Snippet #2: An Empire's Terror.

  #An Empire's Terror: Look into the Byzantine reaction to the Cretan Kingdom's foundation and the popular view of its rulers.

It is a terrible thing to destroy an Empire. But to allow it to live knowing you could do so is far worse.

That is the message Elena Alexandrovna, the Italo-Russian filmmaker, inserts into her project: whatever the King and Queen did to Byzantium, what they didn't do far surpasses it.

Though the time difference would be great, the game-changing news of the King and Queen's change in allegiance would reach both the Cretan and Byzantine headquarters, and as you'd expect, their reactions were worlds apart. Where the Emir got so blasted drunk that he couldn't see straight for a week, Constantinople broke under the shock. 

The King and Queen had not just simply betrayed the Empire, they had humbled it. The army sent to Crete, under command of the famous Nikephoros Phikas, had been the largest in a century, with a fleet to match it. They had shattered the former to nearly the last man, and they had kept the latter almost wholly to themselves, for Nikephoros had only enough men to sail back home with a handful of them. Overnight, Byzantium went from feeling invincible to knowing it had not a match, but an unfathomable superior.

That revelation struck the whole of the Empire dumb. Even as the commoners rioted and set Constantinople aflame in their rage, their actions were sluggish, slow, and the Emperor's own were no faster. He only acted to suppress the rioters when they had dared to threaten his own home, and even then his orders were surprisingly soft, only to break the rioting crowd up, not to pursue and punish it.

A surprisingly soft-hearted choice, but Emperor Romanos II did not make it based on sentimentality like that. Incapable of matching his predecessor's genius, Romanos had focused on garnering the people's love. Great feasts, carnivals and parades had been a staple of his reign, and it had made him popular with the commons. Indeed, writings of the era state that only a scant few of the rioters sought to punish Romanos for the failure in Crete, as most focused on blaming Nikephoros and his ilk for it. Romanos was cherished by his people, and he knew it. To tarnish that love with heavy repression when they had fair reason to revolt is something he wouldn't have dared.

After all, such love was the only card he could count on when the time came to send them all out to die.

Romanos, unlike Nikephoros and the rest of his advisors, knew well what came next. The King and Queen now commanded a massive fleet armed with great quantities of sea fire, and had turned themselves into the saviors of the Cretan people, who had just suffered under a Byzantine army — and more importantly, Nikephoros' blatant cruelty — for more than half a year. It was only a matter of time before the King and Queen sailed into Propontis at the head of a fleet he couldn't contest, landed at Constantinople, and cast him down, turning themselves into Emperor and Empress.

He resolved he would not live to see the day. During the years of Romanos' rule, the city of Constantinople had a population of well over half a million people. He armed as much of it as he could manage, set his handful of soldiers to drill them, and even began practicing with his sabre again. He blocked the ports of the city with broken pieces of merchant ships, and regularly went out to rouse his militia's morale.

Romanos' intent was clear, and his people understood it. When the King and Queen came, Byzantium would die. But before it did, he and they would make sure it was burnt to the ground. The holy places, the merchant quarters, everything. Every last thing in Constantinople that ever drove men mad.

But it would not come to that.

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A week passed. Then two, then three. Then a month, and then half of another one.

The King and Queen never came. The first contact between the island of Crete and Constantinople came from an Italian merchant that was dragged to the island, then sent northwards to the Empire with a message asking the Emperor how he would like to have his ships returned.

They thought it a joke at first. Romanos certainly felt that they were toying with him, the way a cat does with a mouse. The ship Constantinople sent to Crete could barely be called an Imperial delegation, headed as it was by a volunteer merchant ship captain who dared face the King and Queen. They all expected him to die.

And instead he returned with a dream of peace in hand.

The King and Queen had no interest in waging further war with the Empire. That fact was made clear to the next delegation that arrived in Crete as the King and Queen oversaw Chandax's reconstruction. The King and Queen demanded only a waiver of all Byzantine claims on the Emirate, to recognize it as an independent state with them as its rulers, and reparations to make up for the damage caused by Nikephoros' invasion. In exchange, they agreed to give up all possessions on the mainland, prohibited Cretan raids on Byzantine coasts, and swore to never aid Byzantium's rivals in their own attempts.

They even returned nearly the whole of the Empire's fleet, all of them untouched.

Many minor officials celebrated greatly at such a peace treaty. The Emperor himself could do no less, holding a massive feast in Constantinople and inviting the King and Queen to celebrate the peace.

But while the new monarchs drank and sang, to Romanos and his people the food and drink tasted only like ash.

The implication in the King and Queen's magnanimity was clear. For what reason would they agree to such an equal peace? Why would they take no lands and demand no real tribute? Why in God's green Earth would they return Byzantium its entire fleet? 

Because they did not need any of it.

It was obvious. The King and Queen had no need of the Byzantine Empire's baubles. They returned the fleet because it did not matter to them. If they wished to take Constantinople, they could have.

The King and Queen had shattered Byzantium's military. If any of its neighbors had dared, the Empire would have been brought to an end. But none of them did, and it was because of them. Every single one of the Byzantine Empire's rivals laid paralyzed with fear, terrified that, if they moved, the King and Queen would turn their sight on them. 

The Byzantine Empire had spent six centuries waging a war for supremacy over the Mediterranean, and no matter how many battles it won, it never achieved it. The King and Queen waged war once, and three continents hid from their gaze in sheer fear. 

And it was not only the fear. Constantinople owed its survival to the King and Queen, which was humiliating on its own, but what was worse is that it could never gainsay them. True, they demanded no land or gold now, but if they did in the future, Byzantium could not refuse. How would it? They could not face them in battle, and that was the only facet of the world that such monsters cared to acknowledge. If the King and Queen ever demanded to gorge themselves on the Empire's land and fields, they could do naught but nod and allow them to eat their fill.

It would not be until Basil II's ascension, nearly two decades later, that the Empire would regain some morale through his reforms and military successes, but even he who is credited with saving the Empire never dared turn his gaze towards Crete itself.

The King and Queen forever took the last remnant of Rome's pride. 

They brought solitude into the heart of every Roman alive.

And they dared call it peace.