Succession

[Watchman]

Such uprisings usually happened out in the sticks though, didn't they ? The further a governor or whatever was physically removed from the eyes of the power center, the easier time he had building a personal powerbase - already because he largely had to deal with any local trouble more or less by himself, at least to begin with, as reinforcements from the center could take a while to arrive. An ambitious man could naturally try to use such a powerbase for a coup d'etat when the center was for one reason or another weak. The recurring satrapal revolts both the Achamenids and Seleucids had to deal with being a prime example; Baktria an extreme case. Diverse pretenders to power, or simply break-aways, weren't all that unusual in other realms either.