WI : Julian the apostate looses at strasbourg
- Thread starter Silver01
- Start date
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Okay, so he was briefly emperor and tried to undo Constantine. Meaning, re-establish Paganism as the official Roman religion. And apostate just means a person who has changed their religion.
On the face of it, even a higher trajectory for Christianity.
But for AH purposes, maybe the Christian church(es) grow too fast and don’t have experienced people in place when various crises happen. Maybe a turbulent 75 years or so. And just maybe, one of the early versions experience a definite resurgence.
Maybe!
Well, we wouldn't have his epically meme-worthy campaign into Persia where he winds up larping every single commander he's read of in his books down to imitating actions outside of their actual context.
Julian dies an athletic nerd with promise rather than a gigantic meme of a man who was better suited for navel gazing than for the imperial purple.
Julian dies an athletic nerd with promise rather than a gigantic meme of a man who was better suited for navel gazing than for the imperial purple.
Wouldn't the battle allow for a massive strike on the west by part of the alemani?
So, who succeeds Constantius II in this scenario once he dies as he left behind no heirs historically.
Well his attempts to "revive Paganism" pissed off both the Pagans and Christians. He tried to basically copy the Christian style structural organization and implement it to traditional Roman polytheism which was quite decentralized.
He probably avoids getting illness while on campaign then so he likely lives longer. Historically he had a daughter who eventually married Emperor Gratian later down the line.
Either way Constantius was a highly competent Emperor and the fact that he now had no family would weigh on him. He'd probably be pressured to have heirs. Though if he has multiple sons, the things he did (he pulled a Roman equivalent of Order 66 on his siblings and uncles) to get the throne probably would weigh heavily upon him. I wouldn't be surprised if he has some sort of massive sense of guilt later on that Constantine had probably had after killing crispus.
Considering the way Constantine I brutally executed Fausta after learning of her treachery, he probably was in a state of anger mixed with grief. Its probably why he had a half-baked idea of leading a "holy war" against the Sassanids before his death.
Any possible successors you see in such a scenario where Julian dies at Strassbourg with Constantius II leaving behind no clear successor?
Constantius II was a gigachad. Probably my favorite of Constantine's heirs.
Not a gigachad. The dude was straight up monstrous with how he mercilessly executed his own family. Think about it. Several of Contantine's brothers were killed. They probably knew Constantius since he was a kid.
If they didn't want to be massacred they shouldn't have been a threat to him.
To be fair, I don’t think any of them would have hesitated a second in chopping off Constantius’ head themselves. Being a Roman emperor was a brutal job, emperors were forced to kill their kin all the time. And what Constantius did was nothing compared to the purges happening in the Persian court.
All thinks considered, the battle of Argentoratum wasn’t that big of a deal historically. Hell, Julianus himself couldn’t believe he had won, he had no intention of fighting it at first, the soldiers did all the work. After the battle, he had to keep campaigning for the subsequent years because the Germans were far from being beaten, and he mustn’t have been very effective, since while the Danube area where Constantius operated was pacified, the Rhine frontier was still in turmoil by the time Valentinianus came to the throne.
Maybe, in the long run, Julianus losing and dying would be for the best of the empire. The Alemanni sack Gaul for a bit, they go back and Constantius finally decides to play the last card he’s got left in his desperate attempt to find someone of the family to rule with, and sends Procopius to the West as Caesar. Procopius, hopefully, wouldn’t have dreams of grandeur, would stay loyal, Constantius could take a small break and not die from fatigue and , as @Lady Visenya colorfully put it, we wouldn’t have Julianus’ meme-worthy campaign in Persia and everything turns out better than he did in OTL.
Burning the ships he had, convinced that he would motivate his soldiers by doing so, while he actually destroyed the best chance he had to retreat.
Besieging city by city with reckless abandon, while in the meanwhile the Sassanids let him advance to entrap him.
Fighting alongside his soldiers without even putting his armor on, thus getting killed and leaving his whole army stranded in enemy territory.
And the list goes on. Julianus was a lot of things, but he definitely wasn’t a good general.
Couldn’t this just be because the West had been affected the most by the previous civil wars, the stripping of units from the Rhine frontier and Magnentius' defeat.
As for Constantius’ heir, Procopius was a cousin of Julian but not exactly a Constantinian, thus only loosely related to the imperial family. How about having Constantius’ sister remarried to someone the emperor can trust and is willing to pass the empire to, should he die heirless.
It would all depend on how much of a defeat we’re talking about, if it’s a complete disaster, then the west would run into trouble, but Constantius has enough troops still left in his sector that he could move West and deal with things personally. All in all, it wouldn’t be catastrophic in either case.
Yes, but Constantius did show him some sort of consideration already in 358, he was sent to an important embassy in the Sassanid court. Being all out of options I can see Constantius relying on him.
Constantius was a smart man, and there must have been a reason why he didn’t simply give the other half of the empire to someone he could trust, and instead picked his troublesome cousins for the task. Constantinus I had purposefully destroyed a system where trusted men were chosen as emperor, to enable one where all the power stayed in one family. Constantius was more than determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, it was his full intention to keep the power within the family, because otherwise his whole legitimacy would lose one of its focal points. Procopius was old enough, and at least had that tiny connection that would enable him to pose as a Neo-Flavian.
Or maybe Constantius would just give up, make Ursicinus Caesar and give him control of the West, who knows.
Oh probably I expressed myself wrongly, but I was referring to the fact that the Gallic frontier was in a worse shape compared to the Danube because Julian had to deal with a worse starting situation (due to previous events) in a short amount of time , so while scoring a victory there he never managed to achieve the same stable situation as in the East. Just a suggestion, it could just be that Julian was not 100% up to the task.
There was this nice book I found recently that was trying to bring some new lights to Constantius' reign. I should pick it up as soon as possible since Constantius seems to be the Gallienus of the IV century.
Maybe for added legitimacy we could have Procopius marry Constantius' sister. Cousin marriage has not been abolished yet (and was definitely not a problem between said sister and Julian) and anyway Procopius was just a cousin of a cousin (don't know the term for that) of the emperor. This way we truly keep it in the family while entrusting the empire to someone capable, or at least not exceptionally incapable.