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The title (Kaiser-i Rum) passed down to his dynasty until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.For the first century after 1453, the Ottomans were loud about their claims. As Constantinople had been the capital of the Caesars for about 1123 years, Mehmed II believed that by right of conquest he could claim to be the successor of the Caesars. This would also give the Sultan (called Sultan Basileus by the Orthodox subjects) a religiously based legitimacy among Orthodox people in the Empire. The Orthodox Church also viewed the Sultan as protector of Orthodoxy and believed that God had raised the Turks and allowed them to conquer Byzantium in order to safeguard the Church from falling under Catholic domination (through unity of the Churches, which many Byzantines disagreed with) and heretic ways.In 1466, the Greek philosopher George of Trebizond legitimized this claim as:“No one should doubt that you are the Emperor of the Romans. The person, who legally holds the capital city of the Empire, is the Emperor and the capital city of the Roman Empire is Constantinople.”Arab and Persian authors considered the Empire to be a continuation of the old Roman realm. In Sumatra, Malacca and the Indonesian archipelago, the Sultan was known as the “Raja Rum”, the Roman Raja .Mehmed II, viewing himself as legal inheritor of the Roman Empire, planned to restore territories that once belonged to the Empire. In 1480, an Ottoman army invaded Italy (though the invasion ended up being a failure).Of course, the Holy Roman Empire in the West, seeing itself as the legitimate Roman Empire, refused to acknowledge those claims by the Ottomans. This was especially true for the reign of Charles V (1500–58), when the empire reached a high point. His ambitions clashed with those of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520 - 1566).The Venetian resident at the Porte in 1537 wrote to the doge:“Sultan Sulaiman always calls Rome, Rome. He talks about the Emperor and his title of Emperor with hatred. He desires himself to be called the Emperor.”As Ottoman expansion slowed, although the Ottoman Sultans continued to be titled ‘Caesars’ until the end of their dynasty, their claims about being Roman Emperors were toned down. By the 19th century at most, I doubt anyone thought that the Ottoman Sultans were Caesars.

The Imperial Star Destroyer entered the planet’s atmosphere, hovering over what was identified to be the largest city. Captain Ike was in command of the Star Destroyer ‘Subversion’, where he stood on the bridge, viewing the city below. The planet was actually quite beautiful, it reminded him of Alderaan, his homeworld, before …His thoughts were interrupted when an aide announced that they had finally received an official transmission in Basic, rather than whatever was coming from the city below them.“This is Captain Ike, representative of the Galactic Empire.”“This is the United States of America Department of Defense. We wish to make visual contact with a representative of your people.”“That would be acceptable. Send us your coordinates, and we will send down a shuttlecraft with a diplomatic staff including myself.”“Understood. We will send those coordinates. Welcome to Planet Earth.”Across the planet, news outlets reported this alien contact. The ship was moving away from China, and heading across the Pacific towards a designated location in New Mexico.The UN Security Council has announced they have appointed nine specialists to act as the official representatives. And while nobody was told of this (for fear of being detected), the US and Russian militaries have put their nuclear weapons on standby.Aboard the Star Destroyer, a technician reported to her superior officer that one of the Turbolasers appear to have been clogged with some substance in the planet’s atmosphere. They asked for permission to use a shuttlecraft to fix this issue manually. Normally, a droid would do such work, but the officers were so preoccupied examining the species’ satellite network that they signed off on it without batting an eye.As the technician entered the transport ship, she pulled a data disk from her pocket, while taking note of the proton torpedo shell she had stuffed in the back. She had to get as much Imperial technology to the planet as possible.She had heard rumours of this planet. A few smugglers from Bespin talked about it a couple years before. They had a technology, a very, very powerful technology. One that the Empire would soon discover. She had to make sure the planet wouldn’t turn it over, even if it meant blowing her undercover operation. The rebels needed a new base, and she was going to give them all that and more. She went down to the planet, but not before sending a transmission to the rebel fleet …The Imperial Representatives landed near what appeared to be a military compound, whose name was illegible. Apparently while this planet spoke basic, it didn’t read or write it.As Captain Ike stepped out of the transport craft, he mused how a planet could progress so oddly. They had virtually no presence outside their planet’s magnetic field, yet somehow they had the technology to sustain billions of humanoids. This planet's population was only surpassed by a few core worlds, yet they lived without any food imports.The Captain shook hands with one of the Earthlings. They remarked that they had never made contact with another intelligent race, let alone ones that were indistinguishable from mankind. The Captain inquired as to why there were men in bright orange bags behind them, to which the locals said that they were searching for any dangerous pathogens.Captain Ike began to ask the Earthlings about their customs, when suddenly, another Transporter landed on the planet. Quickly the lone occupant, the Imperial technician, opened the doors. Captain Ike responded in a confused manner, stating that this ship wasn’t authorized to come to the planet.The occupant arrived in a stirred manner. She began claiming that these were evil people, they were a vicious dictatorship who would kill and enslave the people of this planet. Captain Ike immediately dismissed this, stating that species who submitted peacefully to their Imperial government would not be harmed, so long as they remained loyal.The Earthlings became visibly uncomfortable. The lead Earthling stated that they never agreed to annexation. Captain Ike brushed it aside, saying they would talk more about it later: right now he had to interrogate this traitor. The Earthlings stopped him, saying they were now on their planet. One of the Stormtroopers with Ike raised their blaster. The guards around the Earthlings raised their guns …The battle above the surface of the planet was intense. While the Earthlings had no ships capable of fighting in space, they had surface-flight ships that dominated the skies, easily destroying any Imperial fighters. The rebels used this to their advantage, luring Imperial fighters and smaller ships of the main fleet into the atmosphere to be cut to pieces by F-22s.Meanwhile, on the planet, the Rebels learned what this amazing technology was: Computers. While the Empire and Rebels had some basic versions of it, a single portable device on Earth had more power than every holopad in the galaxy put together. With Rebel tech, the Earthlings only needed a couple of rotations to build a defense …Captain Ike was curious as to why the rebels cared so much about this backwater world. The only remarkable thing about it was its incredible food production capacity, something the Empire planned to make good use of. The rebels were putting a lot of what they had into this fight, which encouraged the Empire to send an additional five SDs and a host of other ships to the battle.Suddenly … the rebels retreated. All of their ships jumped into hyperspace. Ike was asked by the captains of the other ships whether they could chase them, but Ike said no. He wanted to make an example out of these Earthlings. The Earthlings couldn’t break their shields even with their strongest weapons, so the Destroyers were sent to go down and level their largest cities, seeing if that would break their will to fight. They had already razed a couple in the earlier fighting, who cared if a few more went down.Yet as they went to do that … the ships stopped. All screens onboard went down. An officer near Ike reported that everything except their communications array was being controlled from somewhere on the planet's surface.Captain Ike began to feel a pit in his stomach, as he heard a message come into the ship …“On behalf of the United Nations of Earth, Captain Ike, you and your ships are under arrest for the destruction of Chicago, Brazilia, St. Petersburg and Beijing. Our technology allows us to completely control your vessel. We will cut your life support if you try anything. Welcome to Earth, bastards …”

There are conflicting stories in answer to this.Before Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr was considered a massive risk for Marvel studios. He had a reputation for bad behavior on set - drugs, drinking, and disruption - and Marvel did not want him for the role. Marvel was instead considering Tom Cruise for the role of Tony Stark. You can actually see how hard Marvel was pushing for Cruise to audition for Tony Stark in the comics themselves - they went so far as to slowly redesign Stark to resemble Cruise:Terrence Howard and Robert Downey Jr were friends at the time of Iron Man’s casting and Howard pushed Marvel hard to give Downey a chance. He staked his reputation on Downey. Marvel originally wanted an unknown actor who would work cheap, since the star of the piece was Iron Man, and it wasn’t an “actor-led” role. However, Howard had clout in the industry at the time (as he still does), Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man) listened to his pitch, and the rest is history. Favreau pushed Marvel hard to let Downey audition for the role. Any talk of Cruise being Iron Man was dropped - though there are rumors Cruise rejected the role a number of times because he didn’t feel Marvel could afford him and he didn’t want to commit to a three picture deal he had no creative control over.Iron Man, needless to say, became a massive hit. For the first film, Howard was actually paid substantially more than Downey. He was coming off of his previously mentioned Oscar win and was considered a top-bill actor. Downey on the other hand (at the time) didn’t have clout or contacts, and Howard (allegedly) had to offer to pay the insurance policy for Downey out of his own salary.Here’s where the story gets messy.Howard’s original claim on why he left the role was that he foresaw that the character of James Rhodes was going to be severely underwritten compared to Tony Stark and he asked to be released from the project after salary negotiations fell apart. He wanted the story to be about Iron Man and War Machine, co-stars and equals. To be perfectly fair though, the character arguably did end up suffering from severe underwriting and was largely marginalized after Iron Man 2, so he wasn’t completely wrong. He’s not even really present for Iron Man’s final scene - the spotlight is instead given to Spider-Man.In contrast we have Cap’s final scenes - which are spent with Sam Wilson rather than Bucky, which made sense as their relationship had seen much more development. So Howard was not completely off base here.However, later on it was revealed that Howard’s agent had been pushing Marvel to increase Howard’s already high salary - which would have put his earnings higher than Downey’s. Marvel (somewhat rightly) decided they needed Downey more than Howard and released him after offering him 1/8 of his salary for Iron Man and being rejected.Some claim that there was a racial component to the decision citing the (much later) fact that Marvel went back and forth with Clark Gregg over his Avengers salary and ended up not only paying him more but writing him a spot on Agents of SHIELD, while the character of Rhodes was first recast then mostly sidelined after Iron Man 2. Some disagree and say that it was Howard’s hubris after his Oscar win that sunk the relationship with Marvel, and that Cheadle was actually better for the role since Howard had aspirations outside of Marvel’s long term plan.Claims of racial bias might not be completely off base, either.Ike Perlmutter who was running the MCU at the time of Iron Man’s success allegedly stated that “no one would notice” if Cheadle was brought in, since “both of them are black” and even allegedly stating “they look the same”. It wasn’t until years later that Kevin Feige convinced Marvel to oust not only Perlmutter, but Alan Fine, Brian Michael Bendis, Dan Buckley, and even Joe Quesada, who he felt were holding back the MCU creatively. He took full creative control for himself. The only reason I mention this is to because Kevin Feige did everything he could to keep Howard after Iron Man, even going so far as to only give Cheadle one hour to make a decision, allegedly in the hopes that it wouldn’t be enough time to decide on such a big commitment and he’d decline.Regardless, most recently, Howard has again changed the story and gone on record as saying it was actually Downey himself that pushed Howard out of the project. Howard claims that Downey was offered an increased salary and the option of splitting that salary with the cast, and “chose to keep it himself”.Downey has never commented on the matter on the record but where Howard’s story falls apart a bit is that later on, when Downey was reportedly paid $50m for Iron Man 3, Downey used his clout to get the rest of the Avengers cast salary increases for Avengers 2 - from $200,000 each to a reported $5m each for the main cast.Negotiations got so heated apparently Downey was ready to walk away from the franchise. Marvel was threatening to recast some of the Avengers (starting with Hawkeye, allegedly) rather than pay them more money, and Downey reportedly said if Marvel did that, they could try and recast him as well and see how well that worked. Marvel caved thanks to Kevin Feige pointing out that Downey would be impossible to recast and that him leaving on a sour note would damage the franchise.This doesn’t seem to match up with Howard’s characterization of him - perhaps he learned from his mistakes or perhaps there was a misunderstanding, but the two stories don’t seem to align.Howard recently said in an interview fans still “ask him to come back” as War Machine - maybe an alternate universe version or something, and he’d be open to it. It also seems like the bad blood between Howard and Downey has settled and the two are at least cordial. Howard was invited to the Avengers Endgame premiere and attended, reuniting with Downey and the rest of the Iron Man cast in seeming good spirits.Lastly, Howard would go on to star in the show Empire which has been a hit in its own right - Howard’s net worth thanks to the show has ballooned to nearly $30m…nowhere near the $100m he claims would have made from the Iron Man franchise but still quite a nice payday for a show where he has extremely high creative control, free of any studio meddling.