Theodosian Women

The Theodosian Women series is a sequence of biographical historical novels about women who exercised power within the late Roman imperial house founded by Theodosius I. Across the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople, the books follow Galla Placidia, Pulcheria and Aelia Eudocia as daughters, sisters, wives, mothers and regents whose authority depended on dynastic legitimacy, religious patronage and control of access to emperors.

The sequence moves from the division of the empire and the Visigothic sack of Rome to the long reign of Theodosius II and the religious controversies of the fifth-century eastern court. It treats invasions, succession crises and Christian conflict through women whose formal options were constrained but whose marriages, vows, households and political alliances shaped both the weakening Western Empire and the emergence of Byzantium.