Must Look Good in Purple

Help Wanted!  A position has become available in our organisation for titular ruler of a disintegrating empire.  The successful applicant will be young, malleable, easy going and capable of taking instruction with a relaxed attitude to the hideous murder of friends, advisers and relatives.  Duties would involve; sitting on a throne, posing for coins and doing what you're told.  Pay and conditions negotiable, would suit unambitious adolescent with a death wish.  Apply to Orestes c/- What's Left of the Roman Army, Ravenna.

With a job description like that is it any wonder that Orestes had trouble finding applicants?  Eventually he had to dump the job on his fourteen year old son Romulus Augustulus thus laying himself open to charges of nepotism, breach of child labour laws and really hating his offspring.  One does tend to think of empires as being handed down from father to son but by the last half of the fifth century AD the western Roman Empire tended to be passed down to the person who murdered his predecessor.  Orestes was never emperor, Romulus' predecessor was a character named Julius Nepos whom nobody seems to have liked very much.  He had been appointed by the eastern emperor Zeno to get a grip on the rapidly disintegrating western empire but all he seems to have done is annoy everyone.

Possibly the silliest thing Nepos did was appoint Orestes as his magister militum (essentially commander in chief) thus proving that whatever talents he did possess judgement of subordinates was not among them.  With the ink barely dry on his appointment Orestes marched the Roman army, by now reduced to a pack of undisciplined, untrustworthy and (ominously for Orestes) largely unpaid barbarian mercenaries, on Ravenna the imperial capital.  Nepos stood not upon the order of his going but hightailed it across the Adriatic like a bat out of hell and wailed for Zeno to restore him.  Since Zeno was currently fleeing across Anatolia as a result of his own usurpation issues he wasn't much help and Orestes settled down to rule Italy crowning his young son as emperor into the bargain.

Almost immediately a problem arose; die cutters complained that the new emperor's name was too long to fit on the coins.  Sadly (for him at any rate) this would prove to be the least of Romulus' problems.  Remember those unpaid soldiers I mentioned about half a paragraph ago?  They wanted paying which is why Romulus wanted coins.  Unfortunately the soldiers didn't want coins they wanted land which has the advantage of not falling through a hole in your pocket.  More specifically they wanted half the land in Italy which was just about everything the empire had left.
Orestes said, "No"
They said, "We'll take it anyway"
Orestes said, "You and whose army?"
They said, "Yours".

From amongst their number they chose one of their senior officers named Odoacer and he led them in an uprising.  The last Roman army essentially became just the latest group of barbarians to rampage through the empire and after a bloody struggle Orestes was killed and Odoacer and his forces arrived at Ravenna.  Much to the surprise of everyone Odoacer didn't kill Romulus, he simply forced him to resign and pensioned him off.  Thus the Roman Empire in the west ended not with a bang but an adolescent whimper.  At the time very few people noticed.

Odoacer sent the imperial regalia to the eastern capital Constantinople with the comment that there was no longer a need for an emperor in the west.  One emperor was enough and he would rule Italy in that emperor's name.  Despite the protests of Julius Nepos, still whingeing from the wings, Zeno (who had managed to deal with his usurper somewhat more efficiently - murder was involved) appeared to accept the situation.  A few years later he persuaded Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths to invade Italy, kill Odoacer and rule the area instead.  It is uncertain why he thought this might be an improvement.