The Romans were not written, they were. And here's what they were not: always two of them and always the apprentice trying to unseat the master. Because that's patently retarded.
Always two of them are, the Emperor and the Pretorian Prefect. One to embody Power, the other to desire it.
lol no
Augustus to Tiberius to Caligula to Claudius to Nero to Galba and so on. None of them were Praetorian. (this is going to be a running theme btw)
Not Otho, not Vitellius, not Vespasian — though his son Titus was in fact a praetorian prefect, but he was also his
son and heir. So that doesn't really hold up.
Domitian, Titus' son, was not a praetorian prefect.
Certainly not Nerva. Or Trajan or his adopted son Hadrian or
his adopted son Antoninus Pius.
It is truly a mystery how co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus and Commudus fit into this nonsense theory. Because they don't. Not only did they reign two at a time, but none of them — nor any mentioned before — was a Praetorian prefect or otherwise.
Those are the first 250 years of the Roman Empire and never was there this scenario you bring up as "always". So no, it's the opposite, *never* in the first quarter millennium. Never.