Queenmaker
20TH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF PTOLEMY XII
Today, I heard Tryphaeana and Bernice say something they shouldn’t. This is not uncommon.
They were gorging themselves on honeyed dates and ignoring me. This too, is not uncommon. I sat at the breakfast table with my head bowed, reading the Bacchae.
(My Greek tutor said it was entirely unsuitable for a girl of eleven summers, but when I thundered, he relented, and brought me the scroll from the Museum. It’s fantastic what a princess’s frown will make men do.)
“The old man suckles at the Romans teats like a newborn whelp. He beggars our treasury for their protection - will 6000 talents prevent the raving peasants from storming the palace?” Bernice fumed. Her cockroach eyebrows bristled over her brow.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself about the kingdom, dear sister. When Nothos is gone, I’ll reign. Rome’s senators and Alexandria’s famished will cower.” Tryph drawled, stuffing another date into her thin lipped mouth.
The New Dionysus. The Flute Player. My father is known by many names. Nothos is one whispered by disgruntled servants when their pay is docked by another 100 drachma, one scrawled onto walls in the market when the people starve. Nothos, the bastard.
A common, crass name, one not fit for the mouths of princesses, and certainly not my father’s daughters. My poor father, with an asp for an heir! In the palace, Tryph is Tryph and I am Thea, but we were given the same name at birth. Κλεοπάτρα. Glory of her father. Some glory she is, venom spitting glutton. When I read, she and Bernice sneak up behind me and yank my hair out of its plaits, cackling. They say I’ll never be a beauty with my hook nose and chubby cheeks, and my stomach sinks, heavy as a stone.
Arinsoe is tugging at my sleeve, asking me what I’m writing. She’s an annoying little chit, but at least she doesn’t call me homely.
I started bleeding the first month of the flood, waking up to scarlet soaking through my sheets. Nurse says that my breasts will swell and my legs will lengthen, and every day I stare at myself in the looking glass, willing myself to transform. I don’t look very regal at all, but the tutors say I’m the most sharp witted of my siblings, the only one in the family to speak Egyptian. Father was so proud.
“Our blood may be Greek, Thea, but our souls are made of the same matter as the Nile. Remember when Alexander founded this city, he left the Egyptian village that first stood here alone. Know who we owe our throne to.”
I never knew my mother, who died birthing me. My stepmother passed soon after my brother was born. But I’ve never wanted for a mother, not with a father like mine. My father, the flute-playing king. My father, who slips me wine from his own goblet. My father, who orders that scrolls from the library be brought to the palace in the armful, just for me.
Tryph might rule, but I? I’m more worthy of the name Cleopatra.
PERET TYBI, FIRST MONTH OF GROWTH
24TH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF PTOLEMY XII
We took a barge out to the river today. Being the decadent dynasty we are, we took half the court, a bevy of musicians and a feast with us. Somewhere amidst the beef and the honeyed pomegranates, Iras started speaking of Caesar.
“They say he brought the Gauls to their knees in Alesia. What I would have given to see the sweat dripping down that noble brow!” She thumped her chest melodramatically at this last proclamation, sending Arinsoe and Charmain into spasms of laughter.
I groaned. “Only you could bring lust into talk of war, Iras.” Secretly, I thought that I would have liked to see that too. It’s silly to think this way of a man I’ve never met, let alone one 30 summers my elder! But when Father speaks of the time he heard him speak at the Senate, he sounds as though he has a mind to match that noble brow.
Those two years he was gone were agony. I remember the mobs surrounding the palace from the Museum to the harbour, the smoke from their torches stinging my eyes till they watered. I remember Tryph’s shrill laughter echoing through the throne room. Berniece plotted, Arinsoe cried, my brothers fought and I kept my head down and in my books. I learnt Arhmaic, Phoneician, mathematics, and astronomy as my family ripped itself apart.
How strangely mundane things are now! My foolish, wonderful father drinks wine on the deck as though he did not recently murder his daughters. Iras and Charmain bat their eyes at every boy at court, spotty faced or weak chinned. They teach me how to outline my heavy eyes with kohl and perfume myself with jasmine. There’s little use to teaching a girl the art of seduction when she’s fated to wed her brother. I do not care about 200 years of Ptolmaic tradition - I can barely think of it without retching!
But a small price to pay for the crown. How violently it tumbled into my hands! My serpent tongued sisters still hiss as I slumber, mocking my short stature and manly chin. In the morning, at the breakfast table, I look at Arinsoe, tawny haired and slender, as elegant as a river reed.
I don’t care. I don’t. The Nile is dizzyingly blue, the same as lapis lazuli, and the breeze blowing across the deck carries the scent of lotuses.
SHEMU MESORE, FOURTH MONTH OF LOW WATER
1ST YEAR OF MY REIGN
I have neglected these pages for several moons, the Nile flooding and abating without my ink nib touching papyrus. But I’ve returned from Thebes, my voyage over, giving me time for repose and meditation.
As I sit in my chambers, I can see Pharos from the balcony. As a girl I would lie in bed and watch the shadow of the lighthouse erupt from the crashing waves, the fire burning at its apex the only light for miles. A beacon in the dark, the only constant in my brief, turbulent life.
Alexandria of the wine dark sea, city of riotous streets, how I love you. It seems that I wasn’t born to my forgotten mother’s arms, but to you. But oft late, I’ve learnt to forsake you. This is a city of Greeks in a foreign land, and if I was to rule, I’d have to learn the contours of Egypt. When the sacred bull of Buchis died, I knew that I must sail up the Nile to the temple of Hermonthis to deliver the new calf myself.
O, Upper Egypt! I grew to love your shifting sands, and in turn, I taught you to love me. I sailed down the river like Isis herself, beetle-green malachite on my eyelids, burning red ochre on my lips. When I saw my people lining the riverbank, cheering for me, I felt something golden swell up inside me. Something like a father’s love.
I’ve learnt the womanly arts. Charmain, whispering to me at night. “Oh, to men, it doesn’t matter what you say. Merely how you say it.” Isas, laughing as she watches her lover gaze at a statue of Venus. “When you’re a goddess, you have them on their knees.”
I have Egypt prostrate at my altar. Somehow, I am not wholly content. What of Assyria? Judea? Yea, even Rome?
Wits are not enough to bring the sons of men to worship, especially not if you’re a woman. No, as much as they persuade themselves of their civilized nature, the irrational calls to them.
Something primordial stirs. The roll of thunder. The fork of lightning. The mystery in the flutter of a pulse, the tattoo of the heart against a ribcage.
I have my books and I have my lips. I have my words and I have my gaze. Civilization’s marble spires or nature’s wilderness - they are mine to seduce. Even after I am ash in a golden sarcophagus, I will not be forgotten to the desert. Bards will sing of me for millenia to come.
The hubris of a girl of 18? Perhaps.
But as I watch that fire burn in the ink dark sky, immortal longings stir within me.
Analysis
By acknowledging how, to a drastic extent, her romantic relationships and theatricality were motivated by a desire to keep her kingdom and people safe. In this fictionalised reconstruction of a much younger Cleopatra’s diaries, I examine how her approach to learning, ruling and beauty may have formed.
I’ve tried to ground my prose in historical fact, constructing a young Cleopatra’s world as accurately as possible. Her father, Ptolemy XII, was known by all the epithets I have assigned him, and not without reason! Much of the political instability in Cleopatra’s own reign, particularly Egypt’s vulnerability to the Romans, was his doing. Increasingly unpopular with the people, he paid Rome massive amounts to ensure the backing of their army. By 59 BC, when Cleopatra was approximately 12, this proved futile, and he was forced to flee to Rome. According to some records, this left her oldest sister, Cleopatra Tryphanea queen. Others dispute her existence entirely, arguing that the name refers to Cleopatra’s mother. Other people argue that the original Cleopatra Tryphanea died in childbirth in 69 BC. Ptolmaic family trees get confusing when nearly every woman had the same name!
Nevertheless, Ptolemy’s daughter/wife was murdered, most likely by Berenice, who soon seized power. However, her attempts to gain Roman and Egyptian support were thwarted, and her father executed her upon his return. Cleopatra Thea’s whereabouts during these two years are uncertain. Some suggest that she accompanied her father to Italy ; others, that she remained in Alexandria. Either way, the years would have proved formative for the young, bright teenager, whether she was observing Rome’s senate or her own family’s brutal power struggle. Shortly before his death, Ptolmey named his daughter his heir, stipulating that she was to marry her brother, Ptolmey XIII. She couldn’t have enjoyed this arrangement much, seeing as she later killed him, her other brother, and Arinsoe, all of whom posed a threat to her power.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like for her to grow up with three sisters who didn’t like each other very much. Siblings are diffcult to deal with when you like them - they’re so much worse when you know they could murder you! Comparison and competition must have been endless, particularly in the beauty department. Her insecurity about her looks and need to tear down female rivals is clearly evident in Act 3, Scene 3, when she prods an ill-used messenger for details of Octavia’s inadequacy. The precision of her cruelty is learnt. She doesn’t merely inquire about her looks, but asks whether she is ‘shrill-tongued or low’and about her ‘gait’- not just about her sexual and romantic attractiveness, but whether she has any ‘majesty’ to her. A woman who inquires so closely about how a rival carries herself is used to creating and projecting a certain image not just through attire, but posture and conversation.
While our conception of Cleopatra’s looks is heavily influenced by her image as the ultimate temptress, contemporary coins, statues and portraits do not depict her as conventionally attractive. Her hook nose, firm jaw and prominent chin were not her primary appeal - it was her commitment to the bit. The feverish description of Cleo’s first meeting with Mark Antony sounds hyperbolic, but it may be one of the most historically accurate aspects of the play. The ‘silver oars’, the ‘perfumed’ sails - all were selected as carefully as the props for a play. She knew how to play the goddess and she knew how to make men believe it. Makeup and flirtation strengthened her throne as much as, if not more than language learning and warcraft. In summation, she did well what modern celebrities does well - constructed an image.
Perhaps that’s why Cleopatra makes for such a fascinating character. Every woman raised in a patriarchal society knows how to play a part to ensure her safety. Octavia may play the pious virgin, and Cleopatra may play the irresistible exotic goddess, but both must leverage the wills and minds of men to remain secure.
But make no mistake - she was much more than the part she played.