Character Index Book I

Bessarion is Constantine’s bridge to the West, an insightful monk and philosopher (a protégé of Plethon). Moving through Rome, Naples, and Florence with monastic restraint and a mind that never stops calculating, he becomes the Empire’s cultural ambassador and quiet intelligence-gatherer: a “monk turned merchant” who can sell books, read men as well as manuscripts, and translate Hellenic prestige into gold, alliances, and influence. Cautious at first about Church union, he comes to treat it as a necessary bridge, using the printing press and the traffic of ideas as soft power for Constantine’s wider cause, identifying useful patrons like Cosimo de’ Medici.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (Bessarion).

Andreas is a blunt, battle-worn Byzantine officer who fought at the Battle of the Echinades (1427) and was among the small force assigned to Constantine Palaiologos in the aftermath, helping secure and administer Glarentza in Elis as it passed under Constantine’s control. Experienced and unsentimental, he is initially skeptical of Constantine’s unconventional ideas—but as those ideas prove themselves in drill, discipline, and war, Andreas rises from wary professional to one of Constantine’s most trusted commanders, valued for steadiness, hard judgment, and loyalty earned on campaign.

Aristos is a disciplined Byzantine officer entrusted with a high-risk mission into Albania to fan the revolt and bleed the Ottomans far from the Morea. He serves as both commander and instructor, bringing Constantine’s modern doctrine, Drakos cannons, organized drill, and hard logistical sense, into the brutal world of mountain chieftains and irregular war. He proves his worth by taking Gjirokastër through patient artillery work rather than reckless assaults, negotiating difficult allies like Depë Zenebishi with results instead of promises, and then making the cold professional choice to abandon the city when Turahan’s relief force closes in, executing a scorched-earth withdrawal so the Ottomans retake only rubble.

Emperor John VIII Palaiologos is the weary Basileus in Constantinople—the eldest brother of the dynasty, ruling an Empire he knows is already bleeding out. Where Constantine burns with innovation, John carries the slow exhaustion of a man trying to keep collapsing walls upright with diplomacy, ceremony, and ink. A pragmatic unionist, he treats reconciliation with Rome less as faith than necessity, bargaining for gold and crusading promises while also struggling to contain the poisonous rivalries of his brothers—especially the widening feud between Constantine and Theodore. In this timeline’s great fracture, John’s balancing act fails: he is assassinated in a late-1432 palace coup orchestrated from within the family, murdered in his own palace.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (John VIII Palaiologos).

Francesco Sforza is the most formidable condottiero of Italy, an “architect of victories”. Imposing, cold-eyed, and relentlessly pragmatic, he treats loyalty as a contract and war as a craft, yet he’s one of the few commanders who immediately grasps that Constantine’s pikes, Pyrvelos muskets, and Drakos field cannons are the future of battle. Hired at staggering cost, he brings disciplined veterans, siege expertise, and the ruthless instincts to press every advantage—most visibly at the Hexamilion, where his men hold the wall in brutal close combat while his engineers and judgment turn defenses into a killing system. And for all his cynicism, Sforza leaves the Morea inspired: determined to carry these new guns and combined-arms methods back to Italy, and quietly probing for whatever secrets he can buy, steal, or learn before he rides home.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (Francesco I Sforza).

Plethon is the famed, elderly philosopher of Mystras who relocates to Glarentza, drawn by the shock of Constantine’s vision and the force of his ideas. Brilliant, stubborn, and dangerously unorthodox, he becomes not a court ornament but an intellectual weapon: a rare voice who can challenge the Emperor without fear, pressing for reform, discipline, and a Byzantium that refuses to think like a dying state. Most importantly, Plethon serves as the co-architect, alongside Constantine, of Ieros Skopos, shaping it into more than a pamphlet: a weaponized text meant to ignite identity, resistance, and purpose far beyond the Empire’s borders.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (Gemistos Plethon).

Iskander is a Tatar scholar, philosopher, and revolutionary—a man with the bearing of a learned preacher even in chains, marked by high cheekbones, narrow eyes, and dark hair threaded with silver. Once a devoted follower of Sheikh Bedreddin, he survived the crushed dream of Karaburun as a disciple of Börklüce Mustafa, then spent years wandering as a hunted seeker of knowledge. Constantine first finds him among prisoners rescued from an abandoned Ottoman camp near Corinth, and quickly recognizes his true value: not as a captive, but as a weapon. Iskander helps drive a “revolution of ideas,” crafting manifestos meant to unite the oppressed across faiths and fracture Ottoman stability from within. Moving under the guise of a wandering scholar—building secret networks from Antalya to Dobruja—he becomes a whispered figure in the borderlands: a rebel-preacher stirring peasants with the promise of a world “without masters,”

Niketas is Constantine’s “master of thunder”, a wiry Greek gunpowder artisan and engineer who defects from Ottoman service and turns his former craft against the Sultan. Once a maker of Murad’s siege powders and bombards, he breaks with the Empire that employed him after a brutal personal injustice forces him to flee with his family, eventually placing his life at Constantine’s feet in exchange for protection and revenge. Niketas becomes the technical backbone of Constantine’s artillery advantage: refining stronger, more reliable powder, overseeing the testing and sighting of Drakos field cannons, and pushing for local production sites so gunpowder isn’t a vulnerable supply chain during sieges. His rise from hunted fugitive to director of imperial production, trusted enough that Constantine relocates his family to keep him anchored, embodies the new regime’s ruthless meritocracy: skill over lineage, results over pedigree.

Sultan Murad II is the shadow that falls across Constantine’s resurgence, the Ottoman Sultan and the primary external antagonist, a seasoned warrior-ruler who treats Byzantium’s sudden defiance not as a border nuisance but as an imperial insult. Stocky and hard-featured, with sharp, watchful eyes and the controlled presence of a man used to obedience, Murad is defined by calculated fury: patient enough to avoid traps, ruthless enough to crush resistance when the moment is right. He values order and the prestige of his empire as much as conquest, listening to cautious counsel even as pride pushes him toward decisive punishment, especially after Constantine’s victories and provocations force him to restore the Ottoman aura of inevitability.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (Murad II).

Theodore II Palaiologos is Constantine’s chief domestic antagonist—the middle son of the dynasty and the shadow of tradition in a world Constantine is trying to drag into the future. Devout, austere, and resentful, Theodore treats innovation as corruption: the printing press, Latin Bibles, artillery, Western entanglements—all of it, to him, is a betrayal of Orthodox Byzantium and the sacrifices of their ancestors. He becomes the nerve-center of the anti-unionist faction, escalating from obstruction to outright sabotage—turning conspiracy inward until the family itself becomes a battlefield. His final gamble is a coup in Constantinople alongside Demetrios: John VIII is murdered, and Theodore is then betrayed and killed in the aftermath, dying with the bitter knowledge that his attempt to “save” the Empire helped doom it.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (Theodore II Palaiologos).

Theodora is the daughter of Carlo I Tocco and becomes Constantine Palaiologos’s first wife through a hard-edged political marriage forged in the aftermath of the Battle of the Echinades (1427)—a settlement that forces Tocco to concede territory and places Glarentza under Constantine’s control to rule. Intended to stabilize the Morea, their union is nonetheless worn down by the era’s brutality and the private costs of dynasty. She dies tragically in 1430 during childbirth, along with the child, mirroring the same outcome as in the original timeline, and her loss leaves Constantine/Michael permanently changed.

Historical reference: Wikipedia (Theodora Tocco).

Theophilus Dragas arrives in Glarentza under the direction of Helena Dragas, Constantine’s mother—sent as both kin and safeguard. A distant cousin of Constantine, he becomes the engine behind the civilian side of the new regime: overseeing the Morea’s publishing operation and keeping a hard hand on the treasury and wider economy that feeds Constantine’s reforms and wars. Known for tight control, relentless accounting, and constant complaints about costs, Theophilus can be infuriating—but his stinginess is rooted in loyalty. Family-bound and deeply trusted, he serves as the indispensable counterweight to Constantine’s ambition: the man who makes sure the dream doesn’t bankrupt itself.