Cleopatra's Daughter

Author: Michelle Moran

Age: YA

You know how the story of Marc Antony and Cleopatra ends...with their Romeo-and-Juliet-style suicides. But what happens to their three children, the twins Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios, and their little brother Ptolemy? Augustus Caesar takes them back to Rome with him and gives them to his sister Octavia to raise. (Octavia has to be one of the nicest women in history. I mean, if your husband left you for another woman and started a war with your brother, would you take his children with his mistress into your home and raise them like your own kids?)

Slavery is a central theme in the book. Caesar keeps many of the royal children of various conquered nations as slaves in his household, and Selene and her siblings realize that it's only luck and Caesar's good temper that has kept them from becoming slaves themselves. As the book transports you to a time and a place where simple survival is the daily goal, you find yourself asking, "Who is really free? Or happy, if happiness is tied to freedom?" Certainly not the common slaves, who are often severely mistreated by their masters. Not the royal slaves in Caesar's household, either...they may have better food, lodging, and education, but they miss their homelands, and can't help but remember that Caesar killed their parents. Not the poor free people of Rome, who are abused by the wealthy. Not the aristocratic wives of cruel husbands. And not the cruel husbands, who struggle to avoid incurring Caesar's wrath. Definitely not Caesar's family, who are subject to his daily whims, and those of his jealous, plotting wife Livia. Not even Caesar himself, as he lives in constant fear of assassination.
 
As Selene grows up in Augustus' Rome--an exciting and terrifying place--she makes friends, develops a crush on her foster brother Marcellus (Caesar's heir), attends gladiator fights, misses her parents, studies architecture (she is warned to find a way to make herself useful to Caesar, if she wants to survive), and tries to solve the mystery of the Red Eagle, a rebel who stands up for the slaves and may start a revolution. But will she be able to overcome her tragic past to find happiness, love, and fulfillment? Or is she doomed to meet the same miserable end that seems to await just about everyone associated with the Julio-Claudian family?
   
I went through an enormous Cleopatra phase in my early teens, and at that point I read a biography about Cleopatra and her children called (aptly) Cleopatra's Children, by Alice Curtis Desmond (which I am planning to re-read and review for you at some point). From what I remember of that, it seems like this book is as historically accurate as it can be (i.e. with the limited information we have about what happened to Cleopatra's children). So--good factual framework, the fictional parts (which the author points out in a note at the end of the novel) are interesting and plausible, and there's just a bit of romance--everything I require from historical fiction.




Recommended for fans of: historical fiction; Egypt; Rome; The Royal Diaries series; I, Claudius; Suetonius; Philippa Gregory and the TV series Rome (although be warned that as this is young adult fiction it features MUCH less sex than the last two)