[quote=@Dinh AaronMk] Technically in a sense the Mongolian Empire was rather successful in its goals of creating a unified state and what brought it down wasn't any sort of military incompetence but Mongol law and tradition really, which was as successful as any Mongol would imagine. The thing with this post is that you're trying to frame Genghis Khan's ultimate goal in a modern or even a theory of a modern complex framework, even if "own the world" is an inevitably simple one. But I doubt the real goal of Temujin's conquest was really to do that. The mission of Genghis Khan was likely more along the lines of forming a unified Mongol state through finding and fighting external enemies, as they did. And then taking the people they subjugated and finding a common enemy for them and the Mongols and pitting the combined armies against them. Rinse, wash, and repeat until the Great Khan dies and succession dictates his sons get equal territories and powers. The other strength of the Mongols was their practice of conscripting their subjugated states into their armies with more-or-less the same equal standing in its structure. Being tribal they didn't really bother with trying to justify any sort of religious morality under Tengrism as most people so they weren't as persecutory as the peoples they rolled in under their banner. So they were much more flexible than any other armies. Plus it was the classical medieval era anyways, so modern nationalism didn't exist so there wasn't as rigid a definition of who you were in relation to your neighbors and your exact practices. But in any case, I wouldn't call Genghis Khan a military failure since the division of the Empire went about as would be expected by Mongols at the time. And their Empires likewise. But in the framework of the thread that is not "best Empire" but "best leader" the question of the Empire's health isn't really a factor since it occurred only after his death. If because he wanted to avoid his family beating the shit out of itself over who claims the entire thing so declared it all would be divided equally with each son being Great Khan in their own right. He was a by-gone factor by the time legal division happened. It's a similar deal you find in other Empires. The Carloingian Empire didn't so much "collapse" as we might think but just sort of lapsed out of existence, because also fuck having French sons kill French sons. Or holding multiple titles of the same strength. [/quote] A lot of this comes down to why Empires happen. Megalomania only describes a few of them. Most of the time, there is some social or economic drive that causes the Empire to happen. As you alluded to, Genghis Khan's Empire was a snowball. He united a group of relatively diverse warrior tribes. When your court is filled with people who have old feuds with each other, and they have a penchant for creating new feuds over the sparse resources in your lands, then you have to keep them occupied so they don't break everything you have created. The Carolingian empire is sort of an after-the-fact concept. Early Medieval Europeans didn't think about these things like we do. To them, the Franks were a people, and the kingdom was a land-contract. From Charlemagne's point of view, splitting the Empire amongst his sons isn't the end of his accomplishment because he still accomplished what a Frankish King was supposed to accomplish: he saw Frankish hegemony spread across western Europe into places that had previously been held by other peoples. For him, dividing the Empire amongst his sons wouldn't be so much more different then a modern business mogul splitting up his corporate empire. The win is still there, it just isn't all under one contract. (this is a time when titles were fairly nominal. Hence why the Crown just sort of lapsed from the Merovingians to the Carolingians with no real contest. No civil war, no murder or rebellion. Just a haircut.)