WI: Different Byzantine fallout post-Manzikert?

[TheIO]

The Battle of Manzikert is one of those totemic PoDs, the moment when the Byzantine Empire began its inexorable decline and decay, sometimes with the idea that if Byzantine defeat there hadn't occured there'd still be a Roman Empire rampant in the Near East to this day.

This isn't about that. First, a refresher on what happened.

After Seljuk Turkic raids into Anatolia from the east had been growing in intensity over the past decade, in 1071 Romanos IV Diogenes raised an army of 40,000 soldiers and led them to the region north of Lake Van, where the fortress of Manzikert had recently fallen into Seljuk hands. Romanos split the army in two, his half took Manzikert swiftly, the other half under Joseph Tarchaniotes beseiged the neighbouring town of Khliat, some 30 miles south. Except that the Seljuk leader Alp Arslan, returning swiftly from a campaign in Syria, caught Tarchaniotes by surprise and scattered his army.

A few days later, Arslan and Romanos' armies engaged outside Manzikert. Fighting was indecisive, the Byzantine centre capturing Arslan's camp but the wings being mauled by Seljuk cavalry, until the day grew late and Romanos attempted a withdrawal back to Manzikert. The right wing didn't see the order and were routed, the rearguard under Andronikos Doukas retreated instead of covering the withdrawal, the left soon broke and the emperor with his elites in the centre was captured by the Seljuks.

Andronikos marched back to Constantinople and launched a coup elevating his cousin Michael VII, Romanos got released and attempted to get his throne back and failed, the Norman mercenary commander Roussell de Bailleul took over chunks of Anatolia as a warlord for a while, Seljuk raiders stopped heading back home and started wintering in Anatolia when they realised the Byzantine state wasn't mustering an army capable of sending them back. Michael's incompetence got him overthrown in 1078 but the political turmoil wouldn't calm down until Alexios Komnenos took over the remaining Byzantine Empire, now evicted from most of interior Anatolia, in 1081.

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For the sake of this exercise, we are assuming that the Byzantines are still losing at Manzikert. Them losing a major battle versus the Turks at some point is inevitable, the specifics of the defeat at Manzikert and their response to said defeat isn't. Some potential in-battle what-ifs from our PoD on the 26th August 1071:

• Romanos manages to pull his army back to Manzikert in reasonable order, leaving both sides intact but battered after an indecisive battle?
• Romanos avoids capture, leaving him defeated but without the additional humiliation and delay imposed by his capture?
• Romanos straight-up dies in the fighting?

And some post-Manzikert what-ifs:

• Andronikos elevates a different Doukas to the throne, such as his father John or even himself, rather than his politically uninterested cousin Michael?
• Romanos retakes the throne from the Doukas family, leaving his treaty with Alp Arslan intact?
• Roussel doesn't form his warlord state in Anatolia?
  • Or if he does, is defeated swiftly rather than staying in control for over a year?
• And later (1078), if Nikephoros Bryennios overthrows Michael Doukas rather than Nikephoros III Botaneiates doing so?

Plus any other what-ifs one could think of - it's a non-exhaustive list of a very exhausting decade for Byzantium. Could make a good PODCast if I knew how to do one.

 

[Roger II]

I guess my question is-how much of the Byzantine loss of interior Anatolia was inevitable to some extent by 1070 give Political And Socioeconomic Developments and how much was just bad luck of who got into power after Manzikert and who failed to evict the Normans?

(also because I'm a shitstirrer, an interesting *opposite* PoD-what if the Doukas succumb to infighting and Alexios Komnenos gets killed in some pissant skirmish, leaving the Byzantines to just spiral further and collapse to a rump state in mainland Greece and Rumelia or worse by 1100? so much of later medieval Mediterranean history is just Byzantine fighting for survival and Latin involvement thereof that it' interesting to imagine a late middle ages where Anatolia is already a post-Byzantine patchwork or even Islamizing rapidly.

 

[TheIO]

I guess my question is-how much of the Byzantine loss of interior Anatolia was inevitable to some extent by 1070 give Political And Socioeconomic Developments and how much was just bad luck of who got into power after Manzikert and who failed to evict the Normans?

(also because I'm a shitstirrer, an interesting *opposite* PoD-what if the Doukas succumb to infighting and Alexios Komnenos gets killed in some pissant skirmish, leaving the Byzantines to just spiral further and collapse to a rump state in mainland Greece and Rumelia or worse by 1100? so much of later medieval Mediterranean history is just Byzantine fighting for survival and Latin involvement thereof that it' interesting to imagine a late middle ages where Anatolia is already a post-Byzantine patchwork or even Islamizing rapidly.

Oh it getting worse is also a possiblity. The Byzantines collapsing to that point almost actually happened in the 1080s - Alexios Komnenos was simply able to get the wins at Larissa and Levounion required to not collapse entirely in Europe.

Losing Anatolia I don't think was inevitable - without a gaping hole in the centre in 1071-74 it feels quite possible for Byzantium to stabilise along the old post-Yarmouk borders around Melitene, even if the lands east of the Euphrates are lost - the Turks doing the raiding aren't a Seljuk field army, they're beatable and they're not yet interested in making a state. But once the Turks were wintering in Anatolia and the remains of the Byzantine army was busy killing other Byzantine armies instead, that's when it becomes a reconquest situation rather than a policing problem.

After Romanos' attempt to regain the throne and de Bailleul's rebellion collectively break the remaining Byzantine field armies, the Turks are firmly in Anatolia, at least as residents. After Botaneiates hands over Nicaea and then does nothing to take it back, the Turks aren't going to be Byzantine subjects either.

A potential scenario that could be interesting is one where Nikephoros Bryennios becomes emperor before Botaneiates rebels - you've still got a bunch of Turks in Anatolia at this point, but they're not an organised state, and Bryennios isn't going to retain the entirety of the sclerotic Doukas government either. Quite plausible that you see a a Turkic foederati situation instead if they're not given their own state on a silver platter, which would make the ethnic dynamics even messier now that there's Turks to balance as well as the pre-existing Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Pechenegs within the borders - but better in the tent than out as happened OTL.

 

[Roger II]

Losing Anatolia I don't think was inevitable - without a gaping hole in the centre in 1071-74 it feels quite possible for Byzantium to stabilise along the old post-Yarmouk borders around Melitene, even if the lands east of the Euphrates are lost - the Turks doing the raiding aren't a Seljuk field army, they're beatable and they're not yet interested in making a state. But once the Turks were wintering in Anatolia and the remains of the Byzantine army was busy killing other Byzantine armies instead, that's when it becomes a reconquest situation rather than a policing problem.

Yea, I guess the question I'm picking up on is what holes in Byzantine administration and economic policy/activity were keeping the Byzantine armies in civil war mode instead of in keep Turks out mode and how contingent they are.

A potential scenario that could be interesting is one where Nikephoros Bryennios becomes emperor before Botaneiates rebels - you've still got a bunch of Turks in Anatolia at this point, but they're not an organised state, and Bryennios isn't going to retain the entirety of the sclerotic Doukas government either. Quite plausible that you see a a Turkic foederati situation instead if they're not given their own state on a silver platter, which would make the ethnic dynamics even messier now that there's Turks to balance as well as the pre-existing Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Pechenegs within the borders - but better in the tent than out as happened OTL.

In this scenario, is the assumption that they become Orthodox Christian (boring, but plausible as a condition for foederati status) or stay Muslim (probably more realistic and creates a much more interesting situation of a large internal and recognized Muslim minority in the Byzantine state)

 

[heraclius]

The way that the Turkish invasions of or raids across Anatolia pre-Manzikert developed show that it was more of a general exploratory movement by semi-autonomous tribal groups 'testing the waters' for exploiting a weak Byzantine response, and if possible settling in Byzantine territory, than a co-ordinated movement directed by Alp Arslan. The Sultan's main politico-military interest seems to have been in moving into Syria and taking the richer cities there plus better agricultural land than was available in the uplands of eastern Anatolia, which arguably also benefited his dynasty's self-declared role as the - Sunni - protectors of the Caliph in Baghdad, who had been his and his predecessor Tughril Beg's nominal 'sovereign' since the 1050s and who had granted him his title of Sultan .

Attacking the Shi'a regime of the Fatimid Caliphs in Egypt ,which at the time ruled Syria and Palestine, boosted his credentials as the champion of Sunni Islam against the 'heretics' as well as gaining the more strategically vital Levantine lands which had been an integral part of the former, Ira-based Abbasid Caliphate in the C8th and C9th; the concentration on Anatolian expansion was a result of the scale of the success at Manzikert and, more crucially, the opportunities from the resultant Byz civil wars. After Romanus was defeated and captured at M, the Sultan forced a treaty out of him making Romanus his tributary ally but did not annex any territory - arguing that his main interest was to protect his flanks while he moved into Syria and not to overrun Anatolia . In any case, given Romanus' unpopularity with the civil service and urban nobles in Constantinople he could be overthrown if he surrendered much land, with the Ducas family led by former ruler Constantine X's younger brother John - Andronicus Ducas' father - the obvious leaders of this, and /or provincial commanders would refuse to do what R ordered . Possibly Romanus pointed this out to the Sultan; he was a safer ally for the Seljuks if he was not at risk of revolt.

In any case, Alp Arslan's death soon afterwards led to the accession of his inexperienced son Malik Shah, aged around 20 , who did not have the experience or the nerve to lead a Syrian campaign himself; this was done in the later 1070s and 1080s by his older and militarily experienced cousin Tuctush, who became his viceroy there, and in civilian governance too Malik Shah was outshone - by his chief minister and vizier. (Tuctush's sons Ridwan of Aleppo and Duqaq of Damascus were his successors in Syria and were thus the men in charge of the Seljuk lands there when the Crusaders arrived in 1098-9.) The invasions of Anatolia in the 1070s were also led by a cousin of the Sultan, Sulaiman ibn Kutlumish, in loose control of various semi-autonomous tribal bands with their livestock - less of a carefully directed campaign than a general free-for-all with lands being grabbed by separate Turkish groupings as the Byz fell into civil war.

By the 1077-78 period the main army led by Sulaiman had reached Bithynia in the NW and he was a significant enough local military 'actor' to be sought out as an ally by the 1078 NW Anatolian Byzantine commander Nicephorus Botanietes as he led the successful rebellion there that deposed Michael VII Ducas the young and weak civilian ruler in Constantinople since R's deposition in 1068. (Michael, Constantine X's son and successor in 1067, had been underage then so his mother Eudocia had needed a strongman 'regent' and had chosen and married Romanus IV, who then became co-emperor.) This alliance between Sulaiman and Nicephorus, who took the capital and the throne, ceded the city of Nicaea in Bithynia to S as his capital plus most of Bithynia , bringing the Seljuks to the Sea of Marmora; clearly the Seljuks could dictate terms in the Byz chaos, especially as Nicephorus Botanietes still had to deal with the current 'rebel' ruler of the Balkans, his rival Byz general Nicephorus Bryennius.

The length of the Byz civil wars - first Michael VII and his Ducas cousins vs Romanus IV in 1071-2, then the long rebellion and breakway state of rebel Western mercenary commander Roussell de Bailleul in NE Anatolia (who defeated John Ducas and set him up as his puppet-ruler vs Michael), and then the final struggle between Michael and the two Nicephori, Botanietes in NW Anatolia and Bryennius in the Balkans in 1077-8 - made the chaos a lot worse, and enabled the Seljuks and assorted allied tribes to move in and take what they liked while there was little or no central Byz military direction to the defence. Where there was no civil war or a better local defence the local Byz or emigre Armenians did hold out - in Cilicia in the SE, in Byz Syria at Antioch to the mid-1080s, in the far NE in Pontus under the Gabras family at Trebizond, and also probably in the central Ionian lowlands
around Ephesus and Smyrna to the 1080s. There would have been a slower and probably less full Seljuk advance into the West if the Byz chaos had been halted earlier by a decisive victory by one capable contender, eg Romanus with more surviving troops or better luck in 1072 or by either Botaneites or Bryennius (both experienced and capable generals, with Bryennius probably somewhat younger and more capable so a possible 'alternate Alexius I' reviver of Byz fortunes in the 1080s). The war with Roussell - a Westerner and a Catholic so not likely to attract much local support on his own account, or to hold Constantinople long if he had secured it in John Ducas' name - was a distraction that led to even poorer Byz defence of the north of Anatolia while it was going on, and without it the Byz could probably have held more of the NW and possibly all of the lands west of the River Halys or of the Ancyra and Dorylaion regions. Nor was either the veteran plotter John Ducas, subtle and a master of intrigue but not a good general and in his 60s by the mid-1070s, or his shifty son Andronicus - the man who muddled up or threw away the chance of victory as a regimental commander at Manzikert according to sources, and was suspected of doing this deliberately to ruin his family's rival Romanus IV - well-liked or trusted. John Ducas was defeated by Roussell.

The sources are hostile to the intrigue-prone Ducas family's males except for their protege Psellus, Michael VII's tutor, but they seem to have been neither trusted or as good or flexible commanders as Alexius Comnenus (though he won the throne in the end in 1081, backed by John Ducas, and so had the sources writing his brilliance up, led by his daughter Anna's history; he then married Andronicus Ducas' daughter Irene ). The Ducas plots in the 1070s arguably undermined the Byz resistance at the crucial point A Ducas dynasty would probably have failed to capitalise on the Seljuk 'halt' in the mid-1080s, as Sulaiman went off to try to take Syria and Iraq and was killed in 1086; and even if Romanus IV had won the 1072 struggle he had lost too many troops to hold much territory easily, was at risk of more plots if he left the capital to fight even if he had destroyed the Ducas dynasty, and with lots of small Turkish bands spreading out over Anatolia and imposisble to catch - he had had little success catching mobile cavalry raiders pre-1071 and only caught the Sultan in 1071 as the latter wanted a battle - he could not do much to hold them back.

The Byz army was a mixture of infantry and cavalry largely recreated by Romanus after years of cuts and lack for warfare pre-1067, with little experience pre-1071 in fighting mobile Turkish raiders on their tough ponies with their deadly long-range archery; even if R had won in 1071 or extricated many more troops his chances of waging, paying for, or winning a long war against multiple foes on a huge 'canvas' of upland Anatolia would have been minimal. At best he could have held the West and the coastlands, more or less on the Byz territorial lines set up by Alexius I and John II by c. 1140, in my opinion; and calling on more Western help if a more reliable (or cautious) Roussell de B had stayed loyal to him and been a successful commander could have led to a larger Western knightly mercenary force getting experience of fighting the Turks ahead of a 1090s 'Crusade.

But what if Romanus, in his mid-40s by 1071, then died or his health failed in the 1080s and he left his OTL young and inexperienced sons in charge - would Alexius Comnenus, b. c. 1053, have been in pole position as a rising general to lead a coup or would the boldest Western generals fighting in eastern Anatolia 'done a Roussell' and seized territory in revolt, perhaps Cilicia with its Armenians (OTL allies of the Crusaders and as non-Orthodox Christians at odds with the hostile Byz Church?).

 

[heraclius]

A few more thoughts on different Byzantine lines of development after Manzikert, based on ideas from my own published and not-yet-published ebooks for Sealion on the Alt Hist possibilities for the Byzantines . (NB: some of the real life Byzantine rulers of both sexes will be appearing in my forthcoming Alt Hist books on 'Rome Survives' for Pen and Sword Publishing in 2024, where I have the Western Empire surviving and reunifying Rome instead of Justinian doing it as in OTL. In my version, some of the major figures of the OTL East appear as non-ruling members of the combined Eastern and Western Roman elites under invented Emperors, and influence history in minor and major ways - and we get the OTL early Comnenus emperors of the East, Isaac I and Alexius I, as rulers of all Rome.)

If there had been a confrontation not a trade-off between the 1077-8 rebel generals in the West of Byz Anatolia and the advancing Seljuks, with no agreement between their leader Nicephorus Botaneites (who then goes on to take Constantinople from Michael VII Ducas and rule in 1078-81, as he has his Eastern flanks safe with the Seljuks bought off by giving them Nicaea) would Botaneites' revolt have stalled? That way the other rebel army advancing on the capital, that of European military commander Nicephorus Bryennius, wins the race to the capital and as the desperate and bankrupt Michael VII (and his eunuch chief minister Nicephoritzes, hated by the generals and by the public) are very unpopular the capital rises in Bryennius' favour. He becomes emperor and as he has a large army and is more capable than Botaneites he survives longer, defeats the Anatolian rebels, but can only hold onto NW Asia Minor and the coast to Ionia. The ever pragmatic and devious Alexius Comnenus, who was according to his daughter Anna C the historian known as 'the new Odysseus' for his wiles, cuts his losses and allies to Bryennius not Botaneites and fights for the new ruler - in real life he signed up for Botaneites' forces and defeated Bryennius for him.

When Norman warlord Robert Guiscard, who has taken S Italy from Byzantium in 1057-71, adopts a (probably fake) 'refugee Michael VII' as his puppet-ruler and invades Epirus/ Albania on his behalf to conquer it and Greece, as in OTL 1081-5, Alexius helps Bryennius defeat him but has to stay loyal and never becomes emperor. Bryennius rebuilds the army and taxes the nobility to repair his treasury, being less dependant on the nobles than the bankrupt Alexius was in OTL. The new order is thus more centralised and less dependant on and generous to the powerful landed nobility than the Comneni's regime, as having an army that was less weak and short of cash when Bryennius took over in 1078 than it was in real life by 1081 - the Empire has had at least one major civil war less (ie that of 1081 when Alexius took over) and has more of Anatolia to provide taxes, including Bithynia and Ionia plus their ports. As Bryennius had sons in OTL, the eldest of the latter succeed him - and his OTL grandson Nicephorus junior then becomes emperor. As in OTL, he has married Alexius' eldest daughter Anna Comnena; in OTL Alexius used this link to bind the still powerful and rich Bryenni to his regime, but here the Bryenni are the rulers and Alexius is a top commander keen to link his family to the new regime - and as in OTL he has married Andronicus Ducas' daughter Irene he has the powerful Ducas family as his allies. So Anna Comnena (b 1083) becomes Empress , not (or not just) the main historian of the era - in real life she tried to grab the throne when Alexius died in 1118 by arresting (or killing??) her brother John (II), but her husband Nicephorus Bryennius junior refused to help her and told Alexius and John about the plot; Anna was packed off to a nunnery. The throne then descends to Anna's children, the House of Bryennius Comnenus - and there's no catastrophic reign of Andronicus I Comnenus in 1183-5 to wreck the (declining) Empire's elite stability.

A stronger Byz survival in western Anatolia in the 1070s, or even Romanus IV keeping the throne and having a viable and largeish army in the 1070s , means that the scattered Turkish tribal groupings may well spread out over the eastern and central Anatolian uplands but they never get near the West; that way, there is no Turkish presence in Bithynia and no Turkish emirate at Smyrna with a pirate fleet active in the Aegean by 1090. These two threats were Alexius I's OTL priority once the First Crusade had arrived in his capital and been sent off towards Syria; he could not follow up the Crusaders' successes quickly and had to retake all of Bithynia (the Crusaders had taken Nicaea for him en route East) and Ionia first in 1097-8. Indeed, he refused to advance on a risky march to Antioch to rescue the trapped Crusaders there as too risky for his unsupported army - and they had to defeat the local Moslems themselves and accused him of cowardice and treachery. This then led to or exacerbated long-term hostility between them.

If either Alexius or another Emperor (Nicephorus Bryennius' or Romanus IV's son?) had not had to retake the West of Anatolia and had been able to regain full control of the land route across Anatolia to Cilicia in 1098-9, then there would have been closer Byz contact with and pressure on the Crusaders to stick to their promises and only hold ex-Byz lands in Syria (or even Jerusalem?) as vassals of the Byzantines. At least, there would have been a rather different dynamic to the First Crusade and to subsequent Byz power in Syria, which in OTL the Byz never recovered - and the Byz might have retaken Antioch , from the local Moslems or from the Crusaders.


(Note: this impacts on English history. The Crusaders' emissary from their army as it was trapped in Antioch in 1098 by Emir Kerbogha of Mosul was the Count of Blois in N France, Stephen - husband of William the Conqueror's daughter Adela and father of the later King Stephen of England , reigned 1135-54. After S had delivered his message to Alexius and A had refused to help, he decided that the Crusade was doomed and went home not back to Antioch; he was then accused of cowardice and his angry wife insisted he join the next Crusading army to help the retaken Jerusalem in 1102 to make up for it. He got killed at the battle of Ramleh, but saved his reputation; and with him dead prematurely his younger son Stephen ended up going off to England to join the court of his mother's brother, King Henry I, once he was adult. He then proceeded to build up a clientele there and on Henry's death grabbed the throne from H's daughter Matilda - leading to 19 years of civil war. If Stephen had not come to England, there would probably have been no civil war.)

 

[Roger II]

Wait does the First Crusade even happen in your scenario with a more stable and successful Byzantine state?

 

[TheIO]

Wait does the First Crusade even happen in your scenario with a more stable and successful Byzantine state?

Gregory VII apparently had been trying to push the idea in 1074 but that didn't go anywhere. Without a formal request from the Byzantines (and Alexios was apparently keen on mending the Schism too), you're unlikely to get something as large as the OTL First Crusade IMO, but it's still possible for one to happen of some kind.

 

[heraclius]

The politico-ideological dynamic for the way that the First Crusade was launched came from alarmed reports from returning Western pilgrims to Jerusalem in the early 1090s of how the Seljuks had been mistreating them and local Christians since they took over Jerusalem from the Fatimids . This would not have been the case if the Seljuks had been defeated by the latter when they attacked Palestine, having taken over Syria first - and if there had been a stronger surviving Byzantium that still held onto Antioch and/or the coast South to Tripoli into the 1090s, with or without Byz military control of the main land route for troops from Constantinople via Iconium/Konya to Cilicia to Antioch, arguably the Seljuks would not have got that far. (In military terms the tough ex-steppe Turkish cavalry that the Seljuks used was superior to and more experienced than the large but defensive and usually poorly led infantry armies of the Fatimids, who had not fought a war against mobile cavalry for many decades and so were no better prepared to face the Seljuks than the Byzantines were.)

The First Crusade also followed repeated requests for Western cavalry knights to come to Byzantium and aid their weakened army against the Seljuks , made by Alexius I in the late 1080s and early 1090s - eg by him in person to the Count of Flanders as the latter was passing through the Empire en route home from pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But Alexius and before him other emperors had been trying to recruit smallish numbers of controllable Western knights, as the most experienced and bravest contemporary cavalry fighters used to tackling horsemen in single combat, since the 1050s . Hence the use of men like Roussell of Bailleul in the early 1070s - and as with Roussell, the big problem was the tendency of some of these men to get out of control and loot the locals, or even revolt and seize territory; R was the first to actually go as far as to put up a puppet-emperor of his own and so aim at taking over the capital.

Alexius' intention in asking for aid was for a largerish but controllable mercenary force who would take back Syria , and drive the Seljuks out of Bithynia and central Anatolia en route there, and then hand it all back to him or else rule reconquered territory as his vassals. (Hence when the First Crusade leaders arrived in his capital he refused to give out supplies or military help until they all swore oaths of allegiance and agreed to hand back any reconquered lands as and when he asked this.) The size of the Crusade was a surprise to him, and probably unwelcome as it raised a larger risk of revolt; but he did not ask for the Crusade in its OTL form, and the mass-volunteering and march to Jerusalem to evict the Moslems was apparently a separate plan formed by Pope Urban II and announced by him on a tour of France (at Clermont) in 1095; large-scale knightly help to the locals to reconquer Christian territory had occurred in Spain in the 1070s, but udner the full control of the local kings and only to mtake land and return it to them.

With a better Byz position we might still get a call for help from Alexius (or another ruler, eg one of Romanus IV's sons or a Bryennius) as any major Byz losses at an Alt-Manzikert or in another , less successful Seljuk invasion of Anatolia could still weaken his army. The Byz would probably have lost the Syrian coast by the early 1090s and so want to defeat the Seljuks there, and they preferred the weaker and less hostile Fatimids as its rulers. We could still get the Crusade retaking Antioch and going on to Jerusalem, but with a Byz state still holding most of central and SE Anatolia the latter would have had more military 'weight' in threatening or over-running any new Crusader state that was set up in Antioch and which refused to accept Byz overlordship. In OTL it was 1136-7 before Alexius' son John II marches on Antioch and forced the weakened Crusaders there to accept him as its overlord - and he apparently planned to help them retake Homs (the same names crop up in Middle Eastern wars from Roman times to the 2020s) and the Orontes valley and require them to move there. He would then take over Antioch fully ; but in the event his and the Crusaders' war in the Orontes valley fizzled out and John was too far from his capital to risk staying long and soon went home . (Some say the Crusaders did not want to evacuate Antioch for him and secretly undermined his campaign or spread rumours about plots in Constantinople to get him to leave quicker.)

With a better Byz position we may get either John II in 1137 or his son Manuel I in the late 1150s reoccupying Antioch and acting as a 'hands on' overlord to the Crusaders, but the logistics make it unlikely that they would have had much control over either the Counts of Tripoli or the Kings of Jerusalem. But in the long run, if Manuel has a better control over Anatolia and does not lost to the Seljuks at Myriocephalon in 1176 , and his half-Antiochene son Alexius II (b 1169) is not murdered in 1183 but rules as an adult, we have far different dynamics for Byz-Crusader relations in the 1180s and 1190s. Possibly no fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, or the Emperor Alexius II, son of Princess Maria of Antioch and nephew of its Prince Bohemund III, aiding the Third Crusade in person in 1191-2. So less Byz vs 'Latin West' hostility by the 1190s, no usurper emperors Isaac II and Alexius III Angelus from 1185, no flight by Isaac's son Alexius (IV) to Italy to get help for a coup in 1201, and no 1204 Fourth Crusade??

 

[TheIO]

The politico-ideological dynamic for the way that the First Crusade was launched came from alarmed reports from returning Western pilgrims to Jerusalem in the early 1090s of how the Seljuks had been mistreating them and local Christians since they took over Jerusalem from the Fatimids . This would not have been the case if the Seljuks had been defeated by the latter when they attacked Palestine, having taken over Syria first - and if there had been a stronger surviving Byzantium that still held onto Antioch and/or the coast South to Tripoli into the 1090s, with or without Byz military control of the main land route for troops from Constantinople via Iconium/Konya to Cilicia to Antioch, arguably the Seljuks would not have got that far. (In military terms the tough ex-steppe Turkish cavalry that the Seljuks used was superior to and more experienced than the large but defensive and usually poorly led infantry armies of the Fatimids, who had not fought a war against mobile cavalry for many decades and so were no better prepared to face the Seljuks than the Byzantines were.)

Given that the Turkish settlement of Anatolia wasn't being led by the Seljuk Sultanate, I don't see the Seljuk campaigns against the the Fatimids changing much even with a different situation in Anatolia, so unless the Fatimids also pull it out of the bag then the pilgrims in Jerusalem are still gonna get mistreated.

As for Antioch, after Manzikert that's under the control of Philaretos Brachamios and his statelet, but in 1084 that got lost to the Sultan of Rum - without official Byzantine support it's still at risk, given that Edessa fell a few years later to the main branch Seljuks, but Antioch's a lot closer to the coast and there isn't near as big a Turkish state in Anatolia in this TL. As it happened, the main branch Seljuks took it from the Rum Seljuks in 1086, so it's still likely to fall into Seljuk hands regardless, but it's not impossible for it to stay in "Byzantine" hands until the hypothetical First Crusade. Perhaps it falls in the 1090s and is a catalysing event for one?