It is 40 BC in the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria, Egypt, and Queen Cleopatra VII is embracing her new Roman lover Mark Antony. Like many of Cleopatra’s infamous affairs, there is a political angle to this coupling, with Antony offering Roman military might to protect the queen’s grip on power in exchange for access to the Hellenistic Egyptian empire’s great wealth. In the end, neither of their ambitions would be realized, with Egypt becoming a province of the Roman Empire after Cleopatra’s suicide.
This is a redrawing of a piece I did using pen ink and grayscale markers back in 2014, in which Cleopatra came out looking rather regretful or anxious. Dunno why she’d be feeling that way (guilt or fear of Antony’s enemies in Rome, perhaps?), but I liked the emotion in that old piece and wanted to “update” it.
