Defender

It is 1449, and the fading embers of the Roman Empire are dangerously close to burning out.

Constantine has finally ascended the throne as the eleventh of his name, but he inherits an empty treasury and a city bitterly divided by a controversial religious alliance with the Pope.

As riots consume the streets inside the walls, a terrifying new threat materialises outside. The ruthless young Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II takes power, determined to claim Constantinople as his ultimate prize.

Surrounded by a shrinking territory and forced to rely on foreign mercenaries, Constantine must rally a fractured city. From blood-soaked borders to the threat of a terrifying new siege engine, the empire’s survival walks a razor’s edge.

It falls once more to Gabriel, the emperor’s fiercely loyal bodyguard, to shield his master from a deadly web of politics and steel.

The second instalment in SJA Turney’s epic trilogy on the Fall of Constantinople, the last bastion of the Roman Empire.