Constantine: Legit?

Constantine did not convert into Christianity until he was in his deathbed, but promoted it for long time before that. Why? Many possible answers to that exist but as the reading taught, the two main reasons were one, for political advantage, or two, because he was a true believer. It’s a difficult thing to do, to try and give reasons to someone's choices when it concerns beliefs, in this case, religious beliefs. To further explore this, I researched a few things, among those that came up, I learned that Constantine began openly giving support to Christians once he was already on the clear road to power, this could lead many to believe that his intentions behind this leaned towards gaining support from that group also. But this could also be interpreted as history noticing this because not many had done it before.

So could it really have been because of political advantage, or just something that stood out among those that happened along the way? I also found, that although not too openly, in his early-ish life, he had been less tough on those who claimed to follow Christianity, than most people in power were in those times. When I read this, I was surprised. Could it have been, that his form of thinking, was not yet fully constructed, so he was more open to other ideas, or he was just a completely, well open- minded guy, which is a good thing. But when one is open minded, idea of others while not always, usually, tend to become one's one, and are accepted. I think this could have been what happened with Constantine. This is how I see it, Constantine used Christianity as something to help him advance politically, but his 'faked' support for it, lead him to actually, at his later years come to believe in it, and I think he died truly believing in Christianity as his religion.