AHC: Bosphoran Emperors of Rome

jocay

Banned
The Bosporan Kingdom was an ancient Greco-Scythian state located in the Crimea. It was notably the longest surviving client state of Rome, only falling to the Goths in the fourth century AD. The ruling dynasts, the Mithradatids were descended maternally from the Roman general Mark Antony and related to the Julio-Claudians in addition to several of Alexander's generals Antigonos, Seleucus and Antipater and the Pontic king Mithridates. Tiberius Julius Rhescuporis V was a contemporary to multiple Roman emperors from Gordian to Aurelian and the Crisis of the Third Century. Is there a chance to have them seize power, perhaps in the interregnum between Aurelian's death and the succession of Tacitus? Rhescuporis himself would die in the following year but a brief power grab by the descendants of Mark Antony would be interesting enough?
 
It doesn't seem like much of a power base to draw from. It would take an Emperor making one of them a legate or some kind of imperial governor I would imagine.
 
Being descended from the Julians or any other prestigious Roman family would not in and of itself automatically lead to a legitimate claim on the empire. Avidius Cassius was a direct descendant of Augustus through his great-granddaughter Drusilla (the sister of Caligula), and his army turned on him and killed him in spite of that
 
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