Carinus

Marcus Aurelius Carinus was named Caesar by his father, the Emperor Carus, in late 282, then elevated to Augustus and made co-emperor of the western Empire in early 283. He held power until 285, when he died. The official histories that survive paint him as dissolute and incompetent, but those accounts passed through a single filter: Diocletian, the opponent who won. What Carinus actually did, stripped of his successor's spin, remains harder to see.