who either remained Muslim or converted to Christianity. The brothers debated what to do with the Muslims - their father's plan was to present themselves as the new leaders of the Shiite faith against the Seljuks and the decadent Fatimids, but they decided doing so would only make them a bigger target for the Seljuks and any other great Sunni powers. In the end, they allowed the Sunnis to keep their religion and offered the Shiites the chance to convert to either Sunniism or, as most of them did, Christianity. Any attack made by the Seljuks would be harder for their soldiers to accept if they were attacking fellow Sunni Muslims.
1062 AD and beyond...:
Entire regions fell the Roman onslaught - Tripoli, Damascus, Tiberias, Galilee, Acre, Tyre, and the holy city of Jerusalem itself. Egypt itself was in chaos due to a combination of famine and a revolt by the different ethnicities which made up the Fatimid army. After a combined land-sea siege of Damietta and Alexandria, Basil marched on Cairo and shipped al-Mustansir quietly into retirement. Nearly of the former Fatimid lands except for the Hedjaz and Nubia were back under Roman rule for the first time in 400 years. Tax excemptions were granted to Christians and the Muslims were given the choice to leave if they so wished.
Unfortunately, with the drought came a nasty outbreak of slow fever*. While preparing for the attack on the Zirids of North Africa in 1068 AD, Basil III was stricken with the diesease in Alexandria and died. Though his wife Theodora was eight months pregnant, the brothers had agreed on the succession before the campaign:
* If the eldest child dies without legitimate male issue, the crown will pass to the next oldest brother.
* If the reigning emperor dies with underage male issue, the crown will pass to the next oldest brother until his death or the eldest child comes of age.
Theodora gave birth to a daughter whose name is lost to history. Both disappear from the records shortly afterwards, some accusing Eudokia Makrembolites of arranging their deaths to secure the throne for her own sons.
Alexander III would personally lead the campaign against the Zirids while other generals dealt with Turkish incursions into Armenia. Cyrenaica and Tripolitania were conquered in short order, but the Zirids were more careful about facing the Romans in open battle, in part due to the bandits which stung both forces. The agriculture economy, so carefully handled by previous Zirid rulers, had been allowed to decline, so Alexander won many people to his side by his promises to restore it to the way it was, since the Zirids had ultimately failed in this venture. Two Zirid armies were defeated at Kairouan and Mahdia, and Tunisia was starved into submission in a siege. Many Arab and Berber Muslims retreated further inland, and Alexander kept travelling along the coast, gaining the loyalty of Sardinia, until he came to the borders of the Hammadid Emirate. Alexander wanted to continue on, but his troops refused to go any further. His brothers were convinced that they had reached the limits of their expansion, and there were rumblings of another major Seluk invasion.
The year was 1071 AD. The Seljuks were repulsed, but Alexander was wounded in the leg and unable to campaign any further. The successive lack of victories was so damaging to the Seljuks' prestige that in three years, their whole empire would collapse into infighting and never threaten the empire again. Alexander III would die from falling from his horse in 1074 AD, leaving behind two purple-born sons - Basil and Constantine. The throne passed to the master diplomat, Leo VII, who remained unmarried but peacefully annexed the Kingdom of Croatia and spent the rest of his life trying to find a way to peacefully integrate all the new inhabitants into the empire.
Leo turned to the statement which his father had received, and in 1079, organised a Ecumenical Council at Nicaea to discuss the revokation of the Third Council and the readoption of Monothelitism. After weeks of bickering, a majority agreed to adopt Monothelitism as the primary religion of the empire. For the Papacy, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Rome properly broke from the Imperial doctrine and most of Europe followed suit - Hungary, the German Empire, Poland, Scandinavia, France, the British Isles and the Iberian kingdoms.
Of the last known members of the Macedonian dynasty, only these facts are known - Leo died unexpectedly in 1095 AD, supposedly by agents of those who opposed his religious policies. Stephen, who had two sons - Isaac and John - succeeded him and continued to support Monothelitism, which saw a decrease in revolts by Armenian, Syrian and African Christians. The greatest challenge of Stephen's reign was a declaration of a 'crusade' by the Pope in Rome to expel the heretics and bring the 'Empire of the Greeks' under the true Catholic fold. These amounted to a few scattered armies which were more like migrations than armies. While Stephen could make war and peace with Europe, he could not make peace when his youngest son, Isaac, was 'accidentally' killed by John's retainers while escorting his sister home. Stephen's grief contributed to his early death in 1117 AD. After ruling for 4 months, John III was overthrown and blinded in a coup by the sons of Alexander III, the eldest of whom became Basil IV. Basil ruled wisely and well before being gored by a stag in 1124 AD. His son, Constantine IX ruled for 11 months before falling ill and dying. It would be Basil's brother, Constantine X, and his sons, Michael, Alexander and Christopher, who would lead the empire into the future, for good or ill...
Among the sources for the rule of some of the later Macedonian emperors would be Patriarch Ignatios II, known better to some as Constantine, son of Romanos III. While he never learned the truth about his heritage, he was one of the last major opponents of Monothelitism before it became accepted as a fact of life, and especially after the failed crusade.
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*: Typhoid fever.
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Well folks, that's my first TLIAW, scratch that, my first timeline to be done and dusted at all. Of course, though, if anyone finds anything too unbelievable in this final post, just let me know and I will do my best to edit it until such problems are gone.
A big thank-you to everyone who helped and supported me during this, especially Basileus Giorgios, Grouchio, ImperatorAlexander, Soverihn, Al B. Short and Stark.
And to finish off, a map of the Basileia ton Rhomaion in 1125 AD:
Legend:
Red - Basileia ton Rhomaion (Monothelite)
Yellow - Republic of Venice (Catholic)
Pink - Kingdom of Georgia (Orthodox)
Light green - Hashimid Emirate (Sunni)
Dark green - Abbasid Caliphate (Sunni)
Blue - Seljuk successor states (Sunni/Shiite)
