a love that will go down in history - part 2

Claire's Guide to Bad Fictional and Historical Relationships 
(Part the Second)

Previously we covered Romeo and Juliet, Cathy and Heathcliffe, and Bonnie and Clyde!

Anthony and Cleopatra

Okay, so a bit of background. Before she got with Mark Anthony, Cleopatra was pretty hot-and-heavy with Julius Caesar, and had even had a son with him: Caesarion (no, really). He got bumped off, and the Second Triumvirate was formed out of Mark Anthony, Octavian and Lepidus. Now, whilst Cleopatra was busy bumping uglies with Caesar, Egypt was pretty safe from being stomped on by the Romans in any particularly brutal way (See: The Gauls, the Druids, the Carthaginians...) With Caesar dead, suddenly Egypt was vulnerable again, unless Cleopatra could wangle her way into the good graces of any of the three new rulers of the Empire.

Mark Anthony summoned her to visit him, they formed an alliance and sealed the deal as it were. He moved in with her in her love palace in Egypt for a spell and all seemed fine and dandy.

Except, whilst he was busy having fun in the sun with the Queen of the Nile, his wife, Fulvia, was left back in Rome, handling all his political problems for him, particularly with Octavius. Finally, after spending the winter with the other woman, he heads back to Italy to try and help out his wife - who has been exiled during this time - but she dies before he gets there.

This is clearly very unfortunate for Fulvia, but Mark Anthony has just managed to be relieved of his husbandly duties before being caught getting his end away elsewhere. You'd think this might encourage him to be faithful to Cleopatra.

No. Instead whilst he's back in Rome, he married Octavian's little sister, Octavia Minor (no I'm not making this up). 

Then, in the midst of a war with Parthia, Anthony and his new wife go on a jolly to Greece and basically orgy it up in the name of Dionysus. He and Octavian have another little bit of a barney, and in a huff he leaves his pregnant wife (Octavian's little sister, remember, so super-helping his cause here), to go and see Cleopatra again, with whom he's had three kids.

It gets much more complicated than that, and there's a lot of in-fighting, but basically Anthony gets the tar kicked out of him by Octavian, who has forced Lepidus to hand over his third of the power to him, so it was 2:1 odds against Mark Anthony.This squabble continued, with Anthony conquering land and giving bits of it to Cleopatra's children, and Octavian coming along and kicking them about a bit. Octavian eventually got fed up of the whole thing and stomped into Egypt, so Anthony was left with no safe place to hide any more. 

Being a Roman, he felt it best to die with dignity rather than have Octavian give him the monster tactical wedgie he was clearly aiming for. So, assuming that Cleopatra was of a similar mindset, he stabbed himself.

Except. Cleopatra, being as she was, NOT a Roman, (nor, technically speaking, Egyptian, since her family came from Macedonia, but apples and oranges) the idea hadn't occurred to her to top herself. Possibly she'd suddenly become aware that in terms of sexy politics she'd backed the wrong horse, and was hoping Octavian might accept a late entry. Who knows. But Anthony was delivered to her by his friends, and died in her arms.

Cleopatra was then captured by Octavian, who wanted to trot her back to Rome to show off his victory. Apparently she tried to kill herself several times before succeeding, as he had instructed her to be guarded against it. Although she was apparently allowed to conduct the funeral rites on Anthony after her capture, it is stretching it to assume she killed herself in his name.

Oh, and just to round this off, did we mention that prior to becoming sole ruler of Egypt, and her nookie-time with Caesar, she was married to her brother? They got married when he was 10 and she was 18. This was pretty common in Egyptian royal families. She only became Queen because, after being ousted from power in a sibling squabble, her brother-husband Ptolemy pissed off Caesar by decapitating his son-in-law, and then Cleopatra capitalised on this situation by using her sexy 21-year-old wiles to seduce 52-year-old Caesar.

Romantic? Really?

Samson and Delilah

So, Samson and Delilah were a little bit like Romeo and Juliet, except that they were on two different sides of a war rather than a family feud, and she was a spy sent to seduce Samson and find out his weakness, because every time he showed up to battle it was basically like the Hulk taking out a cardboard fort.

The first time she asked him, he lied and said if he was tied up with 7 new bow strings, then he'd be powerless. So she did it, and it didn't work.

The second time she asked him, he lied and said that it would work if she tied him up with 7 ropes. So she did it, and it didn't work.

The third time she asked him, he lied and said that he would be powerless if she plaited the 7 locks of hair on his head. So she did it, and it didn't work.

So she asked him a fourth time. And for some reason this stupid man didn't think that if he told her then, as she had done the previous occasions, she'd actually do it. So he told her the truth. 

GUYS. IF YOU KEEP TELLING A WOMAN HOW TO DEFEAT YOU AND SHE KEEPS TRYING TO DO IT, MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP TELLING HER STUFF.

And delighted, she called in some of her mates to shave off his hair. Oh, and then when he was weak and helpless they blinded him and threw him in a dungeon to rot.Then a few years later, they trotted him out to show him off and his hair had all grown back, and he knocks down the temple with hundreds of people inside it, killing himself in the process.

So, to summarise. She never loved him, she betrayed him and his entire people, and then got him blinded and thrown into the dungeon until he killed himself.

Guinevere and Lancelot

To be honest, integrally this one reads pretty similar to Anthony and Cleopatra in terms of the tick list of bad behaviours. 

Was one of them married to someone else? Check.

Did this affair break an agreement with a close ally? Check.

Did someone end up dead because of it? Check.

We all know that Guinevere was married to King Arthur. Lancelot was King Arthur's most trusted knight. His right hand man. His bro, if you will. So the very fact that the affair happens is pretty crappy to begin with. And it goes on for years. It's only eventually discovered when a feast happens and neither Guinevere or Lancelot bothers to turn up.

But Arthur doesn't take rejection well, and Guinevere is sentenced to burn at the stake (y'know, treason and all). Lancelot isn't super-keen on that idea, rounds up a posse and rides in to save her, and in the process manages to kill the two brothers of Gawain, who'd been the one guy who'd refused to get involved in the whole mess. Gawain, stepping up to Lancelot's position as Right-Hand Knight, and narked that Lancelot had killed his brothers, persuaded Arthur to go to war, because Lancelot broke the cardinal rule of knighthood, Bros before Hos.

Guinevere, left behind with Arthur after Lancelot came along and stomped on everything, is then ditched by just about everyone as the boys go off to have their pissing contest in France, and left in the care of Arthur's illegitimate son Mordred. Who then decides that he wants to marry Guinevere and become king. 

There are then a couple of different versions of how this goes. In one version, Guinevere sees this as a bad deal and locks herself in the Tower of London - followed by hiding out in a convent; in another she decides that Mordred's not quite that bad and agrees to marry him. Arthur gets wind of this, charges back to England and kills Mordred, and then dies himself. Guinevere gets one last meeting with Lancelot, then heads back to her convent. In another version, Guinevere actually decides that Mordred seems like quite a good deal, becomes his consort and has two kids with him.

On the one hand, this is comparatively positive compared to the other relationships listed, because neither of the couple end up dead. On the other, given as there are conflicting views as to whether it ended in a convent or with Guinevere having another man's children, and also a civil war, it can't really be called a romantic success story.

Part three to come, where we will explore the giddying relationships of Helen and Paris, Gatsby and Daisy, and Tristan and Isolde!