Board Thread:Timeline Discussions/@comment-4923787-20130202175501/@comment-32656-20130328104252

Otho may have promised to marry her, but not only is him actually doing so unlikely, but the odds of him actually doing anything if he did marry her are almost zip. She was the widow of a man he absolutely hated, and him talking about marrying her was merely political scheming, for a connection to the his predecessor (remember, Nero was very popular to the people, and Otho apparently resembled him to some degree)

In Rome, it was also very common practice to "adopt" a relative or friend as your heir. Most emperors did this at this point, and it was very successful. Whether Otho had a child or not is pretty irrelevant - Nerva or one of Nerva's family could still be his heir, and has a somewhat higher likelihood than Otho's son coming to power.

Trajan and Hadrian are somewhat overrated, and the other sides would both have generals of the same caliber. The be "Latin" generals, but would give Latium no real advantage.