The Undying Empire: A Trebizond Timeline
- Thread starter Eparkhos
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How will Russia and Ukraine be affected by all that's happening in Anatolia? Since Russia isn't the only Orthodox nation left, how would that affect their mentality assuming they still rise up as a single nation?
PS: what was the extent of the Polynesian-Incan exchange?
I think the Vizier should formally usurp the throne and kill off the House of Osman.The Ottomans have lost whatever influence they had left and at this point in time, they don’t have the same prestige as they later possessed.
As OTL's Constantine XI died in the 1440s, was he assassinated in a power struggle or did he have an unfortunate accident or illness which killed him off?
Well, if Jagiellon Poland exist and is somewhat strong (and the last update when it's mentioned suggests than it is), why doesn't it's king declare himself rightful heir of Hungary? You mentioned Jan Olbracht in your last update even touching Poland (you incorrectly attributed weakness to him, and he was one among most autocratic Polish monarchs) and his mom was sister of Ladislaus the Posthumous. I know it's been some time since Posthumous lost (ITTL) to John Hunyadi but it could not stop anyone from pressing their claims - Henry V pressed Edward III's claim to France, for example. And mom of Jan Olbracht, Aleksander and etc. (I don't know why did you make him hate Jan Olbracht and in reverse, Jagiellon brothers generally got along with each other, with exception being Władysław and Jan Olbracht, but Aleksander and Jan Olbracht loved and supported each other IOTL clearly, Jan Olbracht wanted to name Aleksander as his heir when he was seriously ill in 1490s, but TTL's Aleksander seems like a massive cunt he never was OTL) really *HATED* Hunyadis and personally insulted Matyas Corvinus many times, calling him *Wallachian sheperd* when he tried to obtain hand of her daughter, so Jagiellons probably consider Hunyadis illegitimate usurpers and I think that when the civil war erupted in Hungary, king of Poland TTL (did Jan Olbracht have any sons ITTL?) would probably think it's golden opportunity to intervene in Hungary (also, it's not like Jagiellon claim did not have it's supporters in Hungary itself, older brother of Jan Olbracht, St. Casimir - Święty Kazimierz in Polish, was hailed as a rightful heir of Vladislaus V by magnates of Hungary, who rose up in rebellion for the Kazimierz's/Casimir's cause - you can read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Casimir#Hungarian_campaign) and since Lithuania is dealt with - you mentioned that Jan Olbracht desired to make union with Lithuania more formal, not personal, but if he won militarily with Lithuania, this would be actually quite simple - he'd probably revoke his father's privilege from 1440 guaranteeing that Lithuania is tied to Poland "only in name" and would return to principles of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Horodło, which was stating that:
a) Lithuania is a part of Polish crown itself, not only state in personal union (that point was basically what was done in original Polish-Lithuanian union in Krewo in 1386, where Władysław II Jagiełło, progenitor of Jagiellon dynasty pledged that he'd incorporate his Ruthenian and Lithuanian lands to Poland, upon becoming it's king)
b) Grand Duke would be chosen by Polish king with the advisory voice from Polish royal council and Lithuanian boyars (English wiki figured it out wrong, it stated that Lithuanians will elect their own Grand Duke, but in reality that was only acclamation of the choice made by Polish king, and it was not done by Lithuanians alone, but together with Polish royal council)
c) every single king of Poland would hold the title "supreme duke of Lithuania" to highlight that power of Grand Duke is not that of sovereign, but is derived from the power of king of Poland and is considered only extension of those (this was actually clause from earlier Polish-Lithuanian agreement, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrów_Agreement and English wiki has it once again wrong, since Vytautas did not pledge his allegiance to Jogaila (he did that since the beginning of Jogaila's reign over Poland and even earlier) but to his wife, Queen Jadwiga (by right of whom Jagiełło even was king of Poland to begin with) and to Corona Regni Poloniae - and that meant Polish state as a legal entity
That union was kinda cancelled by Kazimierz's (future Kazimierz IV's) usurpation of throne of Lithuania over his elder brother Władysław III (the one that died in crusade of Varna IOTL) and upon assuming throne of Poland he cancelled that act of union and insisted on more equal partnership, where Lithuania and Poland formed proper personal union. And why did he do it?
His claim to throne itself was contested - and I do not mean that there were other pretenders, but Kazimierz IV's reign opened the great dispute in Poland whether monarchy is elective or hereditary, and the possibility of it going elective (which finally came to fruition in 1538) is what incited Kazimierz to support Lithuanian separatism.
In 1496 IOTL, Jan Olbracht proposed a project in which in exchange of Lithuania being tied to Poland more institutionally once again, secured the rights of Jagiellons to Poland and I suppose something like this would be enacted ITTL.
Where did they get pigs? Pigs didn't make it to Easter Island, which you say is the point of contact.
That's not true.
Firstly, the Orthodox church did allow divorce, although they had a limit on total number of wives, namely 4. Weirdly, they didn't treat divorce and death differently, in that context.
Nonetheless,it was difficult enough to get.Michael III and his probable son Leo VI had to be rather imaginative when it came to getting their sons to succeed to the throne because they were already married to other women.
Eparkhos
Banned
Well, as has been established, Russia had a little bit of a warring states period between 1480 and ~1525-1530. The Golden Horde was in a period of ascendancy, so obviously the development of the Russian state and culture have been delayed quite a bit. By 1530, there was basically a cold war between Velikiy Novgorod in the north-west and Volga Novgorod in the east, the latter Novgorod holding a much better position but the former Novgorod being propped up by the Poles and Lithuanians. Were the Poles and Lithuanians to be distracted by, say, a massive war in the south, then Velikiy Novgorod would be ripe for the picking by Volga Novgorod. Northern Ukraine is part of Lithuania and is faring....alright, I guess. The south is occupied by the Golden Horde and the occasional group of freebooting Cossacks.
I don't know nearly enough about cultural and psychological history to accurately predict the effects of this counterfactual on Russia's history, but I imagine that the presence of fellow Orthodox states means it isn't as so xenophobic. Then again, there is a great number of Mongols and Tatars between Russia and Trapezous/Moldova, so it could just reinforce that feeling. IDK.
I'm considering this as an option. TBH I don't have much prewritten for the War of the Second Holy League.
They're dead, Jim. The Qoyunlu/Qutlughids swept over Iran and most of Khorasan, and the Timurid rump state was basically just fodder for the Uzbeks, who were even more successful than they were in OTL. The Uzbeks may or may not become !Mughals, I haven't decided yet.
Freak accident, actually. According to Arms and the Military in Late Byzantine Society, Constantine was nearly killed by a group of Turkish raiders who attacked the Hexamilion in the 1440, and in TTL the arrow that wounded him landed just a few inches off. And that's that.
I'm not going to kill the Ottomans off just yet, but I'm not going to say anything past that.
1. I was unaware of the stuff about Jagiellon internal relations, so I guess I'll chalk it up to the Principle of Post-Divergence Genetic Randomness (anyone born after PoD will have their character and even very genes changed, sometimes quite dramatically).
2. Jan Olbracht didn't invade Hungary before because... the Golden Horde were being a bunch of pricks and he couldn't divert enough forces to give him a good shot at Hungary.
3. Lithuania. I didn't know anything about this, really, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. Your note about Jan Olbracht's attempt to bind Poland and Lithuania has been noted, and I assume that it has been done TTL
(Welcome aboard, BTW)
This was a bit of CRF (critical research failure) on my part. It appears that there may have been small populations of pigs on Easter Island that were wiped out by disease and/or the natives and which were introduced on occasion by Polynesian traders, so I'll just say that the Incas happened to make contact during one of these periods.
I know a fair bit about Orthodox marriage law and the role of patriarchs in divorces and annulments (that's part of the reason why I had the Pontic Patriarchate created ITTL). I don't remember if I brought this up last time, but Francoise of France refused to convert to Orthodoxy and so was shunned by the Pontic Church, which was why Alexios was able to so easily abandon her.
It amazed me that tiny Trebizond was able to get a French royal in the first place.
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Eparkhos
Banned
They could fairly easily take the region, if they can take Nikomedia. Hypothetically, Ebulhayr Pasha could keep the city supplied by sea, as the Marmara is still an Ottoman lake and will be for the forseable future, as the only three states with the ability and motive to help the crusaders (Venice, Calvi and Savona) are all busy with the Three Leagues.
In 1518 a fleet of Venetian and Hospitaller ships would successfully raid the Karamanid anchorage at Kayqubadabad (OTL Tisan) and burn the ships at anchor there as well as much of the surrounding port, securing Christian hegemony over the northern half of the Eastern Med. The Hospitallers have been quite busy fighting Mamluk fleets (the Karamanids never had much of a fleet apart from the one destroyed at Kayqubadabad) along the coasts of Syria and Libya. After the Three Leagues ends, Hyginus is definitely going to support the Knights as a way to further both Christianity and Papal influence in the region.
Cezari i Shqiperise, coming right up
Yes, its the architect. What he's less well known for is commanding Ottoman armies in several minor battles, all of which he won quite handily. If he lives to his OTL age, at the time of his death he will be the third-longest reigning monarch in European history (second only to Basil II and Constantine VIII, funnily enough) and the fourth-longest reigning ruler in all history with nearly 63 years on the Albanian throne. I'm already imagining the Turks immortalizing him as the Albanian from hell.
Old king Joze and his sword so bold had devoured a thousand score souls.....
I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. Funnily enough, the idea for this whole TL came from a game of EU4 extended timeline as the Rumites.
Re: Constantinople
The Trapezuntines, Ratetas in particular, would have to be out of their minds to not go straight for Constantinople as soon as possible. Fate will intervene to keep them from taking it with such (comparitave) ease--I kind of feel like giving them back the capital now would ruin a bunch of good and unique plot lines, plus completely destroy the Ottomans, who I'd like to have around for a while longer--but the crusaders will still pose a massive threat to the Sublime Porte. They may or may not sheer off everything outside of Thrace and their surviving holdings in Anatolia, I haven't decided yet, but it'll still be a body blow to the already reeling Turks. I think Ebulhayr Pasha will pull a Philip II, using the powers I have as vizier aren't enough to stave off our impending doom, I need to become absolute ruler to keep us all from dying schtik as an excuse to depose the monarch. All I have are vague plans for now, though, so I can't promise anything.
Eparkhos
Banned
Close
Big Naples and Big Uzbekistan are both guarantees (at this time)
Yeah, I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I wrote that. I might retcon Francoise into being a bastard(ess?)
Part XLVI: The Ratetas Regency (1517-1525)
Eparkhos
Banned
And now for something completely different!
Part XLVI: The Ratetas Regency (1517-1525)
The madness and subsequent purges of Alexios V had resulted in the death of most of the Trapezuntine aristocracy, an effect that was only intensified by the rapid rotation of regents for the restive David in 1515 and 1516. By the time Ratetas assumed the office of regent, he found that the usual source of usurpations, the nobility, had been ground into a fine powder and scattered to the wind. As such, with the church and the bureaucracy backing him, he was free to mold the Empire and David’s future rule however he saw fit. It was of immense luck for both that he chose well….
Before he had even departed for the war on the Sangarios’ banks, Ratetas had struggled to set up a regency government around him. He had little administrative experience other than organizing resupply efforts for his ships, and he was fully aware that with his hold on power as tenuous as it was, picking the wrong second-in-command could result in the death or blinding of him and his entire family. With such high stakes, he naturally decided to play it safe, and raised his youngest son, a fairly minor member of the junior bureaucracy named Theophylaktos, to the position of mesazon, or Imperial chancellor[1]. While his father and several of his brothers and cousins took ship for Nikaia and the fighting there, Theophylaktos was left as regent for the regent at the young age of twenty-seven, forced to try and sort through the administrative hell that had been left behind by the chaos of the last decade. It was an uphill battle, to say the very least.
The years of purges had engulfed not only much of the court but also many from the upper ranks of the Imperial administration, effectively decapitating the revenue and internal governance branches of the government, which had left many of the more far-flung parts of the empire to run around like headless chickens. Theophylaktos’ first action was to raise an experienced tax collector named Isaakios Aspietes to the newly created office of megasphoroeispraktoros, or national tax collector, who was charged with managing the collection of the numerous land and crop taxes which were owed by the citizens of Trapezous. Theophylaktos was also alarmed to find that the years of neglect had nearly led the Trapezuntine treasury to bankruptcy, a fact which his father’s expedition to the west was hardly helping. To keep solvency while a more permanent solution was worked out, he summarily raised a new tax, the kephoros, which taxed urban households by a total number of adult residents[2] at a certain percent. This infuriated the residents of the capital city, and Trapezous was engulfed by rioting members of the urban poor, who were already having a hard enough time making ends meet before they started being taxed for doing what they had been asked to do only months before[3]. Theophylaktos was able to scrape together the remaining eleutheroi and several bandons from the surrounding countryside to put down the rioters within a few days, but much of the city’s commercial district was damaged, many buildings have been set on fire during the chaos. It is at this time that Theophylaktos first developed the migraines which would plague him for the rest of his life. He also began to suspect that the cause of the state’s financial decline was due to wide scale embezzlement, and he embarked upon an anti-corruption crusade. Anyone caught stealing money from the state’s coffers was sold into slavery, while anyone caught with more than ten pounds worth of stolen gold was athalricized[4] in the mese of Trapezous[5]. He went so far as to review every material request from across the empire in the last decade with two dozen trusted companions, which resulted in the death or enslavement of more than a thousand corrupt desk jockeys. How much impact this actually had in the grand scheme of things is unknown, but once the Trapezuntine state income started to rebound after 1518, Theophylaktos chalked it up to this in greater part than he did the reformed tax collection system.
With the immediate problem resolved, Theophylaktos was able to turn his attention to more esoteric matters. He believed that the reason for the widespread corruption and ineptitude in the bureaucracy was because there was no standardized way of testing the competency of aspiring civil servants. If nepotism and corruption played a large part in how many civil servants entered the service, then they would believe that such nefarious deeds would be acceptable to perform themselves. In order for the Trapezuntine bureaucracy to reach its full potential, all opportunities for misdeeds needed to be weeded out of the entry process; if a civil servant is kept away from corruption in his formative years and shown that the wages of corruption are only death and pain, then he will be incorruptible, out of fear if nothing else. But how to do so?
The inspiration of the neosystemadomikon has been speculated to be everything from the contemporary Ming jishi system to a direct revelation from God himself to the mesazon after he ate too much cannabis one night. Regardless of its origin, the new Imperial exam system is arguably the most important product of not only the Ratetas regency but the reign of David the Great itself. Anyone, from the lowest provincial farmer to a member of the Imperial family itself, would be subject to the same, impossible-to-rig series of tests and examinations to determine their potential as a civil servant. Upon reporting to one of the twenty designated provincial testing site (located in the twenty largest towns within the empire, of course) the applicants would be subject to a basic literacy test, to weed out the morons and the scammers. Then they would be assigned a number--written as a complex formula, in the old Milesian system, which had been phased out in favor of Indo-Arabic numerals during Alexandros II’s reign and was impenetrable to anyone who hadn’t been trained in its use from childhood[6]--and told to report to the Imperial Testing Center in the capital. There, they would be processed by that number and randomly assigned to a tiny, fifty-square-foot room where they would be locked in for two days and a night to take the test, after which their papers would be stamped with another randomly selected formula with the same product and shuffled through three layers of test examiners, who would each grade one section, before finally being gathered together and reviewed by a fourth examiner, who would then certify the results and have them posted in a designated building outside palace. Those who passed would enter the Trapezuntine bureaucracy as civil servants.
The desired curriculum of these applicants would vary greatly under successive aftokrators and mesazons, but the foru constants that persisted from the time of Theophylaktos onward were math, the natural sciences, law and the antiquites. The mesazon felt that math was necessary knowledge for the bureaucrats, who would almost certainly have to do calculations with some regularity, and the natural sciences would make sense as a subject of knowledge for men who would be working with practically all aspects of society. An understanding of the laws of the empire is just common sense, but the desire for knowledge of the antiquities is somewhat of a mystery, as Theophylaktos didn’t write much down about this. It is probable that he, like so many across Europe and the Near East, was obsessed with the idea of the renaissance man and felt that any good bureaucrat must be well-rounded. It would take several years for the neosystemadomikon to be fully implemented across Trapezous--the first class to make its way through the system entered civil service in 1522--but once it was completed it would dramatically help the ailing bureaucracy’s return to competency.
The only other event of note on the homefront during Ratetas’ regency was a series of bad droughts and famines that affected the newly-conquered Inner Paphlagonia from 1531 to 1534. The region had already been devastated by years of warfare and constant back-and-forth raiding between the various Turkmen tribes and bands, Neo-Rumite forces hoping to finally put down these raider bands once and for all and of course the forces of Trapezous themselves, who were having more than a little bit of difficulty driving back the numerous enemies who were arrayed against them. The entire Black Sea littoral region was hit by a series of droughts in the first half of the 1530s, but the impact was felt the hardest in this region, which was naturally quite dry compared to the rainforests coasts of Pontos and the fertile valleys of Khaldea[7]. Ratetas had by now returned from conducting affairs in Nikaia, and was present to personally oversee the famine relief which his son propagated. Grain was shipped in from Pontos and from across the Black Sea, while hundreds of hapless farmers and their families were shuttled around to different parts of the empire to ease the burden placed upon Paphlagonia’s limited resources. The church also played a significant role in the affair, with Patriarch Dionysios opening the patriarchal coffers to succor the afflicted peoples of the region. Of course, the military presence in the provinces there was also stepped up to keep the Turkmen from taking advantage and they, too, needed to be fed, but on the whole it was an improvement for the Paphlagonians.
While the disasters and crisis of Ratetas’ tenure were thankfully few, this did not mean this time as regent was a period of little activity. Good fortune and the blood of too many good men (alongside a number of not-so-good-men) had allowed the regent to inherit a situation whence the power of the nobility and the independent-mindedness of the church had both been greatly curbed. Ratetas recognized this and knew that he could not let this bout of good fortune go to waste. He pursued a series of policies aimed at keeping the nobility in their place--namely, entirely subservient to the emperor and his officers--with multiple angles of attack.
Much of the land and estates both physically and economically of the men who had been executed by Alexios remained in legal limbo long after his death. According to the laws which had been promulgated during the chaos of the 1340s, if a man were to be executed for treason then his land would be returned to the state; the law here was crystal clear, there was no room for interpretation. However, if this person had been killed for his support of someone who later became emperor, then this seizure would be made void. Given that no-one was quite sure what the hell was going on in terms of property rights after Alexios’ bloodbath, Ratetas was jam-packed with requests from the next of kin of those who had been unjustly persecuted and who felt that they were owed their loved one’s land. Ratetas and Theophylaktos went through all of these listings with a fine-toothed comb, giving land back to those who they felt were worthy and denying the rest, which resulted in several hundred angry relatives of those killed during the purges taking but brigandry in the wilds of the mountains. This would be a recurring problem that would ultimately require the intervention of Tarkhaneiotes and several bandons to be done away with in a series of anti-highwayman campaigns throughout the 1530s. The greatest upshot of this affair, though, was that there was now several thousand acres of land which had formerly been possessed by the magnates that were sitting in Imperial bond, concentrated primarily in the newly-conquered frontier zones. Ratetas recognized the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by further reducing the power of the aristocracy and securing these new conquests by extending the bandon system into these regions. He invited several thousand Circassians, Armenians and other Orthodox/Apostolic peoples from across the region, many of whom had been forced into exile due to violence in their homelands, to settle in these regions in exchange for service: most took him up on his offer. In this manner, Ratetas was able to, in the five years between 1521 and 1526, almost completely secure the newly conquered lands in the west and south.
Ratetas also undertook some numismatic reform, but this had little impact other than slightly altering the ratio of the precious metals within the baser denominations of the coins, and so has little standing in comparison to the other events of his regency. He, with the help of Theophylaktos, also promulgated a new codex of laws, the Nomos Davidos, in 1522, which was somewhat impressive in terms of scope but wound up being more of a confusing mess than anything else as it tried to balance precedent and unwritten laws from across Pontos in terms of value and apply them across all of the country at once, ultimately being discontinued in favor of the Nomos Basileus Davidos in the 1540s. Ultimately, the thing which Ratetas is best known for is what he didn’t do: rock the boat. By keeping a firm but gentle hand on the tiller domestically and cautiously expanding the empire’s territory, the admirable admiral was able to keep Trapezous on the right course throughout the usually chaotic years of a long regency, thus ensuring that the boy aftokrator would come into his own without a major crisis. After a seven-year-long regency and a lifetime of service, Ratetas died in his sleep in January 1524 at the age of seventy-four. Rather than selecting a regent to carry him through the forty-one days he was still legally a minor, David assumed the throne in his own right and was crowned on 13 March 1524.
Khalaza David, o oikodomos, kai khalaza David, o katastrapheas….
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[1] The exact role of the mesazon varied greatly throughout history, and so it is difficult to truly name an English equivalent. The closest office is probably either chancellor or prime minister, but these are still rough analogs.
[2] That is, adult men
[3] Alexandros II had instituted a number of tax breaks and donatives in hopes of driving up Trapezous’ birth rate, so that it could compete with its neighbors. Many Trapezuntines had taken advantage of this, and as you might imagine they weren’t exactly overjoyed to now be taxed more for doing so.
[4] To quote myself: This is the most extreme punishment recorded in Byzantine law. The subject of this punishment was whipped raw, then tied to a platform in the public square. They first had their fingers severed with a hacksaw, then their hands, then their forearms and then their arms up to their elbow. Their nose was skinned and then severed, after which the same was done to their legs. They were then blinded and left on the platform for three days in excruciating agony. Finally, they were set on fire and burned to death, which no doubt was a mercy. This punishment is recorded for only two individuals in Byzantine history, those being the perennial rebels Basil the Copper-hand and Ioannes the Athalricist.
[5] That is, the city center
[6] Alexandros II also completed the long-awaited Nikephorian Reforms, which had been proposed by the philosopher Nikephoros Gregoras in the 14th Century. They were, namely, switching to Arabic numerals and adopting a slightly altered Julian calendar, i.e. the OTL Gregorian Calendar.
[7] Khaldea refers to the Lykos Valley and the surrounding country of rivers and valleys. It had previously been referred to solely as Lykonia, but the expansion of Trapezuntine influence in the region had led to its renaming.
Part XLVI: The Ratetas Regency (1517-1525)
The madness and subsequent purges of Alexios V had resulted in the death of most of the Trapezuntine aristocracy, an effect that was only intensified by the rapid rotation of regents for the restive David in 1515 and 1516. By the time Ratetas assumed the office of regent, he found that the usual source of usurpations, the nobility, had been ground into a fine powder and scattered to the wind. As such, with the church and the bureaucracy backing him, he was free to mold the Empire and David’s future rule however he saw fit. It was of immense luck for both that he chose well….
Before he had even departed for the war on the Sangarios’ banks, Ratetas had struggled to set up a regency government around him. He had little administrative experience other than organizing resupply efforts for his ships, and he was fully aware that with his hold on power as tenuous as it was, picking the wrong second-in-command could result in the death or blinding of him and his entire family. With such high stakes, he naturally decided to play it safe, and raised his youngest son, a fairly minor member of the junior bureaucracy named Theophylaktos, to the position of mesazon, or Imperial chancellor[1]. While his father and several of his brothers and cousins took ship for Nikaia and the fighting there, Theophylaktos was left as regent for the regent at the young age of twenty-seven, forced to try and sort through the administrative hell that had been left behind by the chaos of the last decade. It was an uphill battle, to say the very least.
The years of purges had engulfed not only much of the court but also many from the upper ranks of the Imperial administration, effectively decapitating the revenue and internal governance branches of the government, which had left many of the more far-flung parts of the empire to run around like headless chickens. Theophylaktos’ first action was to raise an experienced tax collector named Isaakios Aspietes to the newly created office of megasphoroeispraktoros, or national tax collector, who was charged with managing the collection of the numerous land and crop taxes which were owed by the citizens of Trapezous. Theophylaktos was also alarmed to find that the years of neglect had nearly led the Trapezuntine treasury to bankruptcy, a fact which his father’s expedition to the west was hardly helping. To keep solvency while a more permanent solution was worked out, he summarily raised a new tax, the kephoros, which taxed urban households by a total number of adult residents[2] at a certain percent. This infuriated the residents of the capital city, and Trapezous was engulfed by rioting members of the urban poor, who were already having a hard enough time making ends meet before they started being taxed for doing what they had been asked to do only months before[3]. Theophylaktos was able to scrape together the remaining eleutheroi and several bandons from the surrounding countryside to put down the rioters within a few days, but much of the city’s commercial district was damaged, many buildings have been set on fire during the chaos. It is at this time that Theophylaktos first developed the migraines which would plague him for the rest of his life. He also began to suspect that the cause of the state’s financial decline was due to wide scale embezzlement, and he embarked upon an anti-corruption crusade. Anyone caught stealing money from the state’s coffers was sold into slavery, while anyone caught with more than ten pounds worth of stolen gold was athalricized[4] in the mese of Trapezous[5]. He went so far as to review every material request from across the empire in the last decade with two dozen trusted companions, which resulted in the death or enslavement of more than a thousand corrupt desk jockeys. How much impact this actually had in the grand scheme of things is unknown, but once the Trapezuntine state income started to rebound after 1518, Theophylaktos chalked it up to this in greater part than he did the reformed tax collection system.
With the immediate problem resolved, Theophylaktos was able to turn his attention to more esoteric matters. He believed that the reason for the widespread corruption and ineptitude in the bureaucracy was because there was no standardized way of testing the competency of aspiring civil servants. If nepotism and corruption played a large part in how many civil servants entered the service, then they would believe that such nefarious deeds would be acceptable to perform themselves. In order for the Trapezuntine bureaucracy to reach its full potential, all opportunities for misdeeds needed to be weeded out of the entry process; if a civil servant is kept away from corruption in his formative years and shown that the wages of corruption are only death and pain, then he will be incorruptible, out of fear if nothing else. But how to do so?
The inspiration of the neosystemadomikon has been speculated to be everything from the contemporary Ming jishi system to a direct revelation from God himself to the mesazon after he ate too much cannabis one night. Regardless of its origin, the new Imperial exam system is arguably the most important product of not only the Ratetas regency but the reign of David the Great itself. Anyone, from the lowest provincial farmer to a member of the Imperial family itself, would be subject to the same, impossible-to-rig series of tests and examinations to determine their potential as a civil servant. Upon reporting to one of the twenty designated provincial testing site (located in the twenty largest towns within the empire, of course) the applicants would be subject to a basic literacy test, to weed out the morons and the scammers. Then they would be assigned a number--written as a complex formula, in the old Milesian system, which had been phased out in favor of Indo-Arabic numerals during Alexandros II’s reign and was impenetrable to anyone who hadn’t been trained in its use from childhood[6]--and told to report to the Imperial Testing Center in the capital. There, they would be processed by that number and randomly assigned to a tiny, fifty-square-foot room where they would be locked in for two days and a night to take the test, after which their papers would be stamped with another randomly selected formula with the same product and shuffled through three layers of test examiners, who would each grade one section, before finally being gathered together and reviewed by a fourth examiner, who would then certify the results and have them posted in a designated building outside palace. Those who passed would enter the Trapezuntine bureaucracy as civil servants.
The desired curriculum of these applicants would vary greatly under successive aftokrators and mesazons, but the foru constants that persisted from the time of Theophylaktos onward were math, the natural sciences, law and the antiquites. The mesazon felt that math was necessary knowledge for the bureaucrats, who would almost certainly have to do calculations with some regularity, and the natural sciences would make sense as a subject of knowledge for men who would be working with practically all aspects of society. An understanding of the laws of the empire is just common sense, but the desire for knowledge of the antiquities is somewhat of a mystery, as Theophylaktos didn’t write much down about this. It is probable that he, like so many across Europe and the Near East, was obsessed with the idea of the renaissance man and felt that any good bureaucrat must be well-rounded. It would take several years for the neosystemadomikon to be fully implemented across Trapezous--the first class to make its way through the system entered civil service in 1522--but once it was completed it would dramatically help the ailing bureaucracy’s return to competency.
The only other event of note on the homefront during Ratetas’ regency was a series of bad droughts and famines that affected the newly-conquered Inner Paphlagonia from 1531 to 1534. The region had already been devastated by years of warfare and constant back-and-forth raiding between the various Turkmen tribes and bands, Neo-Rumite forces hoping to finally put down these raider bands once and for all and of course the forces of Trapezous themselves, who were having more than a little bit of difficulty driving back the numerous enemies who were arrayed against them. The entire Black Sea littoral region was hit by a series of droughts in the first half of the 1530s, but the impact was felt the hardest in this region, which was naturally quite dry compared to the rainforests coasts of Pontos and the fertile valleys of Khaldea[7]. Ratetas had by now returned from conducting affairs in Nikaia, and was present to personally oversee the famine relief which his son propagated. Grain was shipped in from Pontos and from across the Black Sea, while hundreds of hapless farmers and their families were shuttled around to different parts of the empire to ease the burden placed upon Paphlagonia’s limited resources. The church also played a significant role in the affair, with Patriarch Dionysios opening the patriarchal coffers to succor the afflicted peoples of the region. Of course, the military presence in the provinces there was also stepped up to keep the Turkmen from taking advantage and they, too, needed to be fed, but on the whole it was an improvement for the Paphlagonians.
While the disasters and crisis of Ratetas’ tenure were thankfully few, this did not mean this time as regent was a period of little activity. Good fortune and the blood of too many good men (alongside a number of not-so-good-men) had allowed the regent to inherit a situation whence the power of the nobility and the independent-mindedness of the church had both been greatly curbed. Ratetas recognized this and knew that he could not let this bout of good fortune go to waste. He pursued a series of policies aimed at keeping the nobility in their place--namely, entirely subservient to the emperor and his officers--with multiple angles of attack.
Much of the land and estates both physically and economically of the men who had been executed by Alexios remained in legal limbo long after his death. According to the laws which had been promulgated during the chaos of the 1340s, if a man were to be executed for treason then his land would be returned to the state; the law here was crystal clear, there was no room for interpretation. However, if this person had been killed for his support of someone who later became emperor, then this seizure would be made void. Given that no-one was quite sure what the hell was going on in terms of property rights after Alexios’ bloodbath, Ratetas was jam-packed with requests from the next of kin of those who had been unjustly persecuted and who felt that they were owed their loved one’s land. Ratetas and Theophylaktos went through all of these listings with a fine-toothed comb, giving land back to those who they felt were worthy and denying the rest, which resulted in several hundred angry relatives of those killed during the purges taking but brigandry in the wilds of the mountains. This would be a recurring problem that would ultimately require the intervention of Tarkhaneiotes and several bandons to be done away with in a series of anti-highwayman campaigns throughout the 1530s. The greatest upshot of this affair, though, was that there was now several thousand acres of land which had formerly been possessed by the magnates that were sitting in Imperial bond, concentrated primarily in the newly-conquered frontier zones. Ratetas recognized the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by further reducing the power of the aristocracy and securing these new conquests by extending the bandon system into these regions. He invited several thousand Circassians, Armenians and other Orthodox/Apostolic peoples from across the region, many of whom had been forced into exile due to violence in their homelands, to settle in these regions in exchange for service: most took him up on his offer. In this manner, Ratetas was able to, in the five years between 1521 and 1526, almost completely secure the newly conquered lands in the west and south.
Ratetas also undertook some numismatic reform, but this had little impact other than slightly altering the ratio of the precious metals within the baser denominations of the coins, and so has little standing in comparison to the other events of his regency. He, with the help of Theophylaktos, also promulgated a new codex of laws, the Nomos Davidos, in 1522, which was somewhat impressive in terms of scope but wound up being more of a confusing mess than anything else as it tried to balance precedent and unwritten laws from across Pontos in terms of value and apply them across all of the country at once, ultimately being discontinued in favor of the Nomos Basileus Davidos in the 1540s. Ultimately, the thing which Ratetas is best known for is what he didn’t do: rock the boat. By keeping a firm but gentle hand on the tiller domestically and cautiously expanding the empire’s territory, the admirable admiral was able to keep Trapezous on the right course throughout the usually chaotic years of a long regency, thus ensuring that the boy aftokrator would come into his own without a major crisis. After a seven-year-long regency and a lifetime of service, Ratetas died in his sleep in January 1524 at the age of seventy-four. Rather than selecting a regent to carry him through the forty-one days he was still legally a minor, David assumed the throne in his own right and was crowned on 13 March 1524.
Khalaza David, o oikodomos, kai khalaza David, o katastrapheas….
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[1] The exact role of the mesazon varied greatly throughout history, and so it is difficult to truly name an English equivalent. The closest office is probably either chancellor or prime minister, but these are still rough analogs.
[2] That is, adult men
[3] Alexandros II had instituted a number of tax breaks and donatives in hopes of driving up Trapezous’ birth rate, so that it could compete with its neighbors. Many Trapezuntines had taken advantage of this, and as you might imagine they weren’t exactly overjoyed to now be taxed more for doing so.
[4] To quote myself: This is the most extreme punishment recorded in Byzantine law. The subject of this punishment was whipped raw, then tied to a platform in the public square. They first had their fingers severed with a hacksaw, then their hands, then their forearms and then their arms up to their elbow. Their nose was skinned and then severed, after which the same was done to their legs. They were then blinded and left on the platform for three days in excruciating agony. Finally, they were set on fire and burned to death, which no doubt was a mercy. This punishment is recorded for only two individuals in Byzantine history, those being the perennial rebels Basil the Copper-hand and Ioannes the Athalricist.
[5] That is, the city center
[6] Alexandros II also completed the long-awaited Nikephorian Reforms, which had been proposed by the philosopher Nikephoros Gregoras in the 14th Century. They were, namely, switching to Arabic numerals and adopting a slightly altered Julian calendar, i.e. the OTL Gregorian Calendar.
[7] Khaldea refers to the Lykos Valley and the surrounding country of rivers and valleys. It had previously been referred to solely as Lykonia, but the expansion of Trapezuntine influence in the region had led to its renaming.
At this point in time, is it fair to assume that the Komnenos have achieved status as THE Imperial dynasty unlike other dynasties?
The Palaiologoi of Morea are still a notable Roman dynasty, and they're probably the only ones that can claim all of Rhomania besides the Komnenoi of Trebizond.
Since no Roman controls Constantinople, there's no reason why outsiders would recognize either power as the sole representative of the Roman people.
- Status