When did the Roman Empire fall (your thoughts)?

[Flavivs Aetivs]

@ MM Flavius Aetius

"Legitimate" is somehow contradictory for self-proclamed emperors no?
Keeping 476 or 480 as the end of the Roman Empire would mean that it still existed while an emperor was ruling the state. So if Odoacer would have proclamed himself emperor i.o. King of Italy it would have last longer.

Most Roman Emperors were self-proclaimed, Augustus himself was a Self-Proclaimed Emperor.

As for the East, I always considered it fell in 1204. Trebizond and Epirus were basically city-states and Nicea recover a fringe of teh empire past territories.
By the 1300's, the "romanoi" where largely turkified and byzantium ended as a vassal state to the turkish sultans.

Not True, Byzantium managed to reconquer a lot of greece from the Ottomans Multiple Times after the collaps of the so called "Serbian Empire"

Manuel II got a s Far as Varna and Thessalonike Recovered, and Konstantinos XI got Athens and Larissa, along with reconstructing the Hexamilion. If the Byzantines had built up their fleet the could have prevented the ottomans from crossing to Greece and essentially reconquered most of it. Even EU3 can simulate this.

The "Basileia toh Romaioi (That's what the East Called itself as the "Byzantines") lasted until 1453, I personally think the end of the Palaiologan Dynasty was the end of the Roman Empire.

As for the west, I'd have to say 480 AD with Nepos, who was assassinated before he could launch an attack on Italy, and was the last Emperor supported by Eastern Claims.

However, Mauretania Tingitania and Mauretania Caesarensis remained "Roman" until 533 in Belisarius' reconquest of Africa.

Aegidius' Gallic Domain lasted until 487