This read was disappointing and it made me sad as I was really looking forward to this story. My apologies to the author and the publisher...but thank you to #netgalley for this opportunity to read this book early!

While I am not writing a written review for this one, I have featured it in multiple videos on tiktok and instagram. Thank you for allowing me to read this book.

I have been waiting for this book ever since I first learned, probably as a teenager, that Cleopatra and Marc Antony had a daughter. Even her name, Cleopatra Selene (after the goddess of the moon), was evocative and intriguing. While it was usually mentioned that she was taken to Rome after her parents’ deaths, along with her two full brothers, who both soon disappear from the historical record, and raised in the household of Octavia, her father’s Roman wife, nothing else was mentioned of her. Finally, Jane Draycott has granted my wish.

With rare exceptions, biographies of ancient and medieval women can be disappointing, mainly due to the sheer paucity of information available about them from a world run by and written about by men, and far too often the book devolves into a “life and times” with a lot about the men in the subject’s life and mainly supposition about the subject herself. I’m happy that this was not the case with Cleopatra’s Daughter. Yes, those things were present, as is to be expected, but I never forgot that she was the focus, and it seemed that Ms. Draycott was able to extract a surprising amount of information from a scanty record. This was helped by the fact that Cleopatra Selene, if not as powerful and charismatic as her mother (a well-nigh impossible task), also seems to have been a formidable woman who inspired loyalty on her own behalf, as well as having what appears to be a compatible and equal match with one of Rome’s client kings.

The book starts with a brief history of the Ptolemaic dynasty, its center in Alexandria, and the lives of the two outsized personalities who would become the parents of Cleopatra Selene. It then traces what her life would have been like, first as a princess and nominally a queen in her own right, as her parents declared her Queen of Crete and Cyrenaica when she was only six years old, then her late childhood and adolescence in Rome, and finally her marriage to Juba II of Numidia, a fellow child hostage who had also been raised in Augustus’s circle, and their rule of the kingdom of Mauretania until what seems to have been a fairly early death. Despite this, she still exerted a large influence on the culture of their court, including Egyptian symbolism in artwork and on their coinage, as well as on Juba’s scholarly writings. Finally, Ms. Draycott speculates on whether the pair, whose son was murdered by Caligula, might also have had one or more daughters whose descendants may have ended up on the imperial throne. I also found her discussion of the fraught question of Cleopatra Selene's mother's, and by extension her own, ethnicity to be both balanced and thoughtful. All in all, I enjoyed this book very much, and it truly brought Cleopatra Selene and those around her to life for me.

I received a copy of Cleopatra’s Daughter from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book became quite repetitive near the end and was mostly about Cleopatra IV with a "its implied Cleopatra Selene would've been there too". Sort of became a paper trying to reach word count

"Cleopatra's Daughter" is a biography of Cleopatra Selene, the surviving daughter of the great Egyptian queen. Jane Draycott's efforts to retrieve Cleopatra Selene from the murkiness of history are admirable, and her unrelenting efforts to place Cleopatra Selene within the greater Roman empire, including north Africa, are admirable.

What's iffier: As Draycott will fully acknowledge, some of our sources on Cleopatra Selene are limited. Sometimes we just don't know fully what happened when, or year-by-year details of her life. As a result, Draycott has to tell us how Cleopatra Selene "might" have done something or "probably" did experience some such thing. While Draycott's approach is absolutely understandable (she's attempting to illuminate all of the Roman world, not just one woman's story), one can't help but chomp at the bit a bit at those repeated mights/mays/maybes.

That said, this is a book that takes one of the most well-known characters in ancient history and uses her to nudge our curiosity in a different direction. Through Cleopatra Selene, we learn more about client kingdoms in Africa and what that meant in Roman society.

With gratitude to the publisher and to Netgalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

While at times it can seem like we know a lot about history, this work of non-fiction clarifies how little we do in fact know about a lot. Cleopatra’s daughter, also named Cleopatra (and from a long line of that name) led a full, varied, and ultimately short life. The story of the love affair between Cleopatra and Marc Antony led to the birth of the daughter, named Cleopatra Selene. As is well known, things did not end well for Cleopatra and Marc Antony and from a life of Egyptian luxury, Cleopatra Selene found herself part of the deposed household and under the thumb of Augustus Caesar, who was the nemesis of her parents. After her time in Rome, she married Juba, a Numidian king in present-day Algeria.

It’s an ambitious project to write a biography of a woman who lived over 2000 years ago, but that’s what the author has done in this book about Cleopatra’s daughter. With very little recorded history, especially about women, Draycott pieces together an interesting account of the life of Cleopatra Selene, a relatively unknown queen, the only daughter of the famous Cleopatra VII. I feel like I learned a lot and I’m glad more attention is being given to women in history.

<b>First line:</b> How does one dare to attempt to write a biography of any ancient historical figure, let alone an ancient woman?

<b>Summary:</b> Cleopatra Selene was the daughter of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony. She grew up in the beautiful city of Alexandria and was one of the heirs to the Egyptian kingdom. But after the deaths of her parents her life is thrown into turmoil when she is carted away with her twin brother, Alexander Helios and their youngest sibling, Ptolemy Philadelphos, to Rome as a prize of Augustus. She spends the next several years among the Romans until her marriage to Juba II and their eventual rule over the kingdom of Mauretania.

<b>My Thoughts:</b> The only knowledge I have about Cleopatra Selene came from the book, <i>Cleopatra’s Daughter</i> by Michelle Moran. I always assumed that Cleopatra VII did not have children because they are rarely mentioned. I was very excited to see what more I could learn about this little know ancient woman. It appears from Draycott’s work that there is very little evidence about her so she draws much of the book from what the time period expected of women of her class. The beginning of the book follows the lives of Cleopatra Selene’s parents, their rise and fall as well as the consequences faced by their children after their defeat.
Since very little is known or has been discovered much is assumed based on the evidence available as well as the art work left from this era. I liked that many of the pieces of sculpture and pottery are inserted into the book to give an idea of what the author is describing. Even with the lack of more evidence I really enjoyed learning about what life was like during Cleopatra Selene’s life and how she saw the world around her change during her lifetime.

I’ve often wondered about the sole survivor of Cleopatra’s children’s her daughter.
Draycott attempts to fill in the gaps by piecing together clues from ancient sources.
She does offer a few tidbits that I’d not known, such as Ptolemy I may have been the half brother of Alexander the Great.
A lot of the book involves cultural and political background for context as I realize information is scant and suppostional.
Thanks to Edelweiss and W.W. Norton for the early read.

*I received a copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this opportunity.*

As a person with minimal knowledge of Egyptian history, CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER was an approachable, informative, and well researched delve into the fascinating figure of Cleopatra Selene. While commonly overshadowed by her infamous mother, Cleopatra VII (or, as most of the population refers to her, Cleopatra), Cleopatra Selene was an intriguing and powerful woman in her own right.

Draycott does a wonderful job of piecing together a timeline of Cleopatra Selene's life from her rather minimal historical presence. The author has obviously done a thorough job of not only finding every reference to Cleopatra Selene in classic literature as well as any art that is confirmed (or theorized) to be her. While there isn't a lot about Cleopatra Selene's life, especially compared to her illustrious mother and father, Draycott supplements the gaps in her life with theories (with evidence to support her suspicions).

Additionally, Draycott makes the complex interpersonal relations of Egypt and Rome understandable-- which is definitely not an easy feat!

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about Cleopatra Selene or the post-Cleopatra VII Egypt/Rome!

¡ requested cleopatra's daughter on a whim and ended up completely fascinated by a historical figure i previously knew nothing about. cleopatra selene was the only daughter of cleopatra and antony; following their deaths, the young princess and her brothers were taken from egypt to rome, where they disappeared from the historical record while she went on to marry a king and become queen of mauretania.

i really appreciate the way draycott theorizes about cleopatra selene's life despite the limited source material available to her. her passion is evident in her writing and research, and she does an excellent job of exploring not just one historical figure, but providing context including the societies cleopatra selene lived in, the people who might have played significant roles her life, and the heavily debated question of cleopatra's (and therefore, her children's) race/ethnicity. despite my lack of knowledge of this era, i was never lost and actually struggled to put this book down at times.

Overshadowed by her famous parents Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, Draycott is able to dig up quite a lot on the life Cleopatra Selene, who had a full and bumpy life, tossed up and down Fortune's wheel multiple times, but, almost miraculously, making out OK, especially when compared to the fate of most of the rest of her extended Egyptian and Roman family.

Draycott goes through all the primary documents, always careful to point of bias, looks at what has been discovered in the archeological record, especially coins, as well as doing some extrapolating based on what was "typical" for royals, political prisoners, teenaged girls, Romans, and Egyptians for the time.

Cleopatra Selene had a fascinating life which deserves more attention and I'm glad Draycott gave her her own, long overdue, biography.

In her most recent book, Draycott discusses the life of Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Cleopatra VII and Marc Antony and the only one of their three children to survive to adulthood. Continuing research she began over a decade ago, Draycott uses historical and archaeological discoveries and information to unravel the mysteries around Cleopatra Selene’s life. Draycott discusses the myriad of female and foreign influences on Cleopatra Selene’s life, even going so far as to discuss whether Cleopatra VII and Cleopatra Selene were Black African princesses. Draycott brings in a substantial amount of historical evidence and analyzes these artifacts and documents in an attempt to draw conclusions about Cleopatra Selene. Draycott’s clear familiarity with the period and the multitude of tensions in Octavian Augustus’s empire adds to the uncertainty surrounding the facts about Cleopatra Selene; yet this uncertainty makes Draycott’s work more legitimate and groundbreaking given the greater focus on Cleopatra Selene’s mother. Draycott organizes the book into clear chapters organized around periods or themes of Cleopatra Selene’s life, which makes the book more readable. She conveys her information, analysis, and conclusions through clear prose, and her expertise on the topic makes this book a very credible source.

I really liked this. My edition (it could be from the ebook version) was riddled with typos, missing letters, and random spacing. Aside from that though I really loved the research that went into this. It was very digestible and really intriguing. I am interested to see what other famous women from history we will get biographies? from.

I didn't know what to expect from this book but have always been fascinated by this time in history. Of course I had heard of her famous parents but nothing of their offspring. This was a fascinating look at the making of a queen and lives of ancient peoples.
I liked that the author gave a lot of information on her family leading up to her birth and even after her death. She included everything from every day life to the conflicts of the era.
I would definitely recommend to anyone who finds this period of time captivating.

There is a story to be told here, and Jane Draycott clearly knows what she is talking about. The only problem is that there is so little really known. As with books I've read about Cleopatra herself, lots of educated guesses have to be based upon the slim evidence.

Writings about Cleopatra tend to stop with her death, leaving the stories of her children hanging. While her sons are either known or presumed to have died soon after she did, her daughter Cleopatra Selene lived another two decades and more, and was queen of the north African kingdom of Mauretania. The most interesting parts of the book were those that talked about her life after Cleopatra, as a ward of Augustus Caesar's ex-wife and as queen. She and her husband were apparently both influential and effective, as well as well connected all around the Mediterranean. It is easy to forget that being Antony's child she was half-sibling to ancestors of Roman emperors to come, and through living in Rome for a number of years would have known her relations there. Her son would have continued the Mauretanian line, except that he ran afoul of Caligula which proved fatal. While this was essentially the end of the client kingdom of Mauretania, he appears to have had a daughter who married into a royal family in the Levant.

Draycott tackles head-on the question of what we can and can't know of Cleopatra's ethnic ancestry. The Ptolemies in Egypt were basically Greek, placed in charge there by Alexander of Macedon, but no one knows who Cleopatra's mother was, and she could have been from just about anywhere in the ancient Mediterranean and northern African world.

As usual with books like this, where very little is known, I sometimes questioned the value of certain assumptions upon which a lot was then hung. Cleopatra Selene was eleven when her parents died, and despite her apparent later aptitude for queenship, we have no idea whether she observed her mother's life as a ruler or whether she was even kept close to her mother at all times. Eleven year olds were undoubtedly more mature then than today, but it's still assuming a lot to think that an eleven year old had learned any lessons about ruling a kingdom from her mother.

The illustrations were clearly reproduced and added a lot to the information presented in the text. If you're interested in Cleopatra, or have read any of the apparently numerous historical novels about Cleopatra Selene, this book will interest you.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read a proof of this book.

I had so much fun reading this biography about a hidden figure in history. Cleopatra Selene was girl in a precarious situation and she grew up to marry a king. Her story is one that I had never heard before. The chapters went into each part of her life as they discussed her parents, her brothers, childhood and life in Rome. Each chapter made me keep reading and I found myself saying “Just one more chapter”. This is a must read for ancient Egypt lovers or for someone who loves a bit of ancient drama.

I received an arc via Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

Jane Draycott takes us on a journey into the forgotten history of Cleopatra’s daughter. The story is full of drama, chaos, and many twists. The writing style is very academic and can be difficult to follow or understand sometimes. I would recommend this book to anyone who is into Ancient Egypt or Roman history. I give Cleopatra’s Daughter 3 stars!

I am always in desperate need of books about historical women and so I really enjoyed this one! Hellenistic and Roman Egypt are such fascinating periods and Draycott weaves Cleopatra Selene's personal narrative through the larger political implications of this world. Some of the broader discussions this book tackles - like the status of Roman client kingdoms and ancient conceptions of race - were incredibly nuanced and insightful, especially in comparison to how discussed and debated Cleopatra the elder has become.

I would have loved to see a more expansive discussion of life in Mauritania during Juba and Cleopatra Selene's reign. Her time in Rome is fleshed out with plenty of supplemental information about art, culture, and daily life, and I think a similar treatment of her time in Africa could have worked really well. Also, this could just be a personal pet peeve, but I could have done with less "perhaps she was feeling this emotion at this time" passages. The art and archaeological evidence made me feel closer to her as a person without this kind of emotional supposing, but I guess that's why I became an art historian.

Overall, I would definitely recommend to someone who is perhaps less familiar with this period of Roman Egypt or wants to examine the ancient world through the perspective of historical women.

In interesting book that follows the life of a character often relegated to a footnote. Cleopatra herself commands attention, but then as soon as she's gone, histories tend to move on to the rise of Caesar and Rome. This books takes time to look in-between the two, and is well worth reading.