A request for the devs: fix the Italian names, History descrition & Galeazza

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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:arrow_forward: SUMMARY

  • Some of the names chosen by the AI refer to when the Italians were supposed to be the Lombards before the development team changed its mind. The very introduction of the civilisation on the Forgotten Empires site is also inaccurate.

  • Backport the Galeazza from Age of Empires 3 to Age of Empires 2 as a unique upgrade for Italians.

:arrow_forward: THE ITALIANS

The first signs of a properly Italian nation and people began to emerge from the 11th and 12th centuries of the Christian era, thus well after the dissolution of the Roman Empire and after the so-called barbarian invasions. [link].

The relationship between people of Latin origin and people of different backgrounds (Germanic and Nordic tribes, Byzantines, Arabs) is both conflictual and integrative. In the Middle Ages, a powerful factor for cultural and religious unity was the Church. After Italy fell into the hands of the Barbarians, a decisive imprint was left by the Ostrogoth king Theodoric (489-526), who, by initiating the Romano-Barbaric kingdoms, entrusted political and military power to the rulers and administrative functions to the Italics. The intention of the Byzantines (the Eastern Romans) to reconquer Italy in the course of a long and devastating war (535-553) had the effect of bringing about the end of the political unity of the peninsula, divided into a part subject to the Barbarians and another dominated by Byzantium.

In 569 the Goths were succeeded by the Lombards, who settled in northern Italy, choosing Pavia as their capital.

Estimates of the migration of the Lombards in 568 AD., who swept through an Italy impoverished and still severely weakened by the previous war (as well as by the contemporary Justinian plague), speak of between 100’000 - 150’000 warriors, women, children and non-combatants, although the broadest estimates go up to 350’000 people in total. It should be noted that the various estimates regarding the Italian population in the 6th century speak of between four and five million inhabitants (in any case the lowest since the rise of Rome), which would therefore bring the share of the incoming Lombards between a minimum of 2% and a maximum of 8% [link].

However, any attempt by the Lombards to build a single state entity on the Peninsula was, doomed to failure. The almost total division between Germanic and Italic (determined not only by legislation that, among other things, for a long time prevented mixed marriages, but also and above all by the invaders’ alienation and disinterest in the civilised values of the Roman world), Byzantine resistance and the opposition of the papacy, which, in order to defend the autonomy of the Holy See, called the Frankish king Charlemagne to its aid, who defeated the Lombards, ending their reign (774).

Charlemagne, having himself crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800, incorporated into it the territories that had been Longobard, with the exception of Italy subject to the Byzantines and Sicily, which was conquered in 827 by the Arabs.

During the course of the 10th century, the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire led to the emergence of multiple centres of power in the hands of feudal lords, some of them very powerful, who were finally brought under Germanic sovereignty by Otto I, in 962 crowned Emperor of the new Holy Roman German Empire by Pope John XII (Papa Giovanni XII).

Italy 1000 AD.
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Confirming how deep and resistant the division between Romans and Lombards was, even in 968, two centuries after Charlemagne’s descent into Italy, there is a reply given by Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, of ancient Lombard lineage, to the Emperor of Constantinople Nicephorus II Phocas, to whom he was on an embassy and who had made an insulting comment towards his people:

‘Since Romulus opened an asylum for criminals and the Roman race was born, never has the most cowardly of those been seen who have called themselves emperors of Roman blood: and not only we, who are Lombards, but the Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians and Burgundians have so much contempt for you, that we do not know how to say a more cruel insult to our enemies than to call them Romans. Under this name we intend to understand what is most ignoble, most avaricious, most lascivious, most lying and most timid in human nature’.

Despite this, it was precisely in those years that the appellative of italic or italiense slowly began to be used again to refer to all inhabitants south of the Alps.

A drastic change in the physiognomy of Italy was brought about in the 11th century by the rise in the north-central part of the Communes - the reborn cities that formed themselves into de facto autonomous centres of power - and by the rule of the Normans in southern Italy, who put an end to the power of the Byzantines and the Arabs.

Iltay 1112 AD.
Iltay 1112 AD.712×806 108 KB

:arrow_forward: NAMES TO BE REMOVED

  • Alboin → King of the Lombards
  • Liutprand → King of the Lombards
  • Arechis II of Benevento → Lombard Duke
  • Gisulf I of Salerno → Lombard Prince
  • Maurizio Galbaio → We can consider it simply Roman

:arrow_forward: PROPER IA NAMES

  • Marozia (890 - 936): was an Italian noblewoman, daughter of Theodora and the Senator of Rome Theophylact. She was Queen Consort of Italy. She was believed, without certain sources, to be the sister of Adalbert II of Tuscany. It is said that she was a very beautiful and unscrupulous woman. She ruled over Rome and the Catholic Church for twenty years in the 10th century. Although she was, like her mother, illiterate, through cunning and seduction Marozia managed to forge strong alliances and powerful friendships to build her power. (wiki)

  • Matilda Di Canossa (1046 -1115): countess of Mantua, duchess of Spoleto, margravine of Tuscany, duchess consort of Lower Lorraine, countess consort of Verdun and duchess consort of Bavaria, also known by the pseudonym Magna Comitissa, in Italian Gran Contessa, was an Italian noblewoman of Lombard lineage, member of the Attoni dynasty, commonly called ‘Canossa’ after the name of one of their fiefs. (wiki)

  • Domenico Selvo ( ? - 1087+): already present in the game.

  • Papa Gregorio VII (1015 -1085): already present in the game.

  • Ezzelino III da Romano (1194 - 1259): was an Italian condottiero and politician, lord of the Marca Trevigiana. Bold, cunning and valiant, his decision and will to rule resulted in acts of ruthlessness and cruelty in the face of the many dangers that surrounded him, mostly following the death of his ally Frederick II of Swabia in 1250. In later chronicles he was given epithets such as ‘fierce’ and ‘terrible’, although many of the nefarious deeds attributed to him are the result of legends. (wiki)

  • Ottone Visconti (1207 - 1295): already present in the game.

  • Papa Bonifacio VIII (1230 - 1303): was the 193rd pope of the Catholic Church from 1294 until his death. In 1300 he celebrated the first Holy Year in history.

  • Pietro Gradenigo (1250 -1311): already present in the game.

  • Castruccio Castracani (1281 -1328): already present in the game.

  • Cangrande I della Scala (1291 -1329): was an Italian condottiero, lord of Verona and imperial vicar. Son of Alberto I della Scala and Verde di Salizzole. He is the best known, best loved and most celebrated member of the Scala dynasty. (wiki)

  • Cola di Rienzo (1313 - 1354): was an Italian politician and military. He has remained in history because, in the late Middle Ages, he attempted to establish a form of commune in the city of Rome torn apart by conflicts between the people and the barons. In homage to the city’s ancient history and to reconnect with it, he called himself ‘the last of the tribunes of the people’. (wiki)

  • Simone Boccanegra (1301 - 1363): already present in the game.

  • Francesco Sforza (1401 - 1466): already present in the game.

  • Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417 - 1468): was lord of Rimini and Fano from 1432, while his brother Domenico (Novello) Malatesta was lord of Cesena. He was widely considered by his contemporaries as one of the most daring military leaders in Italy and commanded the Venetian forces in the 1465 campaign against the Ottoman Empire. (wiki)

  • Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449 - 1492): modernly known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, was an Italian statesman, the de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, and the most powerful patron of Renaissance. (wiki)

Of course, there are many other condottieri who could be nominated.

:arrow_forward: THE GALEAZZA

Galeazza
Galeazza512×512 104 KB

The galeazza model was developed in the Arsenal of the Venetian Republic, at an unspecified date but certainly after the end of the Third Turkish-Venetian War, during the reorganisation of the maritime military order at the hands of Admiral Cristoforo da Canal.

The first were obtained around 1550, by converting large galleys from the market, in order to have ships that could outperform ordinary galleys in firepower, without depending solely on wind power for movement and with a limited draught. The first galleys, probably built in secret, were never used in war, because they burnt in the great Arsenal fire of 1569. The first appearance of the galleys was at the Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571), during which six Venetian galleys were deployed as a vanguard in each of the three sectors of the Christian line-up, under the command of provveditore Francesco Duodo.

Further discussion: link.

EDIT. Some adjustments to try and make the text more readable.
EDIT. Other minor improvements
EDIT. The Galeazza

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I lose some braincells whenever I hear people say that dark age Romans (yes they existed) are from Rome who are Italians who are Lombards who are the papal states etc.
Lombards stand to Italians as much as Franks stand to French or Visigoths to Spaniards or Suebians to Portuguese or Vandals to Africans. They were just Germanic people who happened to control those Roman lands for a while in the dark ages.
French are descendants of Gallo-Romans, Spaniards are descendants of Hispanic Romans, Italians are descendants of Italo Romans and so on… With just an inch of Germanization that persisted in certain aspects (some Germanic words, names, customs etc).
The tribes who invaded the Roman empire were just too few in numbers to make any difference with the native “Romans” (in late antiquity being Roman simply meant being born on Roman soil so no Romans are not the inhabitants of Rome and not even Italy, legally after Caracalla you were Roman if you lived in Britannia as much as if you lived in Egypt which is what later led to the “are byzantines Romans?” controversy).

The only areas that lost their Romanness were Africa because of the Arabs (we don’t have Latin Africans nowadays, the language went extinct during the middle ages), Britannia because Romano-britons and their Latin language went extinct around the 7th century AD because of Anglo-Saxons (you could make a case for Welsh but they reverted to their Celtic past rather than clinging to the Roman experience) and other small poorly Latinised areas like Pannonia and Belgium.
So only Arabs and Anglo-Saxons were able to break the Roman hegemony over these lands but nowhere else occupants managed to survive the occupied. They just didn’t have the structure and organisation they found in Roman lands so they simply adapted (slowly accepting Christianity for example and most military titles like dux, comes that would evolve in duke, count etc) until they lost their identity.

Every country is a peculiar case but in the case of Italy actually Lombards managed to hold a grip a little longer than say Vandals or Visigoths. The Lombard language went extinct towards the 10th century iirc but Lombards continued to exist through the norman conquest of south Italy until the 12th century I think (?)
And as you said Italians ironically defined their identity in contrast to Romans (this was probably the biggest heir of Germans: nationalism/regionalism in contrast to Roman universalism/imperialism) and it’s ironic cause they were relatively close to ancient Romans. Dante spoke very bad of Romans (as of people in Rome, which was where at that point the designation was confined) in contrast to Italian (Florentine) people.

Also ironically (but makes sense if you think that Roman identity was becoming a status marker and that the city of Rome lost its importance since the 4th century AD) Italy is the country where you can find less Roman people in the dark ages. Maybe no Italian wanted to be Roman anymore after the devastating gothic war led by the “Roman” emperor Justinian. No other ex province of the empire had to endure such a disaster despite having been invaded by Germans as well and Roman identity lived on for long in Gaul, Hispania and even Africa.
The heart of the old empire was actually the first to abandon its roots, just when everybody started to squabble over it. The “Roman” emperor of the west in 800 was a Frank and he was fighting over Rome itself with the other “Romans”, the byzantines. And none of them were in control of Rome the city. Everyone “felt” Roman except Rome lol. I think nothing shows more transparently how you can manipulate identities when you need it.

Anyway yeah I’d be fine if they would simply take away Lombard kings from Italian ai names. That’s the thing that makes less sense.
Mauritius Galba was a magister militum per Venetia so it’s almost ok as Italian although it’s better if he was either Roman or Byzantine (although Roman sounds more appropriate) at least until there’s not a Venetian civ.

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I take this opportunity to give some more information for the curious reader.

True, but particularly in Italy this process of Romanisation was very profound. Already in the late republican age, in fact, the appellation ‘Roman’ no longer concerned only the inhabitants of Rome, but those of Italy.

This sense of common belonging, also called consanguineitas, was felt both inside and outside the Peninsula and, not infrequently, created real demarcation lines between the Romans of the provinces (Gaul, Hispania, Illyria, etc.) and the Romans of Italy (which was not a province, but the metropolitan territory of Rome, and therefore had a different status from the provincial territories), causing in some cases even ethnic friction and contrasts.

Also because, what was the point of calling oneself a Roman? The Roman aristocracy had largely been killed off by the Lombards and the Emperor had already been a Germanic for a few centuries to whom the Pope gave the title ‘Emperor of the Romans’ for pure political expediency.

It is not surprising that northern Italy, which was part of Regnum Italiae, began to rebel against the emperor.

The way the game is structured, it does not make much sense. However, the Italians could be improved. For example ‘Silk Road’ could be renamed ‘Venetian Routes’ and also give it a UU ship with the Venetian flag.

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That’s true until Diocletian reorganized the administration and made Italy just a province among others. This is a consequence of the edict of Caracalla and the fact that by the end of the 3rd century Roman identity was very abstract, fluid and basically meaningless to discern anything (look at how many Marcus Aurelius there were in the 3rd century and Flavius later on while the tria nomina system slowly disappeared except for aristocrats).

Same reason why I find meaningless the debate about Byzantines being Romans since “being Romans” didn’t mean anything at all in terms of ethnicity by the time Constantinople was founded. The only function it had was to distinguish between “us and them” when barbarians started to integrate, at least until the 8th century when the two things became the same. As you said being Roman in the dark ages was just a political tool (similar to what’s happening to identities nowadays, once an identity loses any concrete and shared designation it becomes arbitrary first and then the ones in power start to manipulate it) and that’s how the Byzantines and later the HRE used it through the middle ages.

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I also added the request to bring the Galeazza into AoE2, following another discussion.