Whore-Queen, by Ever Whitlock
The poem “Whore-Queen” was written by Ever Whitlock of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. They are an undergraduate student working towards a double major in History and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, with a planned graduation date of May 2024.
Their look at Kleopatra VII is a response to Tara Sewell-Lasater’s lecture “Kleopatra VII in Assassin’s Creed Origins and Other Media: The Creation of a Cultural Memory Caricature” on the myth of the Ptolemaic queen, held on 27 February 2024, in which she emphasised the fictional aspect of Kleopatra’s personality, as transmitted by ancient sources as early as the Augustan era and into our modern popular view of the queen via video games. The lascivious, ambitious, sexualized, and lustful queen depicted in the Roman sources thus conceals the real Kleopatra VII, and it is in this way that she has been transmitted to contemporary popular culture, with examples in multiple films, novels, games, etc. Whitlock’s words explore this distorted view of the queen. This fictional Kleopatra is the “canopic prostitute”, as Propertius claimed, condemned for her lust to dwell in one of the circles of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, both in the literary sphere and in the video game reproduction of that work.
Whitlock translates this vision and tinges it with a deep feminine pessimism, condemning the image of the queen that has been created by an enemy’s conquest. As a student of Classical studies, Whitlock speaks on the contemporary view of the myth of Kleopatra, one that is deeply influenced by today’s popular culture.
Whore-Queen
By Ever Whitlock
goddess on earth
worshiped and loved
ruled the kingdom as was expected
with one exception
a woman
alone
far too intelligent for the tastes of men
dumb down, sexualize
wipe the truth from history
place on a pedestal
of man’s creation
present as advisory meant to be defeated
only good enough to be beat
down down down
fallen into public memory
as a no good seductress
fuck me over
call me a whore
I know who I was
Kleopatra VII
goddess on earth
Author: Ever Whitlock, Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas
Foreword by: Abraham I. Fernández Pichel and Tara Sewell-Lasater
Featured Image: Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1887), by Alexandre Cabanel. Oil on canvas. Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (Wikimedia Commons).
