@RaineV1
I guess you have a point. The Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire was at several points reduced to just Constantinople and the surrounding countryside and constantly got wrecked by both Islamic and Catholic kingdoms, and yet it still retained its Empire title up until the Ottomans put them out of their misery.
And then there’s empires like the Holy Roman and Islamic Umayyad Empires, which in their later histories were more like a collection of scattered kingdoms headed by powerful nobles and princes that just paid lip service to the powerless emperor/caliph while they did their own thing and squabbled with one another.
I guess you have a point. The Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire was at several points reduced to just Constantinople and the surrounding countryside and constantly got wrecked by both Islamic and Catholic kingdoms, and yet it still retained its Empire title up until the Ottomans put them out of their misery.
And then there’s empires like the Holy Roman and Islamic Umayyad Empires, which in their later histories were more like a collection of scattered kingdoms headed by powerful nobles and princes that just paid lip service to the powerless emperor/caliph while they did their own thing and squabbled with one another.
