Annia Faustina

Annia Aurelia Faustina (fl. 201 – c. 222) was an Anatolian Roman noblewoman. She was briefly married to the Roman emperor Elagabalus in 221 and thus a Roman empress. She was Elagabalus' third wife. Ancestry and family Faustina was of noble descent, the daughter and only child of the wealthy heiress Annia Faustina and the Roman Senator, consul Tiberius Claudius Severus Proculus. Her parents were maternal second-cousins. Her paternal grandparents were the Pontian Greek Roman Senator and Peripatetic Philosopher, Gnaeus Claudius Severus and his second wife, the Roman Princess Annia Galeria Aurelia Faustina. Her maternal grandparents were wealthy Roman heiress Ummidia Cornificia Faustina and an unnamed Roman Senator. Her paternal half-uncle was Marcus Claudius Ummidius Quadratus, who had been adopted by the Roman Consul Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus, the nephew of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. She was a Roman citizen of Pontic Greek and Italian ancestry. Her paternal great-grandparents were the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius; Roman Empress Faustina the Younger; the Roman Senator, Philosopher Gnaeus Claudius Severus Arabianus and his unnamed wife. Her maternal great-grandparents were Marcus Aurelius’ sister, the noblewoman Annia Cornificia Faustina and Gaius Ummidius Quadratus Annianus Verus a Roman Senator who served as a suffect consul in 146. Thus she was a descendant of the former ruling Nerva–Antonine dynasty of the Roman Empire. Although by birth, Annia Aurelia Faustina was of the gens Claudia, she was not named after her father; instead she was named in honor of her parents' relations to the gens Aurelia, the gens Annia and the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.