To keep the family fortunes under one house, Cornelia arranged for her daughter Sempronia to marry her adopted nephew Aemilianus—even though she did not like Aemilianus personally. Cornelia found him pretentious and did not think him worthy of the honor of being head of the family. In fact, much of Cornelia’s focus on her children was an effort to keep Aemilianus from outshining her jewels. She pushed her sons’ ambitions by reminding them that the Romans still called her the mother-in-law of Aemilianus, but not yet mother of the Gracchi.
