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-Rome”, 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?

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My real name is Michael; use it, if you like.

How are you going to handle the fact that Xanarium never had its capital moved? A great part of Byzantium's character is due to its melding the imperial legacy with the post-Hellenistic world of the eastern empire. Without that, I believe that the Byzantine elements used in developing Xanarium should be limited.
Reading the material on Xanarium in the book certainly does not sound very Byzantine, being much more "Catholic" in character. Maybe the Greek/Middle Eastern/Orthodox aspects of Byzantium could be developed in a different part on Weyrth. The obvious choice for me would be Taveruun, though I realise this has been taken in a "French" direction in the forum (which puzzles me greatly!).

I don't know wether you have already read my verbose disquisitions on the historical and cultural development of Xanarium, but they do to some extent hint at the answer to your question. Which is basically this:

For the original Xanarian Empire before present-day Weyrth I have not so much drawn on the legacy of earth's Roman Empire. My point of reference was the Roman Empire as it existed in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. This was my model for Xanarium in the recent past. For Xanarium before that day, I have extrapolated from this point of refwrence backwards, drawing upon developments from the earlier Roman history. For present-day Xanarium I have extrapolated the developments onward in time from this point of reference, drawing upon actual developments under the Byzantine Empire. This may seem like a semantic difference to simply redrawing Rome's development into Byzantium for Weyrth, but if you look at the results for Xanarium, it actually isn't. Early Xanarium had already a much more Byzantine feel than early Rome, and present-day Xanarium has a less Greek feel to it than medieval Byzantium. It's a stringent development.

And what you read into a text as sketchy as the original outline of Xanarium is of course always subjective. It certainly doesn't fit any single historical country in Europe. I chose to emphasize the bits about the remnants of empire, which does of course fit in much better wiith Byzantium than with Italy, though I do of course concede that different interpretations would of course have been possible. In the end, it's a matter of taste and a creative for choice for one interpretation over another.

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My real name is Michael; use it, if you like.