The Byzantine Empire is the archive’s heading for the Eastern Roman Empire and the corridor it held — the Bosporus, Constantinople and the Balkans — on which three successive powers are recorded: the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.
| Type | Empire / region |
| Spanish entry | Imperio Bizantino |
Name
The voice that set out the map corrected the name as it spoke: “the Eastern Roman Empire, not the Byzantine Empire”. The material is nevertheless filed under “Byzantine”.
The Eastern Roman Empire (1055)
On the map of 1055 it held part of Italy, the whole Aegean, the Balkans, “this is Turkey”, all the Anatolian kingdoms, Cilicia, Antioch, Cyprus and “the part of Syria”, and was called “spectacular”. That same year the Torcos were pressing militarily on its east.
The Ottoman Empire
Later the Ottoman Empire holds Constantinople and the Bosporus; Constantinople is “the capital or one of the capitals”. It rules Serbia and the Balkans and is “old Turkey, the Ottoman Empire”. Its weight on the northern Balkans is measured by 1389, Kosovo. Ottoman territory is a relevant point in the cosmology of the chronocides; why is not explained.
The Dual Monarchy
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, “the dual monarchy”, a regime of two crowns allied with the Germans and enemy of Serbia, rules until 1920. Its capital is mentioned but never named. From the Balkans it is “the Austro-Hungarian empire that oppresses us”.
Description
Only alleys and streets of “an eastern empire”, scene of a fight, are recorded. One image is fixed: the “Christ of the Empire”, which “they call the Hammer of Thor”, among people who “went on being sort of Christians”.
Open questions
- Whether “Byzantine” stands as a tolerated or a rejected alias.
- Whether these are three entities or one in three phases, and how one passes to the next.
- The look of its cities, walls, palaces, ports and coinage; the name of the Dual Monarchy’s capital.
- What the Christ of the Empire is (idol, devotion, weapon, order), and who “went on being sort of Christians”.
- Whether 1920 is a fixed date of this world or a slip.