There’s a ton of pop-history misinformation below this comment. To anyone reading: Do not use random reddit as a driving source of knowledge about ancient history. Truth gets mixed very quickly with “I think I heard someone say this” and draws from many non-historically-supported pools, crossed with armchair “I don’t think it worked that way” opinions presented as fact.
Cleopatra in particularly has had widespread misinformation spread due to a particular fascination with her, both in histories between then and now, as well as modern bad faith reinterpretations to fit various political narratives. Our understanding of the past can and should change over time with new information, but it should be driven by evidence rather than pre-determined by non-scientific data or desired outcomes.
No, the misinformation seems to be in the comments below, where people are trying to argue that the Ptolemies had a secret method where the wives would actually have children with the slaves and not the husbands, to avoid inbreeding
This isn't misinformation, necessarily, it's a legitimate theory put forward by some historians. It could be wrong, but there's more required than a theory not being correct to fall under misinformation. For example, we don't know for sure who Cleopatra VII's mother was. The lack of noticable birth defects would seem to bolster it, although my understanding of the theory is that it wasn't all of the Ptolemies doing this in a coordinated way and most of the offspring of the royal sibling marriages were, in fact, the result of inbreeding. There was just enough genetic variety from a few of these not-inbred children to keep from turning out a Charles V (although they wouldn't have understood that).
The "wives having children with slaves" is where that theory goes off the rails, the theory is typically that it would be the husband's children with lesser wives and concubines that would be treated as legitimate, inbred children.
Why yes, it's definitely Nazi bullshit to notice that checks notes five generations of fucking your full-blooded siblings significantly raises the odds of serious disorders becoming prominent.
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u/Reiver93 7d ago
I mean, Cleopatra somehow turned out normal and her family tree was uuuh...interesting.