Tea at Trianon: Descendants of Cleopatra

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Descendants of Cleopatra

And according to Egyptian law, Cleopatra was married to Julius Caesar and later, after Caesar's death, to Mark Antony. From Ancient Origins:

Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of an independent Egypt, had four children: Caesarion (with Julius Caesar), twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy Philadelphia (the latter three with Mark Antony ). But she only had descendants through one of her children: her sole daughter, Selene, who married King Juba II of Mauretania.
Selene probably had two children of her own, after which her descendants faded into obscurity. But two hundred years later, Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra in Syria (who conquered Egypt in the third century AD) claimed descent from Cleopatra. Was it possible that Cleopatra’s descendants lived, throve, and survived to challenge her ancient frenemy of Rome? (Read more.)