Could your particular love story be a romance that could change the course of history? Well, probably not, but with Valentine’s Day happening this week, this seems like a good time to look at some romances that did really change the world. For better or for worse, through violence or through science, through law or through religion, these historic romances altered the course of history.
First on our agenda are Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Cleopatra VII of Egypt is often remembered for her legendary powers of seduction and mastery at building shrewd alliances. However, her political and romantic partnership with the Roman general Mark Antony brought about the deaths of both of her lovers and toppled the centuries old dynasty to which she belonged.
Earlier in her reign, Cleopatra’s relationship with another Roman general, Julius Caesar, had allowed her to take the throne from her brother and co-ruler when civil war erupted between the two siblings. After Caesar’s murder, Rome fell into another civil war. Antony took up the administration of Rome’s eastern provinces. He summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus to answer charges that she had aided his enemies. Hoping to woo Antony, Cleopatra arrived on a river barge dressed as Venus, the Roman god of love. The love struck Antony followed her back to Alexandria, pledging to protect Egypt and Cleopatra’s crown.
The next year he returned to Rome to prove his loyalty by marrying Octavian’s half-sister Octavia; Cleopatra, meanwhile, gave birth to Antony’s twins and continued to rule over an increasingly prosperous Egypt. Antony and Cleopatra were reunited several years later, and Cleopatra had another son, Ptolemy Philadelphos, in 36 B.C. Having left his wife, Antony declared Caesarion to be Caesar’s son and rightful heir (as opposed to his adopted son, Octavian) and awarded land to each of his children with Cleopatra. This launched a war of propaganda with the furious Octavian, who claimed that Antony was entirely under Cleopatra’s control and would abandon Rome to found a new capital in Egypt. In 32 B.C. Octavian declared war on Cleopatra, and in 31 B.C. his forces trounced those of Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium.
The following year, Octavian reached Alexandria and again defeated Antony. In the aftermath of the battle, Cleopatra took refuge in the mausoleum she had commissioned for herself. Antony, falsely informed that Cleopatra was dead, stabbed himself with his sword. On August 12, 30 B.C., after burying Antony and meeting with the victorious Octavian, Cleopatra closed herself in her chamber with two of her female servants and committed suicide. The method she chose remains unknown, but writers advanced the theory that she used a poisonous snake. According to her wishes, Cleopatra’s body was buried with Antony’s, leaving Octavian (later Emperor Augustus I) to celebrate his conquest of Egypt and his consolidation of power in Rome.
Our second couple, that we will discuss is the Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra Federovna. Set against the backdrop of revolutionary turmoil, featuring an opportunistic mystic and hinging on an incurable bleeding disease, their story had all the elements of a sensational romance. The granddaughter of England’s Queen Victoria, Alix Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice—later known as Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov—rejected an arranged marriage to her first cousin, Prince Albert Victor, after falling in love with Nicholas, heir to the Russian throne, as a teenager in 1889. Equally smitten, her lover convinced his reluctant, ailing father to agree to the union, and the pair wed in November 1894, just several weeks after the czar’s death and Nicholas’ coronation.
Though forged amid great sadness, the marriage was a happy and passionate one, producing four daughters and a son, Alexei. From his father the young czarevitch inherited the claim to the Russian throne, but his mother bequeathed him a more burdensome legacy: the mutant gene for the clotting disorder hemophilia, of which both Alexandra and her grandmother Victoria were carriers. Terrified of losing Alexei, his parents became increasingly reliant on the controversial “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin, whose hypnosis treatments seemed to slow the boy’s hemorrhages. Rasputin’s political influence over the czar and czarina undermined the Russian public’s confidence in the Romanov dynasty and contributed to its overthrow during the February Revolution in 1917. Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were executed on July 16, 1918, on orders from Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Indirectly, at least, the royal couple’s romance had opened a new and bloody chapter in Russia’s history.
Next week you can look forward to reading about our third couple who didn’t make it into this week’s article: King Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn. They need their own Did You Know article all to themselves.
