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To the west, Theodoric at his accession found his kingdom bounded by the Alps, for Odoacer had given up to the Visigoths Marseilles, and the other towns which had obeyed the emperor down to the year 476. Beyond the Alps, Alaric the Visigoth now held the mouths of the Rhone and the Provençal Coast, while Gundobad the Burgundian ruled on the middle and upper Rhone, from Avignon as far as Besançon and Langres. North of both Burgundian and Visigoth, and far from the Alpine borders of Theodoric, lay the new Frankish kingdom of Chlodovech, now reaching as far as the Loire and the upper Seine.

With all these three monarchs the king of the Ostrogoths had many dealings. At the very beginning of his reign he asked for the hand of Augofleda, the sister of Chlodovech, and hoped that by this alliance he had bound the clever and unscrupulous Frank to himself. By Augofleda he became the father of Amalaswintha, the only child born to him in lawful wedlock, though he had two elder daughters by a concubine ere he came to Italy. |Marriages of Theodoric’s family.| Soon after his own marriage with the Frankish princess, Theodoric wedded one of these natural children to Sigismund, the son and heir of the Burgundian Gundobad, and the other to Alaric the Visigoth. Thus all his neighbours became his relatives.