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alternatehistory.com
A/N: Since I'm new here, I figured I would start with an alternate Roman timeline based on an emperor who doesn't seem to have a lot written about him. That and I've sometimes wondered how his reign could have turned out if a few things happened differently. This is more or less an experiment for me, so I'm not sure where this timeline will go. Any kind of feedback, comments or criticism, would be appreciated so that I might better develop this thread.
THE REIGN OF ROMULUS AUGUSTUS
A Boy is now an Emperor
AD 475
Orestes, recently promoted to the rank of magister militum of the Western Roman Empire, launches a sudden coup d’état in order to seize control of the government from Emperor Julius Nepos. By August 28, with most of the foederati units supporting his revolution, Orestes’s army marches on Ravenna on August 28 with little opposition in the way.
During the city’s capture, Nepos attempts to flee to Dalmatia via across the Adriatic Sea where he intends to create a “government-in-exile” until he can reclaim Ravenna. The unexpected betrayal of General Ovida brings the deposed emperor’s plans to a premature end. Although he had briefly contemplated the idea of remaining loyal to Nepos, mainly because of the fact that his rule was supported by the Eastern Roman Empire, Ovida quickly considers other factors such as:
The Eastern Empire was currently enduring its own civil war as Zeno and Basiliscus fought over the throne, and thus Constantinople would be unable to render assistance to its western counterpart.
After the coup in Ravenna, Orestes would most likely proclaim himself emperor, thereby leaving the position of magister militum available to a new candidate.
Upon reaching the conclusion that Nepos’s short reign was finished and further resistance was ultimately futile, Ovida kills the unsuspecting Nepos just as the latter was ready to depart to Dalmatia. But when he presents the body to Orestes, hoping to ingratiate himself to the new regime and perhaps be rewarded with Orestes's office, his actions fail to produce the desired result. While it is true that Nepos’s claim to the western throne died with him, Orestes had hoped to keep him alive as a bargaining tool that could be used to gain recognition from the eastern court, thereby legitimizing his rebellion. He ultimately chooses to arrest Ovida, deciding that an emperor’s murderer would have to suffice once diplomatic channels with Constantinople were resumed.
Ovida’s rationale behind his decision to betray Nepos was further proven wrong when Orestes made it public that he did not intend to claim the title of Augustus for himself. Though he was of mixed Roman and barbarian origin, his Pannonian roots made him at the very least a plausible option for the Romans. In any case, the position of emperor in the West had been so diminished throughout the course of the last century that it now only nominally ruled over an equally reduced Western Empire. True power, Orestes realized, or what was left of it remained with the magister militum. As such, he retains his command over the military but appoints his 14 year-old son as the new emperor on October 31. The reign of Romulus Augustus has begun, but the responsibility of stabilizing the West must fall to his father if the boy-emperor is to eventually become more than a de facto figurehead.
Son of a Rebel / Emperor of an Empire
[Orestes was a true and virtuous Roman, driven by an unyielding sense of patriotism for the Empire and a father's love for his only son—or, at least, that was how history remembered him. Later, some historians began to question his legacy, claiming that the Magister Militum was a ruthless opportunist for betraying one Emperor and turning the next (his own son, no less) into a powerless figurehead in order to rule the Empire from the shadow.]
[Although history came to regard Romulus Augustus as a dutiful son who avenged his father's death in the Gothic Wars, even this view has been challenged by those who point out that the Emperor made very little effort to honor his father. As such, some have claimed that Romulus did everything to distance himself from Orestes's memory—short of passing damnatio memoriae on his own father.]