As in the other kingdoms, patrilineal descent was desirable but not indispensable. Examples from the Vandal, Burgundian, Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms show the ways in which fifth- and sixth-century kings were experimenting with new political solutions in matters of succession. There were no established rules on this matter, and in each state things were handled differently.150 Pagan polygamy or polygyny, children from concubines, multiple sons: all these factors complicated legitimacy and succession, and very often there was more than one heir on the throne. This had happened, for example, in Gaul in 511 with the four descendants of Clovis, and recently in 524 at the death of Chlodomer. In the Frankish realm the succession was uneasy between brothers and their many children, and the kingdom was divided among heirs.151 In the Burgundian kingdom we know that Sigismund held the title of rex starting around 505, during the lifetime of his father Gundobad, and the Burgundians may have originally followed agnatic seniority.152
The Vandals, beginning with Geiseric, regularly used agnatic seniority. According to Procopius, this king on his deathbed hoped that the Hasdings, his family, would maintain their rule over the Vandals, and he gave specific directions. This is considered by Victor of Vita also as his constitutio or “testament”:153 “The royal power among them should always fall to that one who was the first in the years among all the male offspring descended from Geiseric himself.”154 Jordanes also tells us about Geiseric’s last will, and though his version is less reliable—suggesting as it does a pacific view of the Vandal court—it offers a portrait of the Vandal idea of right succession: “Before his death he summoned the band of his sons and ordained that there should be no strife among them because of desire for the kingdom, but that each should reign in his own rank and order as he survived the others; that is, the next younger should succeed his elder brother, and he in turn should be followed by his junior. By giving heed to this command they ruled their kingdom in happiness for the space of many years and were not disgraced by civil war, as is usual among other nations; one after the other receiving the kingdom and ruling the people in peace.”155 Despite Jordanes’s words, in matters of succession the Vandal kingdom had a history of violence going back at least a century. In 428 Geiseric had arranged to have the wife and two children of his half brother (Gunderic) murdered after his death, probably in order to avoid a regency of the children and their mother, and thus their future claims to the throne.156 This bloody legacy was transmitted to his descendants, despite Geiseric’s clear instructions for the succession (discussed above). The eldest of his three sons, Huneric, took power and eliminated his brother Theoderic, together with his children.157 Huneric badly mutilated his first wife, the daughter of the Visigothic king Theoderic, and sent her back to Gaul under the suspicion that she was conspiring against him.158 The reasons for such a monstrous act may have been political: later he married Eudocia, Valentinian III’s daughter, who bore him Hilderic, and this probably facilitated the legitimation of his rule over Africa. Later, in 523, as we have seen, Amalafrida was accused of conspiring against Hilderic and imprisoned; she was not given the chance to return to Italy or stay as queen mother (in a Cassiodoran letter addressed to the Vandal king, the Gothic rulers complained: “you did not tolerate that she, whom you had as former queen, lived as a private person [.] … [S]he should have been sent back to us with honor…. [S]he should have been regarded as a mother, she who transmitted the kingdom to you.”).159 Neither her close kinship with Theoderic nor the fact that she had no children from Thrasamund to claim the Vandal throne could save her life. It is obvious that in this grim reality queens often paid the ultimate price: of the five royal women of the Vandal kingdom whose fates we know, three were murdered, another was sent back to her country mutilated, and one was able to escape from the kingdom years later.160
Gaul too had recently experienced similar tragedies. Queen Clotilde had intervened on behalf of her sons with Theoderic about the division of the kingdom. She also made efforts to protect her grandchildren, but these proved futile in face of the jealousy of her sons. When in 524 King Chlodomer died, she could not save her grandsons from their uncles, Chlothar and Childebert, who had them murdered. The third grandson would have been killed as well, had viri fortes (likely the aristocrats closest to Chlodomer) not intervened and helped him retire to a monastery.161
Last but not least, the Roman Empire itself had a rich history of usurpations, including recent examples in the East with which Theoderic was familiar, like Basiliscus and Zeno.
In Ravenna, Theoderic wanted to prevent any risk of a coup d’état and to protect his grandson and daughter’s lives from situations of violence like these, which had taken the lives, in his family, of Amalafrida in Africa as well as Sigeric in the Burgundian kingdom. His desire for his crown to become dynastic was not unusual in the larger context of the post-Roman kingdoms. Italy, however, had the opposite problem from the other kingdoms. In Spain, Africa, and Gaul, too many potential heirs led to fratricide and sometimes to war, but in Italy there was simply no appropriate heir of an age to rule. Athalaric was far too young to govern over the Goths and the Romans, and Theoderic needed to build a general consent around his grandson and ensure that his family would be protected. Knowing very well that the acceptance of his heir rested with the Gothic aristocracy, and that things would go badly without the support of the nobility,162 he tried to stabilize the succession by winning to his cause the aristocratic Goths, his comites (probably similar to the viri fortes close to Chlodomer in Gaul), as Jordanes states in abridging Cassiodorus: “When he had reached old age and knew that he should soon depart this life, he called together the Gothic counts and chieftains of his people (Gothos comites gentisque suae primates) and appointed Athalaric as king. He was a boy scarcely ten years old, the son of his daughter Amalasuintha, and he had lost his father Eutharic. As though uttering his last will and testament Theoderic adjured and commanded them (in mandatis ac si testamentali voce denuntians) to honor their king.”163
Jordanes’s account is confirmed by the Cassiodoran letters, in which we read that on his deathbed Theoderic asked the Goths who were closest to him for an official oath to recognize his grandson as his legitimate successor, and that the Romans were also asked to support this choice. The whole thing happened very quickly. Gothic nobles (proceres) followed this last order (even if we have doubts about the enthusiasm that Cassiodorus claims), and little Athalaric was raised to the throne of Italy.164 Theoderic, the greatest hero of Gothic history, passed away on Sunday, 30 August 526, after a fifty-two-year reign.165
The counts whom Theoderic hoped would support his grandchild were his old friends, and they were also commanders of the Gothic army in important cities and in the provinces of the kingdom; people like Tuluin, Osuin, and Sigismer, who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield, or at the palace, or in the administration of the provinces.166 In addition there was the vir illustris Wiliarius, who from 523 to 527 held the office of count of the patrimony (comitiva patrimonii). This was an isolated case in Ostrogothic Italy, as this position was normally entrusted to Romans.167
It is reasonable to assume, however, that as he lay dying, the king’s strongest hopes were placed in Amalasuintha, who by now was thirty. She was Theoderic’s only daughter still alive, and the widow of the man who had been designated heir to the throne. Of the entire Amal family, she was the only one left who had an education and deep experience at the palace, and the time to exercise the experience in politics and diplomacy that she had gained over the years on the side of her father had arrived. Amalasuintha inherited a monumental task. She was entrusted with the guardianship of her son, the rex puer. She was to provide him with maternal love and educate him to be the king of Goths and Romans, all the while keeping the situation at the court under control. Her role as tutor compelled her to take care of the affairs of the kingdom in Athalaric’s name, and to manage foreign diplomacy.
Theoderic gave specific directions about his daughter’s position in his will in order to maintain stability in the kingdom. His solution would