I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Powerful mortal women of Greek and Roman myth rarely fared well against the masculine prowess of the Big Damn Heroes on their divinely blessed/cursed quests, even Queen Dido, who was a legendary leader long before she had the…misfortune…of kindly assisting war refugees from Troy. In Aeneas’s myth, she is reduced to a lovestruck tragedy. In The Wandering Queen, Claire Heywood gives Dido the full independent story she deserves as a Princess of Phoenicia, founder of Carthage, and Queen in her own right.
The story starts with young Elissa, Princess of Tyre, playing hounds and jackals with her father and learning to rule. The night her baby brother, Pygmalion, is born, she is awed and promises to always love and protect him. Unfortunately, when they’re grown and the king dies, his wishes for Elissa’s succession are thwarted by corrupt officials and a spoiled Pygmalion, and she is forced to make other choices. Much of the book is the retelling of her early life, how she came to be married to her beloved husband, and how hard she played the political games she learned from her father to take back her rightful place as Queen of Tyre, failing at the game, and becoming Queen of Carthage. It’s a twisty and fascinating tale full of intrigue and machinations long before Aeneas and his fellows land on the beach at Carthage.
Interestingly, Elissa/Dido’s friends, family, and advisors were mostly well rounded folk, but the character development of Aeneas, and therefore the couple’s corresponding love subplot, in The Wandering Queen is so light it’s nearly an afterthought compared to everything else on Dido’s mind. Instead of detracting, I thought it was effective showing how much she handles in her life and how he’s only one small part of it. It also helped highlight Dido’s obsessive lovestruck behaviors later in their affair as a reflection of her perceptions of their relationship, not actual love: a symptom of being “in love with love” versus being in love with the actual person, if you will.
The worldbuilding and culture Heywood has created in The Wandering Queen gives the reader snippets into daily life of a variety of people and places in the ancient world. Perhaps the only negative I can say about this book is the odd lack of awareness Elissa/Dido seem to have about the fall of Troy and the end of the war. Heywood is a classicist with a depth of knowledge of the time period that I envy, so I was surprised that the characters are just surprised by war refugees landing at Carthage. Phoenicians were traders and travelers, and both Tyre and Carthage were port cities who would’ve gotten a pretty steady stream of news, so it seemed odd and pulled me out of the story a bit. However, that’s perhaps an ancient history nerd’s nitpick that most readers may not notice, and while it gave me pause it didn’t detract from Dido’s story.
Overall, I was thrilled that Queen Dido finally got the retelling she deserves in The Wandering Queen, painting her as a smart, politically savvy, complex woman who survived the attempts to take her down and came back swinging. Heywood’s rich tapestry of Dido’s life gave me the answer to the big question the patriarchy-driven myth of “suicidal Dido” always had me asking. This woman fought her way back from a stolen crown to found a whole new city and rule it on her own, she’s sort of woman who kept fighting no matter what came at her, who inspired people to follow her into the total unknown, so why would that woman throw herself on a fire she started to burn an ex-lover’s stuff when he left town?
Five stars. I loved it.
No Pithy Phrase 