because the lords were a bit busy killing each other so that they could be the target of plots and assassinations,
in addition to the long defeat against the Turks
and then there was the fourth crusade....
All that stuff happened after the Investiture Controversy was over. Some of it happened
over a hundred years later.
In the first part of the eleventh century, the Empire was insanely powerful and extremely rich, and its leaders had recently spent several decades eradicating internal dissensions and other related issues. It was as well positioned as any country to 'take advantage' of the weakness of its neighbors. And many of those neighbors
were very weak: the Buyids that ruled Iran and Mesopotamia, the scattered Turkic rulers of the Caucasus and Levant, the fragmenting Fatimid khilafa, the disunited emirates of Sicily, and the civil war-wracked HRE.
The problem is that projecting power is difficult, even more so in an era reliant on horse- and manpower to sustain campaigns rather than the internal combustion engine. In such a context, what might appear to be weakness from afar might not look the same when your troops are bogged down in a bloody stalemate half a continent away. Orlais and Tevinter are not very close to each other. The qunari aren't much closer. Also, wars aren't cheap, and plenty of rulers were averse to spending money just for a chance to roll the iron dice.
Finally, there are specific issues with getting there. It's well and good for one qunari dreadnought to make a jaunt down to the Waking Sea, but you can't sustain an invasion off of one dreadnought. You need local harbors to mount a campaign, and lots of dreadnoughts, and lots of troops. Would the qunari even have the shipping capability to fight a long war in the Free Marches, or Orlais? It's pretty dubious, and even if they did, for that kind of expenditure they'd probably need to have a lot more reason to go than "they look kinda weak-ish now". Fighting overland ain't any easier a proposition, because there are a few countries in the way. Nevarra might be dealing with its own issues at the moment, but fighting Nevarra in order to fight the Marchers and eventually Orlais or Ferelden...well, that's basically an attempt at continental conquest, and ain't
nobody got the ability to try something like that.
Hence the Byzantine comparison. Sure, the HRE was weak in the eleventh century, but taking advantage of that weakness would have required a fairly incredible military commitment. It'd be unrealistic to take such a commitment for granted. A Byzantine Emperor would've been about as sanguine about his ability to take and hold Rome and Milan as a Tevinter archon would be about reclaiming Val Royeaux or Starkhaven - that is to say, "probably not very".
I fully expect that qunari or Tevinter agents will be involved in attempting to take advantage of the conflict in Orlais and Ferelden in some fashion, but an outright attempt at military conquest seems beyond the pale to me.
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