The victorious contender of the civil war that followed Commodus' assassination, Lucius Septimius Severus, the governor of the province of Pannonia Superior and an African of Lepcis Magna, found it expedient to present himself as Pertinax's legitimate successor. As for the women of the Severan dynasty, they played a decisive role not only during the palace intrigues accompanying the moments of succession, but also in the daily exercise of imperial power and in the very construction of the princeps' image. During the first two centuries of the imperial age the administrative fields dependent on the princeps steadily grew in importance. The Praetorian prefecture had extended its authority to cover matters of public order in Italy during the second century. The greatest changes in the administrative organization of the empire during the Severan age were those resulting from the large accretions of imperial property after the confiscation of individual urban estates belonging to the followers of Niger and above all Albinus.