#anna still calls all western europeans celts

[bretwalda-lamnguin]

The thing that gets me about Roman Empire being (arguably) the longest lived state in history is how much they had shifted in culture and language, and yet remained Roman. The founders of the Roman State would have surely considered the late-medieval empire an abomination. Anna Komnenos uses the word 'Latin' to describe the Normans her father fought against. They've lived so long that a word that described their founders has become an almost pejorative term for their enemies! The East-West schism of Christianity happened partially because of the language barrier, the Roman Church spoke Latin and the Roman Empire didn't, it spoke Greek! But they're still Roman. Alexius Komnenos was just as much a Roman emperor as Caesar Augustus.