Not only had the ethnic identities of rulers and landowners changed, so had their political horizons and the systems of government. The empire lived on in Constantinople, where many new challenges—new religions, new technologies, new networks, and new diseases—would remold it during the centuries to come. But in the west, kings and kingdoms were rapidly supplanting emperors and empires, ushering in an age that will, when we turn to it again, look more recognizably “medieval” than the world of wandering barbarians and child emperors has thus far.
