Fausta

c. 289–326

Fausta was born into the ruling family of the Tetrarchy, the daughter of Maximian and sister of Maxentius. She married Constantine in 307 as part of an alliance between Constantine and her father. The marriage survived the subsequent wars in which Constantine defeated both Maximian’s renewed bid for power and Maxentius’s regime in Italy.

Fausta became Augusta and was the mother of several of Constantine’s children, including the future emperors Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. In 326 she was put to death on Constantine’s orders shortly after the execution of her stepson Crispus. Ancient sources disagree about the relationship between the two deaths, and the circumstances remain one of the most disputed episodes of Constantine’s reign.

Fausta appears in Ian Ross’s Swords Around the Throne amid the conflict between Constantine and Maximian, and is a major figure in Imperial Vengeance, which fictionalises the dynastic crisis surrounding Crispus and Fausta in 326.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Fausta (1 series)

Twilight of Empire in Order

by Ian Ross 6 books 4.3(6,153)

Ian Ross’s six-book Twilight of Empire series follows the fictional Roman officer Aurelius Castus through the political and military upheavals that turn Constantine from one claimant among several into sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Beginning on the northern frontier of Britain in AD 305, Castus is drawn…