A Branching Chronicle
Romanos
the Road to Manzikert
Set down by an unnamed scribe of the City, in the four campaigning seasons between the elevation of the Cappadocian general and the dust of the great battle by Lake Van.
Constantinople, the year of Our Lord 1068. The Eastern Roman Empire — what later ages will call Byzantine — is old, rich, and bleeding at its eastern hem. The boy-emperors of the house of Doukas cannot ride; the senate cannot fight; and out of Cappadocia the widowed empress raises up a frontier general to wear the diadem beside her. His name is Romanos Diogenes.
You are Romanos. You have four campaigning seasons before the plain of Manzikert.
Read slowly. The chronicle remembers every choice.
Fourteen endings. One reign. Every choice inscribed in the chronicle.