Nepotian of Asturias

Nepotian or Nepocian (from Latin Nepotianus, now Spanish Nepociano) was a Visigothic count elected in 842 to succeed Alfonso II as King of Asturias. Later sources make him Alfonso's brother-in-law, but this is chronologically implausible, nor is there evidence for such a sister. The earliest chronicle simply calls him Alfonso's kinsman. Likewise he is sometimes identified with a man of this name who appears in a charter of king Silo, but were he the same he would have been in his nineties at the time he machinated for the throne.^[1]

He did not hold the crown long. The same year another kinsman of Alfonso, Ramiro, defeated Nepocian at the Battle of the Bridge of Cornellana, by the river Narcea, and thus became king as Ramiro I. Ramiro then removed the system of election of the king by the nobles.

Notes

1. J. E. Casariego, "Una Revolución Asturiana en el Siglo IX: El Interregno del Conde Nepociano", Boleton del Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, Año 23 (1969), No. 68, pp. 313-339.