We continue with the second part of this criminal version of the list of the Gothic kings with Teudis . This Teudis was not someone who passed by, he was a guy who knew what he was doing, because, in addition to achieving a certain reputation within the army -he was a kind of commander-, he made good friends with the local nobility by marrying a rich Hispano-Roman . He managed to expel the Franks from the peninsula and began to wink at Toledo as the future capital. And despite having everything tied up and well tied up, in 548, after 17 years of reign, he was also going to be assassinated. On this occasion, and without setting a precedent, there was no conspiracy by a rival faction, it was the work of a offended with some unresolved personal issue that posed as a madman to approach the king and kill him. The curious thing is that, dying on the ground and still with the knife stuck, Teudis spared his life. Perhaps it was his way of atoning for his sins by ordering Amalric's death or, at the very least, not doing anything to prevent it.
Teudiselo , the general of the armies of Theudis who managed to drive out the Franks, was to be the next king. And, the truth is, he barely gave him time to sit on the throne, because he only lasted a year. And who killed him? Well, Fuenteovejuna. The goth version says that Ágila supporters killed him , the future king, but the Hispanic version is more… more ours, it's more Fuenteovejuna. It seems that this Teudiselo was to conquer young Hispanic-Roman women, promise to put in and, once put in, forget what was promised. His raids were known throughout the kingdom and, it was clear, that at some point his San Martín was going to come to him. And he was not a father enraged to learn of the disgrace of his daughter, but a plan hatched by the local nobility. They organized a banquet with the best food and the best wines to pay homage to the king and, as it was free, Teudiselo showed up there, ready to enjoy the exquisite delicacies of the land and, for that matter, the Hispanic woman who was within range. . When the wine was doing its thing, the doors of the dining room were closed, the lights went out -candles and torches version- and the parents of the outraged daughters went by to give what was theirs to the king. The lights came on and, lo and behold, the king was dead. Not even the CSI Las Vegas team would have been able to figure out the exact number of murder weapons. And what was that? Well, nothing, because, still warm, the supporters of Ágila They elected him king and here peace and then glory.
Well... peace, what is called peace, in this world of Goths, the fair one, because a group opposed to Ágila appeared, led by Atanagildo , and messed up again. Although there were skirmishes between rival factions from time to time, normally the disputes were settled by taking out the current king and enthroning a new one, but this time it was a full-fledged civil war that lasted several years and, as if that were not enough , with a third party in contention:the Byzantines of Justinian , Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. After defeating the Ostrogoths in the Italian Peninsula, and in his attempt to recover the greatness and the territories of the Roman Empire, Justinian led his troops to the Levantine coast of Hispania. With a (let's say) ambiguous policy, he took advantage of the troubled river between King Ágila and the rebel Atanagildo to ally himself with one or the other depending on what interested him most at each moment and place to achieve his objective, which was none other than to establish himself in the Iberian Peninsula and defeat the Visigoths. There was such a tangle of intersecting interests that even the Goths themselves would not have been able to confess who had drawn the Byzantines into that domestic war. Logically, that mess was not going to have a happy ending and, as you may have guessed, the cause was a sharp object. And the victim? The Eagle King. And now comes the good part, he was assassinated in 555 by his own followers accusing him of having allied with Justinian. They proclaimed Atanagildo king and both factions joined forces to drive out the Byzantines. What a cheap excuse. Let's see, first, the Goths have never needed to justify their regicides and, second and more importantly, it was the Byzantines who prevented the defeat of Atanagildo's army in Baetica. Logically, all this played in favor of the interests of Justinian who managed to establish himself on the southeastern coast of the Peninsula, including the Balearic Islands, creating the province of Spania. And despite the fact that the Visigoths tried to drive them out again and again, they managed to fortify themselves in the coastal cities and held out until the year 624.
We will ignore the reign of the rebel Atanagildo and his successor Liuva and we will stand up to welcome our next protagonist:King Leovigild, the most important of all the Visigothic kings and whose reign marked a before and after… (and on).