The moment I realised the 'Byzantines' were Romans:

This may sound completely and utterly stupid but...it all changed when I watched the Kings and Generals video on what was lost in the 1204 sack of Constantinople.

That was when the mental barrier I had in my head between 'Rome' and 'Byzantium' began to unravel.

I had for a long time heard of the sack as a baffling decision, a treacherous attack, or a Christian tragedy, but never knew the specifics of the plundering. And to see and hear in that video about the IMMENSE amount of artwork that was vandalised completely shifted my mindset. Because what stood out to me was not that it was just artwork- but that it was CLASSICAL artwork. In a MEDIEVAL city so far away from Rome that I believed had discarded its classical heritage to focus exclusively on religious orthodoxy.

What really did it for me was the listing of there being a statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. I knew of no such statue in the Holy Roman Empire. And it made me rethink my ideas about there being such a hard difference between Roman and 'Byzantine' - "if the Byzantines were just another successor state like the HRE, then why did they have such strong classical ties and artwork to the ancient world? Why would they have a statue of Romulus and Remus, the founders? Did they consider them also to be their founders?'

And so it was from there that I did much more digging, curious as to the identity of these people. I have always had an immense interest in world history, but the ERE to me until then was something I just liked on a superficial, aesthetic level what with their dressware and capital city's location. I was also swayed somewhat by the (incorrect) image of the state being some exotic oriental despotate of secrecy, shadows, and mysticism.

Understanding the material link the East Romans maintained to their classical heritage was what kickstarted my fascination with the state that turned from 'oh hey, that's a cool capital location/drip, now let's focus back on the real Rome!' to 'wait a minute, who were these people? What exactly was their link to classical antiquity in the middle ages? And what continuity is there between old and New Rome?'