Veranilda

In a war‑torn Italy where Byzantine armies loom over crumbling Roman estates, a dying aristocrat clings to the last threads of his once‑glorious lineage. Flavius Anicius Maximus retreats to his family villa perched above Surrentum, a silent refuge where disease, political pressure and a haunted past converge. His sister Petronilla, steadfast and devout, watches over him while his nephew Basil, still restless, navigates the tangled loyalties of a city besieged by both invaders and imperial edicts.

Beyond the villa’s faded walls, the story unfolds among a cast of freedmen, scholars, and servants, each echoing the wider collapse of the ancient order. A distant daughter, Aurelia, now bound to a Gothic lord and estranged from her Roman faith, embodies the cultural fractures tearing the peninsula apart. As rumors of a fierce young Goth king named Totila swirl, the fragile world of the Anicii teeters between hope for redemption and the inexorable pull of an uncertain future.