A Comm for Historymemes

Sorry, I wasn’t clear on a crucial point. There was continuity. While the other states that we call “successor states” were founded by foreigners who conquered or were granted parts of the Roman Empire and who adopted some elements of Roman culture, the “Byzantine Empire” was just a division of the Roman Empire that lived on after the barbarian invasions. That part had been speaking Greek since the beginning, and was already Christan by then, just like the Western half.

'Continuity' is a very vague and subjective concept. Just was we recognize a difference between the Franks and the French despite there being no clear break, and as we recognize the difference between the English monarchy and the British monarchy, despite significantly more continuity between them than between the Empire of Augustus and the Empire of Constantine XI, so too is there a difference between the Byzantines and the Roman Empire of old.

So what remains of the Roman Empire in the Byzantines of the 14th century? Not even unbroken imperial succession. Just a name, and a name unrecognized by much of the Empire's former territories, including its heartland, and others which claim that same name.

For the Turks, maybe, I’d like to know why you think so. I don’t know enough. My initial assumption would be that they took it simply because they conquered the Romans, and their territory, and wanted to give their rule legitimacy before the Roman people.

I mean, they used the title of Kayser-i-Rum to justify a claim to Italy and Western Europe as a whole, and went in big on Classical antiquity as legitimization for their dynasty for the first ~100 years after Istanbul was taken.