Most Roman emperors didn't have children, they adopted. Mary Beard writes that "The so-called Julio-Claudian ‘dynasty’ was cobbled together from adoptions, marriages, and last-minute fixes... it was a family only in the loosest sense." (SPQR, p.406). Augustus managed to convince the Roman elite that his claim to succession was more valid than... See more
reddit.comWhy did Roman emperors mostly adopt, while European monarchs were obsessed with bloodlines?
‘Good emperors’ and ‘bad emperors’?
Mary Beard • SPQR
Until their half-brother Edward had children of his own, their place in the line of succession made their marriages a matter of intense political significance. There had never yet been a reigning queen of England, and the prospect was an alarming one: ‘man is the head of woman’, St Paul had declared,4 which meant that female rule was both
... See moreHelen Castor • Elizabeth I
For a millennium, rivalries between and among Byzantine noble families propelled public life, with the kind of bloody factional maneuvering that makes the Tudors look like the Waltons in comparison.
Though political power was usually a male privilege in Byzantium, a striking feature of the Byzantine tales is the prominence of women as political... See more
Though political power was usually a male privilege in Byzantium, a striking feature of the Byzantine tales is the prominence of women as political... See more