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20 Noble Relationships in History that Had Internal Conflict

Khalid Elhassan July 23, 2019 23 min

Peter the Great - Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia

12. Cleopatra III Deposed Her Own Son, to Replace Him With a More Favored Son

Family intrigues complicated the reign of Ptolemy IX Soter II, nicknamed Lathyros (“Chickpea”), who had married his sister, Cleopatra IV, sometime before he became king. When his father, Ptolemy VIII Potbelly, died in 116 BC, Chickpea’s mother and the reigning queen, Cleopatra III, made him co-regent. However, it seems that Ptolemy IX had not been her favorite son, and that she had been forced to choose him because of public pressure.

She worked out some of that resentment by forcing Chickpea to divorce his sister-wife Cleopatra IV, and replace her with her own sister and Ptolemy IX’s aunt, Cleopatra Selene I. The ditched sister and ex-wife fled to Syria. There, she married into the royal family, and reigned as queen until she was murdered. As to Ptolemy IX, Cleopatra III accused her son and co-regent of having tried to murder her, and deposed him in 107 BC. In his place, Cleopatra III installed her favorite son, Alexander, who ascended the throne as Ptolemy X.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.