Galla Placidia (388-27 November 450) was Queen consort of the Visigoths from 414 to 415 as the wife of Athaulf, and the Western Roman empress in 421 as the wife of Constantius III. She later served as regent for her son Valentinian III until he came of age in 437.
Biography[]
Galla Placidia was born in Constantinople, Eastern Roman Empire in 388, the daughter of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I and the half-sister of Honorius and Arcadius. She was granted her own household during the 390s and was raised by Stilicho and his wife Serena after her father's death in 395, but Stilicho was executed on trumped-up charges of treason in 408, while many of the family members of the foederati were also put to the sword. During the Visigothic king Alaric I's siege of Rome, Galla Placidia was accused of sympathizing with the Goths due to her upbringing under Stilicho, and the Roman Senate called for her to be executed. She was captured by Alaric prior to the city's fall, and she was taken along as the Visigoths migrated into Hispania and was married to Alaric's successor Athaulf on 1 January 414, having been in an affair with him for three years. Galla Placidia was therefore Queen consort of the Visigoths from 414 to 415, but she was mistreated by Sigeric following Athaulf's murder, and her abuse caused several Visigoths to conspire to murder Sigeric shortly after. The new Visigothic king, Wallia, agreed to return her to her brother Honorius, and she went on to marry his general, the future co-emperor Constantius III. As Constantius' wife, she was an Augusta of the Western Roman Empire in 421, but Constantius died later that year. On Honorius' death in 423, Constantius and Galla Placidia's son became Valentinian III, and Galla Placidia served as his regent from 425 to 437. Her regency ended when Valentinian reached 18 years of age in 437, and her influence declined as the Western Roman general Flavius Aetius rose to prominence. She died in Rome in November 450.