Adoption of Nero (AD 50)

In AD 49 Claudius married his niece Agrippina the Younger. A year later he adopted her son Nero, who gained precedence over Britannicus, the emperor’s own son. The reasons are disputed: scholars point to pressure from the court and dynastic considerations. The adoption of AD 50 gave the boy the name Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar Drusus Germanicus. In AD 53 he married Octavia, Claudius’s daughter, and after the emperor’s death in October AD 54 he took the throne at the age of sixteen.