21. The King Who Murdered His Sister/ Wife/ Cousin
Egypt’s Ptolemaic Dynasty was probably history’s most dysfunctional and perverse ruling family, in which intra-familial murder and incest were so common that their absence from a reign was more shocking than their practice. Perhaps none of the Ptolemies illustrates how tangled things had gotten after generations of incest than Ptolemy XI Alexander II, who ruled the kingdom for a few days in 80 BC.
His uncle Ptolemy IX Lathryos had died in 80 BC, leaving the throne to his daughter Cleopatra Bernice, who briefly reigned alone as Bernice III. The Roman dictator Sulla however wanted a more pliant ruler, so he sent a young Ptolemy XI to Egypt. There, the new arrival married Bernice III – his cousin as well as his half-sister – and ruled jointly with her. The joint rule would last only a few weeks, before Berenice’s brother-husband did her in.
