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Jan. 26th, 2011 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsFor Hanukkah this year, my dad bought me the new biography of Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life. I am pretty sure that this was actually a a not-so-subtle reminder on his part that we had been talking about going to the Cleopatra exhibit at the Franklin Institute (which worked, for the record; I bought us all tickets for his birthday, and we went, and it was vastly entertaining) but, you know, now I also had this book! Which I went into with few expectations, and therefore was enormously and pleasantly surprised to find myself pretty much loving it.
Stacy Schiff is explicitly out to show that Cleopatra was "more than the sum of her supposed seductions," to sift through what little information we have about her and her reign and draw out a picture of an intelligent, practical politician who was one of the most powerful women of the ancient world in her own right. Which is a worthwhile project and one I am excited about, but I'm not going to lie, the main part of my enjoyment of the book lies in Schiff's prose. Schiff is not just a thorough but a very witty writer, who can occasionally go over-the-top in terms of description, but is nonetheless a woman who is very clearly appreciative of LOLHISTORY. She spends several delighted pages discussing the incestuous twists and turns of the Ptolemy family tree; she's hilariously cutting about Cicero, whose dislike for Cleopatra she traces to the queen not delivering a book he'd asked to borrow from her library; she takes a digression to tell us all about Herod and his wife, who "to his frustration, somehow never could get past the fact that Herod had murdered half her family," and his wife's teenaged brother, who was so pretty that Herod's mother-in-law sent a letter and some portraits to Marc Antony basically saying "hey, dude, my kids are SO HOT. CHECK IT," and Antony was like ". . . . yeah, I would be okay taking Herod's brother-in-law as a page or something, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN," and then Herod had to scramble around so that Antony would not show up at his doorstep all "HHHHHELLO. I COME TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR FAMILY (ALL MEMBERS OF WHOM ARE CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU)."
. . . and I've lost my dignity in this review, haven't I. ANYWAY, the point is I found this book enormously enjoyable, and am also pleased with its stated feminist project, and now I kind of want to finally get around to watching Rome and also reading Schiff's other biographies. It was also actually exciting to learn about Cleopatra, since somehow she went under my radar when I went through my phases of obsession with various powerful queens as a kid and read up everything I could find on Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
So, my question for you guys: who is your favorite AWESOME QUEEN(/Empress/Woman King/whatever the correct nomenclature is)? Bonus points if it is someone I do not know so I can then go look them up! (But also bonus points if it is Elizabeth I or Hatshepsut or anything else that is pandering to my favorites, so really it is all bonus points.)
Stacy Schiff is explicitly out to show that Cleopatra was "more than the sum of her supposed seductions," to sift through what little information we have about her and her reign and draw out a picture of an intelligent, practical politician who was one of the most powerful women of the ancient world in her own right. Which is a worthwhile project and one I am excited about, but I'm not going to lie, the main part of my enjoyment of the book lies in Schiff's prose. Schiff is not just a thorough but a very witty writer, who can occasionally go over-the-top in terms of description, but is nonetheless a woman who is very clearly appreciative of LOLHISTORY. She spends several delighted pages discussing the incestuous twists and turns of the Ptolemy family tree; she's hilariously cutting about Cicero, whose dislike for Cleopatra she traces to the queen not delivering a book he'd asked to borrow from her library; she takes a digression to tell us all about Herod and his wife, who "to his frustration, somehow never could get past the fact that Herod had murdered half her family," and his wife's teenaged brother, who was so pretty that Herod's mother-in-law sent a letter and some portraits to Marc Antony basically saying "hey, dude, my kids are SO HOT. CHECK IT," and Antony was like ". . . . yeah, I would be okay taking Herod's brother-in-law as a page or something, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN," and then Herod had to scramble around so that Antony would not show up at his doorstep all "HHHHHELLO. I COME TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR FAMILY (ALL MEMBERS OF WHOM ARE CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU)."
. . . and I've lost my dignity in this review, haven't I. ANYWAY, the point is I found this book enormously enjoyable, and am also pleased with its stated feminist project, and now I kind of want to finally get around to watching Rome and also reading Schiff's other biographies. It was also actually exciting to learn about Cleopatra, since somehow she went under my radar when I went through my phases of obsession with various powerful queens as a kid and read up everything I could find on Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
So, my question for you guys: who is your favorite AWESOME QUEEN(/Empress/Woman King/whatever the correct nomenclature is)? Bonus points if it is someone I do not know so I can then go look them up! (But also bonus points if it is Elizabeth I or Hatshepsut or anything else that is pandering to my favorites, so really it is all bonus points.)
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Date: 2011-01-26 04:51 pm (UTC)From what I know of Cicero, I would absolutely believe that.
I'm in the mood for some lolhistory -- I may have to check this book out!
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Date: 2011-01-26 04:55 pm (UTC)I think you would enjoy the book enormously, perhaps I will trade you for it next month. :D
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:10 pm (UTC)best. ever.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHELLO
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:16 pm (UTC)(Even more ridiculous is that apparently, after he finally did just have his wife executed, he spent THE REST OF HIS LIFE pining and moping for her and hallucinating her various places, because nothing says 'forever love' like a woman whose family you massacred and then you killed on trumped-up adultery charges.)
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:35 pm (UTC)Edward was probably sleeping with a series of favorites of both sexes including Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser. Isabella wasn't going to take that. So when Edward asked Isabella to go to her French family and negotiate a peace treaty, Isabella was delighted to leave town. (France got a much better deal out of that treaty, not incidentally.)
While Isabella was in France, she found a lover, the English baron Roger Mortimer, and the two of them decided to INVADE ENGLAND. Which they did. AND THEY WON. (I won't describe what Isabella and Roger's forces did to Hugh Despenser in their victory. Check Wikipedia if you really want to know.) Isabella and Roger imprisoned King Edward, and got Parliament to force him to abdicate in favor of his son Edward III. Isabella may or may not have been responsible for Edward II's assassination in prison in the same year.
Isabella and Roger's happy regency over the young Edward III didn't last very long, though. Edward III wasn't 18 yet when he planned a coup, executed Roger and stuck his mother in prison. Oh, happy families.
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:49 pm (UTC)ALTHOUGH I think, from this book, I can see you an equally dramatic marriage! One of Cleopatra's grandparental brother-sister pharaonic couples had a dramatic fight after the Pharaoh seduced and married his wife's daughter (brilliantly, without first divorcing his wife). She declared a rebellion; he decided to teach his wife a lesson by murdering and dismembering their young son and sending her the pieces as a birthday present. The wife promptly displayed the chopped-up pieces to the Alexandrian public, who revolted in her favor. Cue three years or so of civil war . . .
. . . and then a reconciliation, after which the happy couple, having overcome their child-chopping differences, ruled relatively peacefully for eight more years with her daughter/his other wife and then both died of natural causes!
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:24 pm (UTC)Livia Drusilla (later Livia Augusta) fascinates me. She wielded a whole lot of power for a very long time, and she did it in a way that was subtle and really made it work. Many Roman ladies are quite interesting to read about.
Empress Theodora of the Byzantine empire was also amazing. From actress/prostitute to devout empress - not bad. Justinian seemed to really love her and consider her a partner in the accounts I've read.
Ah, ancient history. Before soap operas, we had to look to the royalty.
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:30 pm (UTC)LIVIA. Oh, man. The other thing I want to do now that I do not have time to do is go back and read all of I, Claudius. Or watch it.
Maybe we only need soap operas now because we ditched the royalty!
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:25 pm (UTC)Favorite queen: Elizabeth I, hands down. Ever since I did a report on her in elementary school. :D
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:32 pm (UTC)Hee, I did a report on her in middle school - the best part was that a percentage of our grade entailed costuming. >:D Although I did have some difficulty getting through doors!
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:27 pm (UTC)Mistress of Pericles of Athens (and only not married to him because she wasn't a citizen of Athens, was foreign, had the wrong social class, and stuff). But she supposedly had a school for other women and Plato recorded her having a chat with Socrates.
I mean, there were some haters who blamed her for the Peloponnesian War, but that's mostly just cause she was outstandingly awesome.
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:33 pm (UTC)(Haters are always blaming the ladies for wars when they are exceptionally awesome, it is a sad old story.)
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:31 pm (UTC)In terms of rulers, I'm a fan of Eleanor Roosevelt since she got things done, same with Victoria. Elizabeth I has always been one of my favorites but I figured I'd go outside the box, also Alexander's mother, Olympia was badass and possibly mad.
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:35 pm (UTC)And hahahahaha OLYMPIA. Whatever else you can say about Olympia, she was definitely a hell of a dramatic figure . . .
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Date: 2011-01-26 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-01-26 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 08:20 pm (UTC)Also, I had never heard of her at all, so you get the most bonus points for this!
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Date: 2011-01-26 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 09:04 pm (UTC)*scowls*
Anyway, this book sounds awesome, as I adore Cleo no idea. But, hmm. I have to go with Catherine the Great of Russia. I ADORE that woman. Fuck yeah seizing control from her idiot (probably literally) husband and ruling RUSSIA, of all places, even though she was German (I think) and having as many lovers as she felt like.
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Date: 2011-01-26 09:09 pm (UTC)Catherine the Great is PRETTY FANTASTIC, it is true. (Also pretty fantastically entertaining! Catherine, like Cleo, was way way more than the sum of her affairs, but I still love the Kate Beaton comic.)
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Date: 2011-01-26 10:53 pm (UTC)Awesome.
My favorite awesome queen is Eleanor of Aquitaine (hence my default icon), though I've always had a fondness for Elizabeth I as well.
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Date: 2011-01-27 04:05 am (UTC)I WAS A SERIOUS SCHOLAR.
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Date: 2011-01-27 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 04:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-01-27 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 04:15 am (UTC)However, I had never even heard of Himiko! BONUS POINTS FOR YOU AS WELL. She sounds incredibly cool. :O
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Date: 2011-01-27 01:35 am (UTC)Also, my favourite queen is Cheng Sao, CHINESE PIRATE QUEEN whose fleet was so big it was bigger than the navy and then finished it off by getting the government to grant her and her pirates amnesty so she finished her criminal career with retirement and lived to a ripe old age. I quite seriously don't know why no one has made an epic Chinese drama out of her life because IT WOULD BE SO EPIC.
Some more details here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/worklife/08/27/woman.pirate/index.html
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Date: 2011-01-27 04:20 am (UTC)HAHAHAHAHA okay, so I have the eighth book in the Bloody Jack books on my library shelf RIGHT NOW, and though I have not read it yet from my quick skimming through it I am pretty sure that Jacky actually has a ~romantic interlude~ with Cheng Sao? SO EXCITED FOR IT NOW. *___*
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Date: 2011-01-27 02:40 am (UTC)I'll just tell you about a few that you probably haven't heard of (I think you might find something interesting about them):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Christina_of_Sweden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_I_of_Denmark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_of_Namur
About the latter - there's no evidence for Saint Birgitta's claims that her husband, King Magnus was a homosexual. It was just politics. From what little historic evidence there is, he was very much in love with his wife, but she kept having babies (mainly girls) who died, and I think eventually they gave up having sex so she wouldn't have to go through that again. (Not that it wouldn't be interesting to have a gay king, and actually we've had two, as far as I know - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_III_of_Sweden, and this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_V)
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Date: 2011-01-27 04:23 am (UTC)I knew about Christina and Margaret, but not much about Blanche, so thank you for the links!
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Date: 2011-01-27 03:37 am (UTC)The one about whom I most want to find out more, though, is Queen Himiko of Yamataikoku. Who may be little more than a myth, but the little I've heard sounds interesting.
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Date: 2011-01-27 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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