Even more randomly: the current British Royals are also descended from Robert the Bruce, which is amusing given how energetically he opposed the Royals at the time.

And the story of what happened to his heart is pretty interesting as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Teba

The Varangian guard is so interesting and could have been something out of a book or movie. A Roman emperor having an elite squad of viking warriors to protect them!

They are depicted in "Raise and fall of D.O.D.O." by Neil Stephenson.

* Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland

Totally...although it makes sense in context. The Byzantine court was notorious for conspiracies, cabals, backroom deals, logrolling, and other shady political manuvers. The Eastern emperors were also presumably aware of the history of the Praetorian Guard in the Western empire, so their choice of bodyguard would probably have been a matter they thought carefully about. The logic, then, was to bring in a bunch of foreigners, from further away the better, with no ties to Rome and no interests there besides getting paid. All the better if these foreigners were immense badasses with uncanny pale skin and enormous beards.

Exactly. The Turks never destroyed Byzantium. The Byzantines destroyed themselves, and made life shitty for most of Europe in the process (a la the Crusades).

Right--the Turks were just in a good position, literally, to pick up the pieces afterwards.

I mean, it started with Manzikert, where the Turks just did their usual nomad stuff, which the Byzantines could have averted - if they weren't busy fighting amongst themselves and deserting the army.

Varangian guard was not really a elite guard unit. Varangian guard were stationed all around the empire and were more like a normal part of the military.

In the sources they show up just as often fighting in battles where the emperor was there and when he was not.

The did protect him on campaign, but that might just be because the were the primary infantry arm.

Some people think of them like the Praetorian guard, but that isn't really accurate.

>They also created settlements in what is now Ukraine.

Can you name something googlable or wikipediable so I can read more about this?

Nova Anglia. Perhaps better to say "might have created settlements". There is a tantalising number of crumbs from place names to travellers reports but little written record. The alleged location would make them the first victims of the Mongolian invasion of Europe a few hundred years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_(medieval)

I believe they're referring to Nīwe Englaland/New England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_(medieval)

Timothy Snyder has a great set of lectures about the making of modern Ukraine and he goes into great detail about the impact the Vikings had in the creation of Rus and their interactions with the Byzantines

I was about to recommend this series as well, really glad to see a fellow-traveller got there first!

Free, high-quality history content, can't recommend highly enough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz...