I want Julianus (sc. the Apostate) to run Germania, because he was the one among the Constantinians who averted a Germanic invasion across the Rhine OTL, so I think it would be a nice touch if he does the same at the Elbe in MGR.

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was a somewhat lower administrative and/or military title in the late Empire:

Since Diocletian’s Tetrarchy reform, the provinces were organized into dioceses each administered by a Vicarius. As with the Governors, the Vicarius was assisted by a Dux. This Dux was superior to all of other Duces within the dioceses and when the Vicarius called the legions of the dioceses into action, all of the legions were at the Dux’s command. An example would be the Dux per Gallia which was the Dux of the Dioceses of Gaul. The office of Dux was, in turn, made subject to the Magister Militum of his respective Praetorian prefecture, and above him to the Emperor. ¹

I would not rule out that the Dux per Diocesem might come to the fore; it might even be likely!

If you limit yourself to OTL invaders from within the ATL empire, you’re left with Saxons and Frisians.

I’d have thoght there was a good case for PRINCEPS - I think that was an old title for the Emperors themselves, before they got grander ideas.

Or perhaps someone will like the idea of being DUX. Or maybe they will look North, or East, and realise anybody who is anybody these days is called REX (or perhaps *CUNINGU will sound better to their Germanic-ish ears. The Fins borrowed Kunningaz after all, and Kingship is a particularly German thing in these times).

DOMINU would probably be taking things too far, I don’t think Augustus would stand for that, even if he was just a figurehead. The Pope might have something to say about it too.

My knowledge of Roman history is only rudimentary, but what you say seems to make sense.

As an alternative to a cohort of Emperors, I could also imagine a scenario where you have the OTL E/W split of the empire, but with a weak western Emperor becoming purely a figurehead as the various provinces assert more and more defacto indepndence from central control and gradually develop into separate states under the control of their respective Proconsuls. Sort of an early “Holy Roman Empire” (no pun intended). One can imagine a state of long term, low intensity civil war as the leaders of different provinces ‘act only to ensure the security and stability of the empire/emperor’ (i.e. vie for greater control for themselves and to keep other provinces in their place).

Perhaps instead of some of the babrian invasions we ‘lose’ in the ATL,we find instead the Romano-Franks find it necessary to march on Gallia, or the Lombards on Italia, to “restore the Emperor’s authority” or somesuch.

Or you could have it the other way round, Britain returns to a celtic/pagan religion, and Germania launches a missionary or military ‘crusade’ to restore them to the Roman Church.

Another alternative, the British Roman leader tires of the pretence of being a Roman ‘province’ and declares himself Emeperor of Brittannia and refuses to recognise Rome’s sovereignty, prompting an invasion and occupation from NW Europe to bring them back under Imperial ‘control’.

The one that migration that would be quite different and would need to be considered I think would be the Burgundians. We can explain away Franks moving into Northern Gaul, or Angles to Britain using something like discussed above. I don’t think any of the other migrations would affect the geographical area we are looking at, so we can just leave it all vague and fuzzy until someone decides they want to look at those areas in more detail.

There may even be no Northern French at all, but a larger Romano-Franconian area providing an ATL analogue to OTL-Dutch/Flemish that also includes OTL-Wallonian, -Picardian etc. All depends on what those Franks and Burgundians do!

My thoughts on possible language regions are on this sketch (the OTL political frontiers obviously have no bearing here, but serve as a familiar reference). I could forsee:

• Danish speaking areas include Schleswig and Holstein
• An area corresponding roughly to OTL Pomerania which would speak either Swedish, or some NGmc language derived from it (this area was under a lot of Scandinavian influence OTL, it seems likely that without a (North) German state it would be even more so in the ATL)
• A NRom area split into three main parts that are Romance analogies to English, Dutch/Low German, and High German. There may also be a Burgundian derived language in this area?
• A Southern French/Provencal based language (WRom)
• Not too sure what would be in the OTL Brandenburg/Saxony area. Maybe actually ‘Saxon’ ( a bizarre teutonic language that doesn’t seem to fit in with Swedish, Pommeranian et al, and leads ATL-linguists to imagine a possible prehistoric N/W/E split of the teutonic languages, rather than the apparent N/S split), or this area might in fact have become Polish (or Sorbian!?)

Brithenig would slot very nicely into this ATL as an alternative to Welsh. If the Romans never left Britain, the chance of Welsh bing a Roman tongue would increase a lot I’d say.

Pete