YMMV / The Sarantine Mosaic

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Chariot racing really was Serious Business in Eastern Rome, and the Blue and Green demes were real factions that possessed fairly significant political clout.
  • Sarantine characters use a mixture of Greek and Latin, and they have both Greek and Latin names. This can come across as a historical mixup a la Ancient Grome, but it's Truth in Television—the Byzantines mostly spoke Greek, but Justinian's native tongue was Latin, and it makes perfect sense for a Byzantine-inspired setting to include both languages.
  • Emperor Valerius II and Empress Alixana's backstories are almost identical to the real-life backstories of Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora, respectively; Justinian was born a rural peasant of Thracian or Illyrian origin, and Theodora was an actress and probably a sex worker. Despite this, several reviews of the duology dismiss Valerius and Alixana's as origins as unrealistic (or even problematic and offensive, in Alixana's case), presumably not realizing that both of these characters are based on real people.