“While the inbreeding was meant to stabilize the family, it had a paradoxical effect. Succession became a perennial crisis for the Ptolemies, who exacerbated the matter with poisons and daggers. Intermarriage consolidated wealth and power but lent a new meaning to sibling rivalry, all the more remarkable among relatives who routinely appended benevolent-sounding epithets to their titles. (Officially speaking, Cleopatra and the brother from whom she was running for her life were the Theoi Neoi Philadelphoi, or “New Sibling-Loving Gods.”) It was rare to find a member of the family who did not liquidate a relative or two, Cleopatra VII included. Ptolemy I married his half sister, who conspired against him with her sons, two of whom he murdered. The first to be worshipped as a goddess in her lifetime, she went on to preside over a golden age in Ptolemaic history. Here too was an unintended consequence of sibling marriage: For better or worse, it put a premium on Ptolemaic princesses. In every respect the equals of their brothers and husbands, Cleopatra’s female predecessors knew their worth. They came increasingly to assert themselves. The Ptolemies did future historians no favors in terms of nomenclature; all the royal women were Arsinoes, Berenices, or Cleopatras. They are more easily identified by their grisly misdeeds than their names, although tradition proved immutable on both counts: various Cleopatras, Berenices, and Arsinoes poisoned husbands, murdered brothers, and outlawed all mention of their mothers—afterward offering up splendid monuments to those relatives’ memories.” — Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life
*note: there is still some debate on the historicity of cleopatra vi tryphaena. while some scholars assert that she is the eldest daughter of ptolemy xii, others suggest that her identity has been conflated with that of cleopatra v tryphaena, thereby making her ptolemy’s wife, not daughter.
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