Details are thin on the ground for the subsequent generations of Thebans, as there are few texts in which they feature as main characters. However, from the text of Oedipus Rex itself, we know a few things.
After the death of Pentheus and the transformation of Cadmus, it is Polydorus who is next to ascend to kingship. There are versions of the story in which his existence is in question, but as he is named in Sophocles we can safely insert him into the line of succession. Some tellings state that he was banished by Pentheus, returning to Thebes to take the throne only after the death of his power-hungry nephew. Regardless of how, Polydorus does indeed rule Thebes for a time, marries Nycteis, daughter of Nycteus and produced a son, Labdacus (whose name is frequently cited in Sophocles’ text).
Labdacus was too young to take the throne when Polydorus died (under ill-attested and nebulous circumstances), so a series of regents (his father-in-law Nycteus and then Nycteus’ brother Lycus) held power in Thebes. Minor power squabbles ensued, as they are wont to do, but when this particular round of the game of thrones came to an end, it was Labdacus wearing the crown.
The literature gets blurry again with regard to events of the reign of Labdacus, but Apollodorus rather neatly disposes of him thusly: “[he] perished after Pentheus because he was like-minded with him” (Bibliotheca, 3.5.5). One imagines this points to a violent death at the hands of Maenadic devotees, at the behest of a yet-again-angry Dionysus.
Another period of blurriness descends, at the end of which we have—
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