So I'm working on a story surrounding the latin empire of Constantinople, and have long past the end of said empire in real life. However, I still want to be fairly realistic, so I humbly ask, how would the orthodox Christians of the Balkans and anatolia be treated by a crusading army of mostly frenchmen? Did any of the crusader states last enough with enough internal stability to really have a pattern?
On the flip side, I've had the Empire take on much of who came before, the Eastern Roman Empire. Much of their administration is based on non-heritary governors, and the monarchy has enough personal lnd to fund a permanent navy based in greece. So them taking on actions based on the byzantine empire might make sense as well.
I especially want to know what might be done with the patriarchs of constantinople and Antioch respectively; the former being the capital of course, and the latter being a recent conquest with mongol help.
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.
For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.