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Operation Nemesis and Other Historic Paybacks

Khalid Elhassan November 17, 2019 32 min

Armenian Genocide - 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Head of a statue believed to be of Berenice III. Wikimedia

20. The Royal Who Got Himself Lynched

Bernice, aside from being Ptolemy’s XI’s cousin as the daughter of his uncle Ptolemy IX, was also his half-sister, step-mother by dint of having been married to Ptolemy XI’s father, and might even have been his actual mother – sources are confused on this point. Despite the close family ties – or perhaps precisely because of those ties – Ptolemy XI did not like his new wife.

Nineteen days into the marriage, he murdered Berenice. That proved to be a mistake, because he was little known to the locals, while Bernice had been a popular ruler. Soon thereafter, Ptolemy XI was seized by an enraged Alexandrian mob, and publicly lynched.

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.