Comments by "Archangel17" (@MDP1702) on "UsefulCharts"
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It depends on how you look at it.
Conquest is a not good reason. By that sense you could say the ottoman empiror was also roman emperor, greek emperor (or whatever you'd call the successor of Alexander), leader of the mamluks, ... basically an endless series of titles of people who had ruled before in the regions under their control.
This also counts out the the HRE, the only real reason they should be considered is that Charlemagne held France, northern Italy (with Rome) and proclaimed himself roman emperor. To that extend, Napoleon has a just as strong claim by controlling France, the HRE, Italy and being crowned emperor by the pope.
Russia could claim the title, due to the marriage, similar religion, ... But the fact that they don't really own much territory that once was part of the roman empire, that they actually originate in the east and don't have a roman culture excludes them for me.
I can agree that the byzantines can be seen as a succesor and you could follow that lineage, however not completely. While they are a continuation of the roman empire, they are more greek/eastern than roman in my eyes and while in practice the roman capitol became constantinople, the true roman capital (in my eyes) remained Rome, especially with the split east/west. Thus any descendent of the last Western roman emperor would in my eyes be the true roman empire and the eastern roman emperor would just be that: the eastern emperor, not the true emperor. But this just depends on how you look at it.
Because of this the king of Spain logic already stumbles for me. Furthermore, while the Romans where very much about law, succession (both in the old roman empire as in the eastern empire) often had happened by the sword and fuck the law, therefor THE LAW just isn't a good enough argument.
In the end I'd say the best claim for Roman Emperor is someone who acts in the same way as roman emperors did and is of the roman culturegroup, so not eastern (like the ottoman, russians) and not greek (like the eastern empire), rather than looking at the bloodline or line of succession.
In the end the one most fitting to these criteria is Napoleon Bonaparte, just like the most known and greatest emperors he expanded his influence by conquest, divde and conquer, had great interest for law like the romans and he acted like I'd imagine a "modern" roman emperor might have acted like. However this doesn't automatically mean that his descendent have a claim to the roman empire imho, just that Napoleon had.
Today, there just is no truely possible claimant of the roman emperor seat.
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