Wasn't it Manuel I who doomed Byzantium?
It looks that all ills of the state started in his reign, including the spread of pronoia and the growth of corruption. On top of that the emperor was squandering state's thin resources on useless adventures abroad while failing to deal with one actual threat - the Turks.
>>1779025
Everyone was a threat. The Turks just happened to be the ones you single out as more important with hindsight.
>>1779125
>Everyone was a threat.
Like who?
>Italians
Mainly concerned with squeezing trade concessions
>Pope
More like an ally
>Arabs
Completely irrelevant, recked by eveyone
>Crusaders
Capable of stinging at best
>Normans
Just plundering here and there
>Pechenges
Exterminated by his father
>Coumans
Ally and backbone of the army
>Hungarians
Conflict over Serbia only
>HRE
Ally
Nope, just Turks were the real enemy. All other enemies were made by Manuel and his retarded policy.
>>1779228
I said everyone. Once again dismissing each with one liners doesn't change what the Byzantine court understood about them. The Italians and Crusaders for example were clearly a major threat considering the damage they did with some very violent squeezing and stinging. Each one of them presented a major danger to the state in their time, and it's only luck that things went one way or another.
>>1779228
Pechenegs were Turks.
>>1779228
Can someone educate me why Crusaders would attack the Byzantium
>>1779303
catholic work ethic
>>1779303
So they could rule it.
>>1779365
Isn't that like friendly fucking in a sense? I would think christians would unite against other common enemies or nonbelievers but apparently they have a huge fucking history of killing each other off as well. Might as well just be considered primitive tribes
>>1779408
More like different companies in an industry 'uniting' against a common threat to the industry but eager to undercut or takeover the competition at a moment's notice. Bohemund, who took over Antioch in the First Crusade, was planning on invading the empire immediately after.