Zeb 摆烂 @[email protected]

Funny I just read this in the book Raciology today.
https://ravergram.club/nextcloud/s/93bmwgT4garqFjQ

>be Greek emperor in Constantinople
>capital of the Roman Empire
>population in the hundreds of thousands
>palaces, aqueducts, senators, eunuchs, theologians arguing about whether Christ has one energy or two
>entire civilization has spent a thousand years becoming progressively more Mediterranean and bureaucratic
>need reliable bodyguards
>obvious solution: import Scandinavians
>not even exaggerating
>somehow the personal security detail of the Greek-speaking Roman emperor becomes a wall of gigantic northern barbarians named things like Halfdan Bear-Splitter
>imagine being some Armenian courtier visiting the Great Palace
>silk robes
>gold mosaics
>marble columns
>incense drifting through halls built by emperors who claimed legitimacy through Augustus, Constantine and Christ simultaneously
>eight 6'4" blond psychos holding two-handed axes
>looking like Odin personally spawned them in the palace courtyard five minutes ago
>“Who are these men?”
>“The Varangians.”
>“Where are they from?”
>“Sweden.”
>“Where the fuck is Sweden?”
>imperial official points vaguely north
>keeps pointing
>still pointing
>some of them literally traveled down the Russian river system from Scandinavia
>sailed through places that would eventually become Ukraine
>crossed the Black Sea
>showed up at Constantinople 1,500 miles south of home like Viking Erasmus students with murder scholarships
>go from fjords, pine forests and six months of seasonal depression
>to standing outside the throne room overlooking the Bosporus
>tfw you left Norway because your brother inherited dad's farm and now you're guarding the Roman Emperor at the precise geographic seam between Europe and Asia
>the Byzantines quickly discover an important property of foreign mercenaries
>they don't have cousins in the Senate
>they don't own estates in Anatolia
>they don't care which Constantinopolitan aristocrat thinks he should be emperor
>their political platform is basically
>1. emperor pays us
>2. we guard emperor
>3. anybody attacks emperor gets turned into a geometry problem
>elite Byzantine families spend centuries organizing coups through marriages, court appointments, military commands and complicated networks of patronage
>some Varangian named Thorfinn watching all this:
>“Is man attacking king?”
>“Well technically Strategos Michael has assembled a coalition of—”
>*AXE NOISES*
>problem resolved
>Basil II especially figures this shit out
>gets thousands of Varangians from Vladimir of Kiev
>finally has troops whose loyalty isn't dependent upon whether some landowning family in Cappadocia got enough tax exemptions this year
>absolutely loves them
>Greek emperor surrounded by men who look like they should be raiding Lindisfarne
>imperial ceremonial protocol probably has 900 pages describing exactly how many steps an ambassador takes before bowing
>Varangian protocol:
>stand near emperor
>hold enormous axe
>look terrifying
>if necessary apply enormous axe
>be foreign diplomat
>enter audience chamber
>Emperor is wearing jeweled purple silk worth more than your entire province
>choirs chanting
>gold everywhere
>mechanical lions reportedly roaring beside the throne
>then notice his guards
>literal fucking Skyrim loading screen
>the message could not be clearer
>“His Imperial Majesty is the divinely appointed heir of Augustus and Constantine.”
>also
>“These enormous pagans-turned-Christians will fucking kill you.”
>best part is the Varangians develop a reputation for fanatical loyalty
>because from their perspective the emperor isn't merely some distant bureaucrat
>he's The Guy
>the unbelievably wealthy southern king who personally employs them
>Roman aristocrat: “The constitutional situation is extremely complicated.”
>Varangian: “Did emperor dismiss me?”
>“No.”
>“Then emperor still emperor.”
>some emperors inevitably get overthrown anyway because Byzantine politics is Byzantine politics
>Varangians occasionally find themselves standing there while the entire government melts down around them
>probably thinking this is the weirdest longhouse feud they've ever witnessed
>Constantinople meanwhile starts treating giant Nordic axemen as a normal feature of government
>“Yes, those are the emperor's Scandinavians.”
>sentence nobody in Classical Rome could possibly have predicted
>eventually so many Scandinavians go there that Scandinavian runestones literally commemorate guys who died "in Greece"
>medieval Swedish family erects stone
>HERE LIES GUDMUND
>HE WENT TO GREECE
>HE GOT PAID
>HE DID NOT COME BACK
>probably still made it into Valhalla despite converting
>Augustus spends forty years creating the Principate
>fast forward a millennium
>his successor is a Greek-speaking Christian monarch whose most trusted guards are Viking ubermensch wearing mail and carrying Dane axes
>standing in New Rome where Thrace meets Anatolia
>time traveler shows Roman citizen circa 15 AD what the world is like a thousand years in the future
>"what the fuck happened after Augustus?"

Oh. Ok.

https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1939921841300922368

https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1939812935631114240

https://www.usluck.com/887499/well-done-6/ Well done! #Memes

RT @[email protected]: It's not a ponytail, it's a scorpion tail! 🦂✨ #ReZero #cosplay #シャウラ #Shaula

most retarded timeline. i cant even enjoy the unhinged schizo political theorists anymore because of trump. trump made this shit boring.