CLEOPATRA: Insanely Inbred in Real Life- Family Tree- Mortal Faces

While Charles II's inbredded family lineage is like a shrub, Cleopatra's can be described more like a ladder or a bowl of spaghetti. In this video, I will transform her faces to see how she might have looked with her multi-generational inbreeding. So let's get started. Thank you for watching. Subscribe for more historical recreations and let me know in the comments who you want to see in real life. As for her appearance, everyone kept calling her a beauty. She had a prominent nose, sloping forehead, sharply pointed chin, thin lips, and hollow-looking eye sockets. There's a possibility she could have looked perfectly normal, but at the same time, given the lack of variety in DNA, she could have looked not quite right. If she did have major deformities, I'm sure the description would have popped up somewhere by an opponent. Perhaps she was beautiful in comparison to everyone around her who might have looked even more out of sort. And if that's the case, then her minor deformities may have in fact made her look beautiful. Also her sculptures may have been idealized by other artists, giving her perfectly proportional and god-like features. Even so, she was a capable ruler and seemed to not have inherited any major debilitating genes. So let's bring her back to real life and we're gonna see what she's made of. Cleopatra's family originated in Macedon in Europe. Back then, Macedon was an independent kingdom, but nowadays most of its territory resides in Greece. So how did the Macedonians end up in Egypt? Well, it was the fault of Alexander the Great. He conquered the whole Persian Empire, which had territories in Africa and Asia, and when he died, these territories were partitioned by his generals and each of these generals became kings of a region from the former empire. Ptolemy I was one of these generals. He got Egypt and he became its pharaoh. His descendants ruled Egypt for the next 300 years and there are 9 generations between him and the last Ptolemaic queen, Cleopatra VII, the one we all know of. She and her son were the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty to rule Egypt. Ptolemy I was from a Macedonian noble family and he took on his wife, Berenice I, also from a Macedonian noble family. The couple had Ptolemy II, the next pharaoh. He married Arsinoe, the daughter of one of Alexander's general-turned-kings, and they had the third pharaoh, Ptolemy III. Their marriage did not last and they divorced and he married his full sister, Arsinoe II. Apparently, they were in love. Ptolemy III married his first half-cousin, Berenice II, because they were grandchildren of Berenice I, who had been married before and had a kid during her first marriage. Then the couple had Ptolemy IV. From the 4th to the 14th monarch, things got quite nasty. The Ptolemies didn't really live a family life as we understand it, rather they lived a kind of domestic safari in which you tried to kill as many of your close relatives as you were able. Ptolemy IV's advisors purged any royal who might be able to oppose them. This included murdering his own mother, Berenice II. Then he married his full sister, Arsinoe III. She was murdered right after his death, again by the same advisors. Ptolemy V, their son, actually liked his mother and sought revenge on his mother's killers and had them ripped apart. He married an outsider because there were no sisters to marry. Her name was Cleopatra I. She was Macedonian and Persian with a little bit of Greek and would be the last imported wife for a few generations. Despite this, she was still related to Ptolemy V. They were cousins through Berenice I and II's sides. Ptolemy V and Cleopatra I had three children, Ptolemy VI, Cleopatra II, and Ptolemy VIII. Ptolemy VI married his full sister, Cleopatra II, and then they had a girl, Cleopatra III. After Ptolemy VI's death, Cleopatra II married her younger brother, Ptolemy VIII, and they also had a kid, Ptolemy VII. This kid, Ptolemy VII, was murdered as a young teen, maybe, by his father, maybe, by someone else. Either way, Ptolemy VIII then married Cleopatra III, his niece. Yes, he was still married to his sister, Cleopatra II, while he married her daughter as well. He may have married his niece to prevent her from marrying someone else who could have claimed the throne. Uncle and niece had four kids, Cleopatra IV, Ptolemy IX, who was Cleopatra's grandfather, Cleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy X. Ptolemy IX tried to assassinate his mother, or so she claimed, but he married his older sister, Cleopatra IV, and they had Ptolemy XII, who was Cleopatra's father. Note, Cleopatra IV might have not been his real mother. His birth mom could have been a concubine, therefore, if this concubine was his real mom, which we don't know, then their new blood would have diluted the Greek lineage if this concubine wasn't Greek. But it's up for debate. Back to the story, after a few years, their mother, Cleopatra III, forced them to divorce. Then he married his younger sister, Cleopatra Selene, and they had a daughter, Bernice III. During his reign, he continued fighting his brother, Ptolemy X, for the throne. Meanwhile, their mom, Cleopatra III, kept switching sides and eventually chose her younger son because she wasn't too impressed that her eldest son tried to assassinate her, so she turned on him, got him expelled, and then her younger son became pharaoh, Ptolemy X. Ptolemy X got the throne, and then Cleopatra Selene, the younger sister, divorced the older brother and married the younger brother, the new pharaoh. They had a son, Ptolemy XI. Pharaoh Ptolemy X eventually divorced his sister, then he killed off his mother, then he married Bernice III, his niece, and then those two ruled. He also had a daughter with Bernice III, who was named Cleopatra V. Ptolemy X died, then his older brother Ptolemy IX came back from exile and became pharaoh a second time, until his death. Bernice III just sat back, watched the events unfold, and eventually ruled alone once her uncle-husband died and then her father died. She married her half-brother-cousin, Ptolemy XI. But he killed her, the people of Alexandria were upset since Bernice was favored, so they killed him. So who's left? Ptolemy XII, who was in exile with his dad, got the throne. He married his, brace with me, first cousin, also first cousin once removed, also half-niece, Cleopatra V. The couple had Cleopatra VII, we all recognized, who to no surprise would marry her older brother, then he would die, then she would have romances with Julius Caesar, while she married her younger brother, then Julius Caesar and her younger brother would die the same year, and then she would finally find love with Mark Antony. And that's a little bit about Cleopatra's family tree. So I hope you enjoyed this video, thank you for watching, subscribe for more historical recreations, and let me know in the comments who you want to see in real life, and I will see you in the next one.