- the Orthodox Church in the Rus' has never been directly tied to Constantinople in the same way the Catholic commnuities were to the pope. It was more a civilisational alignment than religious subservience, proven by the occasional enmity of the Rus' towards Byzantine like in the sack of Constantinople. Catholic church was never even considered, as the allegiance to the Orthodox was mainly a way of establishing relations with the Byzantine empire.By introducing female orcs this game can go very right or very wrong. Female orcs always embody some short of heavy femdom, not really my cup of tea but hey! I won't blame you if you like green pussy
I think you do know how Russia and France differ from each other, but here I go:
The main difference was the manner how religion was organized. In the west there was well-fucntioning Roman Catholic Church, while in the east there was pro-Constantinople Orthodox Church. Because of this the Orthodox Church was even more heavily politized than Roman Catholic Church, and as Byzantium weakened and local states grew in their power autonomous Orthodox Churches sprung up.
Also, the initial Kievan Rus' Orthodox Church was extremely weak. If you look what the first Metropolitans of Kiev did, you find nothing worthy of mentioning which is rather weird as we are well into historical era. This only means that the existing records were deliberately censored, and when it comes to Russia this likely means to hide rather embarrassing political incidents. To give some ideas how wild these times were, Vladimir who Christianized Kievan Rus' first considered converting to Judaism (Khazarians were Jews back then), but rejected this as God had clearly abandoned Jews for they did no longer lived in Israel. Then Vladimir considered Islam and actually was quite found of this religion for it allowed him to have multiple of wives, but then rejected it as Islam forbade alcohol. According to Russian sources Vladimir said: Drinking is the joy of all Rus'. We cannot exist without its pleasure. This is a real historical quote! Then came the turn of Catholic Church and of this Vladimir found just boring, before realizing how awesome the Orthodox faith was and converted (yes, the propaganda is heavy here).
Overall it is rather pointless to compare western and eastern feudalism to each other. Yaroslav was the last strong ruler of Kievan Rus' after which this state simply collapsed and for a century there was a constant civil war between numerous local princes. This civil war only came to an end when Mongols arrived and pretty much destroyed Russia, after which two centuries of Tatar Yoke was followed. Meanwhile in the west matters were much more peaceful, and while English, French, and German monarchies remained relatively powerless they never encountered calamities like Russians did.
- Russia/Muscovy doesn't come into the picture until well into the 17th century, so all parts of your arguments tied to it don't make sense (like the Tatar yoke or Muscovian traditions)
- I'm not sure what's the source for your Vladimir thing is. It reminds me of a play on a Jewish classic called Sefer haKuzari. The Khazarians themselves were not Jewish, at best their leadership was.
