WI: the Roman empire remained divided into 3 for the final duration of the 4th century?

The Huns still would have had a great reason to go for the East. It was pretty close and more importantly, it was where the real loot was. I also think that especially the westernmost empire (Hispania and Gaul primarily) was so much weaker that it would be inevitable for someone else to try taking it over again.

What's the connection between more division and less despotism?
(no offense) it's Arian, not Arianist.



With all this taken into consideration, how I see this happening is basically if the WRE was split into 2 instead of 3 in 395 and the Germanic invasions happened 8 dozen or so years earlier.

A weaker west would fall to the barbarians faster, certainly by 400 AD. These barbarian kingdoms would have a mostly hostile populace still, and issues of paganism v. Christianity ongoing. The barbarian kingdoms would be weaker than OTL.

Weaker barbarian kingdoms would more easily fall to Attila in the 440s and be conquered. In OTL, Aetius managed to organize a coalition of foederati to defend the WRE, but in this timeline there is no WRE and no foederati. The west would fall to Attila. This would probably gut most of the barbarian leadership, opening them up to conquest. The ERE would probably launch an invasion, overrunning the provinces of Italy, Africa, and Spain.

Edit: Or if I'm wrong the Ere teams up with the Germanic peoples or huns to conquer much of the 2 western empires

In OTL, when Justinian took Italy, he was engaged in a long guerilla war with the Goths and Lombards, plus hostilities with the Persians. But in the 400s Persia was peaceable with the Romans, and the Lombards were a long way off. The ERE would probably have no problems holding it's Mediterranean empire, fortified along the sturdy Danube and Alpine frontiers.

With a stronger hold on the West, the ERE could focus on defending the east more - in OTL, the overextensions of Justinian led the Persians to believe they could conquer the ERE. Without that perceived weakness, I think a cold war of sorts would last for several centuries between ERE (by this point, probably just calling themselves the Roman Empire). With Persia and Rome both far stronger that OTL, Islam would likely never expand beyond Arabia, and the Arabs wouldn't expand into the middle East.

Then again if the Persians aren't dealing with Rome they could engage in more wars in the stans and india. Pls tell me what you think would happen here

France would likely remain under either Frankish or native Romano-Gaulish rule, and Britain would still fall to the Anglo-Saxons. The Slavs would push to the Elbe as they did in OTL, but they would probably be repulsed along the Danube by a stronger Rome.