I am going to develop the
Seat of the Xanarian Empire modelling it after late Rome and Byzantium and throwing in a measure of Renaissance Italy.
Doing the past history of the Xanarian Empire would also be politic, but I do not want to intrude on the descriptions of other countries, so I will desist. But as the old Xanarian Empire seems to be modelled on the the Roman Empire, I would very much like to point out a litle known fact about the late Roman Empire and the migration era, hopefully to be taken into consideration by others doing the past history of their countries:
The barbarian people had no intention whatsoever to destroy Rome.Quite the contrary was true. Even weakened late Rome was much more powerful than many barbaric people combined, and those people wer ein great awe of this empire. What they wanted was becoming a part of this empire. Their usual approach was to ask the emperor for land to settle, being refused it and subsequently forcing their way into these very lands. They were often dislodged by Roman armies, sometimes fleeing into other parts of the empire, sometimes fleeing the empire entirely; but as soon as they had settled in fertile and highly cultivated lands, they tried to behave very good indeed. They upheld the Roman administration, wrote polite letters to the emperor in which they adressed him as their master and tried to get official recognition in return for swearing fealty and promising military support (which they mostly really provided), honoured to a large degree the position and possessions of leading Romans in the area and sought their councel. In short: they wanted to become part of the Roman Empire and to find themselves a niche in it, as living in these highly developed parts was simply much easier than subsisting in the vast forests north of the Danube. It was the sheer number of peoples jostling into the Empire which, among other things, brought about its eventual downfall, something which the barbarians who were already part of the empire tried to hold up for many decades. They did not want the Roman Empire to fall, the wanted to
be it.
It would be really nice if Weyrth could be one pseudo-medieval fantasy world where the former pseudo-Roman Empire was not destroyed by hordes shouting “down with Pseudo-Romeâ€, as seems to be the case with all the others. Weyrth has still a chance to be both different and make more sense at the same time.
Edit:
And, Ian - could you manage the reconstruction from the of the Hagia Sophia from the top of
this website as the title picture for the Empire-subforum?