Yoohoo, BKB is back.

1 - I'm not knowledgeable with Byzantine history, or at least not enough to give my opinion on this.

2 - Actually, MTW was my second (gaming) experience with the Byzantine Empire, the first being Age of Kings.
What I saw in MTW kind of supported the idea of the Byzantine Empire I got from AoK: military-wise, they rely on specialized unit, often-heavy (Cataphracts, Varagian Guards) and often old-school (according to west european standards, though it might also be described as "easternish" rather than old-school, ie. scale armor, full armored horses, greek fire, and so on).

Oh, and for some reason, they are always purple. Whether it is in AoK, MTW, M2TW or Europa Universalis. There's probably a reason to this, but I can't figure it out.