Ulpia Severina was Roman empress as the wife of Roman emperor Aurelian from 270 to 275. Severina is unmentioned in surviving literary sources and known only from coinage and inscriptions and as a result, very little is known about her. Her Ulpia suggests that she may have been related either to Emperor Trajan (r. 98–117) or the usurper Laelianus (r. 269), as they share the same nomen, and perhaps from Dacia, where the name was common. It is not known when she married Aurelian, but it might have been before he became emperor. She was probably proclaimed in the autumn of 274. Aurelian was murdered in September/October 275 and his successor, Tacitus, was proclaimed emperor only after a brief interregnum, lasting somewhere between five and eleven weeks. Though coins of Severina were minted under Aurelian from 274 to 275, some historians speculatively assign certain unusual types of coins to this brief interregnum period and suggest that Severina either effectively briefly ruled the empire in her own right, or that there was confusion in regards to Aurelian's successor until Tacitus became emperor, and coin mints thus chose to mint coins in Severina's name. Given that no literary source discusses Severina, any interpretation of the unusual coins remains speculation. Early life and family Very little is known of Ulpia Severina given that no surviving literary source discusses her at all. The only allusions to her whatsoever in surviving texts are a handful of references to "Aurelian's wife" in the and the 12th-century Epitome of Histories by Joannes Zonaras stating that Aurelian married a daughter of Zenobia, probably an invented story. Her year of birth is not known. Through conjecture, it is possible to assume that Severina came either from Dacia or one of the other Danubian provinces, as the Ulpia had been common there ever since the conquests of Emperor Trajan (). It has historically been assumed that Severina was the daughter of a man by the name Ulpius Crinitus, a figure that appears in the as a paragon of military and senatorial virtue, a descendant of Trajan and the adoptive father of Aurelian. However, Ulpius Crinitus's existence is perhaps an invention of the , given that contemporary evidence gleaned from inscriptions and coins does not mention him. Severina may have been related to the usurper Laelianus (). It is not known when she married Aurelian, possibly it was before he became