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Puella Magi Cleopatra Magica revisited
I suspect I'm going to end up writing something much longer than a commentfic...
"She was twenty-one, an orphan and an exile. Already she had known both excessive good fortune and its flamboyant consort, calamity." Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, p. 14.
Kyubey comments that Madoka's potential power is inexplicable because she's an ordinary person - normally the level of misfortune that would result in that kind of power level is limited to... I forget the wording, but queens, national leaders, something along those lines.
Cleopatra, according to multiple accounts, liked to disguise herself and sneak around. I suspect she would have loved magical-girling. Maybe the anime staff did do their homework on her.
When she was around 11, her father was temporarily deposed, and her older sister claimed the throne. She may or may not have fled with him. Two years later, he returned and executed her sister (the Ptolemies tended to marry and murder relatives) putting her first in line for the throne. Five years after that, she and her younger brother/husband ascended the throne together; by the time she was twenty she and her brother were at war. A couple of points where she could form a contract.
During her childhood, much of Egypt's empire was lost. There are indications she was close with her father; her mother is more or less unknown.
The whole etymology in PMMM draws off of Japanese and Latin. "Witch" as a gendered term has a confusing etymology but it's not something Cleopatra would have known (nor is "majou," obviously)... but the presence of Circe, who's described as a witch in translations, suggests there may have been a similar term for a female practitioner of magic. I've come up with "pharmakeia" and "polypharmake" as descriptors for Circe, but the term obviously indicates use of herbal magic. ARGH. I mean, I can just use Translation Convention and have them use "witch," which conveniently has both a gender and connotes evil, but... I'd like to know for my own sake.
"Incubate" is a Latin word.
Magic was believed in and "practiced" at the time - the construction of wishes and curses would make perfect sense to anyone at that time.
I basically know what Cleopatra's wish is going to be and when she'll form the contract. But I'll need to create at least one witch for her to encounter to give her a reason to buy Kyubey's story (possibly more, for her to fight) and that's kind of a challenge, since they aren't exactly going to be decorating their barriers with donuts and medical paraphernalia, or TVs and monitors.
"The fear and fury must have shattered Cleopatra as she realized she was to become the woman who destroyed the Egyptian monarchy, as a third-century AD chronicler has it. For her monumental loss there were no consolations, including -- assuming she believed in one -- a brilliant afterlife." Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, p. 279.
"She was twenty-one, an orphan and an exile. Already she had known both excessive good fortune and its flamboyant consort, calamity." Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, p. 14.
Kyubey comments that Madoka's potential power is inexplicable because she's an ordinary person - normally the level of misfortune that would result in that kind of power level is limited to... I forget the wording, but queens, national leaders, something along those lines.
Cleopatra, according to multiple accounts, liked to disguise herself and sneak around. I suspect she would have loved magical-girling. Maybe the anime staff did do their homework on her.
When she was around 11, her father was temporarily deposed, and her older sister claimed the throne. She may or may not have fled with him. Two years later, he returned and executed her sister (the Ptolemies tended to marry and murder relatives) putting her first in line for the throne. Five years after that, she and her younger brother/husband ascended the throne together; by the time she was twenty she and her brother were at war. A couple of points where she could form a contract.
During her childhood, much of Egypt's empire was lost. There are indications she was close with her father; her mother is more or less unknown.
The whole etymology in PMMM draws off of Japanese and Latin. "Witch" as a gendered term has a confusing etymology but it's not something Cleopatra would have known (nor is "majou," obviously)... but the presence of Circe, who's described as a witch in translations, suggests there may have been a similar term for a female practitioner of magic. I've come up with "pharmakeia" and "polypharmake" as descriptors for Circe, but the term obviously indicates use of herbal magic. ARGH. I mean, I can just use Translation Convention and have them use "witch," which conveniently has both a gender and connotes evil, but... I'd like to know for my own sake.
"Incubate" is a Latin word.
Magic was believed in and "practiced" at the time - the construction of wishes and curses would make perfect sense to anyone at that time.
I basically know what Cleopatra's wish is going to be and when she'll form the contract. But I'll need to create at least one witch for her to encounter to give her a reason to buy Kyubey's story (possibly more, for her to fight) and that's kind of a challenge, since they aren't exactly going to be decorating their barriers with donuts and medical paraphernalia, or TVs and monitors.
"The fear and fury must have shattered Cleopatra as she realized she was to become the woman who destroyed the Egyptian monarchy, as a third-century AD chronicler has it. For her monumental loss there were no consolations, including -- assuming she believed in one -- a brilliant afterlife." Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, p. 279.
no subject
Maybe I ought to give reading biographies another try.
no subject
It's partly brainstorming, partly notes to myself. I actually have a drabble already done, but I'm too fascinated with the topic to leave it at that. It's kind of funny - as an Egyptophilic kid, I never had any interest in Cleopatra, because she wasn't a real Egyptian.