HAGIOPOLIS, Rhōmanía (RNA)
The Office of the Megas Logothetes has taken note of a hostile-worded 3 September statement published by the Anactoria of Græcia announcing an “official confirmation of the termination” of so-called Græco–Rhōmæan diplomatic relations, brought to its attention by an ally. According to sources close to the government, the notice has been received as a public flourish around a legal vacuum: no bilateral treaty of recognition or exchange of instruments ever placed those relations on paper, and diplomatic relations, as the Basileia understands them, require paper and not posts on X.
The same clarification, officials said, applies not only to Græcia but to Pangration. In both cases, the only standing link recorded by Rhōmanía as a formal listing was membership in the Based Commonwealth, a loose political union founded on 11 January 2021 and disestablished on 17 February 2023. The previous version of the MicroWiki article on the foreign relations of Rhōmanía, mentioned in the Graecian publication, stated that point in unambiguous terms: relations with Græcia and with Pangration existed “by virtue of membership in the Based Commonwealth.” When that organisation ceased to exist, the derivative relationship ceased with it.
According to the Office of the Megas Logothetes, the recent edit on that MicroWiki page is not a new political act. Official relations with both parties ended on 17 February 2023. The article had simply been left outdated. The current table now records both ties as terminated on that date, bringing the encyclopaedia into line with a fact already settled in Roman practice. Government sources also added that it appeared quite interesting that such a minute editing detail, of no present significance, was noticed.
Relations with the other Based Commonwealth member Zenia, sources added, were likewise ended on the same day the Based Commonwealth dissolved. That fact is not stated in the foreign-relations article because the Government of National Salvation set up in Zenia became an affiliate of the Basileia of the Romans. Affiliation replaced the old external file. It did not keep a vanished Commonwealth seat alive under another heading.
Whatever else existed after that date with Græcia and Pangration, sources said, was not a pair of bilateral treaties. Other contacts ran by virtue of common membership in the League of Hellenistic Micronations, until Rhōmanía withdrew as a full member, and by close informal relations in general. The reason Græcia and Pangration were named explicitly in the foreign-relations article, while other League partners were not, was the particular weight of the Based Commonwealth for the Basileia: closer ties, frequent real-life synods, and geographic proximity. Rhōmanía’s closest border with Pangration lies some two hundred metres away. That combination, officials said, explained the listing. It did not convert bloc membership into deposited acts.
That membership, the Logothesion said, is illegitimate. The true government of Zenia, as accepted at the time by most members of the League of Hellenistic Micronations, is the Government of National Salvation, which still stands and is an affiliate of the Basileia of the Romans. The name-only Stoa that still occupies the League’s roster has no such pedigree. “A seat reserved for Zenia is not a seat reserved for whoever holds the letterhead,” a source close to the government said. Hagiopolis expects the League to act accordingly, in particular since most members once accepted the legitimacy of the Government of National Salvation, and to reassess both its stance and the continued membership of Zenia-on-strings.)
Græcia’s newspaper presents a longer chronology of its own dispute with Rhōmanía. It dates an original link to 20 August 2020, cites admission to the League of Hellenistic Micronations, and argues that Nea Mikrasia continued to regard bilateral relations as standing through years of Rhōmanía’s reduced public presence, until what it calls a “silent unilateral dissolution” this past February, linking an article about an unrelated and irrelevant to Rhōmanía event. Sources in Hagiopolis described this as indirect blame for "completely unrelated incidents that have already been addressed and are not the business of the Basileia’s foreign service, and as an attempt to write a rupture into a file that, in Roman terms, was already empty". The Anactorial Office of Foreign Affairs further states that it will accept the narrower span now listed on MicroWiki — 11 January 2021 to 17 February 2023 — and treat that interval as the life of the relationship.
According to the Logothesion, that concession still does not turn an organisational affiliation into a treaty. The Based Commonwealth produced the Treaty of Zenia among its members; it did not substitute for separate instruments between the Basileia and either Græcia or Pangration. “Recognition by tweet and fellowship in a bloc are not the same as deposited acts,” a source close to the government said. “When the bloc ended, there was nothing left to denounce.”
Officials also objected to the framing that surrounds the announcement. Græcia’s text links the diplomatic question to the removal of the title of Doux Domestikos of the Theme of the Roman Islands, to the fate of a personal coat of arms, and to the status of the appellation «Κοΐντος Βιτάλιος» and citizenship certificate № NTAA000001. It further salutes what it calls Rhōmanía’s “isolationist policies".
The isolationist line itself, they added, should surprise no one. It was restated in 2020, again in 2022, and again in 2023 — as well as this past Tuesday. Publicly available documents of that period listed Rhōmanía as open to diplomatic relations, but under strict criteria. The most significant of those criteria were that the other party must possess a set, defined territory it wholly controls — in macronational terms, privately owned property — and that it must be free of fantastical or unrealistic claims. Members of both the League of Hellenistic Micronations and the Based Commonwealth, though not all of them, failed one or the other test. In the case of the Commonwealth, that shortcoming is cited as the reason no formal treaty of diplomatic relations was signed with Græcia or with Pangration, at least at the time.
A brief public illustration of the second criterion remains on the record. Rhōmanía investigated the alleged death of the King of Pangration. The episode was shown to be false and fantastical, and therefore not in keeping with the Basileia’s standards of diplomacy. Officials did not labour the comparison, but the same standard is what they now apply to Zenia-on-strings: a government that exists chiefly on paper, and moves when pulled, is not a counterpart for treaty.
The Imperial Communiqué of 1 September, published by The Imperial Tribune, had already set out the Throne’s position on continuity, isolation as chosen policy rather than vacancy, and the termination of titles, dignities, offices and honours held by persons who are not Rhomaean. That measure, officials repeated, formed part of a period of governmental restructuring. All offices held by citizens of non-Rhomaean origin were removed. Among those affected was Alexianos Ephranorites.
The Communiqué did not revoke citizenship. Government sources said the distinction is deliberate. Where citizens of non-Rhomaean origin have since taken unilateral decisions concerning their own standing, those decisions are regarded as valid and are accepted. Græcia’s declaration that a particular appellation “shall not be used henceforth” falls, in that reading, on the side of personal and external choice rather than of an act the Basileia was required to contest.
What remains, according to the Logothesion, is a matter of record rather than of sentiment. Græcia may announce the end of a relationship it long treated as living. Rhōmanía’s position is that the relationship, insofar as it was ever formal, lived and died with the Based Commonwealth; that Pangration stands in the same legal light; that relations with Zenia ended de facto on the same day and were succeeded, not preserved, by affiliation with the Government of National Salvation; that a recent wiki correction merely recorded an old fact; that a League seat still occupied by Zenia-on-strings is a separate irregularity awaiting correction; and that a unilateral suspension of affairs which were not embodied in treaties is a description of theatre, not of diplomacy.
The Imperial Government wishes Græcia and success in all future endeavours and good health.
The Basileia remains open to diplomacy with those willing to treat and able to meet the criteria already published: defined territory under actual control, and no fantastical or unrealistic claims. Inquiries may be directed to the relevant official channels - basileiaofromans@gmail.com, to the brand-new @rhomaniagov account on X, to the relevant user talk pages on MicroWiki, and on Discord.