WI Aetius survived the assassination attempt in 454 AD?

In 453 Senator Petronius Maximus and Chamberlain Heraclius plotted against Magister Militum Aetius who was celebrating the betrothal of his son Gaudentius to Valentinian's daughter Placidia...
Valentinian was enlisted to the plot in early 454 because he felt intimidated by Aetius... (Aetius had supported the usurper Johannes earlier in his reign and Valentinian was afraid of a revolt from Aetius)
So in 21 Septembre 454 Valentinian killed Aetius with his own hands in Ravenna while the General was delivering his financial account to him...
WI Aetius was informed somehow for the assassination attempt and escaped death?
How would Aetius reacted to the attempted murder? Could he depose the incompetent Valentinian III and proclaim himself Emperor? (Of course this butterflies away the disastrous reigns of Petronius Maximus and some of his succesors...)
 
Given the sorry state of the imperial succession around the time, I'm inclined to say that anyone with half a brain and some military backing could have had a fair shot at claiming the throne. And Aetius had both. The only problem is: would he have wanted it? Western Roman Emperor wasn't exactly a promising career option during these years. Besides, if Valentinian's fears were correct, Aetius was more interested in putting Gaudentius on the throne than himself.

I suspect that, had he survived the attempt, Aetius would have tried to neutralize Valentinian in some fashion, most likely through military force, and placed either Gaudentius or someone else he could have more easily controlled on the throne. In the long term, I'm not sure how much it would change. All it would probably do, in the short term, is substitute the instability of Petronius Maximus's short reign (and its aftermath) with the instability of a fight between Aetius/Gaudentius and Petronius/Valentinian. And any sort of serious instability is going to serve as a cue for Gaiseric's Vandals to swoop down and besiege Rome. Though Aetius would probably have been preferable to Petronius Maximus, in the end its probably too late in the day to prevent the fall of the Western Empire, or even serious alter or delay it.
 
I am pretty sure that Aetius's ultimate target was to elevate Gaudentius to the Purple (with him as the true power behind the throne of course)
By surviving the assassination attempt in 454 he would have deposed Valentinian III and Gaudentius takes the throne easily... since Aetius would be the one pulling the strings i think WRE could have lived a little longer than OTL...
 
Besides the prime target of Aetius after the failed assassination attempt would have been Senator Petronius Maximus and not Valentinian III... In OTL he persuaded Valentinian to kill Aetius and Valentinian was killed by Optila and Thraustila who were Aetius friends (acting under Petronius Maximus's orders of course...) only some months later... By completely eliminating Petronius Maximus in an ATL we have Valentinian III under the complete control of Aetius no sack of Rome occurs Visigoths are still allied with Rome and by having his rear safe Aetius might have assaulted the Vandals in North Africa with the help of ERE Marcian... the only thing i cant calculate is a Hunnic attack...
 
One downside is that my new favorite Roman Emperor, Majorian ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorian ) wouldn't have much of a chance to shine. He served under Aetius, but Aetius's wife seemed to have Majorian.

But, if the western Roman Empire could have a few more years of Aetius behind the throne, and then Majorian came in, either as Emperor or in Aetius' role, and stuck around for awhile, things could be alright.
 
Nah... Aetius's wife hated Majorian... I am thinking... WI Aetius faces a second assassination attempt and this time the chief-conspirator is Majorian? If i am not mistaken Valentinian III had appointed him Comes Domesticorum just before Aetius's assassination... (He played a part in Avitus's death in OTL why not in an ATL second attempt on Aetius?)
 
As I understood it, Valentinian didn't really need Petronius Maximus to encourage his distrust of Aetius. Certainly, Petronius capitalized on that distrust for his own purposes, but Valentinian was predisposed to suspect the worst of his Magister Militum. After a failed assassination, I can't imagine Aetius and Valentinian are going to be overly eager to kiss and make up. It would take some kind of miracle to prevent things from coming to a head afterwards.

And unless either Valentinian or Aetius can neutralize or eliminate the other immediately, and prevent the sort of civil strife that inevitably accompanied such struggles, the Western Empire is still going to have to deal with its external enemies. If Valentinian is deposed, Gaiseric is still likely to consider his treaty with Rome null and void. And I doubt Aetius or Gaudentius would be able to get their own affairs in order in time to launch a preemptive strike, so the Vandal sack of Rome is likely to still occur.

A more capable emperor might well make the difference in the combined Roman offensive in North Africa in 468, which was a close thing in OTL anyway. Whether or not this buys the western empire any additional time, though, I'm not sure.
 
Nah... Aetius's wife hated Majorian... I am thinking... WI Aetius faces a second assassination attempt and this time the chief-conspirator is Majorian? If i am not mistaken Valentinian III had appointed him Comes Domesticorum just before Aetius's assassination... (He played a part in Avitus's death in OTL why not in an ATL second attempt on Aetius?)

Yeah, I meant to type that she hated Majorian. That was a typo.
 
Aetius had supported the usurper Johannes early in Valentinian's reign... Valentinian had reasons to fear him... Petronius enlarged these fears and "made" the Emperor kill him...
By eliminating Petronius Maximus and fully controlling Valentinian after the failed assassination attempt Aetius had to move really fast against the Vandals and take them by surprise...
 
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