Cleopatra Selene was the sole survivor of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt for almost three hundred years. Taken prisoner after her parents committed suicide, she was only eleven years old when she was marched as a chained captive through the streets of Rome. That she survived these horrors to become one of the greatest queens in the empire is a story that should inspire everyone, but Cleopatra Selene is virtually unknown. Perhaps this is because she is entirely overshadowed by her more famous mother, but with a spate of books coming out about this most intriguing Egyptian princess, perhaps Selene will have her day in the sun.

The latest book about Cleopatra Selene is my own debut novel, entitled Lily of the Nile (Berkley Books, January 2011); I’m delighted to have the chance to compare and contrast the books that came before mine.

Selene is mentioned only briefly by the ancient historians. The first biography of her life appears to have been written by Beatrice Chanler in 1934. Chanler’s book might be seen by academics as altogether too speculative for a biography–it supposes motives and often jumps into the heads of others like a benign omniscient narrator. For a commercial fiction writer, however, it is immediately recognizable as historical fiction. I was powerfully influenced both by Chanler’s lofty prose and her theory that Selene was a religious figure for Isis worshippers. Her book has long-since been out of print and it’s quite difficult to come by a copy of it; my own is one of my most treasured possessions because it moved me so. In fact, one of the motivations for my own work was to update Chanler’s ideas and make them more accessible for modern readers.

In 1971, Alice Curtis Desmond wrote a book entitled Cleopatra’s Children which covers both the end of Cleopatra’s life and the fate of her children, including Cleopatra Selene. This book is more firmly in the tradition of historical fiction and takes a number of creative liberties. For example, like me, Desmond imagined Selene being directly involved in her mother’s suicide. Though many of its theories have been disproved and it’s an old book, I would recommend it for young readers because of its direct, simple style.

Nine years later, Andrea Ashton would write Cleopatra’s Daughter, a romantic epic of Selene’s life, totally in keeping with the tradition of Bertrice Small. The book is filled with melodramatic flourishes, but she’s the first of the authors to approach Selene’s life with any concern for the Berber peoples over which Selene would rule as Queen of Mauretania. Though there’s no evidence that Selene and her husband Juba II ever set foot in Numidia, and recent scholars suggest they did not, Ashton threads genuine concerns about native populations and imperialism through her romance. Oh, sure, she gives us a spunky cheetah-keeping, chariot-driving heroine who has constant misunderstandings with her husband before they can find their happy ending. But she also sketches out some of the genuine difficulties a modern audience might have about a grown man marrying a fifteen year old girl and explores the psychology of exiled royalty like Selene and Juba with remarkable sensitivity.

Most recently, Cleopatra Selene was memorialized by the acclaimed historical fiction writer, Michelle Moran. Moran’s book explores the famous people, trials, customs and architecture of Rome in the Augustan Age. She takes the liberty of imagining Selene as an architect and inventing an anti-slavery activist known as the Red Eagle to represent slave revolts of the age.  Whereas Michelle Moran applied an archaeological lens to her book, I embraced magical realism in my work and wanted to focus on the significance of the Augustan Age in the progress of women’s equality and spirituality.

This summer Vicky Alvear Schecter will publish Cleopatra’s Moon. I can’t wait to read it! And in the autumn, the second installment of my series about Selene, Song of the Nile, will hit bookshelves too. 2011 is clearly the year of Cleopatra Selene.