What if Rome survived?
After winning the Battle of Adrianople, the Roman Empire subjugates the Goths and later successfully uses them as soldiers against other invading peoples.
Here's a video detailing the history since:
And here's a tour of the Roman world in 2023:
Europa is the heart of the empire; all business of note is conducted there. Most in Europe speak one dialect of Latin or another, everyone’s Christian, and all adults can vote for their politicians depending on their class. Despite recent changes, Europa is still a deeply unequal place, with the plebeian industrialists and tech entrepreneurs holding most of the wealth, sharing power with the last remnants of the old patrician aristocracy above a large proletariat body increasingly losing its little wealth. Among the aging Europeans is a large population of immigrants from elsewhere, chiefly Asia.
Asia is an immense continent, but Romans kinda have difficulty telling the difference between everybody. Half of the Arab World is ruled directly from Rome, but the other half is split between a series of puppet monarchies. Christianity is the majority religion among Arabs, with Islam pressed by the crusades into the Arabian Peninsula and Persia. Persia, India, Russia, and China are all immense puppet states run by loyal monarchies intermarried with the imperial dynasty from Rome. Though they’re poor, increasingly, industrial products are produced in these places instead of Europe; that means Europe is losing its leverage. Some in these monarchies plan for a future revolution against Rome, in secret. Many cities along the coast of Asia, however, are Roman colonies; they have majority European population and they’re armed to the teeth—that’s Rome’s leverage.
Most of Africa, on the other hand, is ruled directly by Rome but denied any rights of Roman citizenship. These vast colonies are the impoverished backwaters of the planet, where Roman governors can use extreme force to order African laborers into mines or crack down on any independence movements. There is an African middle class made up of the Christian local administrators of these colonies; they increasingly resent Roman rule and have the tools to do something about it.
Across the Ocean is Atlantis, north and south. The geography of Atlantis makes it the chief economic competitor to Rome. Plus, a large portion of the population of the many Atlantean states are the outcasts of the world system: indigenous people, freed Africans, Arabs, Indians, Slavs, non-Catholics, liberals, and so on who resent the caste system imposed by the Roman Catholic elites. With their vast farms and bustling industrial cities, the Atlanteans could pose a threat to the Empire, but for now Roman soldiers dominate the illiberal democracies and royal dictatorships that rule over them.
