Doomed Queens (7 page)

Amastris’s sons grew up to be ruthless despots, unlike their much-admired parents. The princes arranged for Amastris to be drowned when onboard a ship, perhaps to short-circuit the populace’s growing dissatisfaction with their rule. The murder was quickly avenged by Lysimachus, the queen’s final husband, who decided that his affection for Amastris remained as strong as his desire to regain her lands.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Avoid boats rowed by your enemies.

80 BCE

erenice III was the first queen of Egypt to rule without a consort in over a millennium. Though her reign was brief, her example inspired her descendant Cleopatra to also rule alone. Improbably, neither queen possessed Egyptian blood. Berenice did not even speak Egyptian; she considered Greek her lingua franca.

How did a non-Egyptian woman ascend to the Egyptian throne? Berenice’s rise to power can be traced back some two centuries earlier to Alexander the Great. When Alexander’s body proved weaker than his will, his vast empire eventually suffered the fate of all empires without a strong ruler: It was cut up slice by slice by those hungry for a piece of the pie. Berenice III’s ancestor Ptolemy was a distant relative of Alexander and one of his most gifted generals. Like everyone else, Ptolemy wanted in—but he was wiser than the others. Instead of overreaching for the world, he limited himself to Egypt.

Geographic isolation plus agricultural wealth equals one happy ruler. Egypt was surrounded by sea and mountains, making it unappealing for spur-of-the-moment invasions; its wealth was derived from the Nile, whose annual flooding ensured abundant harvests that the ancient world depended upon for survival. To cap his coup, Ptolemy managed to steal Alexander’s corpse, which he interred in a magnificent tomb in the heart of Alexandria, Egypt’s capital city. By owning the literal embodiment of Alexander, Ptolemy’s reign gained an aura of legitimacy that allowed his descendants to rule Egypt for three centuries. The only power to get in their way was the Roman Empire, which they mollified with regular tributes of money.

Though Ptolemy originally hailed from Macedon, his family quickly assumed the customs of their adopted land, though not its language. Chief among them was the use of intermarriage to consolidate power. Egyptian mythology encouraged the wedding of brother to sister, niece to uncle; Ptolemy saw no reason to break with tradition. The Ptolemaic dynasty also recycled names ad nauseam, which makes it confusing to ascertain exactly who ruled when and how.

Ptolemy monotonously followed after Ptolemy for generations. Then along came Berenice, the third of her name.

Queen Berenice III was the daughter of Ptolemy IX. Her father married her off to his younger brother who, not surprisingly, was named Ptolemy X. It was uncertain whether the marriage was consummated, but it mattered not—Berenice was widowed before an heir could be born.

After her father died in 62 BCE, Berenice decided to rule without a consort at her side—one dead husband was enough. But the powers that be in Rome weren’t too happy about this. To assuage them, Berenice deigned to marry her father’s stepson, Ptolemy XI. Having gained Egypt by possessing the queen, Ptolemy had no further use for Berenice. He waited a scant three weeks before arranging for her murder.

This Ptolemy’s reign was short. Though Berenice’s reign had lasted only half a year, she won the hearts of her populace during this period. They proved their loyalty by lynching Ptolemy several days later.

or

When Inbreeding

Leads to Discord

Though Ptolemy had not a drop of Egyptian blood in him, his dynasty ruled over the Nile for many years. Berenice III was one of his direct descendants.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

If you share your power,
you may soon lose it.

71 BCE

bout nine years after Queen Berenice’s death in Egypt, halfway around the world another royal woman met an unnatural end. The Chinese empress Xu Pingjun lost her life to fulfill a family’s quest for power. Unlike the immediately avenged Berenice, it took half a decade for Xu’s assassin to be brought to justice.

This most unfortunate empress reigned during the illustrious Han dynasty; the Han dynasty’s many achievements include porcelain, the first dictionary, and the proliferation of Confucianism. Xu was the devoted wife of Emperor Xuan, who had been raised as a commoner but elevated to the throne at the age of eighteen in a veritable Cinderella story. Xuan’s fairy godmother was Huo Guang, a mover-and-shaker statesman with enough influence to depose the previous emperor when he proved ineffective.

Initially Xu was acknowledged only as the emperor’s imperial consort. Huo advised Xuan to take a second wife for his empress, suggesting his daughter for the role—her appointment would complete Huo’s passive-aggressive coup. However, the emperor truly loved his wife, who had wed him when he was poor and humble. He refused to let politics trump emotion.

Xu was crowned in 74 BCE. As empress, she never forgot her roots and, like her husband, was noted for her modest ways. Everyone could have lived happily ever after were it not for Huo Guang’s wife, Lady Xian. Xian did not take the emperor’s rejection of her daughter lightly. Plus she was even more ambitious than her kingmaker husband—think Lady Macbeth, Han dynasty style.

Xian watched for an opportunity to impose her will. It took her three years, but her plot was exceptionally devious. When Xu was in labor with her second child, Xian bribed the empress’s female physician to add wolfsbane to her medication; wolfsbane, also known as aconite, causes asphyxiation. The timing of the murder suggested that Xu perished from postnatal complications rather than cruel intentions.

Nonetheless, after Xu’s death the physician was arrested for questioning. Terrified the not so good doctor would point the finger at her, Xian lost her cool and convinced her husband to drop the case. With that crisis averted, Xian was free to concentrate on the big picture again. Soon after, the emperor made her daughter empress—she just happened to be available to comfort the grieving widower.