The First Intermediate Period (2181–2055 BCE) counts as a highly restricted example. After the collapse of the Old Kingdom, the regional lords — previously the Pharaoh's governorsnote In older books, these governors are often called "nomarchs," as the provinces were called nomes. However, this is based on Greek usage, which is understandable, as the Egyptian language was unknown to Western scholars until well into the 19th century (even after Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone, the Ancient Egyptian language took decades to more-or-less-fully figure out — more or less, because there are still arguments, made more complicated by the fact that Ancient Egypt existed for three thousand-plus years and so changed a lot). On the other hand, the Greeks, with their collective hard-on for all things Egyptian, had written down everything they could find out about Egypt in a language Western scholars could understand but translated the terminology. — took complete control of the country, but for the first part of it (the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties) there was still a Pharaoh at Memphis. However, his power was completely nominal; at best, he might have had a religious role outside his relatively small domain around the once-great capital. (Records of the period are very sketchy, seeing as it was frickin' four thousand years ago — it was ancient history to the Ancient Greeks.) Eventually, the Memphite pharaohs collapsed, and the lords of Heraclitopolis in Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta in the north) and Thebes in Upper Egypt proclaimed themselves Pharaohs and fought for quite some time before the Theban Eleventh Dynasty conquered Lower Egypt and established the Middle Kingdom.
Egypt during the Twentieth Dynasty (1189-1077 BCE) and 3rd Intermediate Period (1069-664 BCE). The country was united for most of this time, but it lost control of its empire in the Levant to various independent kingdoms (Israel being the most famous), its western territories to local raiders and Greek and Phoenician settlers, and Nubia to the Nubians, who would occasionally conquer Egypt itself for good measure. When it wasn't being ruled by Nubians — and particularly in the Twentieth Dynasty — however, Egypt was very much an ex-empire in splendid isolation, cut off from the affairs of the outside world.
The Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770–256 BCE) ended up like this. After the capital was moved, the central government gradually collapsed, as regional lords began to assert their independence from the Zhou monarch and his officials. This decay started at the edges, but within two hundred years, the king had lost all his authority outside his relatively small personal domain.
The entire history of China has been zigzagging this, alternating between world-spanning empires and domestic collapses. See below for more details.
Iran's history is interesting. Achaemenid Persia (550–330 BCE) was once a world-spanning empire, encompassing most of the civilized world and featured in the annals of most others. Alexander the Great knocked it out while they were still at their peak. After a while under the Seleucid Greeks, the Parthians established an Iranian empire that while it was constantly at pains to maintain its western border against the Greeks and later the Romans, managed to establish a firm hold on Central Asia and the Persian Gulf that the Achaemenids never managed; this is even truer of the Sassanids, who very nearly rebuilt the empire as it was in the time of Darius under Khosrau II (590-628 CE), when the tide of the war turned in favor of Byzantium... just as the Muslim Arabs knocked the whole empire out in one fell swoop. After that, Persia would spend a lot of time being either a province of someone else's empire (the Caliphate, the Mongols, and an ever-rotating cast of Turks) or divided among squabbling warlords (often Turks); there would be one more great Persian empire (the Safavids from 1501–1736 CE), with subsequent dynasties leaving something distinctly to be desired.
The Han Empire (202BCE- 9CE, 25CE-220CE) underwent this twice.
The first happened in 9-23CE, when the ambitious official and member of the imperial consort clan Wang Mang usurped the Han throne and founded the Xin Dynasty. Part of the reason he was able to do this was because the Han imperial family had lost much of its prestige thanks to a combination of a failing economy, increasingly powerful noble families that spent a lot of time and money trying to outdo each other with Conspicuous Consumption, and a series of natural disasters that negatively impacted the livelihood of the empire's peasants. Many of the nobles and bureaucratic officials were actually apathetic to his takeover, as it was thought he couldn't actually make things any worse than they already were. Unfortunately, Wang instituted a series of well-intentioned but poorly thought out and executed reforms that were initially welcomed by the peasantry, but eventually led to rebellions breaking out led by a combination of disaffected peasants, unhappy nobles, and members of the Han imperial clan. As a result of this brief interruption in Han imperial rule, the pre-Xin Han is sometimes described as Western Han (thanks to the capital being the western city of Changan) with post-Xin Han being described as Eastern Han (due to the capital being the eastern city of Luoyang).
Most famously, from 184-220CE, the Han Empire's authority increasingly diminished and gave rise to the famous Three Kingdoms period. Numerous agrarian revolts, most famous of them being the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184, had broken out due to natural disasters and the inability of the imperial government to provide any sort of relief to the peasantry (in a large part thanks to rampant corruption ensuring the central government was only getting a small fraction of what it was owed). One official named Liu Yan suggested to Emperor Ling in 188 that the root of these agrarian revolts was that Inspectors lacked substantial administrative powers and so could only report back problems, more often than not taking so long to get up The Chain of Command that the information would only arrive after it was too late to act upon it. Emperor Ling, convinced by Liu Yan, changed the Inspectors' titles to "Governor" and granted them the authority to levy taxes and command armed forces within the borders. Liu Yan himself was commissioned as the Governor of Yi Province. This led to Governors being able to raise personal armies loyal only to them rather than the Han itself, and so when Evil Chancellor Dong Zhuo seized power many of these Governors became warlords battling for territory. Cao Cao was able to take the final Han emperor Liu Xie into his care and so became The Man Behind the Man, but it was clear to most that it was Cao's personal power (thanks to him having the largest population pool and plentiful supplies) that was giving Han any sort of actual authority. When Cao's son Cao Pi compelled Liu Xie to abdicate so he could declare the Wei Empire as Han's successors, most people saw it as a natural matter of course.
Alexander the Great's empire stretched from modern Macedonia and the Balkans to modern day Iran and Afghanistan. It started with him and barely outlived him, but it left behind quite a few successor states in Egypt, Persia, Greece and as far as India.
Many of the aforementioned kingdoms became this themselves, notably the Ptolemaic empire (who went from ruling practically half of the Eastern Mediterranean to barely maintaining a hold on Egypt) and especially the Seleucids (who, at their peak, controlled all lands from actual Turkey and Syria to the border of actual India, and ended their dynasty as the ruler of a handful of cities in Syria taking orders from the Romans).
Although they were certainly a great power at their prime, the Punics were actually just the surviving remnant of the Phoenician civilization, a vast network of trading cities throughout the Mediterranean that rose in prominence after the Bronze Age collapse, spanning from the Levant in the east to Hispania in the west. Their domination ended in the 9th century BCE, leaving only the Punics, who integrated with local Berbers in modern-day Tunisia.
The Western Roman Empire and its ever-decreasing territory during the 5th century is a rather good example. By 395, its last partition with the Eastern Roman Empire, the West included Britannia (Wales, England), Gallia (Gaul: France and certain areas of the Low Countries), Hispania (Spain, Portugal), Italia (Italy), Dalmatia (Croatia), Mauretania Tingitana (Morocco), Mauritania Caesariensis (western Algeria), and Africa province (eastern Algeria, Tunisia, Libya). Imperial troops left Britannia between 407 and 410, leaving the Romano-British to fend for themselves against invasions. Gallia and Hispania were increasingly settled by Germanic populations from c. 412 onwards. While often allied or even subordinate to the Romans, they set up regional kingdoms and eventually become fully independent. The last Roman governor in Gaul, Syagrius, fell to the Franks in 487. Most of the North African areas fell to the Vandals between 429 and 439. The Vandals use their new ports to replace the Romans as the chief naval power of the Mediterranean Sea. Italia fell to its own Germanic mercenaries in 476. Dalmatia followed it in 480, followed by Gaul in 486. By the end of the century what was left of Roman rule in the west was an independent but isolated Mauretania Tingitana. Eventually Belisarius took it back for the East, but then the Arabs came along...
The so-called Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire's eastern half, centred around Constantinople/Byzantion, lingered for just under a thousand years after the better known fall of the western half. It spent most of that time gradually losing territory, power and influence, though it also had several resurgences — one under Justinian and Belisarius, one under the Macedonian dynasty, and one under the Komnenoi emperors. It spent the last century or so of its existence as a few disconnected regions and cities around the southern Balkans, until the Ottoman Turks put it out of its misery in 1453; technically, though most forget it, the last vestiges of Roman power were not Byzantium, but the small Empire of Trebizond in modern-day Crimea and Anatolia, which did not fall until 1461, and the Despotate of Epirus in modern Albania and Greek Macedonia, which survived until 1479. And then you had the fact that as soon as Constantinople fell, Ivan III of Russia immediately emphasised Moscow's position as 'the Third Rome' (Constantinople having been second), something helped by the fact that his wife was the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, and then he and his successors spent the next 460 years trying to get hold of Constantinople (and on occasion, coming very close to succeeding) until the Russian Revolution of 1917. This example is probably closer to fictional portrayals than most others on this list, in that for a long time Constantinople's wealth and glory lingered (and both were often used, along with a ruthless grasp of realpolitik to either court new allies or divide and conquer), even if they could never recover the direct political or military power of the old empire. In fact Basil II 'the Bulgar Slayer', who ruled in the late 10th and early 11th century, is believed by some estimates to have been worth almost 170 billion in modern US dollars, placing him among the top ten richest men to have ever lived. That last century or two, however, it was simply a shadow of its former self, barely holding on — though some scholars have argued that if they'd played their cards a little better in dealing with the Ottomans, they might well have succeeded in resurrecting themselves again.
The Byzantine Empire was the vestigial empire of The Roman Empire; many examples of this trope in fiction are directly based on it. And then the vestigial empire retreated to another vestigial empire in the form of the Empire of Nicaea (1204–1261), which was formed by refugees of the Imperial court and aristocracy after Crusaders occupied Constantinople. It managed to reconquer its old capital after more than half a century. The restored empire then had yet another vestigial empire in Trebizond, above.
Bear in mind that it's hard to call Byzantine decline terminal before the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, since all empires fluctuate in power to some extent, especially on their frontiers. Indeed, it has been argued that were it not for the unexpected rise of the Ottomans to power following the collapse of the Seljuk Empire, the Byzantines might once again have played their usual game of divide & conquer and come back from the brink once more. They were kind of good at it.
Brunei once had an empire throughout most of Borneo Island and other islands, like parts of the Philippines, as well. It is now a small enclave surrounded by Malaysia in Borneo. Made more jarring because Borneo is named as such because of Brunei. The nation's substantial oil wealth helps cushion the blow, though.
The 12th-century Fatimids and post-11th-century Abbasids are also good examples of this trope. The former went from a vast empire that spanned from northern Morocco to Syria to a rump state that was restricted to Egypt in about a century, while the latter went from dominating most of the Muslim world during the late 9th century to a remnant that had no real power outside central and southern Mesopotamia in about two centuries.
The Caliphates in general. The Rashidun Caliphate expanded from the city of Mecca to swallow up all of Arabia, North Africa, the Middle-East and Persia, before it was internally dismantled by the Umayyads. The Umayyad Caliphate was one of the largest contiguous empires in history, spanning from Persia to Spain. It was then overthrown by the aforementioned Abbasid dynasty, and the Umayyad dynasty fled to Spain and established a new Caliphate at Cordoba, which later disintegrated into warring factions which were all annexed by Portugal and the Spanish kingdoms following the Reconquista.
The Mongol Empire. Under Genghis Khan, it conquered many well-developed societies until it stretched all across Asia, from the Caspian to China. It was by far the largest empire the world had ever seen, outdone only by The British Empire centuries later. Now, Mongolia is right back where it was before Genghis Khan came along: a swathe of desert, and a bunch of nomads. It has the lowest population density (people per square mile) of any country in the world.
This is also one of the quicker examples of this trope happening; Genghis Khan's empire barely lasted 12 years after his death. Upon the death of Ögedei Khan without a clear heir, a massive Succession Crisis split the empire into a succession of khanates (and the Yuan dynasty) that increasingly went native. The last khanates (which at that point were mainly Turkic) fell to Russia in the mid-19th century.
The Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee (The Longhouse Builders), a league of nations formed somewhere between 1450 and 1600, whose last remnants were swept up in the United States and Canada in the 20th century. note A few historians even argue for dates as early as 1142 based on astronomical details in oral tradition, though this is not widely accepted. The earliest records of them acting as a state with regards to European powers dates to 1643. Early on, the leadership of each of the six nations was determined by the highest-ranking woman within the hereditary lineage in consultation with other (primarily female) tribal members. Later on they became a loose democracy, with popularly elected tribal representation on the governing committee and widely distributed local decision-making, where decisions were arrived at by consensus of local men and women. They reached their height in the late 1600s, when they controlled most of the region east and south of the Great Lakes, though most of their claimed territory was sparsely settled at best, and contained more French colonists than Iroquois (which lead to a war when the Iroquois "ceded" much of this land to the British in 1701). The American Revolution split the Iroquois — four of the six nations sided with the British, while two sided with the colonists. After the war, the British ceded Iroquois land to the US without consulting the locals, resulting in many Iroquois hostile to the colonists fleeing to Canada, and the remaining land in the United States being very sparsely populated. Eventually, the Iroquois were limited to limited reservation lands in the US and Canada. In the 20th century the Iroquois formally became part of the United States and Canada and gained citizenship in the respective countries; while they retained nominal sovereignty over limited reservation land, the Iroquois are subject to most national laws and are now considered to be part of those countries rather than independent states.
The Sengoku Jidai came about due to the decline of the Ashikaga Shogunate. In this case, the decline of the Shogunate's power was not a result of Japan as a whole weakening, but of the growth of trade and wealth in the peripheral regions of Japan, and the resulting growth of power in the hands of local daimyo at the expense of the central administration. Eventually, things boiled over to the point where the capital at Kyoto itself became a battleground for warring daimyo, and this kicked off over a century of strife before Oda Nobunaga put the Ashikaga out of their misery. It took a few more decades of war before Toyotomi Hideyoshi put Japan back together, though he could not prevent his death from causing a Succession Crisis.
The Mughal Empire, before the British East India Company put it out of its misery in 1858. The Mughals are the most recent example, but India is scattered with ruins of long-dead empires, like the Gupta Empire, the Vijayanagara Empire, and the Maratha Empire.
To detail on the (chronologically) last part: the Mughal Empire started out as the remnant of an empire rising up from the ashes of the Mongol Empire (thus being the vestigial empire of a vestigial empire), until they overran the Delhi Sultanate and replaced it. From there, they expanded and took over most of India, taking advantage of the Vijayanagara Empire, its only possible rival, entering the state of Vestigial Empire after a fluke defeat against the Deccan Sultanates, until the rise of the Maratha Empire made their authority nominal. From then on, Mughal authority was mostly nominal, with the real power residing in the hereditary governors of the Mughal territories, formally vassal kings and the various East India companies of the European nations (among which the British one was the one who ended up triumphing), with the Maratha themselves becoming a Vestigial Empire and a confederation formed by five mostly independent kingdoms (that would end up being absorbed by the Madras Presidency of the British East India Company), until emperor Bahadur Shah II, partly hoping to restore actual Mughal power, supported the Mutiny of 1857 (started as a mutiny in the Bengal Army of the Company's army due the Company supporting religious and secular offences to the local culture and land grabbings and ignoring the European officers' and noncoms warnings that the troops were getting enraged, and then becoming a full-blown war against multiple Indian states) and was proclaimed Emperor of India. When the British won, the second thing the Raj that replaced the Company rule did was to depose him (the first being eliminating the causes of the rebellion), with Queen Victoria being proclaimed Empress of India a few years later.
19th- and 20th-century Spain fits this trope to a tee: losing its empire and all pretensions of world power status, sinking into a deep economic decline, dominated by an over-powerful nobility, racked by constant political instability, coups, and the occasional civil war. Attempts to lord over its former South American colonies led Spain to get its ass kicked by them in The Chincha Islands War. Lingering imperial delusions and hubris were finally shattered in 1898, when they were quickly and brutally defeated in the Spanish-American War (mind you, the American armed forces were viewed as a joke in 1898, making this especially humiliating), but not much changed after that.
Spain annexed Spanish Morocco (mostly present-day Western Sahara and coastal territory around Tangier) in 1912, hoping to recover their international prestige. Instead they almost immediately fell afoul of hostile Riffian tribes. From 1921 to 1926 they fought a bloody guerilla conflict with Abd el-Krim's forces, winning only after France intervened. This sliver of mountainous desert remained Spain's marginal claim to world power status until 1956.
Portugal, similarly. Lampshaded, albeit symbolically, in its national anthem. Translated: "Heroes of the sea, noble people, valiant, immortal nation, raise, today, once again, Portugal's splendor!".
For some 20 years after they fled in fear of Napoleon, the seat of the Portuguese monarchy and capital of the Empire was Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, making Brazil a "united kingdom" (of Brazil, Portugal and the Algarves) and also making Brazil the only former colony to ever become the capital of the empire it belonged to. Later on, Brazil was one of the few colonies to gain independence "peacefully". (And by "peacefully" we mean "after about two years of irregular warfare with only a few dozen thousand battle deaths." That this was actually considered peaceful says something about the wars of independence in the surrounding Spanish colonies). This was why Brazil was an empire in its first half-century of independence (with a Portuguese emperor, no less), up to a coup in 1889 declaring a republic. Fast reaction when you bear in mind that the last nail in this empire's coffin was Princess Isabel, daughter of Pedro II, outlawing slavery. The slave owners who still supported Pedro against a pro-England aristocracy prone to "modernisation" (industrialization) had enough to jump out of the boat.
The Ottoman Empire deserves a mention. Largely weakened by internal corruption in the 18th century, the Ottomans were constantly defeated by Russia in a string of wars in the Black Sea. Making matters worse was the loss of Greece in 1832 following the Greek war of Independence. Then there's the fact that they fell behind in the Industrial Revolution in the same period. It had gotten to the point that it became so far gone by the 19th century that Russian Tsar Nicholas I coined the term "sick man of Europe" to describe it, and further noted that it was "falling to pieces." Despite a victory against Russia in the Crimean War, albeit with assistance from Britain and France, the Ottomans would greatly suffer once again in the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War and enter a long period of internal collapse as modernization efforts proved to be for nought in the interim. Then the 1910s hit, and the empire lost Libya to Italy and most of their remaining European territory to the Balkan States, then lost everything else to the British and Russians in World War I and now Turkey only has Anatolia and Eastern Thrace left (and barely at that: all of Eastern Thrace and most of Anatolia were to be ceded or put under foreign influence, and were only recovered when the Turkish National Movement based in Ankara overthrew the emperor and won the War of Turkish Independence against primarily the Greeks, forcing a new treaty). At least Mustafa Kemal Atatürk managed to make the best of the situation by finally modernizing the country, and they still have Constantinople, so the situation isn't completely bleak.
Andorra is the last surviving remnant of the Marca Hispanica, a series of border states created by Charlemagne as a buffer between the Carolingian Empire and the Moors. It is now represented by Andorra, a delightful little enclave between France and Spain, and the 191st country in the world by area, with a total land area of only 181 square miles and a population of 85,000.
The Principality of Liechtenstein may not seem much today, but it is arguably the last remaining piece of the old Holy Roman Empire. It probably helped that the ruling family possessed considerable land and clout to retain their power even after Napoleon signed its death warrant. And surprisingly enough, prior to World War I the Principality was somewhat larger, having included properties scattered across Austria-Hungary.
Andorra identifies itself with the Holy Roman Empire as well.
Austria under the Habsburgs once held hegemony over pretty much all of Central and Eastern Europe, especially during the 16th-17th Century. But by 1914, the Dual Monarchy had long become (perhaps not fully justifiably) the basis of Ruritania for much of Europe. The next decades would see the country dismembered, absorbed into Germany, and ultimately reduced to only a fraction of its former territory. Indeed, given their shared history, much of that could be said of Hungary, which after World War I had to cede territory to every neighboring country; a quick look at the complete lyrics of the latter's national anthem ought to give it away.
If you look closely as the Hungarian anthem, the Himnusz, it's actually a surprisingly solemn hymn lamenting their lost achievements and calling on God Himself to pity their fallen glory.
The Habsburg Monarchy also tended to see itself as one to the Holy Roman Empire.
Where Britain once ruled a quarter of the world and had a massive Blue Water fleet explicitly designed to take on the next two largest navies in the world at once and win, she now maintains Gibraltar, The Falkland Islands, some delightful rocks in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, some rather more windswept rocks in the Atlantic, and the headquarters of the Commonwealth, which is about as loose an organisation as it gets. One wonders if JMS had it in mind when writing Londo's dialogue quoted on this page. One notable legacy of the British Empire that is near-inescapable is English, the international lingua franca of business, science, technology and aviation. The UK, however, downplays this to the extent that, despite its dramatic territory loss, it still wields a disproportionate amount of influence and power. The UK is still a member of the G8, the 8 richest nations on the planet, retains its permanent seat in the UN Security Council, meaning it could theoretically (although this is highly unlikely) veto motions issued by such powers as the USA and the PRC. Through its membership of the Security Council, its position as current head of the Commonwealth and its various other ties with former colonies, British influence extends to a majority of the Anglosphere. The defeat of Argentina in The Falklands War, accurately dubbed as "The Empire Strikes Back", went a long way to show that the UK had not lost its status as a major power, as arguably, did involvement in the Gulf War, the Iraq War and Afghanistan (though the latter two are generally taken as examples of Prime Minister Blair's hubris and Britain's reach exceeding its grasp). This is probably best shown in the high Euroscepticism and general mild jingoism in Britain — it may have lost its Empire, but significant parts of it haven't quite realised it yet. Inner London is a monument to this — all manner of grand Victorian palaces and state buildings fit for an Empire that dominated the world now inhabiting the capital of a country that, on a good day, vies with Russia and France for the tag of 'best of the rest' after the US and the PRC.
There are some people who felt that Elizabeth II was the last vestige of Britain's imperial past, not the monarchy itself, but her personally, and not for nothing. She was born during the final boom of the British Empire, during the reign of her grandfather George V, lived through World War II, and her 70 years on the throne oversaw the transformation of the British Empire into the Commonwealth, which observers have opined to be very much a creature of her own making. Even her coronation has come to be regarded not as the dawn of the new Elizabethan age as it was at the time, but the swan song of Britain's Imperial Splendour, with the same being said of her funeral. There are also observers that say republican movements of all stripes will have no success "as long as she was alive", similar to how observers said there weren't any major changes coming to Austria-Hungary as long as Franz Joseph lived. And that proved (semi) accurate as Franz Joseph who had ascended to the throne in 1848 died in 1916 with empire dissolving little over two years later. However, WW1 arguably was a more important cause of those changes than Franz Joseph's death.
The French also downplays this to a degree like the British do, and many of the same traits apply to it (NATO member, permanent seat in the UN Security Council, nuclear weapons capability, fourth-largest military and fifth-largest economy. They remain a powerful force in the world and in Europe and Western Africa in particular, both by themselves and through their influence with the EU. That, and they still have a number of larger overseas territories around. Not bad for a bunch of Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys.
Unlike what is commonly believed, the expression "lingua franca" is not, however, a vestige of France's former power and influence. It actually means "language of the Franks" (not the French), and arose as a result of the medieval Arabic use of "Franks" to denote any and all Western Europeans (or the Western Christians/Catholics, since at the time there wasn't any distinction between the two).note Eastern Christians were another story; Muslim Arabs were quite familiar with them, seeing as they tended to literally live next door, as Christian Arabs. Not at all surprising considering the Franks and the subsequent empire they founded under Charlemagne essentially re-established political order in a Europe that hadn't seen any since the fall of the Roman Empire, and one that would later evolve into the Holy Roman Empire. The original Renaissance-era lingua franca (Mediterranenan Lingua Franca) consisted largely of Italian, with a vocabulary that also incorporated many words and phrases from Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek, and Arabic. That said, French was the lingua franca for a long time, with the children of well-to-do families from Russia to the US being expected to speak French well into the 19th century, before English subsumed it.
Charlemagne's empire itself also provides an example. It was the first large political structure in Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Yet, within a generation of Charlemagne's death, it was reduced to near impotence to the point where French kings had to buy off Viking raiders with grants of land and titles.
Germany, as with Britain and France, also downplays this. The German Empire until World War I was small and compact, but was highly organized and had one of the best-trained armies in Europe. After the war, Germany was forced to give up its African and Pacific territories and much of the land it had won from Russia, giving the rest to Poland. With the start of World War II, Germany captured Poland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Northern France, and much of the Western USSR in just two years, before being defeated and had many of its cities levelled. Today, Germany has a fraction of the territory it held at its height, but is highly influential and a leading member of the European Union, and though it's not a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it is listened to and respected as much as Britain and France (possibly more than Britain these days) remains an economic powerhouse in Europe and the somewhat reluctant leader of the EU.
It's hard to believe today, but Armenia used to be a powerful regional player in the Middle East and West Asia. Oh, and it was much larger than it is today; during the reign of Tigran the Great in the 1st century BCE, it spanned from Lake Sevan in the northeast to Tyre in Lebanon, bordering both the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. Although it was rarely completely independent, Armenians used to be one of the biggest ethnic groups in West Asia as well, with vast swathes of eastern Turkey having major Armenian populations. Then the genocide happened, which wiped out virtually all Western Armenians (who constituted more than half of all Armenians at that time, so it's a huge loss, to say the least), followed by the one-two punch of the Armenian SSR being forced by the Soviet Union, which re-conquered it after two years of independence, to cede a quarter of its land to Turkey and another quarter to the Azerbaijan SSR as part of a peace treaty, which of course meant that Armenians in those lands had to leave (though the folks at the Republic of Artsakh eventually managed to fight back). The remaining territory (estimated to be 3% of Tigran's Armenia) declared independence in 1991 as a poor, Russian-depended Ruritania, a far cry from its proud conquering ancestor.
Sweden was once a great power and its armies were the terror of Central and Eastern Europe in the 17th and early 18th century, before Carolus Rex, Charles XII, etc. Now, it is a small country in the corner of Europe best known for Abba, depressingfiction, Ikea, some rather off-beat chefs, and (admittedly) a few cool planes. This is (again) reflected in the national anthem, which contains an affirmation of the ancient glory of Swedennote technically the Nordic rather than Sweden specifically — the originally written verse that is the only one anyone actually uses as a national anthem was written in a spirit of Scandinavism, and as such doesn't actually include the Swedish words for "Sweden", "Swedish" or "Swede" — but obviously Sweden is a rather large part of the Nordic and a rather hollow-sounding reassurance that "Nothing much changed since then. Really."
The European Union itself is a quasi-federation of many vestigial empires cited here: in fact, having the world's second largest GDP (after the U.S.), the second largest military in both number of troops and military expenditures, the world's second reserve currency,note Albeit an extremely distant second. Foreign exchange reserves worldwide are 62% held in American dollars. The euro comes in next at 20%. the world's third largest population, a very respectable amount of soft power, and being one of the few polities to have known a significant expansion post-WWII, the EU could very well be the first alliance of surviving Vestigial Empires turning into an Hegemonic Empire... That is, if it had a strong central government which it still lacks, especially since Britain announced its exit.
In the early twentieth century, Imperial Japan was the dominant great power of the Pacific thanks to its rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth-century, which sees it spread from its original islands (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku and a few smaller islands) to Hokkaido (previously known as Ezo), Okinawa (part of what used to be known as the Ryukyuan Kingdom), Korea, parts of Manchuria, and many other islands in the Pacific (including Taiwan). It shocked the "civilized" Western nations by defeating the eastern Russian navy in 1904–1905, and had plans to expand into China and Oceania during The Great Depression. Before it took pretty a significant portion of East Asia during World War II before being defeated, they also had significant influence in the area due to their powerful navy, leading interventions into China and Siberia, and turning Manchuria into a puppet state before World War II. Now, thanks to their defeat during World War II and their subsequent occupation by The United States, Japan consists almost entirely of its original islands as well as a few it acquired around the Meiji Restoration (namely Okinawa and Hokkaido) and its military has been constitutionally neutered.
Again, downplayed as well, considering that they re-emerged as an economic powerhouse — rivaling that of Germany (or depending on how you see it, and when it was, even the US) — and a major exporter of pop culture and technologies, particularly cars and consumer electronics like televisions (hence the catchphrase "Made in Japan", particularly in The '70s and The '80s); for several decades in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries the largest car company in the world was Japan based. Economically, Japan was far more powerful during and after the Cold War than it was before. For a good deal of 1950–2000, it was the one of the very few First World countries that wasn't predominantly Caucasian, before the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) got to First World level as well via market reforms and liberalization. While its status as a relative powerhouse is fading due to the rise of China, Japan is still the third or fourth biggest economy in terms of GDPnote Depending on whether you count nominal terms or adjust for purchasing power parity, India may or may not be larger, and its currency is still considered to be a major player in markets — investors relied on the the relatively stable yen during the 2008 financial crisis when the dollar and euro became unreliable. Also note that Japan, despite Article 9, still has the 5th-largest defense budget in the world and can be considered to be a potential nuclear state (if pushed, it could develop a nuclear weapon in a matter of months) — so far the only known reasons it isn't actually so is due to the constitution, public opinion, and holding nukes seen as redundant due to the Japan–US alliance.
The Qing Empire was a shadow of its former self by the time of European (and later, Japanese) expansion into its territory, and modern China is noticeably smaller than it used to be. Mongolia is now independent, and Taiwan its own country to say the least (the details behind that are rather complicated and will be discussed below). In spite of going through a humiliating cultural and economic decline in the past two centuries, most of its key territories were intact and the country was still by far one of the largest and most (over) populated countries in the world. With the resurgence of Chinese economic and political power in the 21st century, it can be said that this trope applies to China no longer.
It should also be noted that at various points of Chinese history, the empire has gained territory, lost territory, regained territory, or even split up and later reunited. Both the Warring States and Three Kingdoms periods follow after the fall of a major dynasty (the ancient Zhou and imperial Han respectively) and involved disparate successor states vying among each other for influence. They were succeeded by the Qin Dynasty (recognized as the first actual "Chinese" empire) and the Jin Dynasty respectively.
And on top of that, apart from the Yuan dynasty which was part of the Mongolian Empire, the Qing dynasty had the largest territory in the history of China. Even with the loss noted above, the current Chinese territory is still larger than most of the territories in other dynasties.
Now that we come to Taiwan, the actual title as a country is the Republic of China, as opposed to the People's Republic of China that serves as the title for the mainland proper. Formerly a part of China between 1945 ~ 1949, the territory developed its own distinct nationality when it became the refuge of the Chinese Nationalist government in 1949. For awhile, it continued to represent China and even retained its UN seat until 1971, when it was given to the PRC. As time went on and the government became more native, the claim to being the sole representative of China was de-emphasized to the point where it no longer exists in fact (theory is another question; see below). While relations with the mainland have thawed over the years, it is still uncertain at this point in time what Taiwan actually is: the remnant territory of the former Chinese government or an independent country in its own right? However it goes about it, declaring for one or the other has repercussions that would adversely affect the territory and its international relationships.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At one point it was a Central European superpower, spanning from the Baltic Sea on the north to the Black Sea in the south. The Commonwealth managed to successfully invade what would later become the impenetrable Russian Empire. Twice. They managed to survive near-total Swedish invasion, while defending themselves from Hungary, the Cossacks and other neighbours at the same time. They also saved Austria, and by extension, the rest of Europe, in 1683. Internal bickering, noble houses and confederations selling out to neighbouring superpowers, and general anarchy — all this led to the Commonwealth's three-stage partitions at the end of 18th century. Although Poland managed to rebuild some of its holdings after WWI, its current, post-WWII size is very, very unimpressive. Still, Poland's current borders are quite close to the way they used to be, pre-Commonwealth.
The country's anthem speaks volumes of this trope, the lyrics beginning with the phrase "Poland is not yet lost..."
Applies more to the Lithuanian half of the Commonwealth. Before joining together with Poland, Lithuania was a vast empire stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Even as part of the Commonwealth, much of former Lithuanian territory was captured by the rising Russian Empire while its aristocracy largely became Polonized. It is now a tiny country on the Baltic. On the other hand, it did retake its old capital Vilnius from the Poles after World War II.
The Dutch Empire once consisted of the following: South Africa, Formosa (Currently Taiwan), Suriname, Sri Lanka and Indonesia (not including their various coastal settlements in Africa, America and Asia). The remnants of this empire are a few islands in the Caribbean and a large influences in all kinds of languages, ranging from Afrikaans, English and even Japanese.
The Dutch Province of Friesland used to be an kingdom stretching from Belgium to Denmark and Cologne. Since the middle ages its power declined and now it's one of the least populated provinces.
Vatican City is not this to The Papal States: they're both an Absolute Monarchy and The Theocracy ruled by The Pope, the Papal States extended for the Italian regions of Lazio, Umbria, and Romagna (the eastern half of Emilia Romagna) while Vatican City is two hills and a castle in and near Rome, but if Vatican City claimed any solution of continuity with the Papal States, it would re-open a political contention with Italy that neither country wants to deal with again, thus Vatican City is an entirely new creation that just happens to be easily mistaken for this.
If you believe some Christian fundamentalists, the Vatican is the last remnant of the actual Roman Empire, as is needed for their end times prophecies that the Roman Empire is still existing in the modern times. According to their interpretation the prophecies of Daniel in the Book of Daniel forsaw four empires, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia and Rome, that would remain perpetually active. Thus, Rome can't fall completely: for them, the part of Revelation that says that the Beast (the last empire) was wounded and then heals is a metaphor of the Roman Empire resurrecting, whether as the EU or as a World Government or as a literal restored Roman Empire with the Pope as leader. Of course, other interpretations exist, and some say that the continuation of Rome and fourth beast is actually Islam (the rationale is that whether Rome was continued by the Caliphate when the Turks took Constantinople and the Sultan Mehmet II proclaimed himself to be Ceasar, or that Rome was never the fourth empire but was the Islamic Caliphate since the beginning) or Russia (basically the same idea, with Moscow proclaimed as the Third Rome after the fall of Constantinople, although this theory was more popular during ironically the existence of the atheist USSR and not so much nowdays when Islam is seen more as the big bad guy for Fundies).
The Kievan Rus' (the original East Slavic state) used to occupy what is now Northern Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries CE. It was a powerful state on par with the Western kingdoms whose royalty intermarried with the West. Then the Mongols came, completely devastating the princedom. In the following centuries, the nation would never again regain the former glory, although there were several attempts, such as Galicia-Volhynia, Svitrigailo's faction in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Ruthenian Cossack state (eventually annexed by the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great). Ukraine considers itself to be an heir to the Kievan Rus', especially since the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was originally the capital of the princedom. Interestingly, the current territory of Ukraine (the second-largest nation in Europe after Russia) is not that much smaller than that of the Kievan Rus' at the height of its power (however, only central and western Ukraine correspond to old Ruthenian core territories, while southern and eastern Ukraine was colonized much later). Military and economic power is a different story, though. It's telling that the anthem of Ukraine starts with the words "Ukraine's [glory and freedom] are not dead yet".
Incidentally, the Grand Princes of Moscow (and later, the Tsars of Russia) were descended from a collateral line of the Kievan Rus', and they claimed to be the rightful heirs of the Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks by virtue of the fact that one of their rulers married a Byzantine princess. If you've been reading this list closely, you might have noticed a common theme by now.
There's a micronation called "Romanov Empire" lead by a guy named Anton Bakov who have been trying for decades to purchase a piece of land to create what they consider is the legit successor state of the Russian Empire.
Yugoslavia was originally an idea by Serb nationalists to create a Serbian empire out of the dying embers of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. After World War I, this was going well — Serbia was given most of the Balkan territories of the two now defunct aforementioned empires, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed. Then came World War II and an Axis invasion in 1941. Two resistance movements emerged — a Serbian nationalist movement known as the Chetniks, and a left-wing front known as the Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito. The Partisans won, and retained Yugoslavia as a socialist republic, but Serbia, now rather than being dominant, was one of six equal constituent republics in a federation. After Tito's death, Yugoslavia crumbled until by the late 1990s, only Serbia and Montenegro remained, continuing to call their state 'Yugoslavia' until 2003. In 2006 Montenegro seceded, and while it remains legally disputed, Kosovo has been de facto independent since 2008.
Russia had fallen into this since the The '90s. Under the Soviet Union, Russian influence extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Danube to the Caribbean. They were the first to send a satellite, and then the first humans, into space. In the first post-Soviet decade, its military was engaged in bloody, indecisive war in Chechnya, had to abandon its only space station and struggled to maintain influence over the other former Soviet republics and remain a major power. While Russia managed to recover some of its past glory in the 2000s thanks to a fossil fuel boom and military victories, how long this lasts remains to be seen. Most notably, Russia's political resurgence has been undermined by population decline, brain drain, over-reliance on the volatile fossil fuel industry and crippling sanctions following the country's controversial actions throughout the 2010's (e.g. the annexation of Crimea and interference in foreign politics). The ill-fated 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine only further worsened Russia's standing with the conflict devolving into a quagmire that isolated Russia on the world stage and revealed its military to be little more than a Paper Tiger.
In some sense, the Soviet Union was initially this to the Russian Empire. After defeating Napoleon, Imperial Russia dominated the stretch of territory from the English Channel in the west to the Rockies in the east, spanning most of Europe, all of Asia, and much of North America. In the hundred years afterwards, they lost influence over Central Europe, sold off Russian America, and of course fell apart completely during World War I. In a way though, the Soviet Union at its peak in the Cold War had practically half of the world under its influence much like the United States. Both nations appealed to anti-colonial movements early in the Cold War when possible to buy influence at the expense of the waning European empires, but the Soviet collapse and rising anti-American sentiment has arguably lead to a multi-polar world despite America remaining the sole superpower.
At one time, Croatia was a really good example of this trope. Though not being an empire, but rather an administrative division with certain degree of autonomy within the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Croatia definitely was this in 1594, at the height of ottoman conquest of Europe. It had been reduced to but a shadow of its former self. Fortunately it managed to pull itself from the brink due to a spectacular victory in the Battle of Sisak in which some 8.000-20.000 ottoman soldiers were either slain or drowned, whilst croats suffered a loss of mere 50 soldiers. This period also gave birth to a phrase "reliquiae reliquiarum olim inclyti regni Croatiae" ("remnants of the remnants of the once great kingdom of Croatia").
Mexico had been a literal empire (emperor and all) for two short periods in the 19th century and for a short period of time officially governed over Central America (which would become the United Provinces of Central America, which still lives on in the flags of its former member states if nowhere else) and much of what is now the Southwest of the US. Mexico is still a big country by all accounts, but it's nowhere near "empire" big. However, in a weird inversion of this trope, the actual control of the central government is actually stronger todaynote If you ignore the drug war that is than when it nominally controlled "Alta California" and "Tejas".
During the existence of the First Mexican Empire a civil war broke out in Costa Rica between loyalists to the Empire and republicans. The loyalists won but, ironically, for the moment they won the Mexican Empire had been abolished for months (communications were very slow back then) thus when the lovalists proclaim the loyalty of the country to Emperor Agustin de Iturbide (who was long ousted by the time) technically Costa Rica became this for a few months; the literal last vestige of the once vast Mexican Empire and the only place where Emperor Iturbide was recognized as ruler (though not for long as republicans regain power easily when the news of the downfall arrived).
Belgium used to have an empire several times its own size when its king Leopold II managed to make what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo his personal property and Belgium later took it over as a "normal" colony. Nowadays Belgium is reduced to bickering over who gets to vote in the Brussels constituency and delicious waffles. On the other hand Belgium has mostly stopped massacring people in Africa, which is nice. In addition, Brussels serves as the headquarters for NATO and de-facto capital of the European Union.
Jordan is arguably an example as, while not The Remnant of a unified state/empire, it's the last state ruled by the Hashemite dynasty. The Hashemites were the rulers of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam, and for centuries were vassals to the Ottomans (whose Sultan used the empire's possession of Mecca to proclaim himself Caliph up until the new Republic of Turkey abolished the Caliphate in 1924). In 1916, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali revolted against the Ottomans and, with British aid, led the Arab Revolt which liberated many Arab lands from Ottoman rule over the following two years. Sharif Hussein declared himself "King of the Arab Lands", but British and French politicking prevented a unified Arab state from forming. Instead, Hussein was allowed to rule over the newly-formed Kingdom of Hejaz (the western part of the Arabian peninsula, along the Red Sea coast), and his sons Abdullah and Faisal were granted rule over the carved-out states of the Emirate of Transjordan and Mandatory Iraq, respectively, both states under the "protection" of the British (Interestingly, Faisal attempted to declare an independent Arab state in the French Mandate of Syria, but the revolt was put down by the French and left Faisal dependent on the British, who allowed him to become the King of Iraq in recognition of his popularity among Arabs, provided he stay loyal to them). Sharif Hussein soon proved unreliable to Britain, who switched their patronage to the rivals of the Hashemites, the Saudis, whose leader, Ibn Saud, was building a state of his own in Eastern Arabia. Ibn Saud soon conquered The Hejaz (with Sharif Hussein forced into exile in Transjordan), and was eventually incorporated into the new state of Saudi Arabia. Faisal's branch of the family lasted a few more decades as Iraq was granted full independence from Britain in 1932, but Faisal's grandson (Faisal II) was killed in 1958 during a nationalist coup by military officers who felt that despite nominal independence, the Iraqi Hashemites were still in essence British puppets. Today, Jordan (which was granted full independence in 1946) is still ruled by the Hashemites, under Abdullah's great-grandson Abdullah II, in a relative contsitutional monarchy that, while still granting real political power to the monarch, is far more liberal than the other monarchies of the region.
In a small-scale example, countless chains of businesses, typically in the retail and/or food sectors, have fallen off the map either completely or partially as a result of changing markets, internal issues, or simple bad luck. For instance, while RadioShack used to be everywhere, thanks to their bankruptcies and sale to Sprint (which would itself be bought by T-Mobile), only a few stragglers remain, typically independent franchisees who continue to use the RadioShack name and branding. Other places may be basically debranded versions of what they were before and may continue to offer similar products (especially in the cases of fast-food joints). Here's a blog that chronicles many of said broken chains.
While Egypt was falling into and then in the first century of its 3rd Intermediate Period, its fellow Bronze Age empire of Assyria was in a vestigial empire phase of its own, contracting to its core territories in the wake of the Bronze Age Collapse, and remaining so for just over a century. Unusually for this trope, it then bounced back, taking advantage of the fact that pretty much everyone around them had fared worse to found an iron age Neo-Assyrian Empire that would last for three centuries and reach farther than the Middle Assyrian Empire ever had.
Bulgaria, twice. The first Bulgarian empire in the early Middle Ages encompassed the country's modern territory plus those of Romania, Moldova, Macedonia, and parts of Greece, Albania, Serbia and Turkey. Some time after its destruction it was revived as a smaller empire, but still spanning over much of the Balkans early on before it got reduced to what is now Northern Bulgaria and Southern Romania. After it too fell, its people struggled for centuries to liberate themselves and the country was finally restored and its goals for national unity initially featured regaining all territories of the Second empire. While the third state was initially a monarchy band called itself the same as its earlier incarnations ("Tsarstvo" literally means "empire" from Tsar = Caesar = Emperor), its rulers and citizens now thought of it as the kingdom, not The Empire.
Interestingly enough, Romania used to be an empire in ancient times, called Dacia back then. Dacia (ancient kingdom comprising Romania and Moldova) used to be a powerful empire and one of the biggest threats to the Roman Republic under Julius Caesar under the rule of the mighty king Burebista (reign: 82-44 BCE). Dacia under Burebista managed to conquer between 60 BCE until the king's death in 44 BCE many people, tribes and kingdoms such as the celtic tribes in the Balkans and Central Europe (Boii, Scordiscii; the Greek city state in the western shores of the Black Sea (from Odessa to Apollonia); the Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace; some germanic tribes(Marcomanni, Bastarnae) and some sarmatian tribes. Burebista's Dacian Empire stretched its boundaries from west, Bohemia (Czech Republic) and Bavaria (SE Germany) to east, Odessa, Ukraine and from the north, Southern Poland and Belarus and to the south, Thrace (European Turkey, Bulgaria and N-E Greece). Burebista was referred by governor of the then-Greek city colony of Dyonisopolos as "the First and the Greatest of all the Thracian kings" or the king of kings of his own empire. However, the Roman Republic under Caesar declared his empire, alongside with the Parthian Empire as the two great threats of Rome because Burebista supported Pompey during the brutal Roman civil war against Julius Caesar (49 BC — 48 BC) and was defeated in Greece and was killed in the Ptolemaic Empire of Egypt. But Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC and Burebista met the same fate afterwards in the same year. After Burebista's assassination, his empire was split in 4 and later 5 kingdoms in Dacia. After that, Decebalus (reign: 87 AD — 106 AD) unified Dacia one last time as a defensive kingdom against the rapidly expanding Roman Empire, but Decebalus' kingdom was a shadow of its former powerful self and the Dacian Kingdom was absorbed by Rome in 106 AD. Burebista's Dacian Empire (82 BC — 44 BC) is the only event in Romania's history when the state became a mighty empire which was a short lived rival of Ancient Rome.
The Dalai Lama currently resides in Dharamsala, a small district in Himachal Pradesh, India. The seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile and the de facto capital of Tibetan Buddhism, after the Chinese takeover of the then de facto independent Tibet. This could be seen as the last vestige of the once large Tibetan Empire that actually ruled the area extending from the Tarim basin to the Himalayas and Bengal, and from the Pamirs to what are now the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Yunnan (yes, ironically the Tibetans once ruled the Chinese).
In the Virtual Youtuber scene, as of April 2024 the agency Nijisanji is increasingly seen as this. When it was founded in February 2018, its stated goal was to promote the use of Live2D models and live streaming as opposed to the 3D and clips format popularized by Kizuna Ai from 2016-2017 (this is reflected in the Insistent Terminology the company uses for its talents: "Virtual Livers" or simply "Livers" Pronunciation ライバー in Japanese, a portmanteau of "live" "streamers"). Nijisanji took off with several of their Livers cracking into "most subscribed channel" listings by 2019 and several high profile collaborations with companies, and by 2022 had a total of 159 active Livers spread across Nijisanji Japan (NijiJP), Nijisanji Indonesia (NijiID), Nijisanji Korea (NijiKR) and Nijisanji English (NijiEN). This let the agency dominate the VTuber space even with ID and KR being folded into the main JP branch in April 2022. But by April 2024, 12 out of the 19 ex-ID and 15 out of the 27 ex-KR Livers had departed in a slew of graduations in 2023, and a series of scandals and PR blunders in 2023 and 2024 badly damaged the agency's reputation. In addition, while other companies like hololive and Canada-based Phase-Connect have expanded into overseas markets note hololive having Hololive English and Hololive Indonesia in addition to the main Japan branch, Phase Connect introducing Japanese talents , Nijisanji only has a series of bungled attempted expansions note Nijisanji India was briefly renamed Nijisanji English before returning to its original name and then being shuttered in 2021 with all 3 talents graduating, Nijisanji Shanghai and Taipei likewise both closed down and all talents graduated, the popular Indonesia branch lost nearly all its momentum after it was consolidated with the main branch to the point many of the ex-ID Livers decided to leave . This culminated in a financial report in March 2024, which was gloomy enough that the stocks of Nijisanji parent company ANYCOLOR plummeted to the point stock circuit-breakers explanation a system in stock markets where a huge change in price activates a freeze in buying and selling, this being done to prevent situations where people panic-sell in large numbers triggered. A series of events announced after that financial report's release (including 3D models for their NijiEN Livers, the release of a long-delayed AR concert, the rerelease of older merchandise) were, rather than being seen as a cause for celebration, noted to be not dissimilar from the "love bombing" tactic used in abusive relationships and a sign of desperation with the Financial Year 2024 report being due in June and a General Shareholder Meeting being scheduled for July. Additional info In addition, even members of Nijisanji Japan, the main branch, have dramatically reduced how much streaming they do and a number of them expressed dissatisfaction with the current situation (in a chatting stream Takamiya Rion went so far as to admit she was "resigned" to stay with Nijisanji), as the lack of direction and care by the agency have seen many of the members suffer huge drop offs in terms of viewership (e.g. older members like Shizuka Rin or Higuchi Kaede of the first wave, who once drew concurrent viewers in the thousands, would now barely crack a few hundred). Worse, some members have even mentioned having trouble making ends meet (as under Nijisanji's business model, Livers do not receive a salary and only receive 2% of the revenue from sale of merchandise, with most income coming from superchats and donations... which means a drop in viewership is particularly devastating to them).
(1204–1261), which was formed by refugees of the Imperial court and aristocracy after Crusaders occupied Constantinople. It managed to reconquer its old capital after more than half a century. The restored empire then had yet another vestigial empire in Trebizond, above.