Other Postulated Routes
Innumerable alternative routes of descent from antiquity have been posited. One proposal is to establish Charlemagne's descent from one of the senatorial families of the later-day Imperial Rome based in southern Gaul. This project is of particular interest since all European royal families can trace their descent from Charlemagne, as can many other people who are able to trace their descent from European nobility. While such a link possibly existed, extant sources do not permit reconstructing it with any degree of certainty. The record of senatorial families in the 5th and 6th centuries is very sparse. While a large amount of data exists with which to construct a prosopography of the leading provincial families of Imperial Rome in southern Gaul, it is not yet possible to establish a Gallic line that traverses the Imperial Age, though a Roman line through a Gallic one had been proposed in 1991 by Christian Settipani. Therefore, all reconstructions of the DFA through Western European monarchs must remain precarious at best and speculative at worst. Though two possible lines are proposed for the ancestry of Arnulf of Metz, both are linked to the ancestors who are in turn reputedly linked to the Gallo-Roman genealogies. One of these proposes a descent from the proconsul Flavius Afranius Syagrius.
A possible alternative route to Settipani's original scheme goes through the Counts of Coimbra in 9th century Portugal. That route was originally suggested in a discussion between Settipani and Francisco Antonio Doria; it starts with a Count Ardabastos (b. c. 611), son of a Visigoth refugee in Byzantium, Athanagild (in turn son of Saint Hermenegild) and of Flavia Juliana (a Byzantine noblewoman related to the family of Emperor Maurice), that later moved to Provincia Spaniae (Byzantine possession in Spain) and fathered Erwig, king of the Visigoths (680-687). It is argued that this individual was descended from a Byzantine Artavazd of the great Mamikonian clan. The line is documented in a controversial deed that links the full descent to the historically attested count Hermenegildo Guterres (878). The deed itself is dubious, and while some have suggested that the genealogy it contains could still be authentic, the lack of surviving documentation from the period spanned makes independent evaluation impossible. It is also said that the mentioned Count Ardabastos was a great-nephew of Emperor Maurice, grandson of his brother Peter Augustus, whose ancestry, though Armenian, was of a lower birth. Interestingly, even if Count Ardabastos was "only" a great-nephew of Emperor Maurice, with no kinship to the Mamikonians, through his maternal grandmother Anastasia Areobinda (wife of Peter Augustus and great-great daughter of Flavius Anastasius Paulus Probus Sabinianus Pompeius, Roman consul in 517) he was a lineal descendant of the Valentinian and Theodosian dynasties, as well as of the very ancient gens Anicia, whose first mention dates back to the end of the 4th century BC (Quintus Anicius Praenestinus, curule aedile in 304 BC). If the proposed links between Count Ardabastos and Hermenegildo Guterres are correct, it would be possible to trace a blood-link between Theodosius I or Valentinian I and Ramiro II of León (grandson of Hermenegildo Guterres) and so to the modern European royal houses.
Read more about this topic: Descent From Antiquity
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