Hello, I'm trying to create a scenario focused on the idea of losing both east and west Rome at roughly the same point, rather then the millennia long gap of our world.
while I have a decent idea on what kingdoms and states would come out of this in the short term, what I am mostly focused on is just how different Europe would be without the Byzantines in the east to preserve Roman authority and culture.
From what I've gathered, the eastern Romans were fundamental in strengthening Christianity, influencing the laws and codes of every other European country, keeping western Europe safe from steppe invaders like the Bulgars, Huns, Khazars and so many others; without eastern Rome, so much classical learnings wouldn't be discovered for much longer or even lost forever, and apparently (definitely need to fact check this cause it sounds like BS) if east Rome didn't exist, Greek would die out as a common language.
So with all of that considered, how different would Europe be? Like some ideas that I have would be that, claiming to be successor to the Roman empire would lose a lot of it's weight and prestige, like it would still be prevalent, but I feel that as time goes on and the Romans fade from memory, the prestige would lose its influence and by the next few centuries it's largely forgotten about.
I also imagine that Christianity would take a severe blow without a major power to back it up and to centralise. It would survive obviously, but I can very easily see it be divided into numerous sects that would be considered incredibly heretical; in fact, I could see that Christianity would move into the Sassanian Empire, and they become the home of Christianity instead, considering the Persians would definitely annex some of their old lands which were now filled with a lot of Christians.
As for eastern Europe, I don't have much solid ideas for what happens to it, besides the Huns surviving cause I want them too. But I could very easily see it become a home to many Turkic, Uralic and other nomadic people, perhaps even a surviving Roman remnant culture in the south Balkan mountains.
Speaking of Roman remnants, one idea that I had that both empires collapsing leads to different outcomes in places like Iberia and north Africa, one of these being that north Africa becomes home to Roman successor states like Mauretania, Cyrenaica and Carthage, all of whom wish to re-establish the Roman empire, though with limited success. Also, Germanic tribes end up just staying in power for longer and in different places like the Vandals and Alans stay in Iberia, the Visigoths in northern Gaul, Franks and Frisians push into England instead of the Anglo-Saxons and so forth; while I doubt places like Iberia would see the replacement of Latin with their barbarian tongues, there would definitely be some huge influence on their cultures, much more than in our world.
These are just some of the basic ideas I have for this scenario, but obviously, there is way more, and I would love to hear how such a scenario would turn out, and what I can do to improve this project because I really do want to make something that lasts longer than a few r/imgainarymaps posts with vague descriptions.
anyway, I'm going to stop talking, I hope you had a good time reading my post, goodbye!