CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES

Half his family tree was bulgarian too, yet you don't see them claiming to be roman emperors.

Oh wait...

Such is life in the Balkans.

Yeah our roots are connected. And very,very old... we wuz u waznt .i.

The Ottomans deserved their victory through strength.

Serbians aren't decent people

I blame venice

Just blame Serbia like normal people do.

>American Education

True patricians realize that their fate was sealed in the Battle of Manzikert.

Fucking justinian over extended and his empire got ganked

Ottomans deserve the plague and nothing else

This. Byzzies got out-fucking-skilled.

Lol, no. The Ottomans were one beylik of several that had encroached upon the region that won out more by chance than by individual merit. If they hadn't, than it would have been another one.

Agreed. Despite recent scholarship/memes that would have Manzikert be not as big of a deal, it and the events of its aftermath were the deathknell for the empire, removing its base of native, Christian, greek-speaking farmer soldiers. The empire then got lucky with a string of talented Komnenoi who knew how to outmaneuver with strategy and a lot of mercenaries, but never again would the empire be able to field large armies of true romans.

I often think that if they had just avoided a Manzikert for a few more decades, the empire could have lived to see the utter collapse (from overextension) of the Seljuk realm, one that never would have had the chance of streaming into anatolia, and possibly could have even taken advantage of the scattered and unorganized fallen arab state the way the crusaders eventually would.

Hell, a second, "mockery" of a scenario exists where if the Komnenoi had just shat out one more decent, not latin halfbreed emperor, then the dynasty could have avoided the fouth crusade entirely, and thus survived to the point of watching the mongols come in and rape the Sultanate of Rum, then on scooping up all the remnant beyliks. Bad luck