It is widely known that after the reign of Manuel I Komnenos, the Roman Empire fell into a crisis which led to the Fourth Crusade.Could this have been prevented, and how? Were the rules who came after Manuel more to blame, or was Manuel the culprit due to his neglect of the Anatolian front, as well as not appointing a successor?
>>17416178yeah they could've just not gone to byzantium. it was a really retarded idea. but no, the byzantines couldn't have stopped them
>>17416178Manuel achieved nothing to restore the realm and afterwards the country fragmented almost straightaway. Some historians have called this the feudalization of Byzantium, based on the pronoia system and chivalric culture of Manuel's time, implying that the ERE would have fragmented in the same way as the HRE, only the ERE was pressed by too many enemies for that to be viable. So, not really.
>>17416178Perhaps if they had pursued a uniate policy before 1204 with the Roman Church it could have been prevented, but I'm not sure if they really would have had any incentive to do that. Also, it would have been cringe.
>>17416178No, it was preordained. so long as Greeks exist they will refuse to pay their debts
>>17416178They could have just paid the denbts Take note modern gayreeks
>>17416178It all went to shit when John died before pushing deeper into Anatolia, then choosing this retard as a successor. He achieved jackshit with all the advantages his grandfather and father left him.
>>17416178I don't get it. He managed to send like 200 ships to invaded Egypt, somehow like 25 years later Byzantine have like a dozen ships eaten by worms and can't fight the Venetian navy
>>17416178It could have been stopped by preemptively euthanizing Andronikos before he usurped the throne
>>17417819idk if that was a fact, the joint Egyptian invasion didn't even break the coastal defences
>>17417819you underestimate greek laziness, corruption and incompetence
>>17417835What do you mean what are you doubting? The Byzantine made up that they lost in Egypt despite having a giant fleet?
>>17417852I said that maybe the size of the fleet was overestimated by the chronicler, just like the armies of olden times usually were
