All of this did not stop Roman elites from trying to appease barbarian commanders often not to protect Roman territories but to gain the upper hand in internal power struggles. For example the Vandals under their king Geiseric ravaged large parts of the lberian Peninsula and then conquered the Roman bread baskets in North Africa from 429 onward. The Roman response to this was to offer Geiseric the emperor Valentinian lll's child daughter as a bride. Geiseric was at the time married to the adughter of one of the leaders of the Goths but this does not seem to have stopped him. He annulled his marriage under the pretext that his wife was trying to murder him and sent her back to her family after mutilating her by cutting off both her ears and her nose