Two Roman-like soldiers stand before an elderly man on a throne as other soldiers gather under a stormy, lightning-filled sky.

Nominally, they were. When Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476 and Odoacer declared king of Italy by his troops, the eastern Roman emperor Zeno couldn't really intervene due to a bunch of troubles going on (civil war and two Gothic armies in the Balkans). So he created a legal fiction where Odoacer was his 'delegate' of sorts who would govern in the name of the western emperor Julius Nepos hanging out in Dalmatia (who had no real chance of taking back his throne in Italy). This arrangement prevented the Romans from losing face similar to how, when they'd paid extortionate amounts of tribute to Attila, they gave him the title of 'magister militum' to make it seem like he was just a general receiving his salary. The two Gothic armies in the Balkans would eventually combine into one (the Ostrogoths) under Theoderic the Great, who needed a place to live but so far had been overall unsuccessful in getting what they wanted in the Balkans. So Zeno decided to kill two birds with one stone: provide the Goths with a new home in Italy that would get them out of East Roman lands and which would also depose Odoacer (reinforcing continued Roman imperial authority in the west). As a result, Theoderic and his successors inherited this legal fiction from Odoacer and were treated in a manner almost like a client state by Constantinople, though the eastern emperors had little control over what went on in Italy under the Ostrogoths. This model, barring a moment of tension under Anastasius in See more