We’ve talked here before about the toughest part of Marcus Aurelius’s legacy. How can a man so committed to justice and moderation have allowed his unstable son Commodus to succeed him? It’s inexplicable. It’s a major failing. But what if it was more complicated than that?

Marcus Aurelius had 13 children, six of them boys, and therefore eligible to be heirs. In 166 AD, when Commodus was five and his other son Marcus Annius Verus was just three, Marcus actually named them both Caesar, hoping they could both be raised to be great co-emperors and that each boy would balance out and help the other.

But Verus would die tragically just three years later in complications from routine surgery. Of Marcus’s six boys, five of them would die before Marcus did. Imagine that, one terrible blow after another. There were plans that Lucius Verus, Marcus’s co-emperor, would have an heir that would co-rule with Commodus, but that too was foiled. Marcus proposed a plan, but as the expression goes, God disposed of it.

It’s not as if Marcus simply planned to live forever and could not even consider the idea of someone ruling after him (as is the case with so many rulers). It’s not as if Marcus was blind to the faults of his children or the pressures of the throne. He was, in fact, well aware of all of this and worked incredibly hard to come up with a solution. But fate kept knocking them down.

This is life, isn’t it? So much of it is outside of our control. Exactly when we need to be cut a break, we get another bad break. That’s no excuse for Commodus, of course. It doesn’t explain whatever was wrong with him, nor does it exonerate Marcus Aurelius as a parent or as an emperor. But it is important context.

We propose, fate disposes. We mice and men lay down our plans and they are dashed to pieces. That’s life. That’s history. Let’s have a little humility about it.