Who Owns the Roman Empire? The Legal Fiction Behind UsefulCharts’ Spanish Emperor

A Byzantine prince left his imperial claim to the Spanish monarchy in 1502. UsefulCharts argues that this makes King Felipe VI the rightful heir to Rome. The historical documents establish the inheritance attempt. They do not establish the legal right the argument requires.

The Roman Empire ruled for centuries through conquest, political appointments, military acclamation, dynastic succession and, occasionally, assassination. Its emperors gained authority through institutions whose powers changed over time.

Yet in Who Has the Best Claim to the Title of Roman Emperor?, UsefulCharts reduces the final question of imperial legitimacy to something remarkably convenient: a will.

The creator considers five candidates: descendants of the Ottoman, Russian, Napoleonic and Habsburg dynasties, alongside Spain's King Felipe VI. He acknowledges that no answer is definitive, invites other historians to argue their preferred cases, and ultimately makes his own selection.

His reasoning is that Roman civilization placed enormous importance on law. Therefore, a legally documented inheritance should outweigh religious affiliation, conquest, ancestry or political recognition.

The argument is ingenious. Its central weakness is that a legally valid will does not automatically establish that everything named in it was legally transferable.

Independent historical research makes that distinction considerably harder to ignore.

1. The Imperial Title Had Already Been Transferred to France

The most consequential omission concerns events eight years before the Spanish inheritance.

In 1494, Andreas Palaiologos, a nephew of the final Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, transferred his claimed imperial rights to King Charles VIII of France.

This was not merely a rumor that France had paid for the title.

Historian Jonathan Harris, drawing on documentary evidence, describes a formal agreement under which Andreas surrendered his claims to the thrones of Constantinople, Trebizond and Serbia.

The arrangement was remarkably specific.

Charles VIII was to provide Andreas with an annual pension of 4,400 ducats, maintain a personal guard of 100 cavalrymen, and attempt to recover the Morea—the Byzantine territory in southern Greece that Andreas's family had lost to the Ottomans.

If the territory was recovered, Andreas would receive it as a possession under French authority, owing a symbolic annual payment of one saddled white horse.

This was not simply an impoverished aristocrat selling an impressive title. Andreas was attempting to obtain French military power for the restoration of his family's territorial position.

The agreement's existence is independently confirmed by historian Donald M. Nicol in The Immortal Emperor, published by Cambridge University Press. Nicol identifies the 1494 transfer to Charles VIII and notes that Andreas explicitly referred to Constantine XI's death without children.

That creates an immediate problem for the Spanish succession argument.

If Andreas transferred the imperial rights to France in 1494, what exactly did he still possess in 1502?

There is a possible answer.

Charles VIII died in 1498 without recovering Constantinople or the Morea. The agreement's territorial ambitions were never fulfilled, and Andreas subsequently resumed asserting his imperial titles.

The conditional nature of the arrangement gives grounds for arguing that the original transfer had become ineffective.

But that is precisely what requires examination.

Were the obligations enforceable conditions of the transfer? Did their nonperformance invalidate it? Did the rights revert automatically, or did Andreas merely consider them restored?

The video does not establish the answers.

Instead, the French transaction receives passing attention before the argument advances toward the Spanish inheritance.

The French claim cannot be dismissed merely because it complicates the preferred conclusion.

Indeed, research by Guy Le Thiec on Charles VIII's Italian expedition places the transfer within French plans for a crusade against the Ottomans. The imperial title was connected to real diplomatic and military ambitions, not merely antiquarian enthusiasm.

A careful historical argument must therefore acknowledge two competing instruments: the French agreement of 1494 and the Spanish testament of 1502.

Neither document can be treated as legally decisive without examining the other.

2. The Will Is Real. Its Supposed Legal Power Is Not Established.

On 7 April 1502, Andreas Palaiologos executed a testament designating Ferdinand of Aragon, Isabella of Castile and their successors as his heirs.

The testament is a documented historical instrument, examined in scholarly literature, including P. K. Enepekides's 1960 study of the Vienna testament.

The existence of the will is not the issue.

The problem begins when UsefulCharts treats its existence as sufficient to establish imperial succession.

The presenter describes the testament as legally binding under Roman law and concludes that the Roman imperial title therefore passed to the Spanish monarchs.

That argument confuses the validity of a testament with the legal ownership of the thing being transferred.

A person can write a valid will leaving a house to a relative. Whether that person actually owns the house is a separate question.

An imperial office presents a much greater difficulty.

Was the Roman emperorship something an individual could own, sell, or bequeath independently of the state that created it?

The video never demonstrates that it was.

There is no identified provision of Roman or Byzantine law establishing that an emperor's nephew could transfer sovereign authority to unrelated foreign monarchs through a private testament.

Nor does the presentation identify a Roman court, imperial institution or recognized legal authority that adjudicated Andreas's transfer.

The distinction matters because Byzantine imperial succession was not governed by a single, unchanging rule of hereditary inheritance.

Francesca Galgano's 2016 research on access to imperial power in Byzantium explains that late Byzantine legitimacy increasingly favored dynastic succession, even as older traditions of election and acclamation remained relevant.

Alistair Davidson's research at the University of Birmingham likewise describes the tension between hereditary claims and other forms of political legitimacy, including the public recognition of new rulers.

Dynastic inheritance was important. It was not the same as an unlimited legal right to dispose of the imperial office as private property.

That makes the presenter's appeal to Roman legal tradition unusually vulnerable.

He uses the prestige of Roman law to settle a question for which he has not established the applicable Roman legal rule.

3. An Emperor in Exile Is Not Necessarily a State in Exile

UsefulCharts makes another decisive claim about the events of 1453.

When Constantine XI died defending Constantinople against the Ottoman conquest, the presenter argues that the Roman state did not disappear.

Instead, imperial authority supposedly continued through Constantine's surviving family.

His brother Thomas escaped to Rome, and Thomas's son Andreas eventually inherited the imperial claim.

The family relationships are historically grounded. Thomas was Constantine's brother, and Andreas was Thomas's son.

Andreas also genuinely used imperial titles.

Harris's research documents his adoption of the title Imperator Constantinopolitanus, or Emperor of Constantinople, and his efforts to obtain support for military action against the Ottomans.

But this establishes a claimant, not necessarily a continuing government.

A dynasty can survive the destruction of a state without carrying that state's sovereignty intact.

Following 1453, Andreas did not govern Constantinople. He possessed no functioning Roman imperial administration, commanded no Roman state army, and exercised no effective authority over the former empire.

His position depended on recognition, patronage and the possibility of foreign military intervention.

That does not make his ambitions meaningless.

Exiled royal families have often retained legitimate historical claims to lost thrones. Their descendants may remain politically significant, particularly when foreign governments support restoration.

But the survival of a dynastic claim and the uninterrupted legal existence of a state are different propositions.

UsefulCharts effectively combines them.

His argument requires the Roman state to have survived in the person of an exiled claimant, despite the disappearance of the institutions and territories through which that state's authority had been exercised.

That is a substantial theory of sovereignty.

The episode presents it without the legal evidence needed to establish it.

4. The Spanish Kings Never Established the Imperial Succession the Video Imagines

Suppose, for argument's sake, that Andreas possessed a transferable imperial title in 1502.

Suppose also that his earlier agreement with France had ceased to operate.

Even under those favorable assumptions, another obstacle remains.

The Spanish inheritance was not followed by the establishment of a recognized Spanish Roman emperorship.

Neither Ferdinand nor Isabella became the functioning ruler of a restored Byzantine Empire.

Nor does the episode identify an official Spanish act accepting or exercising sovereign Roman imperial authority under Andreas's testament.

The presenter acknowledges that the Byzantine title eventually ceased to be officially claimed by the Spanish monarchy.

That admission is important.

The title's inheritance is treated as continuous for centuries, even though the presentation provides no documentary succession connecting each later Spanish monarch to Andreas's particular claim.

The argument passes through Charles V, who ruled Spain and became Holy Roman Emperor.

When Charles divided his inheritance, his brother Ferdinand received the Holy Roman imperial title, while his son Philip inherited the principal Spanish possessions.

UsefulCharts concludes that Philip II would have inherited the Byzantine claim because he was the senior heir.

But why must the alleged Byzantine title follow Philip rather than Ferdinand?

The answer requires establishing the original testament's terms, the legal character of the title and the succession rules applicable to it.

Simply identifying Philip as the senior dynastic heir does not resolve those questions.

There is also the problem of subsequent changes in Spain's ruling dynasty.

The Spanish crown eventually passed from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons. Whatever legal continuity exists within the Spanish monarchy does not automatically prove that every personal claim associated with an earlier monarch remained attached to the crown.

To make that argument, one must establish that the Byzantine claim was inherited as part of the Spanish crown rather than as a separate personal or dynastic entitlement.

The episode provides no such demonstration.

Today, Felipe VI's legal authority comes from Spain's constitutional monarchy.

The Spanish government's official description identifies him as head of state, explains his constitutional functions, and records his accession on 19 June 2014. It provides no basis for treating him as the holder of a legally recognized Roman imperial office.

His status as a reigning monarch is therefore a distinction between him and the other candidates, not proof of an inherited Roman emperorship.

The crown he actually holds is real.

The additional imperial title remains historical speculation.

5. Andreas Was Pursuing Restoration, Not Writing Spain's Imperial Constitution

There is a more interesting historical story behind the testament than the one presented in the video.

Andreas Palaiologos was not simply a man distributing royal titles.

He belonged to a displaced ruling family attempting to reverse the consequences of Ottoman conquest.

His financial circumstances help explain his political behavior.

Research by Jonathan Harris, using Vatican and Venetian archival material, challenges the traditional portrayal of Andreas as merely an extravagant prince who squandered his inheritance.

His papal pension had been reduced, and he was responsible for supporting a household that included other Byzantine exiles.

Andreas sought assistance from foreign rulers because restoring his family's territories required military resources he did not possess.

His agreement with Charles VIII fits that pattern.

It offered France an imperial claim while seeking a military campaign capable of returning Andreas to power in Greece.

The later testament to Ferdinand and Isabella can reasonably be examined in the context of similar hopes for Christian intervention against the Ottomans.

That interpretation is more useful than treating the document as a device that silently converted every future Spanish king into a Roman emperor.

It also gives Andreas greater historical dignity.

He was attempting to recover a lost political world.

His imperial title was one of the few instruments available to him.

Whether he had the legal authority to transfer that title is a separate question from whether his actions were politically intelligible.

The video largely overlooks this distinction.

6. The Roman Legal Argument Works Against the Presenter's Certainty

The presenter's central appeal is to Roman legal identity.

He argues that Romans would value a strong legal case more than religious affiliation, dynastic resemblance or conquest.

That proposition sounds plausible because Roman law had an enormous influence on subsequent legal systems.

But Roman imperial legitimacy cannot be reduced to the ordinary inheritance of private property.

Throughout Roman and Byzantine history, emperors obtained authority through changing combinations of family succession, appointment, military power, institutional recognition and religious ceremony.

The empire experienced civil wars, competing emperors, successful usurpations and dynastic replacements.

These were not unusual exceptions to an otherwise straightforward inheritance system.

They were recurring features of imperial politics.

Even the Palaiologos dynasty, the final ruling family of Constantinople, owed its position to a political system in which hereditary expectations coexisted with the possibility of seizure and recognition of imperial power.

The historical research therefore undermines the simplicity of the presenter's chosen test.

If the question is who inherited Andreas's personal claim, Spain has a documented argument.

If the question is who legally inherited the Roman imperial office, a much more demanding demonstration is required.

If the question is which modern dynasty possesses the strongest symbolic association with Rome, the answer may change again.

The presenter recognizes these competing definitions during most of the episode.

But in choosing Felipe VI, he treats one interpretation of legal inheritance as though it can settle the dispute.

The missing evidence is not a technicality. It is the very evidence on which the winning argument depends.

7. The Video's Best Defense Does Not Save Its Conclusion

There is a reasonable defense of UsefulCharts.

He does not claim that the question has a universally accepted answer.

The episode is openly exploratory, with invited contributors advocating different dynasties and the presenter eventually announcing his own preference.

He also identifies a genuine historical connection between the Byzantine imperial family and the Spanish monarchy.

Those qualifications matter.

This is not a case of an invented document or a fabricated family relationship.

The 1502 testament existed. The 1494 French transfer existed. The Byzantine imperial family survived the conquest of Constantinople.

The problem is the conclusion built upon those facts.

The video moves from a documented inheritance attempt to a hypothetical legal judgment without establishing the rules that would make that judgment valid.

Its strongest argument proves less than the presenter needs.

Spain can plausibly claim to have inherited a historical Byzantine pretension.

That is not equivalent to proving that Felipe VI possesses the superior legal title to the Roman Empire.

The distinction is fundamental.

Verdict: Rome Was Not a Piece of Property

UsefulCharts succeeds in demonstrating how imperial legitimacy can be traced through competing historical traditions.

But the final Spanish argument is weaker than its presentation suggests.

The evidence establishes that Andreas Palaiologos possessed a dynastic claim, transferred rights to France in 1494, and later designated the Spanish monarchs as his heirs in 1502.

It does not establish that the Byzantine emperorship was legally transferable through a private testament, that the French agreement had definitively ceased to operate, or that an imperial office passed uninterrupted through successive Spanish monarchs.

The surviving documents give us a remarkable story about an exiled prince seeking the power to restore his family's lost territories.

They do not give us a Roman court's judgment, an established succession rule, or a legally recognized Roman emperor in modern Spain.

The strongest criticism is not that UsefulCharts chose the wrong emperor. It is that he presented an unresolved historical claim as though Roman law could settle it—and never established the law that would make his conclusion possible.

Rome's imperial inheritance is complicated precisely because the empire was more than a family, a capital, a religion or a title.

Its government existed through institutions, territories, armies and people.

A prince in exile could claim that inheritance.

He could promise it to a foreign king.

He could even leave it in his will.

What he could not necessarily do was turn an empire into something he owned.

References

1. UsefulCharts — Who Has the Best Claim to the Title of Roman Emperor?
YouTube, original video.
Watch the original video

The primary work under examination, including the five proposed claimants, the presenter's legal argument for Felipe VI, and competing interpretations from invited contributors.

2. Jonathan Harris — A Worthless Prince? Andreas Palaiologos in Rome, 1464–1502: The Renewed Version
Science Journal of Volgograd State University, 2022.
Read the research paper

Archival research documenting Andreas's financial circumstances, political ambitions and the terms of his agreement with Charles VIII, including the proposed military restoration of the Morea.

3. Donald M. Nicol — The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos, Last Emperor of the Romans
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Read the relevant chapter

Confirms Constantine XI's death without children and documents Andreas's transfer of claimed Byzantine imperial rights to France in 1494.

4. Guy Le Thiec — Le roi, le Pape et l’otage: La croisade, entre théocratie pontificale et messianisme royal (1494–1504)
Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France, 2002.
Read the historical study

Places the French acquisition of Byzantine imperial claims within Charles VIII's political and military ambitions against the Ottoman Empire.

5. Francesca Galgano — Means of Access and Use of Power in Byzantium
Vergentis, 2016.
Read the study

Explains the historical relationship between dynastic inheritance and other mechanisms of imperial legitimacy in late Byzantium, complicating the assumption that the imperial office was automatically transferable as hereditary property.

6. Alistair James Davidson — The Glory of Ruling Makes All Things Permissible: Power and Usurpation in Byzantium
University of Birmingham, doctoral thesis, 2018.
Read the research

Examines conflicts between hereditary and nonhereditary legitimacy in Byzantium and the importance of political recognition in establishing imperial authority.

7. Government of Spain — State Organisation
La Moncloa, official government information.
Read the official government account

Establishes Felipe VI's constitutional position and the modern legal basis of the Spanish monarchy, without establishing a corresponding Roman imperial title.