Number 1 Moth Girl

A thing that is true: I read a lot of books and papers on the medieval Roman (or "Byzantine"¹) empire, its society and its people.

A second thing that is true: Strategy game Europa Universalis 4 has an upcoming update featuring more content for a variety of middle eastern states, including Byzantium.

EU4 is a game usually on my periphery; I haven't played it, but I have spent a very large number of hours playing its sister game, Crusader Kings 2, and have seen a decent amount of gameplay. So when I heard about it covering this special interest of mine, I checked out the dev diary², and was very struck by how it crystallised a lot of persistent, unspoken assumptions about...not so much the actual eastern Romans, but more the western ideological construct of "Byzantium". The two often bear little resemblance.

First of all, Byzantium is getting a new government type, "Byzantine Autocracy", which is mostly a hindrance. It is described as "a relic of classical antiquity", with "outdated governmental structures".

This is Interesting because something you can do in EU4, as in many Paradox strategy games, is restore the Roman empire (the ancient, classical, Roman empire centred in Italy, that is, which these games consider a distinct entity). If you do that, you get the "Roman Empire" government type, with an imposing, encouraging description and powerful bonuses! It's even possible to change to a "Roman Republic" government type, which is also lauded. So now structuring your society around relics of classical antiquity is a good thing!

This on its own makes a kind of sense, because the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras EU4 takes place in valorised ancient Rome and strove to emulate it. But when added together, all this creates the curious effect that "reaching back for classical ideas is good, because they were cool and smart, except when Byzantium does it, then they're stagnant and need to get with the times".

Another part of the Byzantine Autocracy above I think deserves mention is the penalty to "Maximum Absolutism". Because EU4 is a game set in the early modern era, it draws a lot of its mechanics directly from early modern philosophy. Essentially, the more Absolutism you have, the more you can do, as a more absolute ruler, rejecting the balance of power with strong vassals that characterised many medieval societies. This is a hell of a concept to endorse uncritically, but here I'm just focusing on how the Byzantine system apparently lacks absolutism (i.e. a powerful ruler who can Get Things Done), and this is apparently bad.

This is Interesting, because if you can steer the nation out of its precarious start, you can reform its government and change the above system into an upgraded one, which carries a number of bonuses. There's no image in the dev diary, but as per the wiki, Reformed Byzantine Monarchy is described as:

Through effort, blood and tears the Imperial Government of the Empire has been reformed! The brutal civil wars are no more; the power of the Senate has been restored while the Imperial Army's influence in the government is greatly curtailed.

This is Interesting, because one of the major problems with the Byzantine government was apparently that the ruler wasn't autocratic and powerful enough. But apparently one of the solutions to reform it is to increase the power of the Senate; in other words, to share the ruler's power and become less autocratic. This gives you more Absolutism.

In summary, "absolutism is good, except when Byzantium does it, then it's bad".

It's also Interesting because, again, the problem was apparently that Byzantium was an antiquated relic, and the solution to reform it is apparently to restore an ancient classical institution. So, Byzantium is too reliant on ancient institutions, and it needs to get with the time and restore ancient institutions. It lacks absolutism, so it needs to become less autocratic so it can be more autocratic.

This isn't, in my opinion, a case of wonky game design. This is an incredibly condensed representation of the way western culture has, for centuries, envisioned its constructed "Byzantium".

From Edward Gibbon's 18th-century Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Victorien Sardou and Robert Buchanan's 19th-century play Theodora through to youtube pop-history today, this is the way "Byzantium" is perceived in western eyes. It is a fallen, decadent version of something that was once good; and yet it is also out of touch, and too much like the past³ (but when western, Renaissance thinkers revive that past, it's good, because they know what to do with it). Its rulers are "Oriental despots", cruel tyrants wielding theocratic power over their subjects, but also weak and spineless, easily dominated by scheming courtiers (read: women, eunuchs, people who were not born rich). When they are like the ancient Romans, this is bad. When they are different from them, this is bad. When they are strong, this is bad. When they are weak, this is bad. The strawman "Byzantium" is not an entity in its own right; it exists as a mirror for the west to hold up and favourably compare itself to. To say "you are not who you think you are; that legacy belongs to us exclusively".

In reality, of course, medieval Roman society was not magically frozen in amber. It existed in the medieval world, interacted with it, and evolved, just as the peoples to its west and east did. It was more like the Roman empire than other medieval states, in that it was the Roman empire. But states do not have a "natural shelf-life". They are shared ideas, constantly refreshed by new generations. The Romans were not any more "out of place" in the 14th century than the 1st. Entire generations of them grew up and lived entirely in that world. And medieval Roman government cared a great deal for popular opinion. When placed on the parameters of early modern European monarchies, it looks rather "absolute", in that it does not involve power-sharing with land-holding lords. But Byzantine government was instead beholden to the populace at large, and required their approval to ascend to and remain in power. (This is not mere idealism; when the people didn't approve of an emperor, they made this known via methods like "setting fire to his house"⁴)

I feel like I should have a more impactful conclusion, but really, I just saw this dev diary for a video game I don't play and went "huh, this is a perfect encapsulation of the double-think pervasive in how our culture portrays this historical society I'm really interested in. I want to write about that," and so I did. This one was more about unpicking the foundations of ideas that are often presented without much thought than presenting new information. Don't worry, I do plenty of that if you ever talk to me for more than five minutes.

Thanks for reading! I will strike again.

1. The name "Byzantine" originates mostly out of an ideological need to claim the idea of "Rome" as an exclusively western, European one, and exclude the thousand or so years in which that state and society existed exclusively further east.

2. To be clear, I think a lot of it is pretty cool! They're adding events and mechanics to really put you in the shoes the late medieval empire and all the dilemmas it faced. I think it's overall going to make playing them a lot more interesting. However, it definitely exists in line with the traditional views I'm exploring and questioning here.

3. This really is a pervasive idea. I'm currently reading Caroline Finkel's Osman's Dream, which really is an excellent history of the Ottoman empire from start to finish, recommended for both academic and wider audiences...but even this intelligent work refers to the final small independent Roman states in the 1450s as "anachronistic", again putting the cart before the horse, using the hindsight that their time was almost up.

4. Read Anthony Kaldellis' The Byzantine Republic for more on this ideology of society as common project. When they continued to refer to their society as the políteia (directly translating res publica), that wasn't just rhetoric.

i should not be left unattended

giving my dad a demonstrative lesson on trusting AI